Paediatrician Group Condemns Health Bill

A group of the UKs paediatricians have written to a top medical journal criticising the Government's controversial health bill.

In their letter to The Lancet, the paediatricians from the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health called for England’s Health and Social Care Bill to be withdrawn.

They said that if passed, they believed the Bill will have an "extremely damaging effect on the health care of children and their families" and affect their access to high-quality, effective services.

"We see no prospect for improvement to the Bill sufficient to safeguard the rights of access to health care by children and their families. In our view, no adequate justification for the Bill has been made," the letter said.

"The costs of dismantling existing National Health Service (NHS) structures are enormous and, at a time of financial austerity for all public services, have resulted in precious resources being diverted to private management firms and away from front-line patient care."

Meanwhile, Andy Burnham, Labour's Shadow Health Secretary, said the warnings for Ministers did not come any more serious than this.

Mr Burnham said: "The Government is being told in no uncertain terms by 150 experts that it is putting children's safety at risk with its reckless NHS re-organisation. By pressing on, it is putting its political pride before what is best for children.

"It is simply outrageous for the Government to gamble with children's safety and this warning is sufficient reason alone to drop the Bill. Ministers can't simply ignore it as it backs up similar warnings revealed earlier this week in risk assessments by NHS bodies.

(DW)