UK ministers plan to centralise health data so they can compare England with ‘poorer-performing’ services in Wales
UK Government ministers are planning to centralise health data to make it easier to compare services in England with what they suspect are poorer-performing services in Wales and Scotland.
According to Politico ministers are briefing that they have concerns that the lack of standardized data on health and other outcomes “masks” poorer-performing services in Scotland and Wales, making comparing them to England more difficult.
“It comes as the government in Westminster tries to fight off calls for Scottish and Welsh independence and preserve Britain’s union of four nations,” Politico said, saying that the UK Government is now planning “a more combative stance towards the Scottish and Welsh governments”.
Under the plans, the U.K.’s central Office for National Statistics would be given greater responsibility over collecting and publishing U.K.-wide data, two government officials told Politico. This data is currently collected by separate agencies in Scotland and Wales.
Legislation announcing that responsibility over health data would be taken back from the Welsh Government to Whitehall could be announced in May’s Queen’s Speech.
It comes after devolution allowed the Welsh and Scottish governments sweeping powers to react differently to the UK Government during the Covid pandemic.
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My god they are pathetic. Free Cymru from these infantile dinosaurs
Ideally the English regions ought to be studied separately in a UK wide data analysis as likely the only part of the UK where there are international standard services well funded is London. Even sun regionally there has been a perpetuation of uneven finding from the inception of the NHS leading to areas with persistent low dtandards. The same applies to transport and education which outside London is bad or just terrible.
More direct rule through the backdoor Soviet-style diplomacy from the Whitehall branch of the Kremlin. If they are foolish enough to think by stripping bit by bit devolution will stop Scottish or Welsh independence are deluding themselves. But where’s that cretinous Welsh Conservative Andrew RT Davies opinion of this incursion into our sovereignty, I ask? He’s usually comments on everything. But strangely the mouth is mute on the matter? Telling. Remember, he once stated.” If I become First Minister will not step on the turf of Westminster”. Now that’s ironic seeing his Whitehall overlords are currently driving their tanks over… Read more »
Quick quiz question:
The UK government thinks the health services in Wales and Scotland are performing worse so they will:
a) increase funding under pre-existing structures,
b) devolve crowns estates to increase resources, or
c) use it as a way of attacking devolved governments?
This Union is such a bizarre one.
Real small-d*ck energy. Who cares about comparison like that? What a stupid lie to use to claw back powers. Just admit you want to sell off the data and use this to try to justify privatisation of our NHS publicly and put in your pitch packet to US companies. We need independence! Why would any government of a ‘union’ that claims represent us too take a more “combative stance” towards Welsh and Scottish democratically mandated and elected governments? That makes no sense. Unless they don’t think those governments, and by extension we, should exist. At this point it is simple,… Read more »
Ah more of the respect agenda?
Every day the argument for independence gets stronger, but I feel it’s time for Welsh Labour to embrace it,
Anglo Brit supremacist with a brown skin. Doesn’t the irony of that ever enter his pathetic mind ? There’s a growing number of Tories with distinctive minority backgrounds whose personal ambitions make them bigger nastier bastards than most of their more traditional white skinned Anglo Brit supremacist colleagues. Much in common with those Uncle Dai Welshies who inhabit the Tory benches.
You mean performing poorer because of intetional underfunding?
Each country has a different way when calculating health care and outcomes. Are the English going to adapt to our way of doing things, or maybe the Scottish way ?. To measure all equally they would have to standardize the way stats are compiled just to start off. This is just England fiddling while the UK burns, a waste of time and money, which they seem rather good at doing.
In view of Boris Johnson’s use of dodgy statistics as the Office of National statistics has shown what trust could one put in the Tory Governments figures in the first place..
M
Sajid Javid will not want to be comparing yesterday’s Wales England COVID data which show our virus levels being lower than the English data which he is responsible for.
Not that long ago if you lived in England you had the option to not have your medical data put onto the computerised data sell off to a dodgy American company, no such option here in Wales, because, so I was told “we do things differently here” now a few months later I discover my local health supplier is using an American company to computerise and store our data. Its not just the english nhs being privatised by the backdoor, little by little, chip, chip, chip, the future is bleak for the whole of the UK except the lucky few.