Just when you begin to think British Tory leader David Cameron
is gaining political maturity and also gaining some real traction
against the dreadful, now barely functioning British Labour
government, his gift for ineptitude comes good again.
It has been a major story in the British press that Lord
Mancroft, a Tory member of the House of Lords, has scarified
nursing standards at a British public hospital where he was a
patient.
Speaking in a Lords debate on patient care, he said: “It is a
miracle that I am still alive. The wards were filthy. Underneath
the bed next to me was a piece of dirty cotton wool, and there it
remained for seven days. The ward was never cleaned. The tables,
the beds and the bathrooms were not cleaned.”
He said a splash of blood in the bathroom was there for the week
he was in the hospital.
“I was extremely infectious at that time and no precautions were
taken with me at all. The staff were furious when my wife wanted my
bed cleaned when it clearly needed cleaning.”
Worse still, he said, was the attitude of the nurses, which he
described as “an accurate reflection of many young women in Britain
today.”
He said: “The nurses who looked after me — not all of them, we
should never generalize and there were one or two wonderful ones —
were mostly grubby, with dirty fingernails and hair. They were
slipshod, lazy, drunken and promiscuous.
“How do I know? If you are a patient in a bed and being nursed
from either side, the nurses talk across you as if you are not
there.
“I know exactly what they got up to the night before. I know how
much they drank and what they were planning to do the next night,
and it was pretty horrifying.”
He said he heard one nurse say: “I really shouldn’t be here
because I had so much to drink last night and I feel like I’m going
to be sick.” The other asked: “Did you **** so-and-so?” and the
first nurse said: “No, but I think I’m going to.”
He said: “I’m not attacking nurses, but when you are dealing
with people at their lowest, then professionalism should be
higher.” He said he believed he was alive only because his wife
“kidnapped” him and had him transferred to a London hospital, where
standards were much better.
What did Cameron do about what seemed prima facie both
a public scandal and, for the Tories, a political gift? Promise to
investigate? Demand that the government investigate? Support his
ally? Perhaps even send Lord Mancroft a private note suggesting
that he cool it until investigations had been made?
No. He responded with a furious public tirade, not against the
hospital or the government which was responsible for it, but
against Lord Mancroft.
At the Welsh Conservative conference Mr. Cameron said Lord
Mancroft had been told in “no uncertain terms” that his views do
not represent the party. Mr. Cameron said he asked the Tory leader
in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, to let Lord Mancroft know how angry
he was.
“He should think more carefully before opening his mouth,” Mr.
Cameron said. “My experience of the NHS is 100% completely
different. I was very cross about it.
“I completely disagree with what he said. I think it doesn’t
reflect the incredibly hard work that nurses do and I have as much
experience of the NHS as probably anyone in my party.”
The Labour government was of course more than happy to attack
Lord Mancroft also. Health minister Ann Keen said: “I am appalled
at his comments and I’m sure the rest of the British public is too.
The entire country holds nurses in the highest regard. People will
want to know what action David Cameron is taking on this matter or
if David Cameron shares his views.”
I AM IN NO POSITION to say whether Lord Mancroft’s accusations are
true or not. But I know there is almost nothing that shifts one’s
view of life so radically as being hospitalized: the world dwindles
down to your bed and the kindness, gentleness, friendliness,
cleanliness and professionalism or otherwise of the nurses suddenly
becomes about the most important thing in the universe. I have been
hospitalized on two occasions, once in a public and once in a
private hospital, and both times the nurses were wonderful. I only
hope I expressed my gratitude to them adequately on discharge.
However, I can imagine how terrible bad nurses can be. And so, I
think, can anyone else who has ever been a hospital patient imagine
it. And ex-hospital patients are voters.
It has already been established in recent months that filthy
British hospitals have been the cause of many deaths. The Daily
Telegraph wrote last year:
Now it is 2007, and we learn that nurses in the
hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells National Health
Service trust told patients suffering from diarrhea to “go in their
beds.” Between 2004 and 2006, 90 patients died from Clostridium
difficile, and the disease was a factor in the death of a
further 241.
Were it not for bad nursing, bad medical attention and bad
administration, none of these patients need have died. Indeed, they
would not have contracted C. difficile at all unless they had gone
into hospital. So, after 150 years’ advance of education,
technology, prosperity and science, we have lost what Florence
Nightingale taught [about cleanliness].
Surely the Leader of the Opposition might think that 90 preventable
deaths in the hospitals of one area alone were at least a hint that
all was not well in the Government’s administration?
It was reported in the British
Daily Mail on January 1
that the National Health Service would spell out patients’ rights
in a new “contract.” This, it was said, was likely to cover “the
right to be treated in clean hospitals.” What does it say about
British hospitals if such a “right” actually needs to be stated? Or
that at the present time it apparently does not exist?
Further, given the old adage that there are no bad troops, only
bad officers, Lord Mancroft’s allegations are not an attack on the
nurses in one hospital but on hospital administration and
supervision.
And why does Cameron apparently instantly assume that Lord
Mancroft, a mature and successful businessman of 50, with a
substantial record of public service — he has chaired the
Addiction Recovery Foundation since 1989 and has been chairman of
the Drug and Alcohol Foundation since 1993 and is vice-chairman of
the Countryside Alliance — and a Conservative Party political
colleague, is a liar? And a liar about something that he has no
obvious motive to lie about? For that is the thrust of Cameron’s
reported statement. Further, it is noticeable that Lord Mancroft’s
allegations, as distinct from the generalized grumbling of a
disgruntled and difficult patient, deal with specific facts, such
as the cotton wool and the bloodstain.
Why could Cameron not have said something like: “I don’t believe
Lord Mancroft’s experience was typical and does not accord with my
own, but the allegations must be investigated properly”? This would
hardly slander the nursing profession as a whole and would please
the public, as well as having the advantage of being the right
thing to do.
IF LORD MANCROFT IS TELLING the truth, what he has exposed is a
public outrage that demands urgent action — and not, of course,
for Lord Mancroft’s sake alone: he could afford to go to a better
hospital. Millions can’t.
Possibly Cameron is afraid of angering nurses, or some nurses
(there are nurses in my most immediate family and I know many
others well, and I know that they would be the first to demand any
such scandals, if true, be instantly exposed and ruthlessly dealt
with). But he is also running the risk of angering hospital
patients — a considerably larger demographic. Since the story
broke, the British press has received hundreds of letters
supporting Lord Mancroft’s story. Looking at the matter in a purely
political light the Tories still have to find about 150 seats at
the next election if they are to govern in their own right. They
need all the ammunition against the government that they can
get.
Cameron seems to have dealt with news of what may be both a
public scandal that needs urgent action and a political opportunity
by shooting the messenger. Somehow I can’t imagine a Churchill or a
Thatcher behaving this way.
