Opponents of government's controversial health and social care bill to gather to warn changes represent biggest threat NHS has ever seen
11.32am: Reporter David Hencke – formerly the Guardian's Whitehall correspondent – has been leaked a document that purports to show the various organisations that will make up NHS London under Andrew Lansley's reforms, and how they will work together, my colleague Claire Phipps reports. The diagram is here and Hencke's blog is here.
Hencke writes:
In my view this document gives a complete lie to the idea that some how we are going to have a wonderful bureaucrat-free NHS with thousands of new doctors and nurses … It more looks like a recipe for chaos, fragmentation, confused accountability and irresponsibility with taxpayer's cash. This diagram illustrates why it is costing £1.3bn to do this.
In return, a group of NHS campaigners tweeted the following:
RT @Davewwest @d_williams_: @davidhencke - I'll see your baffling diagram, and raise you a: bit.ly/wFH5fW
— NHS Supporters (@nhs_supporters) March 6, 2012
The diagram they link to does have to be seen to be believed.
There has been much controversy over whether the reforms will, as Lansley argues, reduce the amount of bureaucracy within the health service. Baffling diagrams like this certainly don't seem to help his case. But perhaps our readers who work in the health service can tell us whether this does in fact represent a simplification of current structures?
11.13am: My colleague Clare Horton points out this piece on the Guardian's Healthcare Network, in which social policy academic Bob Hudson asks what will happen if/when the bill goes through. Here's an extract:
As the NHS bill apparently reaches its final parliamentary stages, the government seems to be of the view that once the royal assent is granted, the political and professional furore will die down and the small print of implementation can be safely consigned to guidance and secondary legislation. This suggests a degree of naivety that could be corrected by any student of policy implementation. What we are more likely to see is three types of ongoing resistance.
10.39am: Hello and welcome to today's NHS live blog.
The NHS has published its new waiting times figures. My colleague James Ball will have all the details shortly.
This evening there is a "Save our NHS" rally at 6pm at Central Hall, Westminster, protesting against the government's health and social care bill.
The bill - which hands £60bn of NHS funds to GP-led local groups of doctors to spend on patients' treatments and opens the door to more private provision of NHS services - is currently at report stage in the House of Lords. Peers will continue debating it tomorrow.
Thousands of nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, cleaners, porters and other NHS workers are expected to attend tonight's rally. Speakers include comedian Jo Brand, who used to be a psychiatric nurse, as well as health workers including a speech therapist, a paramedic, and a psychiatric nurse, plus a pregnant mother, union leaders and politicians, including shadow health secretary Andy Burnham and former SDP leader Lord Owen.
Brendan Barber, the secretary general of the TUC, is expected to say:
Together we are speaking up for a publicly-accountable health service, for the values that make our NHS special and for the ethos of public service itself … I want the message to go out loud and clear that our NHS is not for sale, not today, not tomorrow, and not ever.
The government's bill represents the biggest threat our NHS has ever seen. It will mean £3bn spent on change instead of care, NHS patients pushed to the back of the queue by those with fatter chequebooks, and a postcode lottery of provision.
The bill will also mean privatisation on a huge scale, with our health service opened up to competition by any willing provider. Private firms will profit by cherry-picking the easiest, most lucrative work - leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab for everything else ...
This is a bill that is wrong for patients, wrong for the public, and wrong for Britain. Virtually nobody wants these reforms, almost nobody supports them, and certainly nobody voted for them.
Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said:
The clock is ticking and we are running out of time to save the NHS. Health workers from across the country will make their opposition to the dangerous health and social care bill heard loud and clear today in London. They know that the bill will mean the end of the NHS as we know it and they want it to be dropped.
Introducing competition into the NHS will usher in private companies. They will put profit before patients. Where you have competition you have winners and losers and it will mean that patients are hit as some hospitals close. Taking the cap off the number of private patients that can be treated by a hospital means that those who can pay will go to the front of the queue. NHS patients will face growing waiting lists ... Voters will never forgive, or forget the party that ruins our NHS.
We'll be covering all the day's events live here.
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