Tom Harris has a good blog today regarding Labour’s propensity to shout ‘wolf’ every time the Government make an announcement.

http://tinyurl.com/2wsjthn

A prime example of this was Andy Burnham’s performance on Newsnight earlier in the week. Andy made much of the allocation of NHS funding, whilst failing to mention that in his one year tenure, he spent £260 milllion on management consultants alone, something Andrew Lansley put a stop to by imposing a consultancy spending moratorium on day one.

The opposition have also begun to describe GPs as the private sector within the NHS. Another wolf.

I assume, in an attempt to devalue and undermine the role of the family GP, in order to denigrate our NHS GP commissioning policy.

This is the most disingenuous line of attack. Each GP trains for seven years and then a further three to four years, often more, in order to become a GP.

They are professional, highly skilled and qualified individuals.

If I had any complaint regarding GPs, it would be that they have become too process driven. Over the last ten years they have spent more time attempting to reach targets, because they were made to, than worrying about outcomes.

All that will now change with the emphasis in future being very much on outcomes.

GPs will no longer have the PCT breathing down their neck, watching every penny they spend and on who, telling them what services they can procure and which they can’t.

In future, patients will be able to sit in front of a GP and the massive forest of bureaucracy which stood in the way of patients accessing services will have been taken away.

Decisions regarding care, drugs, treatment will be made between the GP and the patient. No decision will be taken about a patient, without that patient being fully involved. No longer will the decision be taken by the faceless PCT.

Now how could anyone wish to deny patients that level of control over their own lives?

Was that a howl I just heard?