WHERE IS LANSLEY?

IN Liverpool tomorrow the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is holding its annual conference. The RCN represents the largest single sector of the National Health Service workforce and it is probably true to say that nurses are as close to the very heart of the NHS as any other staff member even specialists; their role is indispensable.

It would therefore be reasonable to expect that Britain's Lib-Con coalition government would want to take this early opportunity of showing how the consultation process on NHS reforms launched by the prime minister only five days ago will work during the next two months. Yet the government's representative at the RCN conference tomorrow will be the most junior minister of the Health Department -- Anne Milton, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health. Ms Milton is a former nurse and that will work to her advantage but the truth is that if Downing Street wanted to prove from the start that its consultation really mattered it would have sent at least the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley. He was invited but declined.

In recent years there can have been very few important policies of a new government introduced in such an unsatisfactory way. Despite criticism of his reform proposals, especially of the handling of more than 60 per cent of the budget to doctors, neither Mr Lansley nor the prime minister took any remedial action until the possibility of a defeat for the necessary legislation in the House of Lords showed itself. Unless better attention is given to the promised consultation it may only make matters worse. The NHS deserves better treatment than this.