Pulse’s new editor Sofia Lind urges the Government to stop repeating the mistakes she’s witnessed during her 12 years at the magazine
The past week – my first as editor of Pulse – has seen the Government failing to decide, yet again, whether it wants to fund general practice. Labour had promised that they would be different, with ‘any available funding’ going to GPs over hospitals. But so far their actions are speaking louder than their words.
In Liverpool, the health secretary told hospital providers that the extra money they’ve been promised in the Autumn Budget comes with strings – in the form of threats to NHS managers’ personal salaries and their reputations via league tables.
Wes Streeting quoted Lord Ara Darzi’s recent NHS diagnosis report. However, he seemed to have forgotten that the report evidenced how investment into hospitals in the current system will always mean putting it into a black hole – with history continuing to repeat itself. The report said: ‘When things go wrong the kneejerk response from ministers has been to throw more money at hospitals where the pressure is most apparent as waiting areas fill up and ambulances queue outside. The result is that NHS has implemented the inverse of its stated strategy, with the system producing precisely the result that its current design drives.’
Keir Starmer also used the week to continue sitting on the fence on whether to help or hinder general practice. During Prime Minister’s Questions, he was pushed by the Lib Dems on the troublesome National Insurance contributions rise planned from next April. ‘On the question of GPs, we will ensure they have got the resources they need and the funding arrangements will be set out in the usual way later this year,’ Mr Starmer said.
Now, I’d like to argue that there is no choice in the matter: unless the NIC rise is covered, GP practices are going to have to make cuts elsewhere – as we’ve shown in both news reports and a helpful expert FAQ this week. This in turn, will affect hospitals, and the black hole into which all the money is going, is just going to get hungrier.
So let me rewrite that response for you, Keir, in my suggested wording – if you really do mean to shift funding from hospitals and into the community: ‘I can confirm that the Government will fund in full the NIC rise as part of next year’s GP contract, in addition to other funding gaps identified in negotiations with the profession’s representatives and within the DDRB’s review process.’
There really is no other choice, unless Labour wants to repeat the mistakes of the Coalition and Tory governments of the past decade-plus, and continue killing general practice by a thousand cuts.
That time frame fits almost exactly with how long I’ve been reporting on general practice, having first joined Pulse in 2012, by the way. If you read my predecessor Jaimie Kaffash’s blog last week, you will already know that he is moving on to a more hands-off editor-in-chief role, while I take on the role as editor.
I am very excited for my new role, but I do hope it will not mean witnessing a repeat of the last decade when it comes to general practice funding. If Mr Streeting were to listen to Darzi, he might take note of this line: ‘As independent businesses, General Practices have the best financial discipline in the health service family as they cannot run up large deficits in the belief that they will be bailed out.’
Mr Streeting has cautioned that NHS improvements won’t happen overnight, but this seems like clear guidance on where to invest the interim funding.
Sofia Lind is editor of Pulse. Follow her on X @sofialind_Pulse or email her at [email protected]
GP practices are not “obliged” to make cuts as a result of National Insurance raises; Partners can reduce drawings, as Partners in any other business faced by reduced profits.
You want to spend more taxpayer money on the NHS but that doctors should be exempt from paying more tax? How does that work?
I bet the NICs rise will be covered by other funding streams from the £22b, contractors panicking too soon and for the wrong reasons….
But league tables to create more “Bullshit Jobs” in management and admin? More data collection, meetings, and malleable stats as a mismeasure of value in healthcare and in order to make their party political point….tired old thinking from Labour.