No
Final Decisions on Health Board Plans Until Framework Group Reports – Minister
MSP
for Greenock and Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, has welcomed today’s announcement
by Health Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, that he will not issue any final decision
on Health Board plans for service change until the National Framework Advisory
Committee has reported.
“I
am glad that the Minister has responded quickly and positively to my call for a
deferral,” Mr McNeil said today. “We
can’t have the framework group examining service redesign while the services
to be redesigned are collapsing around their ears.”
The
Minister contacted Mr McNeil and advised him:
“I
understand completely people’s concerns about any major service change during
the course of the framework exercise, as I indicated in the debate last week.
I would confirm, therefore that I do not intend to respond to any new
proposals that come to me over the winter until the Framework Group has
reported, unless there are issues of clinical safety.”
Mr
McNeil said he understood this would be confirmed in a letter to the Health
Committee and that it was an essential move if a proper national debate on the
future shape of the NHS was to be begun.
He
commented:
“You
can’t, on the one hand, demand the Minister take action and, on the other, tie
his hands with a moratorium.
“Equally,
there is no point commissioning an advisory committee to look at the issue from
a national perspective, while all around it decisions continue to be taken on a
hospital-by-hospital, piecemeal basis.
“By
agreeing to defer any final decisions on service redesign until the framework
exercise is complete and has reported to Ministers, we can now get on with the
proper national debate which the professionals, the public and the politicians
are demanding.”
ENDS
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