League tables are a weapon for NHS privatisation
The Stafford Hospital scandal’s false mortality statistics led to devastating service cuts despite evidence disproving the whole debacle, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning of similar threats under Labour’s new plans for league tables
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HEALTH SECRETARY Wes Streeting’s plan to introduce hospital league tables is deeply damaging, counterproductive and will ultimately be used as a means of closing hospitals.
At the beginning of the Tory-led coalition government, under David Cameron, the Tories and the media latched onto the so-called “Stafford Hospital scandal” that emerged from an inquiry ordered by Andy Burnham in 2009 into claims of poor care.
The Daily Mail made a lurid claim that up to 1,200 people had died avoidably at the hospital between 2005-08, and this idea was eagerly promoted by Cameron and co as an opportunity to attack the previous Labour government’s record on the NHS.
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