Hundreds of NHS jobs could go in Leeds and Bradford (From Ilkley Gazette)

Hundreds of NHS jobs could go in Leeds and Bradford

2:30pm Thursday 15th July 2010

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

Hundreds of health jobs across Leeds and Bradford are set to be axed within three years under the coalition Government’s plans to shake up the NHS.

NHS Leeds (formerly Leeds Primary Care Trust) and Bradford Primary Care Trust, who employ nearly 1,000 people between them, currently pay GPs, dentists and hospitals in Wharfedale, Aireborough and Horsforth for the services they carry out.

But under Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s proposals to transfer responsibility for commissioning away from local administrators to doctors, primary care trusts will be scrapped.

And Mr Lansley has refused to give any guarantee that trust staff – managers and administrators – will find similar jobs in the new set-up.

The Conservative Minister claims he is scrapping primary care trusts because the system is too bureaucratic and wants GPs to have control of the budgets instead.

In a statement to the House of Commons he outlined how he wants the plans to come into force from April, 2013, and unveiled a White Paper on “liberating” the NHS that he claims will put clinicians in the “driving seat” on decisions about services.

MPs were told NHS staff had had to contend with 100 targets and more than 260,000 separate data returns to the Health Department each year.

Mr Lansley said: “We will remove unjustified targets and the bureaucracy that sustains them. In their place we will set out an outcomes target to set out what the service should achieve, leaving the professionals to develop how.

“We will introduce real, local democratic accountability to healthcare for the first time in almost 40 years by giving local authorities the power to agree local strategies to bring the NHS, public health and social care together.

“After a transitional period we will phase out the top-down management hierarchy including both strategic health authorities and primary care trusts,” Mr Lansley added.

Under the plans, GPs, working together in local consortia would be given responsibility for commissioning NHS services and responsibility for public health campaigns would be transferred to local councils.

Critics, however, claim any savings made by axing administration staff will be cancelled out by the cost of redundancy payments - and are warning this is the start of privatisation of the NHS, as GPs will end up outsourcing the budgetary work to private firms.

Bradford Primary Care Trust currently employs 542 people, while NHS Leeds says it has 440 staff in “a wide range of occupations and professions”.

A spokesman for NHS Leeds said it was scrutinising the Government’s plans but remained focused on ensuring patients could get the healthcare they needed.

He said: “We note the publication of the Government’s White Paper. We are looking through the paper and working with our local health and social care partners to explore the implications it will have for the NHS in Leeds.

“We remain committed to ensuring that people in Leeds have access to high quality healthcare services. We will work hard with our partners to maintain, and where possible improve, the high levels of service currently available.

“We are working closely with all of our staff so that they are kept informed of how the Government’s proposed changes will affect them.

The spokesman added: “At this stage it is too early to speculate on what the immediate impact of the White Paper will be on those currently employed by NHS Leeds.”

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham, meanwhile, said Mr Lansley’s plans were “tantamount to the privatisation” of commissioning.

He said: “Isn’t this the green light to let market forces rip right through the system with no checks or balances? Aren’t the hearts of NHS staff sinking, reading this White Paper?”

“This White Paper represents a roll of the dice that puts the NHS at risk. A giant political experiment: no consultation, no piloting, no evidence.”

He also questioned how more than 500 GP consortia could be less bureaucratic than 152 primary care trusts.

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)