#NHS #blockthebridge : This shocking NHS bill is without sense or mandate

Under scrutiny … the health and social care bill reaches the House of Lords next week. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

 

Westminster Bridge, joining parliament and St Thomas's hospital, will be blocked on Sunday at one o'clock by a UK Uncut sit-down protest against the NHS bill that reaches the House of Lords next week.

The Lords have the last chance to amend the health and social care bill's most egregious clauses. Despite its gigantic size, basic questions remain unanswered. The Tory MP and GP Sarah Wollaston once called it "a hand grenade thrown into the NHS" – and so it is proving. The Lords should be alarmed by the constitutional enormity of this largely unscrutinised bill for which there was no manifesto mandate. 

As it levers the NHS open to EU competition law, who is democratically accountable for its £120bn budget? Who is to answer for its quality or failures? Who commands its privatised fragments in times of crisis or pandemic? The Lords have a duty to scrutinise the most contentious parts of a bill railroaded through the Commons in just two days after the "pause", with 1,000 new amendments undebated. "The fundamental principles remain" boasted Andrew Lansley at his party conference: not much changed. Scrutiny of slapdash legislation is what the Lords are for...read more

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/07/nhs-bill-no-mandate-lords?INTCMP=SRCH