Labour’s dismal record on providing an independent voice for patients in health and social care continues with “offstage” news of the demise of Healthwatch England. Twenty years ago, as the chair of Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health, I was suddenly summoned by the then Labour minister, Rosie Winterton, to be told that the commission was to be abolished. It had only just been set up 2003 in the wake of anger about its abolition of the successful Community Health Councils in that year.
The disillusionment of thousands of patients and service users who gave their time and effort to the new system was palpable, so much so that few felt able to participate in the subsequent ill-fated LINks community engagement system, which never got off the ground.
It was left to the Conservative government to address the absence of users’ voices in health and social care. In 2013, it set up Healthwatch England, which gradually went about overcoming well-founded cynicism, building its independent, local, community-based networks in every English local authority.
The Healthwatch network has involved many thousands of people to bring the experience of service users to bear, using genuine local knowledge, fuelled by an enduring belief in the principles of a quality NHS and social care system free at the point of use.
Abolition will again alienate many of those knowledgeably critical friends whose support Labour might have expected to attract and who will now express their views in other ways.
Sharon Grant
Outgoing chair, Healthwatch Haringey
