Dr. Sarah Wollaston defects from to leave to remain. She fears that leaving is going to cripple NHS. Dr Sarah Wollaston defects from Vote Leave to remain campaign Former GP who was chosen as Tory candidate in UK’s first open primary says her decision pivoted on likely damage to the NHS please log in to view this image The influential Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston has revealed that she is defecting from the campaign for a leave vote in this month’s referendum and will be casting a vote for Britain to remain in the European Union. Related: Influential backbencher delivers blow to David Cameron by backing Brexit Just over four months after announcing that her clear preference was for the UK’s withdrawal from the union, the MP said on Wednesday night that she no longer felt comfortable being part of the Vote Leave campaign and said its claim that a Brexit would unlock up to £350m a week for the NHS “simply isn’t true”. “For someone like me who has long campaigned for open and honest data in public life I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue,” said Wollaston, who is a former GP. “If you’re in a position where you can’t hand out a Vote Leave leaflet, you can’t be campaigning for that organisation.” In an interview with the BBC, Wollaston said that she had undergone a change of heart after her postal vote arrived and she started to think how she would feel on the morning of 24 June if the result of the referendum turned out to be a victory for the leave campaign. “I realised I would feel a sense of loss, that we had lost something, and I am now actually going to vote to remain,” she said. Wollaston said she thought there would be a “Brexit penalty” for the NHS because leaving the EU would hit Britain’s economy. “The consensus now is there would be a huge economic shock if we voted to leave,” she said. “Undoubtedly, the thing that’s most going to influence the financial health of the NHS is the background economy. So I think there would be a Brexit penalty.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest How would Brexit affect you? Wollaston is MP for Totnes and was chosen as a Tory candidate in Britain’s first full open primary selection in 2009. She agreed that some colleagues who had come out for the leave campaign were now wavering, adding: “I think any politician who is not prepared to have second thoughts should not be doing the job.” Wollaston wrote in a blog post in February: “So why am I heading towards the door? I am in love with the possibilities of the EU but can no longer ignore the grinding reality of the institution.” Her defection will come as a boost to the prime minister after polling painted a picture of an extremely close race. It also came as Vote Leave maintained its offensive in the form of a letter from the chairman of JCB, the machinery company, in which he told its employees why he was endorsing a Brexit. “I believe that JCB and the UK can prosper just as much outside of the EU, so there is very little to fear if we do choose to leave,” Lord Bamford said http://www.theguardian.com/politics...-wollaston-defects-vote-leave-remain-campaign
The way the Leave group has used the NHS is really shameful. "The NHS will be better funded after Brexit. So many extra hundreds of millions will be spent a week on the NHS etc" Knowing full well this is not going to happen.
Parts of it needs private sector efficiencies bringing in. Some of their processes and levels of 'customer care' are ****ing woeful It's an extremely inefficient colossus in parts.
I agree it's inefficient -why not put it right, then? I never understand this - if a private company can be efficient then so can a public one, in theory. If it's bloated, then to me that should be addressed rather than simply abandoned, in the same way that I think we should be trying to solve problems in the EU from within rather than run away from them. A private company needs to make profits and I don't agree with profiteering from essential services - you never know what compromises are being made to secure them. The NHS is one of the last remnants of post-war social reform, I don't want to see it completely swept away on another wave of Thatcherite ideology. But it will, I'm fairly certain.
As long as it is done right lol..Account NI ran by BT to take over finance bulk administration in NI for the civil service http://www.niauditoffice.gov.uk/a-to-z.htm/account_ni The last 2 points in the findings are incorrect to an extent. The duplication occurs because Account NI didn't understand the different retention rules regarding various grant based funding so individual departments had to "do the work anyway" despite then sending it on to Account NI to be processed. I'm Local Govt and they planned to eventually shift this area to account NI too but their cost figures are currently triple that of our own. I'm not saying it's a bad idea and I'm constantly looking at private sector practices to see if we can improve what we do. It largely comes down to two stumbling blocks. 1) legislation that requires us to spend more time proving we did the job rather than doing the job. 2) IT infrastructure..since systems went generic it's a constant battle to bring in a system that meets public sector needs functionality. Add to that it's never the people on the ground that are heavily involved in this process so systems are agreed by people that don't do the jobs and the next 3 years are spent finding cumbersome work around that negate any savings made in terms of cost and time. Look at the NHS IT system debacle as a prime example.
This is the bane of public sector work, imo. I'm not heavily involved in this but I know a number of people who are and it's their constant complaint. I have taught part-time classes for the adult learning section of the local uni and found the constant bureaucracy a nightmare. They pay you x amount per hour which sounds good, but in fact the hours of paperwork more or less doubles the workload. The people you're teaching aren't much bothered about accreditation and can't be arsed with feedback forms and it all becomes.....
Yeah. Guess which areas of funding require the most time spent on paperwork in the public sector.....EU funding cough cough...lol..
I agree, but it's down to the skillset and more importantly the mindset imho. The public sector in general don't embrace change, and they can persist with outdated and inefficient process because "it's how we've always done it". As with everything there's good and bad within the sector, but at it's worst it's bloody awful, basic shift organisation appears to be beyond some of the medical staff who end up with 'managerial' decision making according to my 2 who both work in the profession.
My ex mrs (nlm) has spent her entire career in nursing and several of my current friends are in it. One of them does maintain that part of the problem is over-expectation and misuse of the service from the public, but I don't think that's a really fundamental problem. The ex has worked in both the NHS and private nursing and care homes. The fees for these homes are astronomical, and many of the residents have to claim from the state to be in them. It bothers me that yet again we have an area where public money is being used to line private pockets. The basic staff are grossly underpaid and many have no sense of vocation- something I think you really need to do that job.
I obviously can't speak for the entire public sector on your point but I've seen a change since I came in nearly 20 years ago. I used to get so frustrated with that attitude. I had procedural manuals from 1985 lol..And yes a large part of the IT difficulty was convincing that type of person it was more efficient. In our case we had people that never turned it on throughout the life cycle of the system and just kept going with their old manual methods!!! Or inbetween people trying to apply the system to their old methods and it obviously resulted in it spewing crap and they'd point and shout "SEE! It doesn't work!" TBF to them I put a lot of this down to my previous point...the people introducing the system didn't know enough to explain the change in process well enough to show its benefits. Or the system was in fact too clumsy in its original form when introduced and people think "I don't have time for them to get it right I have a job to do now! These days you have a generation of people that grew up with technology and we all go "why the hell is it still being done like this!!" Again it's down to organisations like HMRC and higher govt level twats etc that want a higher level of accountability and transparency in the public sector than private and have added bureaucratic hurdles. (Obviously being tax payers money I see the need for adequate levels) The Unions don't help either. They see every efficiency proposal as a risk to jobs and resist. It also doesn't help when the govt sends team after team of private consultants in like PWC and Deloitte and their findings are the same..."we can get you doing less paperwork with a quarter of the staff" yet when you look at their findings in detail it again shows no understanding of the bureaucratic crap staff have to currently do. They never suggest removing that crap in their findings just that they can magically reduce staff. If the red tape is removed and the right IT systems are in place a significant reduction in staff is a natural end product over time...maybe not as much as people believe..Systems are great when everything is perfect, people are needed when it is not..which as anyone public or private sector knows is an everyday occurrence lol.
Major and Blair say an EU exit could split the UK http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36486016
One of the problems in IT procurement in the public sector is the system is put out for tender. The winning bidder has a track record of supplying IT systems to the private sector successfully but it does not work and arrives behind schedule. often the reason for this is that Govt will have changed the priorities/targets to the sector which is purchasing the system so the IT company adds a chunk to the bill and does a quick bodge job this often happens 6 7 times the development life cycle plus the IT companies often don't fully appreciate the sheer size of some of the organisations they are dealing with which often means a wide variety of kit is being used by the staff some of which may be incompatible with the new system. My experience was just to add to the problems the training packages supplied were often compiled during development and didn't match the finished product though it wasn't a given that you would even receive any training i on numerous occasions arrived at work on a monday morning to find a new icon on my desktop which was for me to adminster access to the system for all users in my area - pity no-one thought it worth letting me know there was a new system never mind give me instructions on how to build the staff in it . as for the idea the public sector isn't used to change in the department i worked a common theme from the staff was if they just left things alone for 12 months they would be amazed at the improvement in results but no either the Govt or senior management would insist on another reorganisation by the end of my time i wasn't even sure what my job title was as even that kept changing on what seemed like a monthly basis
And staffing....bulk work is done by junior grades...This is also the area that has highest turnover through exit or promotion. Add that every round of departmental cuts is usually followed by months of vacancy control where you aren't allowed to fill the posts...hey presto....
There are lot of wastages in the NHS. hospitals are being managed by managers without being doctors or nurses. Also, people are abusing the free medical treatment , people who have never contributed to the NHS either by paying tax or National Insurance. Government bureaucracy is another area that should be addressed. I remember in the 70s, prescription charge was 20p, now I am not sure how much people are paying . Patients cannot get bed in the hospital, Accident and emergency section is nothing to write home about, ambulances are no longer things you take for granted. People who want Britex are not going to use the common man NHS, because they can afford to pay for private medical care. Who is going to lose if Britain gets out the Union? Please tell me !.
