Milburn rejects Bevan's NHS vision Health secretary attacks Labour hero's centralist legacy
David Walker Wednesday October 24, 2001 The Guardian Nye Bevan, paid-up hero of Labour history and founder of the national health service, will be pushed off his plinth tomorrow by the health secretary, Alan Milburn. Mr Milburn will burnish his credentials as a Blairite moderniser by attacking the "centralist" legacy of the Welsh socialist and his preoccupation with "nationalisation". Bevan, the minister of health in Attlee's government from 1945-51 - he resigned over the imposition of charges for glasses - once famously said that the sound of a bedpan dropped on an NHS ward would reverberate around Whitehall. Mr Milburn will say in his speech - no longer, the bedpan gets dealt with locally not by the centre. The speech, to be delivered at the Fabian Society in London, has been strongly influenced and in part written by the minister's special adviser, Paul Corrigan, the partner of chief whip Hilary Armstrong. Ms Armstrong is not renowned as an advocate of decentralisation within the parliamentary Labour party, as Paul Marsden and other backbenchers will testify. Mr Corrigan, formerly an Islington councillor and a leading light in the New Local Government Network, is in favour of devolving power and responsibility within the NHS to trusts and primary care groups. A believer in giving local managers more not less say in how things are run, he was seen to wince when his chief attacked NHS "bureaucracy" during the recent Labour party conference. This week's speech argues for more local innovation and responsiveness within the NHS, effectively strengthening the role of managers in making decisions about who gets treated, when and how. Some of Mr Milburn's language echoes Labour's national plan for the health service published in the summer of 2000, which was followed earlier this year by the launch of an NHS modernisation agency. But Mr Milburn is keen to be seen to be offering a more personal vision of the future, portraying an NHS that will be much more flexible and closer to patients. He will claim credit for giving up rights of nomination to various health boards and committees. Bevan made the NHS too much like a nationalised industry, Mr Milburn will say, and a new model is needed - not like Railtrack but something appropriate to the times. Devolution to the frontline, he will say - using a phrase borrowed from the prime minister in his recent big public service speech - will encourage diversity and "local creativity". Despite a previous promise to "shift the centre of gravity in the NHS from Whitehall to frontline services", Mr Milburn is not finding it easy. On one side he has been accused of cutting vital work done at the centre on research and development. But on the other, the money does not seem to be arriving in doctors' surgeries or hospital wards. Full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,579673,00.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
