The coalition government recently revealed the ambitious task of ‘liberating the NHS’, a goal identified as the widest reforming change that the NHS has seen since its inception in 1948.1 The White Paper2 champions ideological aims to empower doctors while placing patients at the centre of their own management decisions, adopting the maxim ‘no decision about me, without me’.2 While such proposals have been optimistically publicised, on the surface heralding empowerment for both doctors and patients and rightly so, they nevertheless raise a pertinent question: is the motive to actually empower doctors or is it simply a shift of responsibility? At a time when there is financial pressure to cut costs of public services, many might cynically think that this is a way of government conveniently devolving the responsibility for ‘cuts’ which are soon to come; however, Mr Lansley did suggest some of the proposals in the White Paper before the global economic downturn.
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