I made the following points;

1. Some NHS hospitals use these parking charges to deter non-hospital visitors (such as people visiting nearby shopping centres with high parking costs) from using their car parks as cheap or free parking.  Thus ensuring that spaces are available for patients and genuine hospital visitors.

2. In my experience, most hospitals that levy charges for parking have schemes available that reimburse people on low incomes and patients making multiple visits for long term conditions or treatments.

3. The money raised from parking is not a profit and would most probably be used to fund patient care.

4. Most importantly, the imposition of parking charges should not be a one size fits all dictat from central government.  The decision should be made by individual hospitals taking in to account local circumstances.

Not only do the GPs support the reforms but they point out the most important part of them, the benefits to the patients.  For Nurses for Reform this is the most important reason for the reforms.  That patients can work together with their family doctors to chose how and where their healthcare is delivered.

Another article in the Telegraph questions that the GP’s letter does not mention the use of the private sector for healthcare provision.  Could this possibly be because GPs and patients do not mind who owns the hospital in which their care is delivered?  What is important to them is that the care they receive is good quality, value for money and that they do not contract healthcare associated infections or become malnourished during their hospital stay.

Enemies of enterprise seek controls on tobacco

SIR – Today, smokers are asked to observe No Smoking Day. They may also finally get to hear Government proposals that could ban the display of tobacco products in retail outlets, and only allow tobacco to be sold in plain, state-prescribed packaging.

If the Coalition is committed to defeating the enemies of enterprise, as David Cameron, the Prime Minister, claims, a good start would be to call a halt to the relentless campaign to “denormalise” smoking through an endless barrage of new controls, directives and diktats.

Mr Cameron claimed last weekend that he would wage war on bureaucrats who concoct ridiculous rules and regulations. Banning the branding of tobacco products or making cigarettes an under-the-counter product would be yet another victory for these very bureaucrats. Life would become more difficult for newsagents and tobacconists and easier for the providers of illicit tobacco to pass off their wares as legitimate.

We cannot yet be sure about whether the Prime Minister’s commitment to combating regulation and red tape is truly serious. If his Government now unveils proposals to further restrict the sale and purchase of tobacco, it will be a clear sign that his new commitment to enterprise is little more than political rhetoric.

Patrick Basham
Director, Democracy Institute
Dr Eamonn Butler
Director, Adam Smith Institute
Donna Edmunds
Director of Research, Progressive Vision
Dr Helen Evans
Director, Nurses for Reform
Dr Tim Evans
Chairman, Economic Policy Centre
Daniel Hamilton
Director, Big Brother Watch
Angela Harbutt
Executive Director, Liberal Vision
Tim Knox
Acting Director, Centre for Policy Studies
Mark Littlewood
Director General, Institute of Economic Affairs
Matthew Sinclair
Director, The TaxPayers’ Alliance
Simon Richards
Director, The Freedom Association

SIR – Ed Miliband’s failure (report, February 19) to recognise that the NHS is to health care what the Soviet Union was to economics shows just how out of touch Labour has become under his leadership. Tony Blair and the rest of New Labour must be livid at this policy, which will only lead to electoral ruin.

As a nurse on the NHS’s front line, I have long believed that no NHS-funded patient should ever again have to go into a state-owned hospital or clinic. Nurses have everything to gain from a policy that will allow patients and their local doctors to direct NHS money to the highest quality and best value services.

Dr Helen Evans
Director, Nurses for Reform

The NHS does not need more or new targets.  Targets are part of the problem of this broken system.  What we must hear from Andrew Lansley is how is going to change the system itself.  We have had more than 60 years of trying to make the NHS work and it still failing patients every day.

This is a great article in the Daily Telegraph discussing the history of mutuality in healthcare provision.  It is fascinating that all of the three main political parties are desperate to demonstrate their co-operative  credentials now that the public are way ahead of them. This article quotes a poll that shows only 11% of people want the government to deliver public services directly.

To read to complete article click here.

I also urge you to take time to read the comments.  It is amazing not only how people interpret what I have said differently but also how people have completely different expectations of what the NHS should be and do.

As voluntary associations, trade union aligned friendly societies, mutuals and co-operatives have glorious histories and ones that we can learn from today. Born of the market and representing a wide range of diverse ownership philosophies one can actually make a good case that with its mutualist and charitable roots, Britain’s historic independent sector owes more of its history to workers, the labour movement and a worthy concern for the poor than to any political tribe of the so-called right.

This is a serious point. For NFR believes that to become more relevant and useful in the twenty first century, trade unions should consider using their large memberships and economies of scale to forge even better strategic alliances for the benefit of members. Indeed, politicians should stop penalizing trade union aligned, or for that matter, any other sort of independent healthcare. Instead, these good things should receive a much friendlier treatment in the taxation and legal spheres.

Since the recent meeting with David Cameron Nurses for Reform has attracted a vast amount of media attention. Perhaps most importantly we have also picked up lots of new support from registered nurses who have decided to formally sign up and support the organisation. Appalled by the horrific realities of state run healthcare many nurses have clearly been relieved to finally find an organisation that spells out some home truths about the NHS and campaigns to put the long term interests of patients first.

On the media front, NFR has been reported in The Daily Telegraph.  We have also been reported in The Mirror, here, here and here .  And we have been reported on major UK political blogs – such as Samizdata and the Adam Smith Institute .

There have been numerous other blogs about the organisation – including Liberal Conspiracy, Labourlist , and Tom Harris MP’s blog (to detail just a few) – and early this week I was interviewed by the Nursing Standard (readers will be able to see the result of this when the NS gets around to publishing it in a few weeks).

The really heartening thing about this episode is the dozens of nurses who have signed up to support NFR and what we stand for. Their emails and messages of support characteristically represent a profession who are tired of being gagged by politicians and misrepresented by the usual political class types at Unison and the Royal College of Nursing.

On the down side, NFR is mindful that many people in the UK and Europe still do not get how hostile the organisation is to American state healthcare. In failing to understand that the US government spends more on Medicare, Medicaid and S-Chip than the Pentagon spends on the military, it would be helpful if some of our detractors at least read this NFR article on why America does not have a free market healthcare system and therefore why NFR is hostile to the American healthcare system.