January 2008 Archives

COMING from Surrey, it is difficult for Chris Grayling – the Tory “shadow minister for Liverpool� – to make an impact, but surely no city MP can match this achievement?

Mr Grayling once faced the terrifying Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee in a charity cricket match – and smashed the ball to the boundary.

OUR MPs should pack away their hairshirts and vote themselves a proper pay rise tomorrow – ignoring the inevitable bad headlines.

But, in return, MPs must find a way to trigger a Commons vote that would force Gordon Brown to also give police officers the pay rise they deserve.

Tomorrow, the thumbscrews will be put on MPs on all sides to vote down the 2.56% rise recommended for them by the senior salaries review board.

Yes, that’s right – 2.56%. Not “generous�, or “inflation-busting�, or any of he other false adjectives applied, but well below RPI (4%), used for most pay settlements.

Yet the Prime Minister, and other party leaders, will demand that MPs exercise “discipline� by voting themselves a 1.9% rise.

Or, as it should be called, a pay cut.

Mr Brown needs MPs to get him out of the hole he has dug for himself by forcing the police to settle for 1.9% – in defiance of an independent recommendation.

The Prime Minister says this painful decision is necessary to keep inflation under control, but experts agree that is complete codswallop.

Public sector pay does not drive inflation. It is salaries in the private sector – affecting the price of everything from cars to hair cuts and potatoes – that can hit the inflation rate.

So, let’s not be fooled when Mr Brown says: “Nobody would like to pay the police more than I do, but we must not take risks with inflation . . .�

What he means is: “Nobody would like to pay the police more than I do, but I’ve screwed up the nation’s finances and it will be embarrassing if our bud- get deficit gets even bigger . . .�

MPs, earning £60,675, are not particularly well paid.

Here in London, that salary would be laughed at by many in the private, and public, sectors.

But, in standing up to No.10, MPs should also stand up for police officers, up to 10,000 of whom will protest outside Parliament today, in the so-called “bobby lobby�.

Among the MPs protesting over the staged police pay award are Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby), Louise Ellman (Riverside), George Howarth (Knowsley North and Sefton East), Peter Kilfoyle (Walton), Eddie O’Hara (Knowsley South), John Pugh (Southport) and Bob Wareing (West Derby).

They should get their modest pay rise – and ensure the police are next in line.

WHITEHALL targets are normally placed just behind dirty hospitals and greedy GPs in any list of alleged evils dragging down the NHS.

Heroic doctors and nurses are prevented from using their expert, clinical judgment by the ignorant instructions of some puffed-up bureaucrat, or so the story goes.

Last week, it was reported that billions are wasted by casualty departments admitting patients they should send home, in order to meet a target that all are assessed within four hours.

It was easy, therefore, for David Cameron to win plaudits for his New Year pledge to scrap all NHS targets and “let doctors decide the right treatment for their patients�.

The Tory leader claimed the NHS was burdened with a mind-boggling 64 Treasury targets, requiring a staggering 250,000 annual data returns, at a cost of £400,000.

So, targets are, well, an easy target – and perhaps there are too many of them? But what if the evidence shows they are working?

That was the conclusion of the NHS Confederation’s study into the effect of Whitehall’s instructions to hospitals to treat all routine patients within 12, nine and then six months.

In England, hospital managers were threatened with punishments if they failed. The result? Most patients will be treated within 18 weeks – the next target – by the end of this year.

Most will be treated within seven weeks – an astonishing advance on a decade ago when waits of 18 months, or even two years, were all-too-common.

In Scotland, the Edinburgh Parliament rejected a similar target-driven regime, relying on an “expectation� that waiting times would fall.

They did not.

The conclusion was that “targets and terror work� – with little evidence that patients are treated contrary to clinical priority, or that the figures are fiddled.

But this message was buried under the headlines triggered by a related conclusion that devolution had created “NHS apartheid� – with England the poor relation.

The focus was on some benefits undoubtedly enjoyed by Scots – free prescriptions, free eye-tests, access to some life-saving drugs – and denied to the English.

Of course, targets cannot measure everything that matters – and no-one likes paying prescription fees. But I think most patients would rather pay for their pills than wait months for a heart operation, or a new hip, as they do north of the border.

SOUTHPORT MP John Pugh will speak for the Liberal Democrats on the crunch issue of the economy.

A heavyweight job – but he has been in training.

As he told the House magazine, remembering his school days: “I got very interested in weightlifting and still enjoy a relaxing bout of heavy lifting.�