This privatisation-by-stealth has an added advantage for a transparancy-averse government: it allows them to by-pass the Freedom of Information Act (an Act which has been a source of much embarrassment for the NHS).
When a member of NHSEmployers made a statment on the BBC supporting the changes to medical training, Dr Rant made a Freedom of Information request to NHS Employers and received the following reply*:
Dr Rant,
NHS Employers is not a public body as defined in the Freedom of Information Act and is therefore unable to respond to FOI inquiries.
Regards
Sam Ash
Communications & Marketing Officer
It turns out that NHS Employers is a limited company, which is a member of the NHS Confederation, which 'helps the NHS' (somehow).
Clearly, the 'NHS' is now simply a brand.
Shame it's become such a shit brand, but that's years of bad management for you.
* Actually, the doctor making the request was not one of the Dr Rant team, but if we had made a FOI request we would have received the same reply.
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8 comments:
er the freedom of information act covers bodies which are not public
i think u should report this lot to the information commissioner, not that they are very efficient or speedy, but get the wheels in motion
It applies to public authorities only, anonymous (the DPA applies to all)
u sure my commercial company has stuck FOI requests on other commecial companies before now
may have been data protection act, sorry i forget
canrt data protection act be used in this case?
Well, what a surprise! The body that "negotiates" GPs' contracts is not part of the NHS "enough" to have FoI applied... If I turn my partnership into a limited company, would I be exempt too?
We should not be too shocked given that MPs spend their time trying to avoid giving anything aaway and getting round the FoI act.
I do wonder, though, why NHSEmployers need a "marketing officer"...what are they selling, and to whom?
(Other than steaming piles of shit masquerading as "contracts" to the GPC, of course!)
This is a small example of the fucking bastard things this government has been up to when dealing with private companies. How often have we heard that they can't release details of the latest shit deal with EDS/Crapita/Accenture because of "Commercial Confidentiality". I'm sorry, but it's my tax money and I want to know what the fuck it's being spent on.
For the record, I am an IT architect by trade, and I can't figure out how in hell they can spend £13bn on the Connecting for (corporate) Wealth project. But we will never find out where the money went.
"This privatisation-by-stealth has an added advantage for a transparancy-averse government"
Last night, the following was a chilling and less transparent reveal of the political mind;
"I had hoped to find a way to execute people with it looking as least like murder as possible" - Michael Portillo on 'How to kill a human being'. Horizon, 15th Jan 2008
He had this list:
It musn't look gory
It mustn't be painful
It must be able to be carried out by non medical technicians
(server problems, dr rant?)
no one, I do think creative use of the DPA can go a long way to remedy the FOI Act's limitations, but it can't do everything; and it's more cumbersome to try to get the information piecemeal.
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