If the UK has become the epicentre of Europe, it's not surprising considering planes are still flying into the UK and passengers are still not tested at airports before going on their way throughout the country. Similarly,
people are still being forced into going into a workplace for non essential work. It's no use Hancock or those at Public Health England finger waging at individuals when this morning non essential workers are going to work and potentially spreading the coronavirus. When those in charge, Johnson, Hancock don't obey the 'advice' about social distancing and shaking hands - you only had to see the press conferences when the 'front people' were lecturing about social distancing when they were all huddled together as usual. Oh the hypocrisy, oh the irony. Both Dorries and Raab didn't self isolate as soon as they had symptoms and in Raab's case was coughing and spluttering on the front bench and not 'catch it, bin it, kill it' which was beamed morning, noon and night.
The government and Public health England have sold this country short and need sweeping away. Inconsistent, incompetent and incoherent 'advice' has been at the centre of this debacle.
"
The
Health and Social Care Act 2012 (
c 7) is an
Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provides for the most extensive reorganisation of the structure of the
National Health Service in England to date.
[1] It removed responsibility for the health of citizens from the
Secretary of State for Health, which the post had carried since the inception of the NHS in 1948. It abolished
NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) and
Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) and transferred between £60 billion and £80 billion of "commissioning", or health care funds, from the abolished PCTs to several hundred "
clinical commissioning groups", partly run by the
general practitioners (GPs) in England but a major point of access for private service providers. A new
executive agency of the
Department of Health,
Public Health England, was established under the Act on 1 April 2013.
[2]
The proposals are primarily the result of policies of the then Secretary of State for Health,
Andrew Lansley. Writing in the
BMJ,
Clive Peedell (co-chairman of the
NHS Consultants Association and a consultant clinical oncologist) compared the policies with academic analyses of
privatisation and found "evidence that privatisation is an inevitable consequence of many of the policies contained in the Health and Social Care Bill".
[3] Lansley said that claims that the government is attempting to privatise the NHS are "ludicrous scaremongering".
[4]
The proposals contained in the Act are some of the coalition government's most controversial. Although glanced at in the Conservative Party's manifesto in 2010,
[5] they were not discussed during the
general election campaign that year and were not contained in the
Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement,
[1] which mentioned the NHS only to commit the coalition to a real-term funding increase every year.
[6] Within two months of the election a
white paper was published, outlining what the
Daily Telegraph called the "biggest revolution in the NHS since its foundation".
[7] The bill was introduced in the
House of Commons on 19 January 2011.
[8][9] In April 2011 the government announced a "listening exercise", halting the Bill's legislative progress until after the
May local elections. The "listening exercise" finished by the end of that month. The Bill received
Royal Assent on 27 March 2012.
Public Health England was deeper privatisation by the back door and it's failed miserable despite a £4 billion budget. Also, it meant 'health issues' would not land on the heath secretary's doorstep. Defection politics as now. But the government and PHE are now at loggerheads. Blame game.
theconversation.com
