NHS reform: savage, callous, a godsend

The government's proposed reforms to the NHS have aroused much public debate. Would the Health Service benefit from increased competition? Emily Hohler reports.

To Labour, Andrew Lansley's Health Bill is "savage, callous, and a godsend", says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. The party watches delightedly as GPs vote against it and protesters shout "codswallop". Over 100,000 people signed a petition calling for the bill to be withdrawn. The lesson here for the government, albeit too late to learn, is: if you want to reform the NHS, "don't let on". When a Tory says NHS reform', many people hear: "your mother will be tipped out of her hospital bed and made to perform her own hip operation in the car park".

What "agitates" opponents most is competition, says The Daily Telegraph. But new research by the London School of Economics shows that measures introduced six years ago by the last government to encourage competition between hospitals have worked. Their study of two million patients found it reduced costs and increased efficiency.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.