Andy Burnham - the Janus of British Politics

The Ancient Romans had a God called Janus who had a face on both the front and back of his head so that he could face in both directions at once.

Janus is alive and well, and sits in the Labour shadow cabinet as Shadow Health Secretary.

Andy Burnham, Labour's last Health Secretary and their Shadow Health Secretary today, often attacks the outsourcing of NHS services as though it was a Conservative policy which he opposed and yet, as was pointed out recently on Newsnight, when he was Health Secretary he increased such outsourcing at almost exactly the same rate that the coalition subsequently has. About 94% of NHS care is still provided in house. Something over two-thirds of the health services being outsourced today were also outsourced at the conclusion of Andy Burnham's watch, as this graphic shows.



His position on NHS "cuts" is equally ambiguous, as his comments in an interview in the Fabian Review magazine in 2013 demonstrate.

Asked about his project to provide to merge health and social care systems, Mr Burnham said:

"Partly what I'd cut to pay for my policy are hospital beds.

"I'm very clear that we could get much better results for the current £120 billion we put into health and adult social care if we were to treat it as one budget."

When pressed that the logical knock-effect would be fewer hospitals, he told the Sun on Sunday:

 "We're definitely saying that none of this is sacrosanct. We're not going to be on every picket line opposing every closure.”

Source: Daily Telegraph at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11368386/Labour-turn-on-Tories-over-bare-knuckle-pledge-to-protect-NHS.html

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