This shameful Coalition @ No 10

"First - Maggie Thatcher sold off the family silver - according to Harold MacMillan who was hardly a radical man! Now these arseholes, Cameron and Clegg, are selling off the NHS!" Arturo was incandescent with rage.

He is so right. But then, Arturo nearly always is! Today, it really is time to man the barricades. It is the last possible day to *SAVE THE NHS*. By tomorrow, it will be too late!

While 'Boy David' Cameron was poncing around Washington, like Obama's tame mutt, the few men and women of integrity left in Parliament were desperately trying to get the 'Transition Risk Register' published so that the country, as a whole, would know where it stood in relation to the appalling Health and Social Care Bill, the love-child of 'Silly Ass' Lansley and the Devil Incarnate.

Whilst Obama has been struggling to give the poor in America a Health Service that will take care of them - across the pond, Cameron, Clegg and Lansley have been desperately trying to unravel the NHS.

Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, has written a letter to the Guardian explaining exactly what the 'Transition Risk Register' is:

The transition risk register deals not with the unthinkable, which of course raises difficult presentational challenges, but the very real and predictable risks arising from ministers' own policy choices. If ministers are asking for parliament's approval to implement their decisions, they should at very least be required to provide MPs and peers with all relevant information on the risks of doing so. ...
People care passionately about the NHS. They have a right to know the full implications of the government's proposed reorganisation. Ministers are insulting parliament by expecting it to endorse changes of this magnitude to the country's best-loved institution while withholding information that could change the way MPs and peers vote. Ministers are stringing out their response to the tribunal so they can ram their bill through parliament without publishing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/18/risk-register-nhs-reform-bill

Today, in the House of Lords, there will be one last ditch attempt to rectify this scandalous situation. Lord David Owen and Baroness Thornton have tabled motions to hold up the progress of the Bill until the Risk Register is published. The Guardian, in an article by Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor has the headline:

Ministers lied to push through NHS reforms, Labour peer claims

It goes on to quote from Lady Thornton:

"This is an ideologically driven bill and the Lib Dems capitulated. Ministers lied to get it through. I know it's unusually unparliamentary language but I am really horrified. They have sold us a pup."

The article continued:

The Labour peer said such a vote was now justified as "it really was the last 48 hours to save the NHS". Her ire is particularly directed at the Lib Dem peers Lady Williams and Lord Clement-Jones.

After weeks of working with the pair on defeating the government over the pro-competition parts of the bill, Thornton said the two had pulled out just before the crucial Lib Dem spring conference – where activists went on to win a motion declining to back the reforms and embarrassed the party leadership.

Instead of shielding the NHS from the full force of EU competition law, Clement-Jones did a deal with the government so that ministers would offer a "strong statement" on the need to take patients' interests into account – arguing that this would insulate the health service in court against legal challenge.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/mar/18/ministers-nhs-reforms-labour-peer

What is also scandalous is the report issued by the web site Corporate Watch which has the headline:

An unhealthy business: major healthcare companies use tax havens to avoid millions in UK tax March 17, 2012

It goes on to list the various companies and their devious methods of tax-avoidance:

While in public they have been presenting themselves as the future of the NHS, a Corporate Watch investigation into the accounts and finances of five of the major private healthcare companies has found widespread use of tax havens,* including the British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Jersey, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands, and tax avoidance schemes Barclays or Vodafone accountants would be proud of.

Spire Healthcare, the UK's second largest private healthcare company, is channelling £65m a year through a Luxembourg subsidiary of Cinven, its private equity owner, almost wiping out its taxable UK earnings.

Care UK, which operates NHS treatment centres, walk-in centres and mental health services across England, is reducing its tax liability by routing £8m a year in interest payments on loan notes issued in the Channel Islands.

Circle Health, the self-styled “social enterprise” that became the first private company to take over the management of an NHS hospital, is owned by companies and investment funds registered in the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and the Cayman Islands.

Ramsay Health Care, the company with the greatest number of healthcare provision contracts in the NHS, has used a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands to finance the purchase of a French health company for its Australian parent company.

General Healthcare Group, the biggest private hospital group in the UK, has registered the ownership of its hospitals through subsidiaries in the British Virgin Islands, potentially avoiding stamp duty when its owners come to sell. Its corporate structure may also mean its owners will not pay UK capital gains tax.

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=4251

Is anyone surprised? No! With Cameron, Clegg and Lansley in power one would expect nothing less!

The final word should go to Lord David Owen who has made a plea for sanity today:

For the health and social care bill to become law on Tuesday, without at least the Lords and Commons knowing why the tribunal believes this particular risk assessment should be published, is a constitutional outrage.

Peers undoubtedly have different views on publishing the risk assessment, but this is not the issue in Monday's debate. It is that members of both houses should have the opportunity to read the detailed arguments.

The way to block the bill will be to vote against the third reading, something rarely done but, in all the circumstances, fully justified.

Lord Owen is a former Labour foreign secretary and founding member of the SDP who sits in the Lords as a crossbencher

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/17/nhs-bill-parliament-constitutional-outrage

Arturo and I are tootling off down the road to sit in Parliament Square and watch what goes on! But we both say, loud and clear, to anyone listening:

*SAVE THE NHS*

'Bye'