The Gordon Brown Blog

Giving patients more of a say and staff more freedom to shape high quality care around patients’ needs are the core messages unveiled today by leading surgeon and Health Minister Lord Ara Darzi.

After a 12-month review into the NHS, involving 2,000 clinicians and 60,000 patients across the country, Lord Darzi has published High Quality Care for All which sets out plans to build on the past decade of NHS progress.

The Review will:

•    Give patients even greater influence over the services they use by guaranteeing choice and access to the most clinically and cost effective drugs and treatments.
•    Make healthcare more personal by ensuring that everyone with a long-term condition has their own personalised care plan and by piloting personal health budgets.
•    Create an NHS that helps people to stay healthy by rolling out a new national programme of vascular risk assessment for people aged between 40 and 74, and rewarding family doctors for focusing on prevention and early intervention.
•    Raise the standards on quality within the NHS by systematically measuring and publishing information about the quality of care from the frontline up.
•    Foster a pioneering NHS by introducing new funds and prizes to support and reward innovation, and developing new best practice tariffs targeted on areas for improvement.
•    Empower frontline staff by enabling them to lead and manage their organisations and improving the quality of NHS education and training.

Today’s announcement coincides with the publication of a draft NHS Constitution, bringing together for the first time all of the principles of care in our national health service and giving patients the right to choose both treatment and providers.

Labour’s Health Secretary, Alan Johnson MP, said: “There are big challenges ahead but the NHS is clearly in much better shape than it was ten years ago - borne out by increasing satisfaction rates among patients and public. My first job as Health Secretary was to launch this review with the Prime Minister and I’d like to thank Lord Darzi for his outstanding work over the past year, reaching parts of the health service never reached before.

“These locally driven, clinically led plans show how quality of care will be raised right across the country, with doctors and nurses supported to offer big improvements in treatment at the bedside. Quality of life will be improved and more lives will be saved.”

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Labour’s Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes has announced a £265 million cash injection to improve access to sports, arts and drama for children in 18 disadvantaged areas across the country.

The funding comes as the Department for Communities, Schools and Families release figures that show that half of all schools are already providing extended school services.
Labour’s Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes said: “We know that in many areas there is a really good offer to young people – through extended schools, youth and leisure services and a wide range of voluntary and community organisations.

“However, as summer approaches I urge all Local Authorities to redouble their efforts to consult with young people and actively promote activities to them. We need to focus our attention on areas where there is high incidence of anti social behaviour by young people and also help marginalised young people overcome the barriers they face to participation.”

“The IPSOS MORI survey published today confirms the wide range of activities that the majority of schools are now providing. The next step is to ensure that all schools by 2010 are providing extended services, that parents are aware of what is available for them locally and that the most disadvantaged children and young people can access them.

“We want all local authorities to consult widely with young people to provide the sorts of positive activities they want, not only during the school holidays, but also in the evenings, when they are so badly needed. The vast majority of children and young people are law abiding and contributing well to society, but long summer evenings with nothing to do can encourage young people to get into trouble. We want to make sure they have places to go to and things to do to stop this happening.”

The 18 areas receiving a share of £265 million to pilot the extended schools subsidy are: St Helens, Oldham, Gateshead, Redcar and Cleveland, East Riding, Rotherham, Wolverhampton, Warwickshire, Derby City, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk, Luton, Somerset, Wiltshire, Croydon, Newham, Oxfordshire and Portsmouth.

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Tony McNulty MP, Labour’s Policing Minister, responding to David Cameron’s speech in Glasgow today said:

“David Cameron is trying hard to sound tough today - but this is from the man who says he wants to hug a hoodie.

“As the Prime Minister said last month, carrying a knife is unacceptable. We have doubled the maximum sentence for carrying a knife, and anyone over 16 caught with a knife should be prosecuted. When they get to court, they are now almost three times as likely to go to prison as ten years ago.

“The Tories have consistently voted soft on law and order. They have voted against tougher sentences for murder, sexual and violent offences, against five year minimum sentences for carrying an illegal gun, against allowing new trials for murder if new evidence comes to light, and against giving the police more powers to take DNA from suspects.

“People will ask themselves how the Conservative Party can claim to campaign against crime in Glasgow when on the same day they are campaigning in Haltemprice and Howden against our policies to use CCTV and DNA evidence to fight crime.

“David Cameron can’t continue to treat people like idiots. He needs to tell the country what his policies are on crime - and not just tell one audience one thing and the next audience something completely different.”

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