Labour argument on NHS trusts branded puerile by ex-No 10 adviser

Sean Well worth says there has been an ‘infantile political row’ about NHS privatisation. Photograph: Steve Back/Rex Functions

The poorest men and women are becoming harmed by a “puerile argument” promoted by Labour that the government would be privatising the NHS if it allowed outdoors operators to take above failing trusts, according to a former adviser to David Cameron.

Sean Well worth, who recommended the prime minister on public support reform in Downing Street till 2012, says that “bureaucracies and vested interests” in the NHS have effectively prevented new providers from working hospitals by creating an “infantile political row” about privatisation.

In an post for a new guide by the Vibrant Blue Tory modernising thinktank, Really worth cites the example of the 14 NHS trusts taken into particular measures because the report on the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal last yr.

The former No 10 adviser writes: “The easy resolution would be to enable great operators, like people from outside the NHS, to come in, take above and increase these failing hospitals. But by cowing to the puerile argument that outdoors help equals ‘privatisation’, political inaction is actively harming the poorest people in our country.”

Really worth says the government has taken the weakest method to failing hospitals by introducing “however far more changes to bureaucratic procedures” rather than basically allowing new operators to take more than the management of hospitals.

He writes of the government’s strategy: “This is all fine, but it is completely inadequate. It is new competitors on the scene that are essential: new entrants have enhanced each and every other sector in background and hospital competition has been proven by academic analysis from the LSE to save lives. The NHS ought to open to new entrants right away.”

Worth’s essay appears in The Modernisers’ Manifesto, a booklet launched by the thinktank which calls on David Cameron to resist striving to appease Ukip. The booklet contains contributions by Andrew Mitchell, the former international advancement secretary, and the environmentalist and Tory backbencher Zac Goldsmith.

In an attempt to present it is inclusive, Bright Blue invited the rightwing and Eurosceptic former defence secretary Liam Fox to contribute an essay. Fox calls on western leaders to be bolder in saying that their liberal values are far better than individuals promoted by Islamist fundamentalists. He helps make the call after an associate of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy advised him that the west must says its values are various, not better, than people of the fundamentalists.

The former defence secretary writes: “If this is what we really believe, we are in deep problems. If we do not feel that our values are better than the choices, and well worth defending, then why need to any person else listen to us. Liberty, equality and the rule of law are much better than the alternatives.”

Labour argument on NHS trusts branded puerile by ex-No 10 adviser