NHS Reorganisation

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner]

Not at the moment.

The Government Front-Bench team and its Lib Dem colleagues can argue against what I say until they are blue in the face, but we know what the reality is. The chief executive of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, says:

“The scale of the change is enormous—beyond anything that anybody from the public or private sector has witnessed”.

When we bear in mind the context of the plans, the destruction to the NHS becomes very apparent. The plans are to be implemented at a time when the NHS is to make £20 billion in efficiency savings. This is a costly, unnecessary and reckless top-down reorganisation of the NHS, and it is without any real mandate. The coalition agreement clearly states that the new Government will stop the top-down reorganisation of the NHS. Instead, we are faced with a reorganisation that is described as being so big

“you can see it from space.”

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman seems to favour top-down organisation of the NHS. Does he agree with his party’s shadow Health Minister, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who said:

“Many staff are disillusioned and disempowered by the top-down target driven approach that has dominated much of the last decade of health policy”—

his party’s policy?

[Karl Turner]

I am well aware of my hon. Friend’s remarks, and they were made in a very different context, but let us listen to the BMA. Yesterday, it held its first extraordinary meeting for 20 years. Interestingly, it has convened two emergency meetings in the past 20 years, both of them under a Tory Government. It is the same old Tory story: they cannot be trusted with the NHS.

The most damaging part of these plans is the competition aspect. The Secretary of State’s smokescreen about GP commissioning is designed simply to divert attention from the underlying plans, which are, as Baroness Williams has said, privatisation by stealth, and Professor Ham of the King’s Fund correctly asserts that the commissioning reforms

“are of secondary importance compared with the radical extension of competition”.

The Health and Social Care Bill brings the NHS within the remit of competition law for the first time, and Monitor, the new economic regulator, will be instructed actively to promote competition under clause 52. Placing a statutory obligation on Monitor to enforce competition creates a situation in which commissioners will not be able to act in the best interests of their patients, for fear of a costly legal challenge lurking in the shadows.

The Government’s approach to Monitor demonstrates how ill thought out these plans are. In a clamour to roll back the state and win favour with the private health companies that have bankrolled their party, the Government’s plans to introduce competition into the NHS will work against the integrated networks needed to ensure that the long-term ill receive the services they need and are entitled to.

The most worrying aspect of this policy is that the Government have ignored expert criticism—or, indeed, criticism of any kind. The divide is pretty stark. On one side there is the BMA, A National Voice, the Royal College of Nursing, the Stroke Association, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Foundation Trust Network, the Royal Society of GPs, and, since the weekend, the Lib Dems. On the other side, there is the Secretary of State and the private health companies, who are bound to be rubbing their hands, waiting expectantly for their investment in him and his party to pay off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Over Christmas, I found myself using the services of the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield for emergency eye surgery. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the staff there, who saved the sight in my left eye, which is, as hon. Members might imagine, important to me. That procedure was routine for those staff—something that they did day in, day out. The whole experience—the quick diagnosis, emergency admission, successful operation and supportive aftercare—brought home to me the importance of having a national health service that is not only free at the point of delivery but available equally to all and with the capacity to meet the health care needs of our people. Let me contrast it with the system in the United States, where the quality and speed of treatment depends on patients’ ability to pay. Incidentally, the American system costs the public purse more. I know that some Conservative parliamentarians look at that system with enthusiasm. Many of us will recall Daniel Hannan campaigning against President Obama’s health reforms and describing the NHS as a 60-year old mistake, so it is not surprising that the majority of people in this country do not trust this Government with the NHS. When Government Members talk about monopolies, the people of this country see a public service.

[Christopher Pincher]

rose—

[Paul Blomfield]

I will give way once and then make some progress.

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Gentleman talks about Government Members, but he might note that, other than those on the Front Bench, there are only 11 Members on the Opposition Benches for their Opposition day debate. On the Government side there are more than double that number. Does that not bear eloquent testimony to who really cares about the NHS?

[Paul Blomfield]

What bears eloquent testimony to who really cares about the NHS is our record. Before 1997, I remember patients being stacked up in hospital corridors in Sheffield every winter because the hospitals could not find beds. That situation has been transformed under Labour over the past 13 years.

The Prime Minister has tried hard to reassure the public that the NHS is safe in Tory hands, but he has failed. In January, a major survey of the British public demonstrated that only 27% of people back moves to allow profit-making companies to increase their role in the NHS. That reflects the way in which our people treasure the NHS and its values, and that is why the Government did not have the confidence to say at the general election what their real intention was: the deconstruction and privatisation of the NHS by stealth.

It is not only the public whom the Prime Minister has failed to convince. The Secretary of State told us again today, as the Government have done many times during discourse on the issue, that we should trust doctors—those who understand the NHS.