I used to quite like Shirley Williams, based entirely on her usually sensible and interesting appearances on various BBC discussion programmes. My opinion of her has been utterly changed by her actions at the Lib Dem conference, with her working to preserve the NHS bill.
Having heard of that, I started going through this, becoming increasingly horrified as I did so. The point concerning competition law in relation to the proposed changes is not one that I had considered before - by changing the NHS from a state system to one that includes outside providers then it becomes liable to EU regulations on competition and government tendering. This then utterly changes the structure of the system - the responsibilities of the government become not to provide good quality health care to all but instead to get the lowest bidder and comply with the competition regulations. The result of this change will be to stop the NHS being the NHS.
A little question I want to raise, then, is the justice of this woman acting in a way that is entirely politically motivated but which will have huge detrimental effects for proceeding generations (and, indeed, those of us with hopefully quite a few decades left in us). As a matter of biology she will be dead in the not too distant future and so will not have to live with the effects of her short-term political posturing (not that someone as rich as her would anyway...) - surely such actions must be immoral, not to say shameful?
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