Cash not secret reforms call

Frontline staff and patients are being left out of secret plans to shrink NHS services and cut costs, a new report has warned.

An investigation by the King’s Fund think tank shows that NHS England has told local health authorities to keep their Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) under wraps from the public and the media until they have been finalised and approved.

NHS England has even instructed officials not to grant access to STPs, which could lead to the closure of A&E departments and hospitals, under Freedom of Information laws.

The report said the speed at which STPs have been rushed through has excluded doctors, service users and the public from being involved.

“It is clear from our research that STPs have been developed at significant speed and without the meaningful involvement of frontline staff or the patients they serve,” the report said.

“Patients and the public have been largely absent from the STP process so far.”

One local health manager involved in the development of an STP commented, “I’ve been in meetings where I’ve felt a little bit like, you know, ‘where are the real people in this?’.”

‘Ludicrous’

Another described the secrecy ordered by NHS England as “ludicrous”.

The report also highlighted the issue of local health authorities being forced into secrecy.

It said, “As well as the timeline creating a barrier to meaningful public engagement, national NHS bodies had also asked STP leaders to keep details of draft STPs out of the public domain.

“This included instructions to actively reject Freedom of Information Act requests to see draft plans. Two main reasons were given for this.

“The first was that national NHS leaders wanted to be able to ‘manage’ the STP narrative at a national level – particularly where plans might involve politically-sensitive changes to hospital services.

“The second was that national leaders did not want draft proposals to be made public until they had agreed on their content.”

A number of local authorities have gone against NHS England’s orders and published their STPs, which proposed hospital, A&E and maternity unit closures, as well as the merging of services.

Slash, trash, privatise

While the government is insisting that STPs – which will be enacted throughout England to reduce a record ÂŁ2.45bn NHS deficit – will help improve services, Unite says their real aim is to “slash, trash and privatise”.

Unite national officer for health, Sarah Carpenter said, “What the NHS needs are not more secretive ‘reforms’, but a massive injection of ‘new’ money when chancellor Philip Hammond ‘resets’ the economy in his autumn statement on November 23.

“We also need more openness about STPs as they appear, under the mantle of improved services, to mask a culture of cuts. Unite will be writing to all councils to ask them to publish the STPs for their respective areas as a matter of priority and not sign them off without full consultation with staff, the trade unions and the public.”