Future of the NHS

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

It was also a period during which complaints to the NHS reached their highest ever levels. If we ask the public who they think are best placed to design the services patients need, we will find that the answer is their general practitioners, hospital doctors and nurses, not politicians on either the Government or the Opposition Benches. This is about doctors and nurses being in charge, not politicians.

It took this Government to focus on cancer outcomes. It took this Government to provide the drugs patients need through the cancer drugs fund. Under Labour, patients went without new cancer medicines that patients in every other European country were getting access to. It is this Government who are investing in more diagnostic equipment, and more screening and early diagnosis, so that we get better outcomes.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I must say that I admire the consistency with which the Secretary of State defends his proposed legislation. However, will he tell us what he plans to concede, given the threatened veto by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Liberal Democrats?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not want to correct the hon. Lady, but everything I have been saying up until now has been about defending the NHS and defending our focus on delivering better results by giving the NHS greater front-line devolved responsibility. That is not a matter of debate and disagreement between the coalition parties; we are all in favour of that. The point is this: how can the Bill best support the principles on which we are agreed? I thought the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne and the Labour party were agreed on those principles; that seemed to come out from his interview last week. Indeed, at the end of his speech today I was not quite sure whether or not he agreed with us.