Nick Seddon - 'nobody actually knows what privatisation means'
"Most other countries think that the debate we're having here is really weird," Nick Seddon, deputy director of the independent think-tank Reform, told a College of Journalism lunchtime seminar on Wednesday 29 February.
Talking about the legislation going through the UK parliament to introduce fundamental structural changes to the way the NHS is run, and the confusion and ignorance which characterises the national debate about it, he said:
"The debate internationally is not about whether or not you can allow good, different providers to do healthcare... The debate is just about how best to manage that."
In Britain, he said: "We've forgotten a discussion about quality. We just have a discussion about privatisation or non-privatisation. Nobody actually knows what privatisation means."
Paul Corrigan - 'People don't know why all this stuff is going on'
Paul Corrigan, adviser on healthcare to the last Labour government, told BBC journalists that the current Government had failed to communicate what the changes are.
The problem with the bill, he said, is that "the Government didn't have a narrative which it imposed upon this discussion" and, "if there isn't a story about what's going on and you try to do something very big, you get chaos, layered on chaos, layered on chaos."
He predicted a period of turbulence and tension over the next few years as the "reforms" unfold. "You'll get an incredibly patchy reality," he said.
Chris Mason - 'devilishly complicated'
"As a non-health specialist," BBC News correspondent Chris Mason said he was struck by how "devilishly complicated" the NHS changes are.
Commenting on the 200 hours of scrutiny and 1,000 amendments which accompanied the legislation, he said: "It's so complicated and you have a finite period of time in which to get your piece across. The danger is the bit that gets squeezed out is 'what the hell is this all about?', which leaves the audience completely baffled."
He said the nature of coalition politics is such that coverage of the political debate serves to confuse the public further because Westminster journalists ended up reporting on "arguments about aspects of change which were never going to happen anyway".
