Central Council is the governing body of the Association according to our constitution. Any member may attend. If you are not a member and wish to attend please contact the Director. Council members are entitled to claim their expenses in accordance with our Financial Standing Orders.
Meetings are usually held at 12 noon on Saturday, generally in Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London EC1.
The meetings planned are:
2008
5th July NHS 60th anniversary Tredegar
20th September Manchester
held in Wesley’s Chapel, London on Saturday January 5th 2008
Present: Tony Beddow; Nicola Burdett; Paul Crawford Walker (Chair);Huw Davies (Secretary); Brian Fisher; Tom Fitzgerald; Tina Funnell; Vivien Giladi; Neil Gombourne; Christine Hay; Dianne Hayter; David Joselin; Anne Keeley; John Lipetz; Derek Marcus; David Pickersgill; Martin Rathfelder (Director); Mike Roberts; Gavin Ross (Treasurer); Rosemary Ross; Nigel Spearing; Ali Syed. Apologies: Judith Blakeman; Melanie Johnson; David Mattocks; Joy Mostyn; Suresh Pushpananthan.
1.Guest Speaker: The Chair welcomed Neal Lawson of Compass who spoke to his recent publication: Machines; Markets and Morals: The New Politics of a Democratic NHS*. Neal drew a contrast between what he characterised as the centralised organisational model created in 1948 and the market oriented reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and focussed on the tension between equality and diversity. He was not convinced that the latter tension could ever be completely eliminated but looked to models of democratic participation at various levels of the NHS which might enable practice and resource issues to be dealt with more efficiently and compassionately than they could be by target or market incentives. A good deal of discussion was generated which ranged from the role of the ‘professional clinician’ within service delivery to the overall staffing structure of the service. Other members raised the importance of seeing reform from the patient/user perspective as a priority. (*Members wishing to access the full text may go to www.compassonline.org.uk). The Chair thanked Neal for his talk and urged those who have not done so to read the text.
2.Minutes of the meeting of 20th October 2007 were accepted.
3.SHA Environmental Policy: accepted nem con.
4. Back on Track: David Pickersgill took the Chair as Paul Crawford Walker presented the paper on the NHS in England which he had authored jointly with Brian Fisher and John Lipetz. He stressed the change in view over the decades from one where health advances were seen as being driven by the service to one where the service should be seen as operating within the context of public health measures. He saw the paper as stressing the increased need for democratic involvement at all levels of the service and for a decentralisation of the structures. Commissioning was now a fact of life but alternative models such as cooperative/collaborative commissioning should be explored. The paper was divided into sections dealing with diagnosis; short term and long term prescriptions. The discussion which followed was by turns – constructive; disputatious and consensus seeking. A number of points emerged. Could present structures be overturned as quickly as the report suggests? Is there a role for commissioning at all? Was it realistic to suggest that Ministers would not be concerned with the day to day issues facing the service? Was the scope of the paper too ambitious? How should we present the report outside the SHA? There was the view (given the political context) that we should focus – for external purposes – on the prescriptive elements of the paper. It was proposed and agreed that the paper would be regarded as a benchmark by which future SHA policy discussion and submission would be tested. It remained – de facto – a work in progress.
5.John Lipetz asked the meeting to note the KONP response to the Darzi Report.
6.The meeting agreed that the Executive would review the draft of the SHA submission to the next stage of Darzi which is required by 11th January. The Executive would also review the draft of any submission to the Health Select Committee on health equalities.
7.There being no further time the meeting ended at 15.20 and all other agenda items were held over until the next meeting.
Huw Davies
Secretary
SHA