These are the questions UCV Plain Speaker has asked Calderdale Clinincal Commissioning Group (CCG) to answer at the Governing Body meeting this afternoon, which is open to the public, 2-4pm, 5th Floor, F Mill, Dean Clough, Halifax.

1. Is Calderdale A&E department running at a loss? Because admissions have gone up since 2008/9, but under NHS payment rules drawn up by Monitor and NHS England, Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group is only allowed to pay Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) 30% of the tariff for any A&E admissions over 2008/9 baseline.
2. Does Calderdale CCG think it was right that CHFT refused to allow the public and their local political representatives to see the NCAT Report on Calderdale A&E until late last week, nine months after it was written?
3. Under the terms of the Calderdale CCG 5 year plan, how many individuals in Calderdale will have personal health budgets? What will the personal health budgets cover? What will be the total value of all personal health budgets? WIll they cover the total costs of patients’ health care, or will personal health budgets effectively limit and ration the NHS care that patients can receive? If so, how will patients who can’t pay to top up their health care out of their own money get the healthcare they need?
4. The vision for large scale transformational change in the Calderdale CCG 5 year plan seems to be the same as in the CHFT Strategic Review. But as far as I understand, no decision has been made on which of the 5 proposals in the Strategic Review should be accepted. And there has been no democratic participation by local people’s political representatives in drawing up the Strategic Review. They hadn’t even seen it until it was presented to Council meetings and Health and Wellbeing Boards a couple of weeks ago. So how can Calderdale CCG make a Strategic Plan based on a Strategic Review which has not yet been agreed? And how can Calderdale CCG meet your legal obligation to provide meaningful opportunities for public involvement in decision making?
5. Last week, NHS Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit offered up £1,222,000,000.00 of our NHS to Private Health, in two Supply2Health advertisements that said:

“Commissioners are seeking genuine, transformational and sustainable service change that recognises the primacy of the patient in the service model…”

These terms are identical to proposals in the CHFT Strategic Review of Health and Social Care. Will NHS West and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit be selling off similar amount of our NHS if the CHFT Strategic Review gets put into action?