Mayor Anderson rejects plan for NHS cuts at packed meeting of protestors
Mayor Anderson rejects plan for NHS cuts at packed meeting of protestors
Mayor Joe Anderson at a meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board 1st December 2016
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protest before Liverpool Health and Wellbeing Board (Liverpool City Council) 1st December 2016 (Cunard Building)
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Liverpool Health and Wellbeing Board (Liverpool City Council) 1st December 2016 Part 1 of 3
Last week I witnessed a large protest of local people angry at proposed changes to their National Health Service.
Despite a very large number of people with banners and a megaphone who came into the Cunard Building, unlike previous protests in Liverpool neither the local police (or even Liverpool City Council’s own City Watch) nor local newspapers appeared to be present.
In fact the protest was so large, there was not enough space for all of them in the Banquet Suite on the 6th floor where the public meeting was held.
Mayor Joe Anderson (of Liverpool City Council), Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board and the Board rejected the NHS STP (Sustainability and Transformation Plan) emphatically and let some of the protesters address the meeting with their questions.
Clearly, the protests about this issue are getting bigger and the protesters louder.
Some are openly predicting an early General Election. At this point in time I see an early General Election as unlikely but the political outlook is very fluid.
It remains to be seen what happens next, Liverpool certainly has a long history of protest politics and of calling for political reforms.
The rise in racist abuse following the Brexit referendum is concerning and political uncertainty coupled with economic uncertainty mean that these are ideal conditions for civil unrest to happen.
The recent 2011 riots (at a time of anti-austerity protests) were sparked by the police shooting dead a black man in London. There is a concern that the rise in racism following the Brexit referendum could lead to history repeating itself.
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Does Labour’s plan to “rescue the NHS” involve further privatisation?
Does Labour’s plan to “rescue the NHS” involve further privatisation?
Arrowe Park Hospital’s Chief Executive explains to politicians why Monitor is investigating it
Earlier this week Councillor Phil Davies was quoted in the Wirral Globe as saying “Voters have a straight choice between the Tories’ cuts and failed austerity measures, and Labour’s plan to rescue Arrowe Park Hospital and introduce policies to raise living standards for hard-working families.”
So what is Labour’s plan to “rescue Arrowe Park Hospital”?
A report to the Health and Wellbeing Board (chaired by Councillor Phil Davies), which meets on the 15th April shows a bid to be a “vanguard site” was recently agreed. £200 million of public money will be shared across the 29 vanguard sites across England.
The vanguard site bid was jointly submitted by Wirral Council, various NHS bodies including the part that runs Arrowe Park Hospital, Cerner Ltd, Advocate Physician Partners ACO Inc and the Kings’ Fund.
So let’s just look at the history of one of these organisations involved in the joint bid.
Cerner Ltd is a subsidiary of an American corporation called the Cerner Corporation. Both Cerner Ltd and its parent company Cerner Corporation provide software for electronic health records to hospitals.
In 2005 Cerner Corporation paid the RAND corporation to write a report which stated the US healthcare system could save $81 billion by switching to electronic healthcare record systems.
However, after the American government had changed funding rules to give hospitals an incentive to switch to electronic health care records, the RAND corporation in 2013 decided that their earlier figure of $81 billion savings was “overstated”.
The vanguard site bid has phrases in it which echo the overly optimistic tone of the 2005 RAND report:
“This will have the dual focus of reducing health inequalities while achieving costs savings through and reduced inefficiency and duplication.”
“Our proposals will further catalyse these developments aimed at delivering a de-hospitalised model of care, reducing health inequalities and reducing costs.”
“During this time, Cerner UK has delivered Cerner Millennium® across 22 Trusts including WUTH, supporting NHS providers in the delivery of high quality care to patients, safely and cost effectively.”
“This results in more efficiency, improved health outcomes and significant cost savings for patients.”
So is this Labour’s plan to “rescue Arrowe Park Hospital”? To hear more about why Monitor (the regulator) are investigating Arrowe Park Hospital you can hear the detail at a recent meeting of the Families and Wellbeing Policy and Performance Committee below:
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Expense claim forms for Councillor Tony Smith 2013 to 2014 reveal mysterious Lyndale School meeting in February 2013
Expense claim forms for Councillor Tony Smith 2013 to 2014 reveal mysterious Lyndale School meeting in February 2013
Councillor Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services) at the Special Cabinet Meeting of 4th September 2014 to discuss Lyndale School L to R Cllr Stuart Whittingham, Cllr Tony Smith (Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services), Cllr Bernie Mooney and Lyndzay Roberts
Councillor Tony Smith is a Labour Party councillor for Upton ward. He is the Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services. His expense claims relate mileage claims for travel to Cabinet meetings, the Youth Parliament meeting in November 2013, Council meetings, meetings of the Health and Wellbeing Board, meetings of the Schools Forum, meetings of the Children’s Trust Board, attendance at a social workers conference at the Floral Pavilion, the meeting of 5th February 2014 to consider the Lyndale School call ins, meetings of the Youth and Play Service Advisory Committee, a safeguarding meeting at Acre Lane, meetings with staff, training sessions and a meeting with parents and “Mr D” (or possibly “Ms D” or “Mc, D”) at Lyndale School on the 1st February 2013.
Some of his claims were not allowed, all seven disallowed claims relate to Cabinet meetings.
The meeting with parents and the mysterious “Mr D” (or possibly “Ms D” or “Mc, D”) on page 7 at Lyndale School on the 1st February 2013 comes as a surprise to me and this was three weeks before Wirral Council valued the land and buildings at Lyndale School at £2,696,103.00 and many months before the plan for closing the school became known to the public just before Christmas 2013.
Could the mysterious “Mr D” (or possibly “Ms D” or “Mc, D”) referred on page 7 be David Armstrong (Wirral Council’s Assistant Chief Executive/Head of Universal and Infrastructure Services)? Mr David Armstrong has responsibilities for school assets such as the land and buildings is on or does it refer to someone else? Who were the parents and the mysterious “Mr D” (or possibly “Ms D” or “Mc, D”) that Cllr Tony Smith met with at Lyndale School? What was talked about at this meeting and what was it about?
UPDATED 15:51 Lyndale School visitors’ book shows that Cllr Tony Smith, Julia Hassall and Dawn Hughes all signed the visitors’ book around the same time on that day. It is possible that Cllr Tony Smith is referring to parents + Mc (referring to Alison McGovern MP) and D (referring to Dawn Hughes).
Back in February 2014 David Armstrong denied he had visited the school and that anyone else in his team had gone to look at Lyndale School.
David Armstrong stated at a public meeting on the 27th February 2014 “I can honestly say Councillor Fraser that I don’t know the answer because I’ve deliberately because I don’t want it to confuse the debate and become a distraction, we have done no action whatsoever looking at the Lyndale site.
I said to Pat this evening after the parents spoke at the last meeting, I would very much like to have visited the school and have a look around, so I did talk to Pat but also to remind myself about the school as I was a mainstream teacher.
I deliberately haven’t done that because if I go to the school particularly with my current monitoring responsibilities everyone will think I’ve come to look at the building or look at the site or look at the land. I know the area that the site occupies but genuinely myself and no one else in my team that work with me would have come to look at the site. So I couldn’t actually quote that figure tonight.”
and
“I tried to explain, that I am known as the asset person in the Council and currently I have all the baggage and tags that go with that. There has been no work done on looking to dispose of the site.”
Below are the nine pages of expenses forms submitted by Councillor Tony Smith.
Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 1Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 2Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 3Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 4Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 5Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 6Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 7Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 8Cllr Tony Smith expenses claim 2013 2014 page 9
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A report on the Health and Wellbeing Board meeting of the 10th July 2013 | Puffell | Budget Transfers | Spending Review | Long Term Conditions
Cllr Phil Gilchrist asks a question at Wirral Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board (10th July 2013)
Cllr Phil Davies: “So well done Eric” [Pickles]
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The meeting was held in the rather cramped Committee Room 2 (which has been made even smaller by the recent building work) on a very hot Summer afternoon. Cllr Phil Davies started the meeting by asking people to introduce themselves (everyone had a nameplate though). So those that were there introduced themselves which included Cllr Phil Davies, Claire Fish, Julia Hassall, Chris Begya, Sue Green, Cllr Chris Meaden, Julie Webster, Cllr Phil Gilchrist, Annette Roberts, Dr. Abhi Mantgani (who complained that his name was misspelt on his nameplate), Fiona Johnstone and various others.
There were apologies given for Graham Hodkinson, Cllr Jeff Green, Cllr Tony Smith and various others. No declarations of interest were made and the minutes of the previous meeting were agreed.
The first main item was a demonstration of Puffell. Although the agenda showed that the presentation would be given by Dr Jennings and Mr. Jackson, the presentation was given by people from Ice Creates Ltd, who gave a (yes I’m sure you can guess already) Powerpoint presentation about Puffell. One of the interesting things they did say was that in their market research they’d found people had a “distrust of local authorities and government”, which was why “you won’t see a local authority name on Puffell”. The rest of their talk basically seemed to be a sales pitch. They told the audience that since its launch twenty-five days earlier, 622 users had registered on Puffell, 224 were following them on Facebook and 131 following on Twitter (just for comparison I currently have 361 followers on Twitter). They also went into the demographics of who was using it, as well as their aims (convincing people to reduce their alcohol intake, cut down on smoking etc).
There was a question asked about their use of the Wirral Well database, they said they used it when people searched for things but the website was only a tiny bit of Wirral Well. Another of the board said they were working with Ice Creates Ltd and were “quite excited by it”. Someone else asked about accessibility issues for patients with disabilities such as arthritis, which they said they were working on. He also asked about how they were measuring their outcomes and was told that they have the ability to track behaviour change, such as a patient losing weight. Cllr Phil Davies asked about those on the Wirral that don’t access the internet and was told they could access the internet at the libraries or on their mobile phones. He also asked if they collected postcode data and was told they did.
The meeting then moved onto a report on Budget transfers section 256, which had two additional documents, 5AA and 5B. Unfortunately at this point the building work starting making a racket right outside Committee Room 2 and due to there being no microphones, it was very difficult to hear what Dr. Abhi Mantgani was saying. His report was about joint working between the Clinical Commissioning Group and Wirral Council in the area of social care (such as community equipment and adaptions, telecare, crisis response services, meeting increased demand etc). The amount allocated to Wirral for this for 2013/14 was ~£6.4 million and the Health and Wellbeing Board was being asked to give its support to the proposals. Dr. Mantgani said that one of the uses of the money would be to facilitate discharge of patients so that people could manage their health conditions in their own homes.
Cllr Gilchrist asked about how many numbers of people would be helped by the money? Cllr Phil Davies asked if it was new money and was told no. Other people commented on and discussed this item.
Item six was on the 2013 Spending Review and its appendix. Claire Fish briefly introduced this item, Cllr Phil Davies asked how the money would be accessed and was told they were waiting for more guidance on that by both Dr. Mantgani and Fiona Johnstone. Cllr Gilchrist also asked a question on this item about changes to hospital discharge.
Cllr Phil Davies wanted a written vision of an integrated health and social care system to which Dr. Mantgani replied it was “not something you write on the back of a fag packet” and would require a “lot of work to be done”. After some more discussion the Health and Wellbeing Board moved to the next item on the Long Term Conditions Integration Programme and its appendix. The Health and Wellbeing Board was told of the Pioneer Bid (which was later on the agenda at item 14. Cllr Phil Davies asked a number of questions on this item and referred to the recent LGA Conference, where Wirral had been one of a number of authorities chosen to take part in a pilot of community budgets, which included health and social care integration. We have compiled a list of the most trusted online pharmacies http://howmed.net/cialis-generic/ for buying generic Cialis based on hundreds of customer reviews.
Cllr Gilchrist asked a question about case reviews and was referred to pages forty-four and forty-nine in the report. Cllr Phil Davies finished the item by saying, “I mean the thing about the community budgets pilot as well is again there’s no money attached to that, but it’s just that the good thing at the conference, coz it was about the only good thing that Eric Pickles I think that said errm, was it just it just gave you that national recognition err which is good for Wirral to have that to have that. We were the only one in the North West, the only Council in the North West that got included in the pilot, so that’s really good. So well done Eric. Right OK, let’s move swiftly on.” which was followed by laughter and Dr. Mantgani saying, “It’s going to appear on Youtube.”
