Health and Social Care Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

No, I do not accept that, but I will tell the hon. Gentleman that the measures in this Bill will undermine many of his principal concerns and policy priorities about opening up the NHS to the public and to Parliament. I hope that he will take a close look at what the Health Secretary really plans.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I hope that my right hon. Friend will agree that the NHS is supposed to be about people and their health, so does he also agree that putting different parts of the health service in competition with one another will lead to fragmented and disjointed pathways of care and undermine innovation and the sharing of best practice, as well as increasing administrative and other costs with public funding being wasted on transaction costs?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right—and the chief executive of the Patients Association, Katherine Murphy has said just that. Many patient groups are making the same arguments and issuing the same warnings.

My serious concern is that this Government have told only half the story from the start. The Health Secretary and the Prime Minister are happy to talk about GP commissioning and happy to talk about cutting management—the organisational changes—but they downplay or deny the deep ideological changes at the heart of these plans. The Health Secretary mentioned the new economic regulator, Monitor, in just one line in a speech lasting more than 40 minutes. The Prime Minister said last week in his speech on public services that these reforms

“are not about theory or ideology”.

The Prime Minister writes in The Times today, just as the Health Secretary did last week, both of them producing 700 words about their health plans, yet they made not a single mention of competition.

We will explain and expose the truth throughout this debate and the Bill’s passage through Parliament because these changes will break up the NHS; they will open up all areas of the NHS to price-cutting competition from private health companies; and they will take away from all parts of the NHS the requirement for proper openness, scrutiny and accountability to the public and to Parliament. These Government changes are driving free market political ideology into the heart of the NHS, and that is why doctors are now saying:

“As it stands, the UK Government’s new Bill spells the end of the NHS.”