Why did communications go so badly wrong?

Baroness Murphy

Lord Soley doesn’t like the Health and Social Care Bill but I do. I was glad to see it passed. I felt quite elated last night after the final vote.  I was able to speak against the Lord Owen delaying amendment and glad he lost the vote by a large majority. To my surprise even the crossbenchers who had started out in opposition to the bill, even some doctors like Lord Walton and Lord Patel, were won round when they scrutinised the final amended version. This really does credit to the responsiveness of the bill team and to Ministers’ determination to address concerns head on.

But the key question remains. How did we get into a position where the Government introduced a bill which the public had no idea we needed and which they certainly didn’t want? How did a bill which moved policy quite modestly become perceived as a great threat to the very existence of the public’s rightly treasured NHS? And the answer is that no real attempt was made in advance of the Bill to be honest about the real motivation behind the Bill, which is largely about addressing the dire financial situation, improving productivity in secondary care and transferring care into less costly and more appropriate settings. Instead we had the usual PR machine mantra about ‘choice’, ‘patient centred care’ and so on when the public has in fact never been as happy with the NHS as it is now. No wonder the staff of the NHS were puzzled and resistant; no wonder the public thought if doctors didn’t like it then they wouldn’t. The lesson is that Government must be much more open about what problems it is trying to address and tackle head on what it can and cannot do. On this bill they left themselves open to a barrage of misinformation which only the passage of time will reassure the public is wrong.

I bumped into Lord Soley in the Princes’ Chamber outside the chamber after the debate last night. He was his usual friendly self in telling me we supporters were all mad.  Of course he could be right…but I’m sure the resilience of the NHS will prove him wrong even if he is right!

18 comments for “Why did communications go so badly wrong?

  1. Gareth Howell
    20/03/2012 at 6:36 pm

    Was this not the bill/act concerned with the
    commissioning of the new computer systems?

    I shuddered to think of the cost, and I am not at all sure that efficiency in making decisions
    about theatre surgery is a good thing to have.

    Efficiency once somebody is in there, obviously is!

    If parliament was merely being asked to rubber stamp what has been worked on for ten years or more, why the fuss?

  2. 20/03/2012 at 8:52 pm

    Baroness Murphy I thought you made a good speech to Lord Owen’s motion, I also support the bill. I also thought Baroness Mcintosh of Hudnall made a silly intervention on you, she seems not to understand the principle of the bill.
    The Labour Party have lost the battle on this bill, and the manner in which they have behaved in both houses shows how vein the Labour Party really is.

  3. maude elwes
    21/03/2012 at 2:30 pm

    Wrong heading here. Communications didn’t go wrong at all.

    Denial of received communication was the true culprit. Spivs and gangsters do this. And continued denial has set this coalition up for a big crash. They are finally out of the closet.

    This same coalition lied to the people to gain votes. It is therefore in office without a mandate. The ommision of its real intentions were deliberately concealed because they knew if they told the public their true aims and agenda they would not have got to second or even third base in the running.

    The ‘people of this country’ must be able to bring a case for the courts to review, or, whoever they have to appeal to, in order to call for a general election on the grounds of blatant deception and no confidence of those in power as they acted under false pretences.

    And don’t come back with ‘we have an agreement cast in stone for us to rule together until 2015. If you were able to set that up so fast, then you can just as fast put it in the bin.

    Not only did they lie about privatising the NHS, they lied about the requirements of the Human Rights Act in respect of the equalities law on marriage. Something else they didn’t add to their manifesto when they asked for our trust and votes.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9157029/Gay-marriage-is-not-a-human-right-according-to-European-ruling.html

    This kind of electoral chicanery cannot be allowed to stand, for it will set a precedent which will damage our faith in democracy to such an extent it will fall apart. Look at the damage the Blair creature did with his lies over the Iraq weapons of mass destruction. We, the ‘people’ have a ‘right’ to know what we are voting for. Otherwise, you cannot claim this country is a democracy. It is, in fact, despotic under this auspices.

    This thread should be renamed obfuscation and skulduggery deceives voters for a five year haul.

    ‘And the Baroness went along with it because the Earl knew how to rope her in.’ Smooth Operator.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-chH7BMgVI&feature=related

  4. Baroness Murphy
    Baroness Murphy
    21/03/2012 at 5:06 pm

    Gareth Howell, No I’m delighted to tell you we did not have to tackle the commissioning of the new computer systems in this Bill. But I am also puzzled as to why there was all that fuss about long standing policies.
    Tory Boy, In defence of Lady McIntosh temperatures were running feverish in the Chamber and the Opposition sensed defeat. There is always then a lot of bobbing up and down. What won’t emerge in Hansard is that Lady Boothroyd was sitting just nearby me in the seats outside the ‘bar’ where peers and visitors can watch proceedings and kept muttering ‘stand your ground, don’t give way, don’t give way ‘ etc etc, but there were louder shouts of ‘order, order’ which I thought it best to follow.
    And Maude Elwes, no,no,no the NHS won’t be privatised. And if it had been suggested even by Earl Howe I wouldn’t have supported it.

    • Gareth Howell
      24/03/2012 at 6:00 pm

      we did not have to tackle the commissioning of the new computer systems in this Bill. But I am also puzzled as to why there was all that fuss about long standing policies.

      The opposition argument in the other place, led by Milliband, was that the on going system should not be managed by a US firm, and that it was back door privatisation.

      An integrated computer stystem has got to be run by somebody and if they found the best system five or six, if not ten years ago, to their satisfaction, then they have go with the flow.

      To say that permanent system management by an outside, and US firm, is privatisation,is stretching the point a little.

      Labour opposition is a bit if a damp squib at the moment, and bill presentation by the Tories likewise.

      Some difficult years gone by. 2003onwards.

      I’m glad to Sharon Morgan dipping her finger in the hot toffee again.

  5. Gareth Howell
    21/03/2012 at 6:39 pm

    How did we get into a position where the Government introduced a bill which the public had no idea we needed and which they certainly didn’t want? How did a bill which moved policy quite modestly become perceived as a great threat to the very existence of the public’s rightly treasured NHS

    I regret that after 13 years of Labour rule, and the war too, Labour is now mismanaged by inadequate leaders. When they have been replaced we might get some more sense in opposing things which need to be opposed.

    If there were nothing to debate in parliament
    the public would be equally dismayed. Politicans and party convenors are merely trying to give value for money to the public.

    The choice of raving opposition to this one has not been good, and seemed to be led by Mr
    Milliband, without due thought. Labour members can only follow their leaders.

  6. Twm O'r Nant
    21/03/2012 at 8:25 pm

    What won’t emerge in Hansard is that Lady Boothroyd was sitting just nearby me in the seats outside the ‘bar’ where peers and visitors can watch proceedings and kept muttering ‘stand your ground, don’t give way, don’t give way ‘ etc etc, but there were louder shouts of ‘order, order’ which I thought it best to follow.

    I very occasionally wish I were there too,
    and hearing of our Bett and the Murphy at the bar being brought to order for mutterings
    (which can be heard as well as any member’s contribution at the given time)would have been one to savour!!

    Cunningly used the Bar mikes can be very well
    used!!! Ha! Ha! Ha!

  7. MilesJSD
    22/03/2012 at 3:16 am

    The NHS is in fact an NIS (National Illnesses Sector);
    yet very possibly a good one at that.

    But it has never been an adequately Health supportive and individual-wellbeing-improving service;

    in fact in that respect it could be charged with being Iatrogenic, towards both individual-health-improvement (as distinct from illness-curing)
    and sustainworthy-individual-human-development.

    Maude Elwes has thus got it very nearly spot on, too:
    which might be ‘tweeted’ as

    “Since ‘communications’ have never yet been both right and sufficient in the first place, they are logically incapable of ‘going wrong'”.

    previously shown strong argumentative proof to Lords of the Blog
    (the most recent having been suppressed by the Lord Knight blog on “Teach First” along with maude elwes’s simlarly insightful ‘reply’ submission)

    that even psychiatrists are mind-functionally deficient,
    in that they profiteer under the malfeasantly constituted, legislated, and professionally-entrenched Delusion that each of them is not just a normal human-being sustainworthily needing just one human living from the Common Purse and from The Lifesupportive Environment,
    but that each of them is ten or more human-beings, and ‘therefore’ is ‘entitled’ to draw ten human livings (each).

    Baroness Murphy would have an “interest” here, being herself a publicly-advertised and very ‘trusting’ psychiatrist*.

    (* Incidentally, being ‘over-trusting’ is a sign of Schizophrenia;
    it is not a ‘symptom’, because the owner is quite unaware that s/he has it).

    Our really Life-Threatening Problem is that Baroness Murphy, and Lord Soley too, could each or both be right

    and in any case not just Britain’s biggest employer the “NHS” has become an increasingly rudder-stuck Juggernaut blindly piling on steam, straight for the Rocks,

    but the whole British and English-Speaking Establishment is long since even more blindly stuck upon an Earthlife-Extincting longest-term Course and (esoteric) ‘Purpose’.

    What could be more “mad” than all of that ‘luxury-lolling-and-blinded-governance-mis-helmsmanship’,
    pray ?

  8. Sharon morgan
    22/03/2012 at 12:17 pm

    “How did we get into a position where the Government introduced a bill which the public had no idea we needed and which they certainly didn’t want?”

    Because you were all slacking in your job and wanted to push this bill through regardless of the consequences. Because you are being led by smug, selfish people who are looking out for them and theirs and no one else. You only have to look at the budget to realise this. When are you going to wake up and realise yourself what is going on Baroness? This country is getting more like a dictatorship than a democracy. We, the people say NO and Cameron and his cronies laugh and say they will push it through regardless. When are you going to realise that just because you want something badly doesn’t mean that it’s good for the country as a whole. When are you as a government going to see people as people with lives, hopes, dreams, illnesses as real people other than pawns to push around for your own ends?

    • atosvictimsgroup
      25/03/2012 at 3:47 pm

      We do live in a Dictatorship already, our rights are being attacked on a daily basis, one of the next big rights of ours to be taken away is the FOI Act, government dont want us seeing what they’re up to?

      http://victimsofatoscorruption.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/foi-act-under-serious-threat/

      • Lord Blagger
        26/03/2012 at 10:44 am

        Yep. Already happening. Secrecy orders being used as a cover up of corruption.

  9. Lord Blagger
    22/03/2012 at 1:26 pm

    We, the people say NO

    ============

    Just to point out one little bit. You weren’t asked. You, like me, are one of the little people who, as you point out, get dictated too.

    As for the NHS bill, its an irrelevance. Nothing changes the fundamental problem. The government can’t control its spending.

    For example, cuts? There are no cuts. Overall spending is up, in real terms. It is growing faster than inflation. See the latest red book for the details.

  10. MilesJSD
    24/03/2012 at 10:30 am

    “misinformation which only the passage of time will reassure the public is wrong”
    ———–
    Overly much of our knotty British and World issues have burgeoned overheated and irresoluble because of the foggy, ambiguous, national security-wise spin-doctored politically-correct English language we are being hourly fed and misled by, and consequently have had our minds perverted by:
    “shot & slaughtered unarmed peace-abiding neighbours” deliberately misnamed “ethnic cleransing”;
    “bombed to death by own troops” deliberately whitewashed as “friendly fire”;
    “kicking you out, sacking you” deliberately twisted around into “sorry we have to let you go” (as if it is the employee is so desperate to be rid of the job).

    Your ‘spirit’ is right, I think, Baroness;
    it is the ‘junkiness’ we have all been shovelful by shovelful buried under that we need to clear a rel;iable path through:
    “when the public has in fact never been as happy with the National Health Service as it is now”
    should have been worded
    “when the patient-body has in fact never been as happy with the British National Illnesses Sector as it is now”.

    There has never been a British Health-Support and Longterm Individual Wellbeing-Building Service.

    So, Baroness, we must launch, In-Its-Own-Right the
    British Healthy Habits & Individual Wellbeing Building Movement;
    and at the same time make the brief headline, everywhere and permanently on billboards,
    “Health Service needs to be seen as our ‘British Illnessess Sector’ and as one of our very best”;

    and be explained:
    “The 1948 British national health service is in fact our National Illnesses Sector,
    but we must retain its traditional name
    whilst at the same time building a new Individual Wellbeing-Building, and Healthy-Habits-Supportive, National Movement”.

  11. atosvictimsgroup
    25/03/2012 at 3:44 pm

    Any sane individual knows that the NHS is soon to be privatised,I wonder how Baroness Murphy will feel when she realises she has been made a fool?

    I guess just like other privalidged people in our society she will make some excuse and tell us mere plebs not to complain.

    If her previous judgement is anything to go by then the general public can expect to be truly shafted, mind you, the privatisation of the NHS will have no baring on Baroness Murphys life whatsoever, any medical problems will be resolved by a quick visit to some Harley Street specialist or private clinic.

    If I remember correctly the Baroness was in favour of the private IT Company Atos carrying out WCA Assessments, that’s proved wonderfully successful hasn’t it?

    The people in the House of Lords with a few exceptions are totally out of step with ordinary folk of this country.

    It;s all about money folks, and nothing more and nothing less, that’s all the politicians care about.

    • Lord Blagger
      26/03/2012 at 10:48 am

      Well the real problem is that the government finances are shot. Forget the headline debt figures of 1 trillion. It’s far far worse.

      That means the NHS gets hit just as much as other things.

      From the size of the debt, my guess is that we will end up with a NHS just for the poor and emergencies, the rest you have to pay for.

      However, your taxes won’t go down for the reduced services, its all going on debt payments. A large chunk to NHS staff who’ve retired.

      At the end of the day, its about money. Unless you can convince NHS workers to work for nothing.

      • MilesJSD
        26/03/2012 at 11:44 pm

        “At the end of the day it’s about money… Unless…NHS workers work for nothing(…)”

        No legitimate resident in Britain gets “nothing” ( = £0.00 per week income)

        that is thanks to the initially very sober minded and reality-oriented ‘New Labour’ correction of Karl Marx’s cart-before-horse “From each according to ability, to each according to need”
        that Labour ‘spirit’ having legislated
        (“) the British Government has decided that in future every legitimate resident in Britain must have a minimum income (in order to remain healthy, citizenlike and environmentally-supportive; or ‘Human’),
        and the Government will make payment to ensure this minimum is maintained for each individual (regardless of other Allowances such as Unemployment, Sickness, Single Parent, Disability and so forth which will also be maintained) (“).

        Thus the NHS worker being given no “Pay” would nonetheless be receiving a government-guaranteed sufficient human-living out of the Common Purse.

        “So wot’s the Big Problem, Doc ?”
        ———–
        (I concede that travel expenses to and from the workplace should be added to the Guaranteed Minimum Income, simply because such travel whilst not being “Wages” is a “legitimate Business Cost” and must be met by the Business, namely here under Lord Blagger the NHS).

  12. Twm O'r Nant
    26/03/2012 at 6:42 pm

    “Unless you can convince NHS workers to work for nothing.”

    They would certainly do a better job. You know what they say about the professionalisation of care.

  13. Gar Howell
    28/03/2012 at 2:25 pm

    No legitimate resident in Britain gets “nothing” ( = £0.00 per week income)

    It is possible that 5m do,

    MJSD’s contention is known as negative income ie benefit. Everybody’s account for cash or (now more likely) money starts at -£120 per week or more.

    That is then classed as nil income.

    So -£120 = £0 (nothing)

    Gottit?!

    This is standard practice for all the advanced economies which are obliged, by international convention, to
    accept various accounting procedures for welfare and benefit.

    5m, or more legitimate, residents in the UK get NOTHING but that nothing may be represented as £120 per week or more.

    This is by comparison with the minimum wage which is now somewhere around £18,000 an adult shopworker’s 40 hour week minium about
    £7 per hour. (I don’t know exactly how that works out but it is of great significance to the Labour party which I support.
    ———————————

    There is no such thing as “Independent” in UK politics, whether of Parish councillors or
    Parliamentary Lobby Groups, or Parliamentary “charities” limited by guarantee. It is the nature of party politics that there CAN be no such thing.

    The Hansard society which for historical reasons has support from all three party leaders, is not independent but well to the right of centre.
    The theory of its independence is a historical fiction. The Leaders of the opposition while nominally members of it, should remind their members that there is NO SUCH THING as independence in the UK party political system.

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