- guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 17 2002 23.56 GMT
Tony Blair's plans to create self-governing foundation hospitals were the subject of a two-pronged attack last night by senior Labour backbenchers, who warned that the new organisations would tout for private business abroad, and would end up being run by a group of 'self-selecting middle-class busybodies'.
Gwyneth Dunwoody, chair of the Transport Select Committee, and former Health Secretary Frank Dobson both lambasted Downing Street's plans to reform the health service by creating centres of excellence free from Whitehall control.
The first 10 foundation hospitals will be announced in the New Year, when the best-performing hospitals in England and Wales will be allowed to become self-governing, to borrow money from the stock market, and to elect groups of local people to sit on new Stakeholder Councils, governing the hospitals.
But the plans have dismayed many Labour MPs, who believe they will jeopardise the future of the other NHS Trusts, because staff will be attracted to go to work for foundation hospitals, which can offer higher pay.
Dunwoody told staff at the Royal Free Hospital in north London last week: 'There will be a campaign against these plans, and it will crystallise the deep unease many Labour MPs have about a government which appears to have no moral core.'
She added: 'The NHS is having some kind of collective nervous breakdown and staff have forgotten how well they have done in the last few years. We are allowing those who label the NHS a failure to stampede us into thinking that there are bigger problems than there really are, so the true successes are ignored.'
Dunwoody, who earlier this year succeeded in fighting off Downing Street's plans to oust her from her influential committee post, rubbished the idea of an elected group of people making decisions about the hospital, pointing out that Nye Bevan, the founder of the NHS, had explicitly rejected this as unworkable.
'What we will see is a group of self-selecting, middle-class busybodies putting themselves up for election, which is exactly what the NHS doesn't need,' she said.
Dobson, who was Blair's first Health Secretary, told a meeting of GPs yesterday that foundation hospitals would see family doctors losing their influence because the new centres would make their own decisions, and lose sight of local needs.
'Worse still, if things go wrong as a result of their financial independence, they will start touting for trade, looking for high fee-paying private patients, even advertising abroad. Making their proper contribution to treating chronic illness is not likely to be a high priority,' he told the Dispensing Doctors' Association annual conference in York.
