Ed Miliband has demanded that David Cameron apologise for his NHS reforms after a critical report from the King's Fund described them as misguided and structurally incomprehensible. Speaking in Stroud, the Labour leader said the private sector should complement, not replace, the public sector, and accused the prime minister of breaking a promise not to pursue a top-down reorganisation.
The King's Fund assessment of the coalition's NHS record concluded that the reorganisation forced through by Andrew Lansley was 'damaging and distracting' for a health service that should have been preparing for serious financial and service pressures. Its chief executive, Prof Chris Ham, warned that historians would not be kind to the coalition's record on the NHS.
The 80-page report also criticises David Cameron for dismantling NHS expertise built up under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, leaving Lansley unchecked. The prime minister's 'failure to exercise due diligence on the reforms would come back to haunt him', the think tank states.
Lansley's overhaul abolished hundreds of NHS bodies, leaving a structure that is 'complex, confusing and bureaucratic' and 'not fit for purpose'. The King's Fund says it wasted the time of NHS leaders, who were 'distracted rearranging deckchairs rather than navigating safely past the iceberg' of growing demand and a tight financial squeeze.
The reforms also led to a loss of talented senior leaders and a leadership vacuum, with no one in overall charge locally. The King's Fund says this disruption has intensified problems in A&E and waiting times for cancer care and planned operations.
