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Do you still think the NHS is safe after Tebbit's attack on reforms?

Norman Tebbit, Thatchers hatchet man, says Cam is wrong to attack NHS.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/2011/04/01/f...

A couple of extracts for those that don't like opening links:

Lord Tebbit said Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans could bring “unfair” competition, enabling private firms to cherry pick.

He said: “It’s fine for the private sector, which doesn’t have responsibility for teaching and bringing on young surgeons, to take the straightforward and easy stuff.

“But that means the public sector is then left without the base of work to subsidise the more difficult surgery and the teaching of surgeons.”

Lord Tebbit, whose wife Margaret was left in a wheelchair after the IRA Brighton bomb attack in 1984, spoke of his experience as chairman of a charitable fund which helped the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust. He told how a local private hospital was contracted by the NHS to help shorten waiting lists.

“But the damage it did to the finances of Nuffield and its ability to carry out training...was quite considerable,” he said. “The private sector hospital had neither any obligation, nor wish, to take on the more difficult and complex surgery.

“It had no obligation to teach the next generation of surgeons the skills they would need to deal with such work.

“That was all left to be done by the NHS hospital. But the NHS hospital lost income from that bread-and-butter work. It no longer had enough of the routine work for young surgeons to gain the experience needed to take on difficult and complex work and it ran into real financial difficulties.” The Tory peer suggested that one solution could be to privatise all hospital trusts.

2 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    So. He hasn't changed his tune since his time in Thatcher's government about selling off the entire NHS then. Let the Tories play their little games with the electorate. There are still a few about who know exactly what they are trying to do. Remember privatising the utility companies and all the promises made about protecting the British consumer. There is no protection. All the Tory fat cats who bought shares in those companies made a killing when the companies were sold off to foreign investors in France and Germany. The same will happen with the NHS if we persist in electing shysters and thieves from the Tory party into government.

  • focus
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    Yes I think the NHS is safe because no government would risk losing so many votes if it all went too far wrong.

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