Burnham: blames Tory reorganization for NHS crisis.
Guardian News and Media/London
Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, yesterday said he would fight any Tory attempts to blame him for widespread failings in the NHS before 2010.
Speaking 48 hours before the release of a report, which is expected to say that many patients died unnecessarily because of excess death rates at 14 NHS trusts in England, Burnham said that he was “fed up” with suggestions that he was partly responsible because of the decisions he took when he was health secretary.
He also said that conditions at the 14 hospitals had got worse since 2010 because of the coalition’s NHS reorganisation.
Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, will tomorrow publish a report on 14 trusts with unduly high death rates.
The report was commissioned by David Cameron in February after Robert Francis’s damning inquiry into the unnecessary deaths of up to 1,200 patients in Stafford hospital.
It is expected to show that Stafford was not a one-off, and that other hospitals have had comparable problems.
The 14 hospital trusts covered by the Keogh report are: Basildon and Thurrock in Essex; United Lincolnshire; Blackpool; The Dudley Group, West Midlands; George Eliot, Warwickshire; Northern Lincolnshire and Goole; Tameside, Greater Manchester; Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire; Colchester, Essex; Medway, Kent; Burton, Staffordshire; North Cumbria; East Lancashire; and Buckinghamshire Healthcare.
Although Keogh investigated hospitals with excess mortality rates over the past two years, his report is expected to identify problems going back years and there are signs that the Conservatives want to use it to attack Labour’s record generally, and Burnham in particular.
Speaking about the report, David Morris, a Conservative member of the Commons health committee, told the Sunday Telegraph: “Burnham and his predecessors missed far too many warnings about high hospital death rates. He should take a long hard look at this record and ask himself whether he is really fit for the role of shadow home secretary.”
In an interview on Sky yesterday morning, Burnham, who was health secretary from 2009 to 2010, said: “To be honest, I’m fed up of these general accusations being hurled in my direction.
“I will account for all of the things that I did as secretary of state. I took actions to reveal what happened at Stafford, I took actions at Basildon, at Thameside. I left warnings in place on five hospitals.”