Future of the NHS

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend puts the position and the challenge, especially to the Lib Dems, very clearly. The challenge to Conservative Members is this: they must recognise that the Prime Minister made the NHS his most personal pledge before the election. People wanted to believe him, but in just one year the NHS has become his biggest broken promise. My hon. Friend mentions the pause. In our Opposition motion in March, we urged the Government to

“pause the progress of the legislation in order to re-think their plans”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 374.]

The Health Secretary dismissed that, but he has now been told to do so by the Prime Minister.

However, many of the signs point to the Prime Minister’s “pause to listen” being a sham. Just one week after the announcement, and in fact on the day that the Health Secretary received that historic vote of no confidence at the Royal College of Nursing, the NHS chief executive wrote to NHS managers to tell them that

“we need to continue to take reasonable steps to prepare for implementation and maintain momentum on the ground”.

The House is used to pre-legislative scrutiny, but not pre-legislative implementation.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Do we not face the worst of both worlds? The Government appear to be saying that GP consortia should be voluntary rather than compulsory, but primary care trusts are being abolished, and in some cases have been already. If that pause is serious, the Government need to stop that dismantling of the NHS and go back to the drawing board.

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he draws on his experience as a former Health Minister. While implementation continues apace, there is a so-called pause in the legislation. His point is exactly the one made by the all-party, Tory-led Health Committee in a recent report. If the Prime Minister wants to prove to NHS patients and staff that his pause is not just spin, he must shelve the Bill and make radical changes to his NHS reorganisation plans.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

I will give way in a moment. That strategy made it clear that what matters to patients is not only how quickly they see a consultant, but whether they survive.

[Mr Bradshaw]

If things were so terrible under the Labour Government, why was public satisfaction with the NHS at record levels when we left office, and why were waiting times at record lows? Both are now going in the wrong direction. Will the Secretary of State please tell us—we have not yet received an answer to this question—what will happen in those areas now that GP consortia are to be voluntary? He has already abolished the primary care trusts, so who will be responsible?

[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.