Coulter supports call for Health Reform
Rev Dr Robert Coulter, the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member for North Antrim and UUP Stormont Commissioner, has backed a Stormont motion calling on Health Minister Michael McGimpsey to introduce a health and social services reform Bill as a matter of urgency.
Dr Coulter, who is also UUP Health Spokesman, added: “Anyone looking at the monolith of the Health Service will agree that reform is necessary. The Ulster Unionist Party has called for this kind of reform for quite some time.
“My question is: what kind of single health authority do we want? The proposal is for a health and social services authority that will replace the four health boards. Such an organisation has been asked for, through legislation, for some time. It would have an annual budget of £140 million and 1,800 staff.
“People should look at that proposal and see it for what it is: a glorified quango. I am sure that those who propose the motion do not wish to advance “quangoland” in Northern Ireland any further. We have far too many quangos, and we do not want a super-quango that will drain £140 million from the health budget every year and carry a burden of 1,800 staff.
“The Royal College of Nursing has supported Minister McGimpsey’s stance and believes that the Direct Rule proposals now being adopted by the DUP are flawed because they fail to provide for accountability. The health and social services super-quango is to have 11 senior executives on salaries that will be well in excess of £100,000.
“The monstrous and unaccountable health and social services authority was the creature of Direct Rule Ministers. Why is the DUP adopting this further drain on the Health Service budget?
“The recent draft Programme for Government made us all sit up and ask where we had heard it all before. An Ulster Unionist Minister is crying for more money for the Health Service; but what was presented as new was an amalgam of Bills generated by the Civil Service machine under Direct Rule Ministers and rehashed and represented to us.
“In other spheres, a sensible solution would be called for. The one thing that I am afraid of is that, under political pressure, and because he belongs to one particular party, the Health Minister would bring forward something not carefully thought through.
“I think back many years, to the time when we looked for a new hospital in Ballymena. Under political pressure, the location of the new hospital was changed from Ballymena and it was built in Antrim. We were told that that was the right hospital in the right place.
“Looking back over the past few years, some may have commented that it would have been better had time been taken to think the project through properly, in which case the hospital would not have been located in Antrim, but in or near Ballymena, where it would have better served the area to the north-east of our Province.
“The trade union UNISON has said that that model, which some are attempting to rush through the Assembly, was in direct contradiction to the structures-and-reform model that was developed locally in the Hayes Report, and the RPA process.
“UNISON went further, and stated that the draft Order was established without specific consultation or an equality assessment, and replicated the dysfunctional elements of English Health Service delivery, including the purchaser/provider split, and the retention of the trust model.
“Unionists correctly said that they believed that legislation should be drafted in response to the consultation and introduced as an Act of the Assembly for consideration in the Chamber, and by the Committee for Health, Social Services and Public Safety, as per the normal legislative process.
“The Health Service is not a toy to be played with among political parties; it is for the patients, whom we should put first, rather than our political ideals,” said Assemblyman Dr Coulter.