NHS: South London Healthcare Trust

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, all questions of process must be for my right honourable friend to consider, including that one. I emphasise the Government’s approach to reconfiguration decisions. When the Government came into office, we took a very clear decision about four tests that needed to be applied to any sustainable reconfiguration within the NHS: the changes, whatever they were, had to command support from GP commissioners—that is to say, the clinical community; the public must be engaged in the process; the recommendations must be clinically sustainable and sound; and, as the statement mentioned, they must leave patients with a clear choice of good-quality providers. Those safeguards were not there before, but they are there now and my right honourable friend will be looking at those tests when he considers not just the matter of Lewisham but the totality of the administrator’s recommendations.

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, today it is the South London Healthcare Trust, and there is anxiety abroad that tomorrow it could well be another trust. Can the Minister tell the House how many trusts are in the “at risk” box today and what role is being played by Monitor and others in these cases?