NICE has been in the firing line recently. This body which has the duty to decide which drugs the NHS can buy and which are unsuitable on grounds of efficacy and cost has been caught in the crossfire. On one side the pharmaceutical companies have been running effective campaigns to claim NICE was wrong to reject their latest drug. On the other side patient groups have started to lobby in ever more media friendly ways for spending on the latest drug that they hope will alleviate or cure their symptoms.
It is what you should expect when you have a near monopoly health service provider controlled by this particular group of politicians who live by the media. Because the NHS has such colossal power in its buying decisions drug companies have to throw everything in in England to selling to the single purchaser. They are very disappointed if it does not work.
Similarly, patient groups have come to realise with this government that only media friendly prominent lobbying is likely to get Ministers attention and possibly lead to a change of policy. One of the newer features of an MP’s life is a stream of invitations to attend functions organised by groups whose sole aim is to change the drug purchases and the medical and clinical protocols of the NHS for treating a particular disease. Most diseases now have their action group. They feel forced to behave like this, competing for the attention and money of Ministers in this heavily centralised top down system Labour has devised. Too much rests on the decisions of just a few people at the top, in the Ministry, and in NICE. Sometimes constituents write to me urging a particular treatment that they heard about, so I add my voice to those wanting the drug to be available.
The government has invited people to make the NHS the central concern of modern politics, They have shown them how to lobby and use the media, and they have so centralised the NHS that people conclude the only thing that matters is to get to the Minister. They have ended up fashioning a boomerang that is beginning to hurt the very government that fashioned it as their own political weapon.
Labour believed that if they spent lots more on the NHS most of the problems would go away. If they centralised decisions they could guarantee good standards across the country and claim the credit for all that was going on. Such a strategy means they must also be to blame for things that are not working well, and to blame when people cannot get access to the drugs they think they need or the treatment that would make them better.
I have been meeting GPs during the summer break from Westminster. They complain to me that too many top down targets are making it far more difficult to serve their patients well. They dislike features of the very expensive centralised computer technology being introduced into their lives. They too are unhappy about the endless fiats from the centre and from too many judgements being made by too few people.
Labour had better be careful. Its attempt to play politics with the health issue, showing itself as the beneficent provider of more cash from the centre, is becoming a cause of angst with patient groups, with drug companies and with GPs. That is a very powerful alliance of interests to turn against you. Never has so much money been spent by so few people with such negative effects.
Well done to our Olympians. I recently talked to St Crispin’s School about how you can live your dream if you really really want to. If you put the hard work in and take the reverses in your stride, you too might make it. It is great to see just how many young athletes from the UK have lived their dream so spectacularly in the last few days. We are proud of them all. It is good to see our local area represented on the honours board. May they inspire many more to live their dreams too.