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Henry Stewart is a founder member of the Local schools Network

This week Stephen Twigg, Labour shadow education secretary, responded to the Reform report (pdf) on academies with the statement:

“Twelve years after Labour launched the academies programme, they continue to raise standards – with improvements at twice the rate of other schools.”

This claim originates from the Department for Education and has been widely used by supporters of academies.

The DfE has made similar statements for years but for the first time we can test it out, as it released a comprehensive set of data on every school this January.

So do academies perform better? The small print makes clear this claim is not based on all academies, as those that were previously independent or city technology colleges have been excluded from the comparison.

This gives a vital clue. Academies starting from a low base do well, in terms of growth of GCSE results, if compared to all schools. But what if they are compared to similar schools?

Let’s take academies where less than 35% of students in 2010 achieved the benchmark of five GCSEs including English and Maths (35% being the government’s ‘floor target’ for schools). Their results grew from an average of 29% of students achieving the benchmark in 2010 to 37% in 2011, growth of 8 percentage points. This is impressive.

However, take the same sample of non-academy state schools, those with less than 35% in 2010, and you find the percentage of students achieving the benchmark grew from an average 30% in 2010 to 38% in 2011, exactly the same 8 point growth.

• Think tank Reform’s school academy claim lacks academic rigour 28 Mar 2012

Faced with underperformance some local authorities chose to go down the academy route, encouraged by the large amounts of money available. Some chose other routes. These figures reveal that, despite receiving less funding, the local authorities that chose the non-academy route did just as well with their schools as those choosing the academy route.

When we are told how well academies have done with poorly performing schools in deprived areas, we are left with the impression other schools have stayed static and are stuck in permanent under-performance. A revealing chart in a recent House of Commons briefing (pdf) shows the opposite is the case.

See Chart 1:

Growth in results is inversely related to how well the school was doing before. The bands of schools below 35% achieving five GCSEs grew their figures the most. Those with between 35% and 65% also grew but less. And those above 65% didn’t grow at all, on average.

So if you take any group with more schools at the left-hand side of the chart, as academies have, the growth is going to be greater than for schools spread across the whole range. Its a simple statistical fact.

A similar picture appears when you compare academies with similar non-academies over the last three years, and when you include only the well established academies (five years old or more). Many have found these results, published by the Local Schools Network, to be surprising. One of the site’s regular critics, Leonard James, decided to run his own analysis. This only confirmed the findings.

Indeed, comparing academies with schools with similar levels of disadvantage he found the non-academies consistently did better.

These statistics reveal a very positive message about English secondary schools. It is not a picture of schools complacently accepting low results for their pupils, as has so often been alleged. Instead we see schools that previously had low results – whether academies or non-academies – showed substantial growth. It is a story of hard working and dedicated school staff, often in disadvantaged areas, transforming the achievements of their children.

This is, of course, a record of Labour success. It is very odd that Stephen Twigg chooses to promote only the success of the less than 10% of secondary schools that were academies under Labour and not the achievements of the other 90%. It is about time we congratulated the teachers and students in all state schools for the remarkable improvements in results in recent years.

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Think tank Reform  is claiming this morning that their new report (pdf) on Academy schools – schools which tend to act more like ‘independent schools within the state sector’ devolved from local authority responsibility – ‘explodes’ anti-academy myths.

Chief among these are that academy schools, which are intended to introduce more competition into the state sector, find it hard to collaborate with other schools due to, well, competition.

Reform, according to its press release (pdf), argues:

“Critics of academies have predicted that their greater independence will lead to a break up of state education.  The new survey dispels that fear by showing academies have good links with both neighbouring schools and local authorities.”

You might not be shocked that Reform come out to such a view point.

The think tank is widely sponsored by companies that apply for public sector contracts including G4S, Capita and Sodexo, and tends to argue that public sector outsourcing is a good thing, or at least anything which leads to public services away from being delivered by the traditional public sector.

It comes as a further non-shock that this latest research that shows academies in such a positive light has been jointly produced by ‘The Schools Network’ which Reform describes (pdf) as:

“The leading membership organisation for academies.”

However, what is surely odd is that the conclusion is made by only surveying academies, who,one might suppose, like us all, may suffer from confirmation and other biases.

To decide whether academies collaborate effectively, it would seem sensible to survey non-academies, local education authorities and parents as well. However, Reform fail to do this.

• Time to rethink our approach to teaching 16 Mar 2012

• What was hiding behind the boat: Information commissioner is investigating Gove 17 Jan 2012

• Labour’s academies legislation laid the ground for free schools’ marriage moralising 5 Dec 2011

• Gove’s three priorities? Gove, Gove, Gove 4 Oct 2011

• League tables show Gove’s lack of ambition on underperforming schools 13 Jan 2011

The report is excellent in many ways. And the question of whether greater independence from democratic structures for schools is a good or bad thing remains open – as dueling quotations from the internationally-respected PISA studies show.

But asking some academies: “Do you think academies work well?” and to record the answers as “Yes” may not be the most rigorous way to investigate the topic.

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It is just a week since the health and social care bill passed into law and already the landscape is changing before our collective eyes.

Now, in yet another Department of Health whistlestop whistleblow we are all catching a sharp intake of breath as we finally have sight of the desperately sought Transitional Risk Register (pdf), leaked in its draft form to the splendid Roy Lilley.

Yes – we were right to demand it. Yes – we are right to be alarmed. Yes – the government should be ashamed of their actions in ploughing on regardless.

Lack of adequate planning, hiked costs through privatisation, and a raft of other threats score a bright red 16 on the scale of risk.

A core element of the alarm voiced by opponents of the health and social care bill has been the prospect of vast quantities of NHS funds being swallowed up in legal costs where private companies use the complexities of European Union competition law to challenge decisions made following tenders to service.

This risk was flagged up time and again during debate in both the Commons and the Lords. Indeed both Circle and Assura have already made a range of challenges to commissioning decisions (pdf) in Cambridgeshire, the west country,  and in North Yorkshire while some in the legal profession are even rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of joining in.

So here we are. After months of heated debate warfare, we now find ourselves on the delivery battleground. Although some specialist areas are taking great care to promote safe models of commissioning (pdf) it is already obvious that this cannot be guaranteed.

If the coalition thought the protests and campaigns would simply roll over and fizzle out, they are very wrong. If anything, the broadsides are likely to increase.

The notorious Serco may have just won the contract to deliver Suffolk’s community services with more no doubt in their aspirational pipeline, while Surrey has gone to Assura/Virgin Health and 40% of CCGs have already involved the private sector – but not only has the Labour Party pledged to continue fighting on the future premise of repeal, a group of doctors have announced the setting up of a new party to challenge the Liberal Democrats, specifically focused on the rescuing the NHS.

• Lord Owen: If coalition continue to appeal Risk Register, Bill must be paused 9 Mar 2012

• Information Tribunal orders Lansley: Publish NHS Risk Register “immediately” 9 Mar 2012

• Being aware of the risk, how can the government carry on regardless? 25 Feb 2012

• The government continues to bury the risk of the NHS reforms 14 Feb 2012

• NHS London risk assessment of Lansley’s plans makes for sober reading 24 Nov 2011

The backfire potential from what is evolving into a gross misuse of public funding is immeasurable, with the findings of the first draft of the Transitional Risk Register plain for all to see.

So will the new Act be an unstoppable force or will the law reveal to the electorate the full extent of Andrew Lansley and his profiteering colleagues as callous carpet-baggers? Only careful monitoring of every risk riddled twist and turn will tell.

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Jos Bell presents eyewitness sketches from both Houses on the final passing through Parliament of the health and social care bill this week

On March 21st, 1946, Aneurin Bevan announced proposals for a free national health service.

Fast forward 66 years, and on Tuesday, March 20th, 2012, the Queen came to Westminster to mark her Diamond Jubilee; later the same day, the coalition government, despite mass opposition from all of those who care about and understand the workings of Bevan’s NHS, succeeded in their drive to overturn this most successful model of free at the point of need healthcare – the universally owned jewel in Her Majesty’s crown.

Right up until the final minute of 11th hour, there were last ditch attempts to put the Lansley Bill on hold – from the shadow teams in both Houses as well as by NHS champion Lord Owen.

They could not have fought harder to bring the truth of the bill to the general public and to save our NHS.

On Monday, the Lords held their Third Reading – which would see two attempts to put the bill on hold, as well as debates on key amendments which had yet to be resolved.

Presumably in a bid not to appear too triumphant in anticipation, the Earl Howe had opted for his usual Colonel Mustard shaded tie:

“What are you voting for?” – “I have no idea, I’m just doing what my party wants.”

It would be hoped that after an epic 25 days of debate on the bill in the Chamber that all present had a better notion of what they were voting for than this particular Conservative noble.

The Tory grandees were there in force as were seldom seen Lords of the Crossbenches – and just in case Leon, Ken and the Normans felt like bursting into song to mark the occasion, Lord Lloyd-Webber was on hand in the lobby queue, no doubt with a Phantom of the NHS manuscript at the ready in his pocket.

Lord Owen, meanwhile, acquitted himself both with dignity and thoughtfulness as he presented the 38 Degrees petition at the start of the debate, to accompany his well reasoned argument that the bill be with held until the now infamous Transitional Risk Register be released.

• Lucas: “Dismantle this reckless ideology – before it can cause irreparable harm” 19 Mar 2012

• Lib Dems must ask themselves: Do they really want to be the people that killed the NHS? 16 Mar 2012

• “Stockholm Syndrome” – coalition clings on to a bill that will cause irreparable damage 15 Mar 2012

• The damage to public health of Lansley’s bill shouldn’t be ignored 6 Mar 2012

• Even GPs implementing Cameron’s health reforms have come out against them 28 Feb 2012

• “A mess… unnecessary… setting the NHS back”: Another attack on the health bill 26 Feb 2012

• Being aware of the risk, how can the government carry on regardless? 25 Feb 2012

Within the most complex of scenarios the reasons were simple:

“My premise and my plea to the House is that, before making a final decision, all those who respect freedom of information and the world that we now live in with a viable Freedom of Information Act should at least await the decision of Professor Angel and the tribunal.

“That is all I ask for.”

The dark angel cudgel blows came from uber-right Baroness Murphy who caused outrage by implying the Information Commissioner was acting for political reasons and from surprise intervention from the usually absent Lord Birt – who emerged from his extra-terrestrial hinterland as if a malevolent ET to condemn the release of anything containing the R word.

Former head of the Civil Service Lord Wilson raged that civil servants would never again be able to offer an iota of advice save in secret-squirrel code. As Lady Thornton said, did they not think the Information Commissioner had considered all these points before making his decision?

Unusually, Earl Howe was far off the mark in his response – presumably because there is no reasoned argument for constitutional abuse.

Although in the greater scheme of things 25 days is not a lengthy time, in terms of Lords debates it is remarkable. Not noted for his patience, Lord Walton had clearly had quite enough and at almost 90 who could really blame him. As a Crossbencher, along with Baroness Finlay and Lord Patel and Warner he had put forward numerous amendments (and for every one debated comes with it a full and detailed speech).

He reminded the House that whilst a practising neurologist he had once noted Lord Owen, a full generation younger than him, as an outstandingly promising trainee at St Thomas’s. For him the bill was “better2 and Lord Owen’s action unhelpful. It was as if he saw his former pupil as some kind of conscientious objector.

Yes war is bad and kills people but sometimes you just have to capitulate and join in. At that moment it was clear all would be lost.

With the Lords rejecting Lord Owen’s final rescue overture, the following day in the Commons, Andy Burnham succeeded yet again in calling another emergency debate, squeezed in just before the allocated four hours (max) to discuss the 374 amendments which had come back from the Lords.

Reading out the clause from the government’s own website:

“Government will make available its assessments of risks that affect the public, how it has reached its decisions, and how it will handle the risk. It will also do so where the development of new policies poses a potential risk to the public.”

…he made it clear their duty lies in telling the truth.

Yet again, avoiding this duty of care, the government chose to focus their arguments on the erroneous red herring of the n/a Strategic Risk Register instead of the Transitional Risk Register case in point.

Yet again the opposition, with the assistance of Andrew George and John Pugh, railed at the myriad ‘myths’ which Andy Burnham again and again cited, supported in wit and wisdom by John Healey and Grahame Morris; yet again the government kept their majority willing to flout the law – two parties against one.

Back in the Lords there had been last minute rescues and last minute losses. Whilst the urgent need to rescue Public Health England from the brink of becoming a danger to the public was recognised, the Lords rejected the compulsory registration of care workers which would have protected the sick and the elderly.

After much heart searching Baroness Thornton broke with the traditional mollifying end to Lords debate and made her own final heroic attempt to save the NHS:

“This House declines to allow the bill to pass, because:

The bill does not command the support of patients who depend on the National Health Service, the professionals who are expected to make it work, or the public;

Will not deliver the promised objectives of genuinely empowering clinicians in the commissioning process and putting patients at the heart of the system;

Will increase bureaucracy and fragment commissioning; will allow foundation trusts to raise up to half their income from private patients;

And, despite amendment, still creates an economic regulator and regime which will lead to the fragmentation and marketisation of the National Health Service and threaten its ethos and purpose.”

Up sprang Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss – though admitting she had never taken part in any of the previous days of debate – to thunder that if Baroness Thornton’s vote was carried the government could still implement the bill, but without any of the Lords amendments.

Had she failed to notice they had done that anyway with their noble welfare reform amendments? Albeit they had been vigorously opposed at every turn by Freud whereas Earl Freddie is seemingly everyone’s favourite Tory.

The consensus being, as Lady Thornton and Lady Finlay said, that “the government owes him an eternal debt of gratitude” for his endless patience and “willingness to engage with all queries and questions at any time of the day or night”.

Ironically it is seemingly Howe who has rescued the bill from the brink by being willing to engage with amendments in the way his Commons compadres had not. However whatever Freddie’s fond hope, despite the many changes it continues to be a very bad bill indeed. Yet the majority of Lords voted it through.

As Parliament heard:

“This is a betrayal of public trust and an appalling waste of public funds.”

Towards the end of the Commons debate, in one of her finest Parliamentary contributions, shadow social care minister Liz Kendall was moved to read out a summary of the bill impact from Malcolm Alexander, chair of the soon to be defunct Association of LINks Members, and the 67 last minute detrimental changes to the role of Healthwatch steamrollered through in the Lords by Baroness Northover without any notice or consultation.

So much for ‘nothing about me without me’. The promise of patient empowerment had been ‘no more than a slogan’ which gave the public false promise. As former shadow health secretary John Healey said, all they are left with is “the power to write a letter to the local authority, who isn’t even responsible for the provision”.

Moreover, Ms Kendall also had the whistleblower surprise of the day at the ready – one which seemingly sent minister Paul Burstow fleeing from the chamber. Deep from within the Department of Health, a staffer clearly at the end of their tether had sent her an enlightening email containing the government’s own damning internal risk assessment of the reduced role of Healthwatch. A final escapee from the government maze of misrepresentation.

In mockery of Andrew Lansley and David Cameron’s constant assertions that it was all to the good to improve a broken service, patients it is clear will instead be put in needless danger. The truth was finally out.

Then it was all over. The final vote. Despite all the evidence to the contrary this bill of “poor judgements” is now law.

In imitation of the government’s methodology, Burns had bulldozed his way through his amendments as if he couldn’t wait to escape, whilst Burstow finally returned to the chamber when called to account by his opposite number. Seemingly, despite the earlier Cabinet table banging, they were not in a comfortable place.

Lansley, meanwhile, pulled a series of idiosyncratic facial shapes then clearly not knowing where to hide when David Anderson read out the Michael Rosen poem in an earthy Blaydon lilt:

“These are the hands

That touch us first

Feel your head

Find the pulse

And make your bed.

These are the hands

That tap your back

Test the skin

Hold your arm

Wheel the bin

Change the bulb

Fix the drip

Pour the jug

Replace your hip.

These are the hands

That fill the bath

Mop the floor

Flick the switch

Soothe the sore

Burn the swabs

Give us a jab

Throw out sharps

Design the lab.

And these are the hands

That stop the leaks

Empty the pan

Wipe the pipes

Carry the can

Clamp the veins

Make the cast

Log the dose

And touch us last.”

“These are the people we should have been listening to. These are the people who have been ignored constantly by the government parties. And these are the people who will never ever forgive them for what they are doing tonight.

“When the election comes, they will be thrown out where they belong.”

In the Lords, Baroness Joan Bakewell had also observed afterwards “it will lose them the next election”.  A cross-Houses consensus reaching beyond the contradictory tortures of the LaLa bill.

A glance across to the pushmepullyou Liberal Democrats shows there is every chance they will be lost without trace. As the public start to experience the new Fragmented Health Service, they will indeed never forget.

Andy Burnham has pledged that if he is once against health secretary he will repeal the Act.

All we can do is hold onto the hope that this will be feasible – and as both the shadow teams and many a medic are saying  - keep on fighting!

“We have given this fight everything that we had. All I can say is our fight will go on to protect and restore this party’s finest achievement.” – Andy Burnham, 20/03/12, the day the NHS stood still

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Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion) is the leader of the Green Party

We are entering a critical week for the future of the National Health Service as we know it, because despite the hollow government assurances of recent weeks, and cosmetic tinkering around the edges of the health and social care bill, the reality is that the core intention – to vastly increase the commercialisation of the NHS – remains intact.

I wish this were scaremongering, but it isn’t. Under this administration, we can already see the ground opening up to more NHS hospitals being run by the private sector.

Just last week, for example, George Eliot Hospital in Warwickshire confirmed it is open to a takeover and in talks with potential private partners including Serco, Care UK and Circle. This comes after the government tried to downplay the privatisation of Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust in Cambridgeshire as a ‘one off’.

Liberal Democrat peers may have succeeded in making the health and social care bill marginally less bad - but it is still deeply flawed and, when it comes to our health service, ‘slightly less bad’ is simply not good enough.

For a start, the bill still allows hospitals to use nearly half our public beds for private work. It introduces a dangerous element of competition between service providers, and establishes the framework to allow private companies to cherry pick the easiest cases for treatment.

• With the bill almost law, is there a last minute antidote to save the NHS? 19 Mar 2012

• The campaign to Save our NHS isn’t over yet 16 Mar 2012

• Lib Dems must ask themselves: Do they really want to be the people that killed the NHS? 16 Mar 2012

• “Stockholm Syndrome” – coalition clings on to a bill that will cause irreparable damage 15 Mar 2012

• Clegg still has a chance to save the NHS – and his party 12 Mar 2012

As even Lord Tebbit cautioned last year, where the private sector bids for the straightforward and easy stuff, the public sector is left without the bread and butter work to subsidise the more difficult surgery and the teaching of surgeons.

The bill also proposes a far more complex NHS structure. Rather than giving power to local GPs, the proposed system of clinical commission groups (CCGs) will create confusion about individual bodies’ roles and responsibilities – inevitably leading to a crisis of accountability.

Commissioning is a full time job, and as the BMA, the Royal College of Nursing and others have warned, these changes will mean GPs will be forced to club together to bring in the private sector to do the commissioning job for them.

To make matters worse, the bill makes provision for charging for services. It removes the statutory duty to provide public health services for children, smoking cessation services, alcohol and drug services and a raft of other crucial services. As I understand it, the only services that CCGs are obligated to arrange are ambulance services and “emergency care”.

The government has no mandate for any of this, either from the voters or in the coalition agreement (pdf). The Department of Health’s arrogant refusal to release the NHS risk register despite two legal rulings by the Information Commissioner speaks volumes; they know their own assessment could be the nail in the bill’s coffin.

The bill reaches the Lords for its third reading today, with the Commons vote on Tuesday being the last chance saloon for forcing the prime minister to drop it once and for all.

When I addressed a public protest against the plans outside Hove Town Hall on Saturday, I called on peers, particularly those in the Liberal Democrat camp, to exercise their power and reject it outright.

As well as ridding ourselves of this bill, we must also now have a wider debate about the creeping commercialisation of the NHS that has taken hold over the last 20 years – helped along in no small part by the previous Labour government.

The underlying conviction, that competition in healthcare markets automatically leads to cost efficiency, improved quality, and greater equity flow, is just ideology – not evidence-based policy. Even the Office of Fair Trading has conceded there is as yet no “clear evidence on the role of competition in driving performance in health care”.

The only way to safeguard the founding principles of our health service is to dismantle this reckless ideology – before it can cause irreparable harm.

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If you were given the remote control and asked to click on the news channel with the most reliable reputation, which one would you choose? Last week the BBC reported Dr Clare Gerada had said the Royal College of GPs were now in support of the health and social care bill.

Andrew Lansley of course made great play of this in the Commons debate the following day. Flip over to Sky and there was a very different message – Dr Gerada and her College continue to be opposed to the bill.

What she had actually said was that instead of being unconstructively blocked from Downing Street and Department of Health meetings they wanted to work with the government, who she asked to cast aside political ideology in favour of patient care by calling a halt to the bill.

In an effort to bridge its ‘on-message’ gap, the BBC website gives us this 1998 piece showing overt opposer of the Bill Roy Lilley as critical of the NHS (at a time when Thatcher and Major had left it in desperate straits).

At the same time our traditionally most trusted channel has not only made no mention of doctors protesting in Whitehall yesterday kettled by machine-gun toting special police they have also made no mention of the very contemporary, constitutionally serious matter of the government’s withholding of the Transitional Risk Register – which the government by turns maintains is both irrelevant and altogether too scary to be seen.

Meanwhile Lord Charlie Faulkner knows differently.

Elsewhere, feast our eyes on the hint-hint clues within the Faculty of Public Health Risk Assessment.

Last week Gerald Kaufman in the Commons, after highlighting the absurdity of ‘the NHS is Safe in Our Hands’ Conservative Party-contrived election posters, accused the government of callously “turning everyone’s favourite older sister” Baroness Williams.

Waving a near-ancient prophetic hand at the Conservative benches, his tremulous voice echoed around the Chamber:

“The nation will remember and the nation will never forgive.”

• The campaign to Save our NHS isn’t over yet 16 Mar 2012

• Lib Dems must ask themselves: Do they really want to be the people that killed the NHS? 16 Mar 2012

• “Stockholm Syndrome” – coalition clings on to a bill that will cause irreparable damage 15 Mar 2012

• Clegg still has a chance to save the NHS – and his party 12 Mar 2012

• Lord Owen: If coalition continue to appeal Risk Register, Bill must be paused 9 Mar 2012

Also last week, on Friday there emerged a joint move by various representative groups to petition the Queen. The NHS Consultants Association, the NHS Support Federation, Keep our NHS Public, and Public Health for NHS are asking for Royal Assent to be withheld as a “gift to the people in this her Diamond Jubilee Year”.

Hundreds of last ditch attempts to save our NHS from a terrible Jubilee fate are taking place across the country. In addition to more planned marches and Pickles Picnics, the global campaigning organisation Avaaz has launched another petition, clocking 30 signatures per minute.

It seems unlikely Her Majesty has ever availed herself of the NHS and the royal shares portfolio remains unknown, so it remains to be seen whether she would be either willing or able to persuade her prime minister to think again. If she did so it would undoubtedly make her forever ‘the people’s Queen’.           

Historic times; and as iterated in the House of Lords Lobby last week, “where will it all end?”

The day after the Westminster rally, as the Lords worked their way through another swath of late evening health (without social care) amendment debates, Lord Owen sat up on the scarlet cushions by the throne surveying the damage, his shock of white hair standing out dramatically against the candlelit gold and red backdrop. Richard the Lionheart and King Arthur must have struck a similar demeanour back in their day.

Time and again he had watched his old political ally Lord Steele encourage Lib Dem Lords through the government lobby. In the warning weeks of October, Lord Ashdown had parachuted in and put the kybosh on his special select committee amendment debate with Lord Hennessy; lately his former Gang of Four friend Baroness Williams has become a misrepresentation of her former self.

Later today, Lord Owen will personally bring the full half a million signatures of the 38 degrees petition in support of the NHS onto the floor of the House of Lords prior to putting his amendment, asking for the halting of the progress of the Bill until the Transitional Risk Register is released. Anything else he views as unconstitutional abuse of the medical profession and the people.

For Baroness Thornton, leader of the Lords shadow health team, the hundreds of heroic hours spent trying to wring some sense into this “shambles of a Bill” whilst the greater virtue would lie in abandoning it to the sarcophagus of the most misconceived pieces of legislation in history, the events of the past weeks represents both a political and personal tragedy.

Aside from the prospect of the bill becoming enshrined in statute, she is obviously distressed about her long term political friend Shirley becoming “a great lady brought low”, her interview in the Guardian is unequivocal in its phraseology:

“This is an ideologically driven bill and the Lib Dems capitulated. Ministers lied to get it through. I know it’s unusually unparliamentary language but I am really horrified.

“They have sold us a pup… We have 48 hours to save the NHS.”

Today, she will also bring her own motion asking peers to oppose “that this bill do now pass”.

“Never have so many opposed so much to be listened to so little,” Jonathan Reynolds MP said in the opposition debate last Tuesday, directly accusing the government of “using the NHS for the benefit of the private sector”.

Rather than being torn apart at the seams by a manipulative government, these health specialists should have been allowed to concentrate on medical matters of pressing need, such as Nancy Chan from the World Health Organization (WHO) alerting the medical world to the growing resistance to antibiotics, the urgency of addressing capacity issues in primary care and the “tsunami of dementia about to hit”.

Meanwhile, GP Susi Harris rebuts the Lansley ‘reducing bureaucracy’ claim; be sure to watch until the final frame, showing the before and the after…

In the Guardian ‘100 NHS voices’ feature, Krishna Chuttoo, a nursing teacher from Lewisham, observed:

‘The other day I was in a meeting with a hospital director and I said: “What do you look for – profit before health or health before profit?” He couldn’t answer me.”

Increased car parking charges are just the tip of the Titanic iceberg it seems.

The latest private sector information to hit the headlines has come in the shape of a further 7,000 women being in need of the removal of faulty breast implants, coupled with the alarming prospect of either Virgin Health or Serco being handed the £130 million contract to manage the complex and sensitive work of Devon NHS children’s services – where neither of them have any expertise at all in this area.

Indeed Serco have been the cause of unnecessary child mortality in a badly run out of hours GP service, previously highlighted by the local MP – Andrew George.

Meanwhile, we can take some crumbs of discomfort in the knowledge that at some point during the Lords committee stage, Mr Lansley sneaked through a backdoor change which means the private sector is to be immune from the Freedom of Information Act:

As the heroic chair of the Royal College of GPs, Clare Gerada, tweeted:

“No-cooperate multinationals will take over our #NHS. Whitehall will be irrelevent.”

She also re-tweeted Felix Oxley’s table to show the level of opposition versus support for the bill across the full range of medical colleges.

In response to this, Baroness Finlay, another hero of late night defend the NHS sittings, will present a third reading amendment in an attempt to ensure commissioning contracts are made public. We can only hope the majority of Lords limbered up this morning chanting “Save the NHS” with their tai chi.

For those politicians who have chosen to hang on like grim death to this shipwreck of a bill, seemingly designed to destroy the NHS and the lives of many people who need to rely upon it, we can only wonder at their mindset.

In response, we also now know doctors are gearing up to challenge coalition MPs at the next election on an NHS ticket – we can only hope this will not turn out to be the only way that they will be able to safeguard their patients.

Meanwhile, true to form when they feel under pressure, the government has thrown in a curveball to divert the news media into a cul de sac. Private health? Of course not. Private roads? Splendid notion!

So what will the future hold? Free and fair or taking a toll? Of one thing we can be sure:  if you ‘heart’ the NHS, today is going to be a very bumpy blue light ambulance ride; let’s hope we can make it to A&E in time for emergency resus.

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This weekend people across the country will take part in Save the NHS campaigns, in opposition to Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition plans in the health and social care bill.

Opposed by the vast majority of healthcare workers and virtually every Royal College representing NHS professionals, the timing let alone the ideology could not be more wrong. Funding squeezes mean wards are closing and doctors and nurses are being laid-off, yet this reorganisation will cost at least £3billion.

Tories have tried to neutralise the countless warnings from healthcare professionals and the Labour Party, but those who have followed this sorry tale since 2010 know the truth – this bill, if passed next week, will mean the end of the National Health Service as we know it.

Shadow health minister Jamie Reed, speaking to Left Foot Forward today, urges people to keep the faith and campaign this weekend, saying:

“The NHS doesn’t belong to David Cameron and Nick Clegg. It belongs to the people of this country and that is why we are doing everything we can to stop their ruinous plans for the NHS becoming law.

“Nobody voted for these changes. They are opposed by the public and by medical professionals across the country and these changes will cost over £3billion – money that will be taken away from frontline service at a time of acute need.

“The founder of the NHS, Labour’s Nye Bevan, said that there would always be an NHS as long as there was “folk with the faith to fight for it”.

“The next Labour government is committed to repealing this destructive Tory bill, but the fight is now upon people of all political opinions and none to fight against this bill and for the future of our NHS.

“It is not too late. We can still secure change and that is why we again call upon the government to see sense, listen to the public, listen to the medical professionals and drop this bill.”

• Lib Dems must ask themselves: Do they really want to be the people that killed the NHS? 16 Mar 2012

• “Stockholm Syndrome” – coalition clings on to a bill that will cause irreparable damage 15 Mar 2012

• Clegg still has a chance to save the NHS – and his party 12 Mar 2012

• Lib Dems’ NHS bill dilemma: A party that votes against itself is a party in trouble 10 Mar 2012

• Lord Owen: If coalition continue to appeal Risk Register, Bill must be paused 9 Mar 2012

Like campaigners around the country, Bristol South Labour Party will be out tomorrow with leaflets, asking members of the public to sign the Save the NHS petition. This will be presented in parliament on Monday. It currently stands at 555,261 signatures and counting – can you help reach 600,000 signatures today? Ask friends and family to sign too.

Working tirelessly on this campaign, Shadow Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham and the shadow health team have toured the country, speaking to millions of people at rallies and public meetings but still the government will not listen.

Labour’s John Healey, Burnham’s predecessor as shadow health secretary, is something of a hero in this campaign too. Campaigning for the publication of the Risk Register, which assesses the dangers of this controversial bill, the government has been ordered to release it by the Information Commissioner in response to Healey’s freedom of information request from November 2010.

Healey pushed the case for transparency all the way to the Information Tribunal outcome last week. Risk Registers are not normally released to the public, but the tribunal took this highly unusual step due to the particular risks at stake, yet the coalition government still refuses to release the information it contains. Why?

So what can still be done at this stage in the legislative process?

A Labour Lords source told Left Foot Forward:

“There’s both a lot and very little that Peers can do, at this very late stage.

“The government will accept the defeats it has had so far, during the Lords stage of the bill; the Commons won’t ping anything of that back at us after “Commons consideration of Lords amendments” next Tuesday.”

There will be two big votes at the start and end of Monday’s Lords Third Reading of the bill and these could be crucial.

Our source adds:

“The vote at the start – on the Owen amendment on the Risk Register and whether Third Reading should proceed – will be determined more by how peers feel about the lack of transparency and open government issues shown by ministers on this matter.

“Many crossbenchers and a strong Labour whip will deliver numbers but it will inevitably come down to whether Lib Dems join us, sit on their hands (which would also help) or do their Pavlovian worst on hearing the division bell ring, and stride loyally into the Tory lobby.”

The bottom line is this: it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

I for one will not stand by and stay silent. I’m taking part in a Save our NHS campaign day in Bristol South tomorrow morning from 10am, to talk to the public and explain what is at stake.

If you believe in the NHS and want to participate in campaigns this weekend, see what you can do.

It’s not too late to let Lords know what you think but you will need to move fast – the vote is on Monday. Campaigners have devised an ‘adopt’ a Peer mechanism which matches an individual at random to a member of the House of Lords and helps you contact them directly by email. Email a Peer today.

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Stuart Jeffery is the Green Party’s health spokesman

Of course the Tories are no stranger to privatisation. The NHS is just the next victim in a long history of privatisation and free market fundamentalism implemented by the Conservative Party that has seen energy, rail, buses and the telephone network handed over to private corporations in the name of “efficiency”.

And remember the Orange Book? No one should be surprised at the Lib Dems’ backing of competition and privatisation either.

There are clear examples showing the dangers of privatisation and how it will affect the health and wellbeing of the country’s citizens, yet the coalition government continues to insist on the necessity of their policy.

No wonder there has been fierce opposition from medical organisations, practitioners, NHS managers, doctors and nurses; the impact of the reforms will be devastating.

Under Labour, privatisation with a healthcare market was a key plank in their strategy for the NHS, something the Greens bitterly opposed, but Labour’s privatisation was more stealthy and less brazen than the bold steps being taken by the coalition.

The coalition is also starting from the position that the NHS is broken, and to some extent they are right. Labour has invested heavily in healthcare marketisation and this needed to be reversed and the lack of local accountability combined with a post code lottery for treatment desperately needed addressing.

The health and social care bill pushes the NHS into a market-led National Health Insurance scheme fundamentally undermining its founding principles. The bill paves the way for wholesale privatisation of provision, and rationing will need to be administered by GPs which will damage the sacrosanct doctor-patient relationship.

The dangers of the bill are known to the government but they refuse to share their own assessment despite the legal ruling demanding they do so. This simply highlights either that the government’s arrogance is sufficient for it to ignore the law, mounting opposition and proof of their mistake, or that they are so blissfully ignorant they are willing to put healthcare in insurmountable danger.

• “Stockholm Syndrome” – coalition clings on to a bill that will cause irreparable damage 15 Mar 2012

• Clegg still has a chance to save the NHS – and his party 12 Mar 2012

• Lib Dems’ NHS bill dilemma: A party that votes against itself is a party in trouble 10 Mar 2012

• Lord Owen: If coalition continue to appeal Risk Register, Bill must be paused 9 Mar 2012

• Information Tribunal orders Lansley: Publish NHS Risk Register “immediately” 9 Mar 2012

As the NHS moves rapidly towards the US system, there was something depressingly poignant about David Cameron being there for Tuesday’s vote. He was of course engaging in cool one-upmanships with Barack Obama in the land where 40 million of its inhabitants cannot afford healthcare.

The NHS is too important to lose and the fight will continue to stop the Tories and Lib Dems wrecking it; voters will not forgive politicians who take away the NHS, it is too big a part of our culture. MPs and Lords should think hard during the final debates on the NHS bill and ask themselves whether they really want to be the people that killed the NHS.

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Louise Thomas is a senior researcher at the RSA

The coalition government’s 2010 White Paper (pdf) emphasises that the importance of teachers to the improvement of the English education system. Indeed, the paper is entitled “The Importance of Teaching” to ensure the point is understood, even by those who never actually read it.

It’s hard to disagree, but we need to think harder about what ‘quality’ in teaching actually means.

Launching the White Paper in November 2010, education secretary Michael Gove rightly said:

“The best education systems draw their teachers from among the top graduates and train them rigorously, focusing on classroom practice.

“They recognise that it is teachers’ knowledge, intellectual depth and love of their subject which stimulates the imagination of children and allows them to flourish and succeed.”

But is this aspiration enough?

The RSA’s most recent report (pdf) on education, “Re-thinking the Importance of Teaching: Curriculum and Collaboration in an Era of Localism”, argues radical reforms of the schooling system provide challenges and opportunities for teaching as a profession.

On the one hand, a slimmed down National Curriculum, and the devolution of curriculum powers to schools under the academies and free schools policies, means teachers are faced with the challenge of deciding what to teach. The academic literature points out the difficulty this presents after decades of de-skilling of the teaching profession in relation to curriculum design.

However, these reforms also provide an opportunity for the teaching profession to reclaim the role of knowledge creators and mediators robbed by the twin prompts to fatalism of the National Curriculum (“teach what you’re told to”) and the information revolution (“you no longer need to teach anything anyway”).

• IFS: Education spending will “shrink” at fastest rate “since at least the 1950s” 25 Oct 2011

• Breaking the monopolies that control the way schools are designed 5 Nov 2010

• Teachers cheer exit of Balls, but what will they make of Gove? 13 May 2010

• Voters deliver “resounding endorsement” of Labour’s record on education 16 Mar 2010

• David Laws praises “astonishing, dramatic, unbelievable” improvement in schools under Labour 9 Feb 2010

In theory, at least, teachers have more space to develop learning experiences that question received ideas of knowledge, explore the value of the best in our cultural and intellectual inheritance, and create new knowledge that reflects the dynamic, diverse, and information rich world that students are growing up in.

But how many teachers are equipped – with the skills, confidence, or desire – to take on this challenge?

On the other hand, following the demise of the education function of local authorities, it is more and more important schools can ‘tether’ themselves to their local communities, including parents.

Parental engagement is widely understood (pdf) to be crucial to student attainment, but many schools struggle to involve parents in a meaningful way. Parents without a history of educational success themselves can feel intimidated by teaching professionals and schools, and many schools express exasperation at the lack of positive engagement from parents.

What kind of teachers do we aspire to, to meet these challenges?

We believe teachers need to be able to collaborate: with parents and families; with local businesses and heritage organisations; with diverse faith and linguistic communities; and with each other. However, teachers need to be trained, supported, and, yes, expected, to be able to engage and collaborate with the communities they serve.

Too much rhetoric has been spent on the idea that schools must ‘save’ children from the low aspirations, poor literacy and poverty of where they come from, and not enough on working with and on behalf of the families and communities they belong to.

If we are to have a world leading, top class education system, it is not enough that we have teachers that are superb subject teachers, adept at managing classrooms. We need a profession that is creative, collaborative and confident enough in its own professional identity to operate as critical friends to education policy, leaders of educational thought, and collaborators with the communities they serve.

If that sounds ambitious then, well, good; teaching is, after all, important.

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David Cameron was not in the Commons for Tuesday’s health bill debate. He is currently on a trans-Atlantic three-day ‘special relationship’ flesh-press with Barack Obama in the land of home-spun private health insurance.

As health select committee member Valerie Vaz (Labour, Walsall South) said during the debate, when Obama visited Britain in May 2011 he said of the NHS it was “something that Brits take for granted – a health care system that ensures you don’t go bankrupt when you get sick”.

On Tuesday both Houses historically debated the health and social care bill – the Lords weary from seemingly endless weeks of detailed scrutiny and every clause, producing almost 2,000 amendments in total; the Commons fired by desperation, anger and indignation.

It is noteworthy that at one point when health secretary Andrew Lansley, in mid defensive shout, tried to justify himself, he referred only to patient access to healthcare – not to national health.

As US whistleblower Wendell Potter says:

“This bill has the handprints of the US insurance industry all over it.”

With a career of more than 20 years in said industry, he should know.

Clearly in addition to importing the likes of Humana, other US companies notorious for poor practice who are already advertising their services to Clinical Commissioning Groups, the government has also adopted the US Tea Party art of flip-flopping truth and untruth.

• Clegg still has a chance to save the NHS – and his party 12 Mar 2012

• Lib Dems’ NHS bill dilemma: A party that votes against itself is a party in trouble 10 Mar 2012

• Lord Owen: If coalition continue to appeal Risk Register, Bill must be paused 9 Mar 2012

• Information Tribunal orders Lansley: Publish NHS Risk Register “immediately” 9 Mar 2012

• The damage to public health of Lansley’s bill shouldn’t be ignored 6 Mar 2012

Throughout the Commons debate, where the Opposition and other disquieted members of both Houses offered evidence, the government benches cried ‘shallow!’ For every truth a falsehood, for every detail an insult, for every risk alert a mocking accusation of calumny.

The fact the word privatise does not appear in the bill they maintained was proof that Gang Lansley were seriously anti-privatisation. As for competition, why perish the very thought, they seek nothing but cosy integration.

In which case, as shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said, what is the point of spending vast quantities of public funding on a 500-page complete reworking of NHS legal structures pitching doctor against doctor?

At least when Thatcher was doing something unpleasant she didn’t try to hide the fact. According to the government benches in both Houses the bill is designed to wrap every single patient in a snuggle blanket of unending free at the point of need care.

If that were so, then why, asked Burnham, are patient groups such as Diabetes UK, and even those who originally supported the bill, including Asthma UK, now so very concerned, particularly as there are now so few routes for patients to appeal when treatment is blocked or taken away.

In the most heated of Commons debates Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington) highlighted senior GPs expressing great concern at the impact of the introduction of their new CCG roles, resulting in them spending only one or two days per week in surgery along with the need to cover an extraordinary level of spend on locum costs.

What’s that? Cost saving and a reduction in bureaucracy do we hear you cry Mr Lansley? More time and money for patients? Barely any involvement from the private sector? Fabrication will soon be an official NVQ qualification.

Faced with the four coalition horsemen of the NHS apocalypse – sitting identically, by turns sniggering, smirking and sulking, when Burnham asked in a ‘simple but sincere call’ for a cross-party coalition of common ground in support of the NHS he was immediately accused of being uncooperative and partisan – indeed anyone who spoke up against the bill but in support of the NHS was accused of being disloyal to the self same service by being anti-reform per se.

Over in the Lords, health minister Earl Howe had surprised his brown tie-rack with a large shocking pink sateen number – perhaps in a bid to show us his inner man or to divert attention from the poor battered NHS. This was not a day for human wins.

The Lords rattled through a fruit machine of amendment tweaks to the bill in the afternoon following a very odd morning where although the statutory registration of public health workers were carried and social workers were rescued from professional oblivion, the long overdue professional recognition of various clinical specialist areas was blocked.

When on all sides there was support for an amendment overturning the voluntary registration for nurses, midwives and social care staff, for a compulsory safeguard, Baroness Williams (of Crosby, Liberal Democrat) interjected in near inaudible embarrassment to support Howe to the effect that light touch regulation for patient care was an entirely wonderful thing.

The vote could have been won but the amendment was withdrawn – to the detriment of patient safety and professional recognition.

Howe tried to appease surrounding frustration by promising the new structure will be subject to review in three years’ time – although how many more Winterbourne Views there will be in the meantime we dare not imagine.

In the Commons, with deputy prime minister Nick Clegg absent, Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, Bermondsey and Old Southwark) had attempted to clarify what Burnham referred to as his conference ‘smoke signals’:

“The motion that the Liberal Democrats passed on Sunday did not tell the Lords that they should or should not support the bill. It simply reserved our party members’ judgment until we see the work that the Lords are continuing to do.

“That is our position. I think that that is sensible and fair for the NHS and our party.”

Amendment 300a, dubbed the sunrise clause, asked for the acceptance of a pause for consultation on section three with the Commissioning Board, the independent regulator of Foundation Trusts, the Care Quality Commission, patients and staff.

Result? A disappointing no, also bearing in mind the number of crossbenchers who voted against it, seemingly many having decided that to side with the Opposition on the matter was ‘too political’. Would that they viewed the unalloyed assault on the NHS in similar light?

After that, with the report stage completed, the Lords packed up their copious ring binders and departed the Chamber leaving only one more weary day of debate in the third reading on Monday.

Simultaneously in the Commons, the debate brought forth a blistering ‘this is a perfect storm’ speech from David Miliband (Labour, South Shields), followed by a detailed analysis from Valerie Vaz (column 181, Hansard) who asked why Lord Clement-Jones’ solution to European Union competition law had been rejected.

Then to a distressed Gerald Kaufman (Labour, Manchester Gorton), shaking with historically emotional rage, decrying the coalition for “destroying that which Ted Heath accepted as being part of the national consensus and even Margaret Thatcher never targeted the National Health Service” (column 188, Hansard).

Dame Joan Ruddock calmly asked as private waiting list figures were not available how could NHS compare their place on the list?; daughter of the NHS and shadow public health minister Diane Abbott summed up the emotional attachment that the vast majority of this country has for the service; while Northern Ireland MP Jim Shannon (DUP, Strangford) also gave rousing support.

Meanwhile Minster of State Simon Burns’s PPS Anna Soubry (Conservative, Broxtowe) kept her comb and paper completely quiet until she embroiled herself in an off-Broadway gossip resulting in yet another reprimand from the Deputy Speaker. Angie Bray (Conservative, Ealing Central) and Priti Patel (Conservative, Witham) caused their usual level of hilarity.

And health select committee chair Stephen Dorrell (Conservative, Charnwood) made it his business to attack the Opposition rather than protect the NHS.

Where once we all expected that government to varying degrees would safeguard our essential services and build towards excellence in the widest range of suitable service, we are now faced with skilled GPs kept out of their surgeries, huge administration bills, lack of professional accreditation, emerging evidence of patients being denied treatments, reduced data gathering and skewed representation of detail – and that’s just this week.

Once again Andrew Lansley barked out misleading figures to support his argument – referring vaguely to ‘since the election’ – whilst Andy Burnham had the real quarterly detail and former shadow health secretary John Healey (Labour, Wentworth and Dearne) was forensic in his use of damning figures. (See here for a useful summary).

The Liberal Democrat benches were largely bare during the debate – Andrew George (Liberal Democrat, St Ives) and John Pugh (Liberal Democrat, Southport) standing up unequivocally for the NHS, whilst the Gordon Birtwistle (Liberal Democrat, Burnley) spoke about previous local closures which said absolutely nothing about the bill.

As a passionate and direct Andy Burnham said (Hansard, column 161), having urged his party support an amendment proposed by Andrew George:

“Today is not just an Opposition day but Merseyside derby day. Usually both occasions put me in a highly partisan mood, yet despite having double reason to be in tribal mode, I am going to take the unusual step of urging Labour members not to vote for our motion but to consider the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives and his Liberal Democrat colleagues.

“We will listen with interest to what he has to say. The amendment sets out a sensible way forward that we can all unite around. It sends out the simple message that the importance of the NHS to us all and to our constituents should trump any tribal loyalty.

“It is important to say that, because I fear that sheer gut loyalty, political pride and the need to save face are the only forces driving a deeply defective bill towards the statute book.”

In the end more than 20 Liberal Democrat MPs abstained with seven voting against the government. Party members who voted against the bill at the weekend must be appalled at the short term careerism of the likes of Jenny Willott (Liberal Democrat, Cardiff Central) who bristled with self importance in her role as teller for the government in yesterday’s debate.

Could she not just stop and think and save the NHS – and her party?