Is Labour Shadow health Minister, Andy Burnham a liar or just delusional?  Perhaps he should see a doctor.

Hitchinbrooke Hospital was privatised and the company that took it over has now decided to do a runner and hand it back to the nation.

This, as Labour tells us, is evidence that privatisation does not work and has been the cause of the ruination of this hospital.

The BBC finds little to disagree with in that claim.

Here is their report on the matter:

Hinchingbrooke Hospital: Circle to withdraw from contract

 

What’s curious is that there is absolutely no mention that it was the Labour government that privatised the hospital.  They tell us that ‘Circle took on Hinchingbrooke in early 2012, as it faced closure. ‘  which puts the blame squarely at the Coalition’s door.  The closest they get to even hinting that the process might have started earlier is this ‘….the idea of the contract started being discussed in 2009‘  which is a statement from which you could garner very little, there being no sign of who was responsible for initiating the contract talks, i.e the Labour ‘We’ll never privatise the NHS’ party.

The BBC goes on to report this with a straight face:

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said: “Patients who rely on Hinchingbrooke will be worried about their hospital following this announcement.

“It was the decision of the coalition in November 2011 to appoint Circle and they must take responsibility for this mess.

“The government were explicitly warned two years ago about the risky business model Circle were operating, but failed to take any action.”

 

Today on 5Live at around 13:30 (the programme is unusually unavailable at present)  Burnham came on.

Now normally when a Tory minister is on he gets the third degree.  He is immediately put on the defensive by the first question which is usually highly aggressive.

The usual format is for the BBC interviewer to set out an entirely negative view of a government policy and demand the minister then explain why everything is so bad.

The minister has to then deny things are as bad as claimed by the BBC, then explain what is actually happening and then defend their policy.

Today, with a Labour politician it was different.  What did the BBC presenter ask?  This is the hard hitting question…..‘What do you think about what happened?’  [In relation to Hitchinbrooke]

Now that is not even a question in reality, merely an invitation to say pretty much what you please and fill the airwaves with your own, very one sided, view of events….as indeed is exactly what happened.

Burnham informed us that this had nothing to do with him, he had ‘inherited the mess’.  He also warned people that it was likely to be a failure and didn’t want private companies involved anyway.

The BBC presenter did indeed mention Labour’s role in the farce but didn’t challenge Burnham’s rhetoric.

 

As we know from the above Burnham stated that “It was the decision of the coalition in November 2011 to appoint Circle and they must take responsibility for this mess.”

Just how true is that?  The BBC could have delved a bit further but haven’t bothered.  When the BBC’s own Norman Smith tells us that the argument about the NHS will have ‘huge political ramifications’ you have to ask why they are not more conscientious in their investigations and reporting.

 

Firstly why did the hospital end up being privatised?

This process started in 2009. At that time, Hinchingbrooke was failing financially and was the most indebted trust in the NHS, having built up debts of £40 million (almost half of the hospital’s £100 million turnover).

 

So when Labour and the unions claim privatisation will destroy the NHS how do they explain the fact that Hitchinbrooke NHS hospital  was about to close?  Never mind the events at Stafford.

 

Who started the process of privatisation?

This led to a decision by the East of England Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and then Health Secretary Andy Burnham to put the hospital out to tender and allow another organisation to take it over, a decision enabled by legislation passed in 2001 and 2006.

 

Oh..that’ll be Andy ‘not me guv!!!’ Burnham.

Now Burnham may be guilty of more porkies.  Here he is earlier this year:

‘The contract for Hinchingbrooke hospital was signed under the Coalition, and when the previous Government left office there was still an NHS bidder in the competition.’

 

Trouble is there wasn’t…even the BBC tells us this in February 2010 (pre-election):

Hinchingbrooke NHS hospital poised to be privately run

A failing hospital looks set to become the first of its kind to be run by a private firm, after the only NHS bidder withdrew from the race to manage it.

 

And then there’s this:

Tory MP Stewart Jackson then followed that up with another point of order arguing that ‘on 27 March 2010, The Times recorded that he [Burnham] had signed the agreement to restrict the number of providers to just three, in the private sector’.

 

 

So there were no NHS bidders left in the race when Burnham was still in office….though Peterborough NHS Trust was still in partnership with Serco.

 

Why did all the NHS bidders drop out? Here’s a clue:

Earlier this week Cambridge University Hospitals Trust withdrew from the race to run the large, debt-ridden hospital in Huntingdon from April 2011.

A spokesman for the Trust said: “The competitive bidding process will involve considerable investment in both time and money.

 

So the bidding process was too expensive and time consuming.  Who created such a complictaed and expensive process that led to bidders dropping out?  The Labour government.

So why were all the bidders private companies?  Because Labour made a huge mess of the bidding process.

 

 

Burnahm is claiming that ‘If the NHS stays on its current course it will be sunk by a toxic mix of cuts and privatisation.’

 

But as we know he wanted to cut the NHS budget because in 2010 the same Andy Burnham in an interview with the New Statesman said:

Burnham:  Cameron’s been saying it every week in the Commons: “Oh, the shadow health secretary wants to spend less on health than us.”

NS:  Which is true, isn’t it?

Burnham:  Yes, it is true, but that’s my point.

 

 

And as for privatisation……

What did Labour say in its 2010 manifesto, when Burnham was still Health Minister?….bearing in mind that Labour complains loudly that just the act of reforming the NHS is problematic….

‘We will continue to press ahead with bold NHS reforms. All hospitals will become Foundation Trusts, with successful FTs given the support and incentives to take over those that are under-performing. Failing hospitals will have their management replaced. Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services – where these are consistent with NHS values, and provided they generate surpluses that are invested directly into the NHS.
We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care, particularly where they bring innovation – such as in end-of-life care and cancer services, and increase capacity. ‘
Where changes are needed, we will be fair to NHS services and staff and give them a chance to improve, but where they fail to do so we will look to alternative provision.

 

Burnham was Health Secretary when the Manifeso was drawn up and he must have agreed with it and signed it off.  He cannot now claim he had no desire to privatise many areas of the NHS when the manifesto clearly states that Labour were happy to do this.

 

Where is the BBC analysis of all this when it is at the heart of the election?

The 5Live ‘interview’ with Burnham had ended after his free ranging promotional broadcast and the BBC went on to look at A&E.  At the end of the piece we find that Burnham has managed to hang on for nearly 10 minutes and is ‘willing’ to have a say on this subject.

The BBC man asks how we can get people out of hospitals quicker so as to free up beds.

Burnham takes his cue and claims that this is the ‘root cause of the crisis in A&E’…..lack of care in the community for patients who don’t need treatment but are not fit to go home and look after themselves…naturally government cuts were to blame for the lack of care facitilities.

The BBC’s Warburton didn’t say a word to challenge that claim…never mind that just minutes earlier we had been told that hospital management were not processing and filtering patients adequately and that if they had of done the ‘crisis’ in A&E wouldn’t have happened…..not forgetting of course that there is an ‘unprecedented number’ of patients coming to A&E and maybe one third of those don not actually need to be there.

 

We don’t seem to be getting the full picture on the NHS from the BBC.  The BBC in fact seem to be doing all it can to hide Labour’s guilty little secrets and exaggerate the Coalition’s problems.

When they fail to mention Labour at all in a report on privatising an NHS hospital, a process in which Labour was intimately involved you have to ask questions about what is going on at the BBC.

For example as we previously noted, this is how the BBC reported on Stafford:

This  BBC report makes not a mention of Labour or a Labour politician…however it does say:

‘In response to the inquiry, Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the “truly dreadful” mistreatment and neglect.’

 

That gives you the impression Cameron and Co were to blame for Stafford.

 

The BBC also gives the impression that the Tories were to blame for the building of a new, overly expensive hospital in Peterborough but this from the Independent gives us the truth:

‘A hospital now losing £44m a year was allowed to go ahead with a private finance deal to build new premises despite the Government being warned that the project was unsustainable.’

‘It is embarrassing for Labour because, at the time of the approval, Andy Burnham was a Minister of State in the Department of Health. He is now shadow Health Secretary.’

“This was a disastrous Labour PFI blunder. Labour was warned repeatedly by their own regulator that this PFI deal could bankrupt Peterborough Hospital but they pressed on regardless.”

 

Those last two examples were from a post I wrote two years ago which ended with this thought:

I imagine that if you look at many of the BBC’s reports a pattern might emerge….Labour involvement is quietly sidelined with minimal comment whilst any Tory involvement is twisted to turn responsibility onto them.

 

Two years on and I think I can say the case for that statement has been proved.  The BBC is downplaying Labour’s NHS disasters whilst playing up the Tories and is trying to pass off  Labour’s incompetence as Tory incompetence.