Clegg on NHS reforms: concessions or spin?

Nick Clegg this morning (Radio 4 – Today programme) repeated a recent line that GPs not ready to join up into consortia in 2013 will not be allowed to do so. It’s being written up as a concession but it’s not really very new at all. It’s what Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS said back when the Bill was published in January and again in an interview with Health Service Journal in February – here’s how the HSJ reported that:

“A relatively small number” of consortia would not have any sort of authorisation by April 2013 (Sir David Nicholson said) but added: “There will be steps you have to go up to be [completely] authorised and not everybody will get right to the top [by that date].”

You might be wondering who would be running things where the GPs aren’t ready given that government policy is to abolish Primary Care Trusts by April 2013. The government plan as things stand is for NHS Commissioning Boards to help out if GPs don’t make it to the 2013 finishing line. Expect a bit more clarity on this by the end of the re-think.

You come away from the weekend thinking that people like Norman Lamb, very close to the Lib Dem flight-deck in the Coalition, worry that the “pause for thought” won’t amount to much without a severe jolt. That must be the explanation for a man who is Nick Clegg’s adviser (and a former Lib Dem Health spokesman) taking to the airwaves to call for substantial changes to the Lansley plan. He will have noticed Nick Clegg on Radio 4 this morning saying that the NHS pause for thought was not going to “reopen the Pandora’s box” of giving GPs more say – “the building blocks” of reform remain the same. I’ve mentioned before that Andrew Lansley’s allies are on Clegg-watch montitoring his output very closely and proncounced themselves pretty happy with the Deputy PM’s outing this morning.

By the way, there was, supposedly, a systematic progress check going on already on Andrew Lansley’s reforms. The Lib Dems’ Danny Alexander and the Tories’ Oliver Letwin were running fortnightly health checks on the policy and, I understand, were pronouncing themselves very happy with the patient. Their diagnosis seems to have been fairly unceremoniously cast to one side.

One other footnote … allies of Andrew Lansley strongly reject the suggestion in some reports that the Health Secretary vetoed Norman Lamb from the health ministerial team in May last year when the Coalition was formed. They claim that Nick Clegg’s team simply forgot him when they were handing out the prizes.