Recent weeks have seen a familiar pattern from the government and the Department of Health. Faced with the Staffordshire disaster and the inevitable observations from pretty much all concerned that this was a series of deaths caused by the system they put in place, they have reacted characteristically.
What they've done is:
(1) Blame management.
(2) Ignore completely the issue itself by talking about all the Good Things they have done. Alan Johnson has trotted out the same old lines about reduced waiting times. But, Alan - Staffordshire demonstrated really, really well that the pursuit of targets like this kills people. So that you have some good soundbites to chuck out about the health service in an effort to get re-elected.
(3) Engaging the spin doctors to promulgate these spurious well-done-us messages all over the press. Curiously, the opening line of Alan's pat-self-on-back above has been reproduced on Jim Dowd, MP for Lewisham West's website, Andy Reed's, The Northern Echo's, the Labour North-West's, Ruth Kelly's, Glasgow North-East's, Southall's, Loughborough's, Medway hospital, NHS York and Humber, and even the dailies. That exact phrase "Twelve years ago it was not uncommon for NHS patients to have to wait well over 18 months for an operation" has been used by all of them in some form or another in press releases over the past couple of weeks.
It's testament to just how little this government is interested in fixing the problems it has created, never mind taking responsibility for them. As George Monbiot put it, this is a government that stands for nothing but re-election, even if the price is a few hundred dead in every hospital stupid enough to try to hit the targets the DoH has set them...
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