Prime Minister’s NHS speech addresses crucial issues but more clarity needed

Published: 07 June 2011

Prime Minister David Cameron today (7 June) gave a speech setting out five guarantees for the NHS.  Royal College of Nursing Chief Executive & General Secretary, Dr Peter Carter, responded saying:

“We are pleased that David Cameron is using the ‘pause’ period to reflect on the honestly held concerns that the public and professionals have over the future of the NHS. We don’t doubt that in some areas there are inefficiencies where the NHS can and should improve. However, this must be done extremely carefully and must not undermine achievements in the NHS in recent times. The reduction in waiting times over the last decade is one of these achievements and we welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to maintain the 18 week wait.

“We have to reserve judgement until we see more detail, however the Prime Minister appears to have gone some way in listening to our concerns that commissioning should be clinically-led with nurses involved at every level. However, we will be asking for much more detail on this especially as the reality on the ground is that new commissioning consortia are currently being established at pace without nursing representation. New RCN research shows that fewer than one in three consortia currently have nursing representation on their boards.*

“The RCN has repeatedly said that a focus on price competition would mean that quality of patient care could become of secondary importance, and we have expressed concern with Monitor’s duty to solely promote competition. The RCN will look carefully at the pledge to give Monitor a new duty to support integration as this will be vital in delivering uniform services to patients. We now look forward to more clarity on these issues being addressed in the NHS Future Forum report to be published next week.”

Notes for Editors

The RCN contacted 162 pathfinder consortia between March and May 2011 by letter and telephone.

36 positive responses were received. Of these,