The Guardian headline was; "Jacob Rees-Mogg denies potential conflict of interest over fund links"
Before becoming Treasury Select Committee Chair, perhaps Mr Rees-Mogg should first take a long, honest, objective, good hard look at; the Health and Social Care Act, the big profits that awaited the privatisers of our NHS, and the regulator, "Monitor" which manged to have a Chair and CEO all rolled into one so as to help facilitate the pursuit of the big profits there were to be made of a NHS that was to be, "shown no mercy."
He might scrutinise what appears to be a causal link between plummeting regulatory standards multiple conflicts on interests and rocketing profits.
Those would be an interesting conflicts of interest for the Treasury select committee Chair-in-waiting, Mr Rees-Mogg to hold to account: how Monitor, the regulator, was rigged so as to facilitate the rigging of the healthcare market. A market where profits now clearly come before people.
Q. Mr Hunt, as part of the strategy for, "showing the health service no mercy" was it essential to have a regulator who didn't regulate and who chose not to follow his own guidance to NHS foundation trusts?
Mr Rees-Mogg could try holding to account the 207 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) which David Cameron - with the tacit agreement of his Liberal Democrat coalition, "partners" - had said were, "not open for discussion." This lack of proper scrutiny and lack of clear definition of key parts of the Act directly paved the way for the Health Service Gold Rush of 2013 onwards.
When creating CCGs Mr Cameron appears to have insisted they have conflicts of interests built into them. He announced that, "The status quo is not an option." As a consequence, Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill was rushed through Parliament without proper scrutiny.
Similarly, in the National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS Funded Nursing Care the term, "primary health need," does not appear in primary legislation. It is not legally defined.
As a result of the way CCGs were set up, "A quarter of of clinical commissioning group board members have links with companies working in healthcare." (Unite)
Q. Mr Hunt, is this not a conflict of interest and doesn't it conflict with the interests of the patients using this increasingly privatised service?
According to the BMJ,
"The lack of uniformity in CCGs and lack of clarity over the meaning of 'membership' raises questions over accountability, which becomes of greater importance as CCGs are taking over responsibility for primary care co-commissioning."
Not all CCGs responded to the BMJ's request for information, implying that a number have learnt that not to be accountable is the preferred route to take when conflicts of interest and profits are at stake. They are fast becoming a secret state withing the state.
Otherwise things would be different - ie CCGs would be transparent and accountable
Q. Mr Hunt, when rigging the market in healthcare so as to create those Big Profits and savings to the NHS, was it essential to exclude as much accountability from the process as possible?
Q. Professor Waite, does having Unaccountable Anonymous Desk Top Reviewers, help the NHS in its drive to save money?
The crony capitalism that Mr Cameron had promised he was going to do so much to end simply sadly never happened and it appears that the profit motive driving the Health and Social Care Act (and which created 207 CCGs) was just too good an opportunity for Mr Cameron's cronies to miss out on. So much for the Health Service being safe in Mr Cameron's hands. Or the Referendum for that matter.
A more accurate depiction of what is happening comes from Unite,
"The Tory designed Health and Social Care Act handed the NHS budget with tens of billions, over to clinical commissioning groups and in doing so created a monster, where personal financial interests run amok. As a result our NHS is being privatised."
Mr Rees-Mogg appears to see rigging the market - in this instance in health (where 932 (27%) of the 3.392 CCG board members had a link to a private company involved in healthcare) - as one of, "baking bigger cakes."
According to the Guardian article Mr Rees-Mogg quotes Margaret Thatcher, "I like cake, I like having it and I like baking bigger cakes .... I think it's true - economically you want to have a bigger cake rather than slicing an existing cake differently."
In short, the NHS. in the view of Tories thinkers such as Mr Rees-Mogg, is being turned into a big cake and being sliced up according to true Tory Party principles - profits before people.
When speaking of his own conflict of interest - being a founder partner of Somerset Capital Management and the possible Chair of the Treasury select committee - he said, "I don't think that conflict is that great."
According to North East Somerset's MP, small and medium-sized conflicts are fine apparently, and Parliament needn't waste it's time scrutinizing theme.
Unsurprisingly on the other hand, he's very selective as to which of the big ones are deserving of full and rigorous parliamentary scrutiny.
Q. Lord Tim Clement Jones, isn't the RICS Memorandum of Understanding and close monitoring of what they determine to be "effective resolutions of disputes" at Ombudsman Services, not a massive conflict of interest?
Q. Lord Clement Jones, as a Member of the House of Lords, why hasn't this- in our opinion - obvious and massive conflict of interest not been the subject of rigorous parliamentary scrutiny?
Mr Rees-Mogg seems to be one of those MPs blessed with a short memory.
Regarding another conflict of interest, he was one of the 72 MP landlords who were among those Tories who voted down a law requiring landlords make their homes fit for human habitation and as a direct consequence this philosophy of profits before people, thousands of children are condemned to live in squalor - and face subsequent damage to their health as a result of it. We assume his children are more fortunate when it comes to their health and their accommodation.
Q. Mr Clark, is there not a massive conflict of interest involving your department's close and continuing relationship with the maladministrators at Ombudsman Services:Property, your department's fixing of the lettings market on behalf of the RICS and the RICS' close monitoring of its "appointed" redress scheme, Ombudsman Services:Property for what it considers to be the "effective resolution of disputes?"
Q. Mr Clark, do you assure property complaints that a Ombudsman Services:Property 50 quid, "financial award" in a complex and costly dispute is, "an effective resolution of a dispute?"
Yours sincerely,
Steve Gilbert - Workstock number - 510458
No comments:
Post a Comment