Society daily 06.02.12

Sign up to Society daily email briefing Today's top SocietyGuardian stories • Benefit cuts are fuelling abuse of disabled people, say charities • Minister for disabled people: there is no shortage of jobs • 'I never qualified for disability benefit, yet I'm still called a faker' • Tanni Grey-Thompson: 'A lot of disabled people are terrified of the changes to disability living allowance' – video • Ed Miliband: NHS reform defeat could save 6,000 nursing jobs • Terms of nursing regulator review to be set amid concern over quality of care • Ken Clarke reveals plans to give divorced fathers more rights • Women with diabetes warned to take precautions when having a baby • Joblessness and 'toxic relations' with police are blamed for Tottenham riot • Jackie Ashley: Civil servants of Sir Humphrey vintage were amusing: but Whitehall's changed • Patrick Stewart: Domestic violence blighted my home. That's why I support Refuge All today's SocietyGuardian stories The pick of the weekend's SocietyGuardian news and comment • Ed Miliband: Everyone who loves the NHS must fight to defeat this health bill • North-south divide grows as jobs are lost at four times the rate elsewhere • Deborah Orr: Can you condone your child rioting and still be an admirable parent? Yes! All Sunday's SocietyGuardian news and comment All Saturday's SocietyGuardian news and comment On the Guardian Professional Networks • Procurement groups have been popular in the housing sector since Gershon's efficiency drive – so why are landlords complaining about their services? • Surrey council's legal battle over libraries shows how volunteer-led public services can fall at the first legal hurdle. Liverpool's deputy leader Paul Brant explains • The slower nature of charities means they are best equipped to take a longer view of public service delivery , says consultant Tom Levitt • Dick Vinegar, the Patient from Hell, has nothing – well, almost nothing - but praise for his treatment at one of his local hospitals On my radar ... • The health and social care bill, which is due to return to parliament this week. Protests against the goverment's proposals for NHS reform are planned outside the Lords and the BMA. Speculation is growing over whether the bill will be withdrawn. On the Stepping Out blog, regular Guardian contributor Craig Dearden-Phillps says the NHS today is a cruise-liner headed for the rocks within 5 years . On the question of how the health service can reduce costs and "improve its offer", he writes: The left (including many Lib Dems) think this is all about planning and co-ordination. The right think it is all about ultra-devolution and introducing markets and private providers with the state well out of the way. The sensible centre (and most of the non-political community) recognise that you need bits of both. High level planning is needed over the long term around the broad allocation of the health pound in our taxes. As a country, we need to agree what our response to our well-understood demographic and health challenges should be. This is the 'national conversation' we should be having, led by our political class. Then it is Government's job to set the framework. This is not the same thing as the 'co-ordination' offered during the Labour years – which led to the NHS being micro-managed like a nationalised industry. Likewise we need to sensibly open up the non-core sectors of our healthcare needs to other sector. This has, of course, already happened in social care, where a diversity of providers has moved quality up and price down over the years – with notable exceptions of course. But this has to be done with care. The 'cherry picking' argument is a real one and cannot be ignored. We need to use the private sector where it can drive up standards – but keep an overview and retain powers at local level to hold the private sector in check where this isn't working for the common good. Meanwhile, writer Matt Leys is urging patients to join the medical professionals who have voiced their opposition to the reform plans : The NHS isn't perfect. No system on that scale is, ever has been or ever will be. But it is – in terms of results, as well as cost – the best in the world (as this survey by US thinktank the Commonwealth Fund revealed). You may not think that when you're sitting in a crowded waiting room for an appointment that was meant to happen an hour ago – but would you rather the appointment never happened? Your GP – who under Lansley's proposed system will be responsible for deciding how the budget is spent – might not refer you at all. Already GP groups are limiting referrals. If you're the third person with that condition through his door that week, and their ration is two referrals a week – tough shit. Unless you have deep pockets, or your insurer is feeling generous. When Nye Bevan founded the NHS in 1948, one of its guiding principles was 'freedom from fear'. Fear of being unable to pay the doctor, a fear that was very real for millions of people. We don't have to let that fear come back. We can act. The NHS is ours. And it's time we – the patients – were heard. It's time we added our voices to the professional bodies and health workers' unions who oppose the privatisation of our healthcare – who oppose the fear. • An excellent post on the Ekklesia blog by Simon Barrow on the proposed benefits cap : ... when it comes to benefits, it seems that the government suddenly develops an interest in the low-paid - because they can be used as a weapon against the unwaged. But when it comes to axing public sector posts, squeezing investment, cutting job schemes, slashing local authority budgets, pressurising pay downwards and other employment-harming consequences of austerity economics (a strategy which Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls a 'suicide pact' among certain European governments), suddenly both the working poor and the 2.8 million currently denied jobs are conveniently effectively forgotten. All the blame must go on benefit claimants. • An interesting post by John Craig on the Innovation Unit blog, reporting back from a workshop with public sector staff : If the last government saw public services as a machine and this one sees them as a market, I often think of them as a movement of millions, each one of whom joined up to make a difference. Over the last two decades, much of the progress in public services has been about driving productivity. Private sector sickness absence, for example, is two-thirds that of the public sector, and these simple differences have allowed them to take on services, make improvements and make money. However, as the public sector catches up with the tricks of productivity, the outsourcing industry is running out of low-hanging fruit. As a result, it's now being argued that market has peaked. To improve further, public services will have to crack tougher problems. To do so, they will have to find a way not just to make public servants marginally healthier and happier. They will have to give them sufficient confidence, power and responsibility to become innovators. • This lovely set of photographs from the NSPCC from a competition to highlight its All Babies Count campaign Other news • BBC: Welsh government targets smoking in cars when children present • Children & Young People Now: BBC social work film prompts calls for early police support • Community Care: • Independent: Goodbye, minister: civil service hit by staff exodus • Inside Housing: Landlords to consider ASB when allocating homes • Telegraph: Divorce - grandparents have 'clear rights' to see children • Third Sector: Newcastle City Council considers by-law to restrict street fundraisers SocietyGuardian blogs Patrick Butler's cuts blog Sarah Boseley's global health blog SocietyGuardian on social media Follow SocietyGuardian on Twitter Follow Patrick Butler on Twitter Follow Clare Horton on Twitter Follow Alison Benjamin on Twitter SocietyGuardian's Facebook page SocietyGuardian links SocietyGuardian.co.uk Guardian cutswatch - tell us about the cuts in your area Public Leaders - the Guardian's website for senior managers of public services The Guardian's public and voluntary sector careers page Hundreds of public and voluntary sector jobs SocietyGuardian editor: Alison Benjamin Email the SocietyGuardian editor: [email protected]