skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The NHS reforms are suffering because Ministers consistently fail to explain them clearly. People want to be reassured that their services will not be cut. Frankly, the public does not care at all what particular structure NHS bureaucracy takes. They need to know that doctors support the proposals, and that their services will improve. To ensure the first one, the Government must get doctors - GPs in particular - on their side, and ensure that they fully understand the changes. The second will require simple and easily comprehensible messages about the future direction of the NHS. It is amazing that Andrew Lansley has been allowed to work for so long at these reforms and yet no-one has ever pressed him devise a way to encapsulate them in a simple media narrative. Hopefully this will now change.
The Big Society is an ongoing problem, which has suffered from incomprehensibility since its inception. No-one appears able to clearly explain it. And now with the Government starting to reduce the funding to local authorities it looks like a bad joke: your services will continue if you do the work yourselves. What the Big Society is about is responsibility. It's about the social networks we have - our families, our friends, our neighbours - and finding ways to ensure that all those people who live in the same area as you have help if they need it. The Government needs to move from the conceptual to the practical, and actually start to outline just how people can get involved.
So Craig Oliver will have to deal with all of this and more. Indeed, it seems that just to provoke another section of the public the Government has chosen to start a poorly explained programme to sell Britain's forests. There is not yet a coherent media narrative that explains why this is a good thing. There should be. In fact, there should have been one even before the measures were announced, because unless the public knows that a problem exists, they won't take kindly to changes to something they quite like. Craig Oliver must ensure that in the future, all announcements are solutions to clear problems, and that they can be condensed into a simple, clear message.
We were also treated, early on Friday morning, to the resignation of Andy Coulson, David Cameron's Director of Communications. This was not a total surprise - it had been a question of when not if - but the timing was a little unexpected. The case against Coulson personally has a lot of circumstantial evidence but has so far lacked concrete proof. He had quite accurately realised that he had committed the cardinal sin for a press officer and become the story, but that had been true to some extent since he was hired. While it was excruciating to see an opportunistic Ed Miliband question Cameron's judgement just hours after his own inept Shadow Chancellor had walked, the PM will quite rightly face some hard questions next week about his decision to hire the former NotW Editor. As a final point, it is worth noting that without question both Johnson and Coulson chose to use the appearance of Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry as cover for their resignations.
The rest of the week was dominated by unemployment figures that made particularly depressing reading for young people, and the official launch of Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, which - although well-intentioned and if successful will radically improve the way the NHS operates - represent an unusual gamble by the PM.
Bit of an odd session today, with a six-question break in the middle of Ed Miliband's questions to the PM. Even odder, however, was the huge cheer that Miliband got when he stood up to speak: for a split-second I think he thought something else was going on in the Chamber. Still, it's definitely good news for the Labour leader that his party is starting to support him.
The first question, as it tends to be with Miliband, was very simple. He asked if it was a good thing that unemployment was rising. Cameron responded very well and actually gave an honest answer, stating that he was worried about the figures but that there was some progress being made. He then, cleverly, raised the issue of youth unemployment and pre-empted the Leader of the Opposition by saying that it had increased by 40% under Labour.
And so it all started to go wrong for Ed. He clumsily read out his clearly scripted line which bore no relation to what Cameron had just said, and accused him of being complacent - Cameron's answer had been anything but. He then delivered a hopeless line about how the PM was 'rumbled' in Oldham. It made no sense. Predictably, Cameron laid into him for his inability to debate properly and his reliance on his notes, before easily swatting away his attack on the coalition's decision to scrap the Future Jobs Fund with some excellent statistics.
We then endured a 6-question interlude before Miliband got back up to ask the PM if he could guarantee that hospital waiting times would not increase. This was a well-designed question, because the PM can't guarantee it. He can't because he's abolished top-down targets, and that means that there is no longer scope for a centrally imposed guarantee. But Cameron failed to make this point, and to argue that his reforms would reduce waiting times, which was his biggest slip-up of the day. Instead he just started to attack Labour for not promising an increase in NHS spending.
Miliband said Cameron was taking the 'National out of the NHS', which is a nice line but didn't really reinforce the point Miliband made in the previous question. Miliband then got a little personal, and called the PM 'arrogant'. By now Cameron had got back into his swing, and he came up with a line - I've no idea why he didn't use it earlier - that the waiting list times were in the NHS constitution. He also said the reforms would save £5bn and improve the NHS.
The session started with Cameron on top and ended the same way too. Miliband made some comments about broken promises which didn't fit his earlier questions and were horrendously delivered, prompting Cameron to make yet another joke about his sub-standard debating skills.
What's most worrying for Miliband is that if he can't kick Cameron around on Lansley's NHS reforms and bankers' bonuses then what can he beat him on? These were golden opportunities for Miliband to make life very hard for Cameron and yet, aside from a couple of good questions, he has not managed to do it. So poor is his delivery and his inability to divert from his script that he's managed to make it an issue that Cameron highlights as much as Miliband picks up on dodged questions. Cameron was on better form than last week and, aside from one missed opportunity, was on top for the whole debate. So while Miliband's attacks on the NHS might play well in public, they were not good enough to save him from defeat today.
Cameron win.
Posts
