Mark Chadbourn: The Telegraph is reporting that Blair bigwig Alan Milburn is going to be advising Wes Streeting on sorting out the NHS crisis. Milburn is a smart guy and he understands the NHS well.

The Telegraph is reporting that Blair bigwig Alan Milburn is going to be advising Wes Streeting on sorting out the NHS crisis. Milburn is a smart guy and he understands the NHS well.

Ooooh look what happens when you have grownups in charge

Loving the boring grownups in charge 👏

Fraser Nelson of The Spectator, in The Guardian: “The next five years are going to be thrillingly unpredictable,” he said. “This week sets the scene for an extraordinary political drama." I really, really hope not. I'm sick to death of all the madness. I crave boredom and normality in public life.

It's like horlicks

🤣... Ovaltine for me!

Tbf I hate both!

Tia Maria livens both up. 🤔🤣

And a great back catalogue.

Isn’t he involved in private healthcare? Which is what Wes Streeting has been denying he’s a fan of? Do we need to be concerned about further privatisation of the NHS?

I can’t see Labour moving to privatisation. It needs to remain free at the point of use. But some drastic action is required to stop it collapsing.

I sincerely hope it remains free at the point of use, but also I worry that if anyone is making a profit then that profit should be put back into the service. There must be a way of doing that. Otherwise it seems it’s just like privatising the water companies all over again.

It’s a tough one. We’re going to need to find increasingly innovative ways to provide the level of services the public needs. Even taxing the rich at punitive levels won’t provide the necessary funds.

If only there was a country nearby who had some kind of excellent healthcare system that could be looked at...

No, no - only two healthcare systems exist, ours and the US. Suggestions that any other models exist are to be treated with great suspicion.

Or the PFI/PPP schemes, which Gordon Brown was very keen on, but have been heavily criticised

PFI: 'The rip-off that just keeps on taking'www.lrd.org.uk Public authorities continue to stump up colossal charges for PFI-built projects that are often riddled with design and structural problems. It is just over 30 years since former Tory chancellor Norman...

This sounds like good news because Wes Streeting is one of the current Labour crop who has yet to impress me at all.

Considering he moved to jobs related to the Private Healthcare industry depending on the role could be the first challenge to Starmer's cleaning up vested interests and corruption in government.

plus a lot of his good reforming ideas about NHS funding private procedures and hospitals to cut waiting lists quicker is fine at the increasing capacity of the NHS but a different issue with NHS capacity than before is the bedblocking through bad social care and that can't be fixed in that way.

Personally I don’t mind NHS-funded private (health) care to relieve waiting lists or bridge care gaps, but I struggle with the cherry-picking this enables private providers to do at the expense of patients whose needs get labelled “(too) complex” and end up being sent from pillar to post.

I don't think the end outcome was perfect after the last set of Milburn reforms but it did tackle a capacity issue which led to smaller wait lists. I am unsure if he'll be having enough fresh and new ideas to resolve issues like you highlighted.

heck, considering that Covid really showed how bad things were since Austerity with beds per capita in the NHS anyway and that so many small local hospitals and walk in centres and what not got closed the "we can pay private providers" strategy still won't make up for what is missing now.

excellent. I am guessing the Telegraph regards this as absolutely scandalous.

We can only hope 🤞🤞🤞

Is this the same Milburn who stood up in the HoC before the 2003 consultant contract and announced that he was going to make hospital consultants work 40h/wk for the NHS, at which point most of them turned round and said “fine, what 8h do you want me to drop?” That Milburn?

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