Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The whole point about overhauling our financial services regulation is that it gives us the opportunity to look around the rest of the world, see who has tougher penalties and work out whether we can introduce them to our system. That is why we will be introducing this Bill, with a major overhaul of how the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England work, and dealing with the regulatory system that was not working properly.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

A year ago the Prime Minister told me that the reason for the, at the time, new Health and Social Care Bill was

“simply that this country now has European levels of health spending but does not have European levels of success”.—[Official Report, 19 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 831.]

Now that we know that that is not the case, will the Prime Minister shelve this disruptive and destructive Bill, which is struggling in another place, go back to the coalition agreement and build from there?

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect for my hon. Friend, but I do not agree with him on this one. With the Health and Social Care Bill, a huge exercise was undertaken, in which the Deputy Prime Minister and I both played quite a large role, of actually listening to health professionals—to doctors, nurses and associated health professionals—to understand what they most wanted to see in the NHS reform Bill, and that is what we are delivering. My hon. Friend says that it is not the case that we have outcomes that are less than some parts of Europe; I am afraid it is the case. In some cases we could be doing a lot better. To argue just that the NHS simply needs money and not reform, I do not believe is right.