I made the following speech during the debate on the HSSD 2020 Vision at the January 2013 States meeting.
Sir, I would firstly like to say how useful I found this report in providing a very clear impression of the challenges facing not only the department, but the States as a whole. Whilst many of the problems are well known to many of us,
Whilst I believe it is right to set a timescale I would question the ability to get such structural changes sorted within 7 years, especially given it has taken 2 years to get to this point. It is made clear in the report that HSSD believes that a truly effective health and social care system can’t be created through gradual change and that this will mean considerable work to make sure services are linked financially and contractually.
What is missing here, as was missing at the start of the FTP and that is the absence of any recognition of the importance of the change management process. And, the faster you want to bring a completely new system, the more important that process will be. It will certainly be impossible without the buy-in of every affected organisation internal and external to the States of Guernsey.
I would also like to raise the issue of the States outsourcing work to third party organisations. This has been an issue raised by the Chair of the PAC in the UK, Margaret Hodge. She has voiced serious concerns in the UK about the problems of effective scrutiny where funds are passed to third sector and other external organisations. I would like to echo her concerns and believe there should be a States-wide policy regarding financial reporting requirements placed on organisations as a condition of them receiving public money.
Finally, I would like to advise Members that the Public Accounts Committee will shortly be following up the previous PAC’s review into Secondary Healthcare in 2011 to determine actions taken against its recommendations at that time.