Hazel Blears MP, Cliff Mills and Peter Hunt

Following Alan Milburn’s announcement that the public will be given a key role in the management - and in effect become the owners - of NHS Foundation Trusts, Health Minister Hazel Blears spells out the political philosophy behind the Government’s NHS reform programme. She draws a clear policy between the Labour movement’s co-operative roots and the Government’s new direction, and indicates that the Government is committed to extending mutual ownership across the NHS, into areas such as primary care.

Blears states that the new governance arrangements for foundation hospitals will be modelled on successful mutual and co-operative organisations, placing ownership in the hands of employees and patients and replacing decades Hazel of central State ownership with local public ownership. She illustrates that this reform programme is every bit as radical and progressive as that which created the NHS over fifty years ago, drawing on the traditions of social and community ownership that inspired the founders of the NHS, and placing a premium on local accountability for local services.

Cliff Mills explains why the Industrial and Provident Society model is ideally suited to this new approach to the ownership and governance of essential services, while Peter Hunt puts the proposed reforms in the context of a resurgence of mutuality that has the potential to transform the public sector.