Health and Care Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Our NHS is built on the values that Britain holds dear: each of us is equal, and we will be treated on the basis of our need, never on our ability to pay. It is part of our national heritage, so much so that even the Tories have to pretend that they believe in its founding principles. Those are principles of fairness for all, and from each according to their means, to each according to their needs. Those are the values that led to the creation of the Labour party over a century ago. If the Tories hold those values so dear, why have they failed to apply them everywhere else?

This is the Tory Government who left children without food during the school holidays, and who are failing to pay for children to catch up with their education. They are cutting £20 from universal credit for the poorest households in the country. Why did we have 11 years of austerity, when billions were taken from public services, hitting the poorest communities hardest? There was no sign of levelling up there.

In the past 40 years our NHS has come under threat on two occasions: first during the Thatcher years when it was starved of resources to breaking point, and again from 2010 with the Tory austerity years and the Lansley Health and Social Care Act 2012. Now the Tories are at it again. Integrated care systems are nothing short of capitulation to the forces of the market.

This Bill will give the private sector the freedom not only to plan services but to do so in their commercial interests above those of patients and to cover their tracks by hiding the records of meetings where they have intervened. For too long, there have been those within the NHS who believe that it can only be improved if it is exposed to the rigours of the marketplace. The rigours of the NHS are saving lives and healing patients. There is no higher market test for the skills and dedication of health workers and none is needed. Where the private sector is used, it should be to support NHS services, not replace them.

Nye Bevan said:

“The NHS will last as long as there’s folk with faith left to fight for it.”

The Labour party breathed life into the NHS. This Bill is one of those occasions where we have to fight for the NHS again, and the Labour party will lead that fight.

Health and Care Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who knows of what he speaks in terms of the operation of healthcare services. We would not wish to exclude GPs or groups of GPs from being able to participate in decision making. That expertise, as we have seen with clinical commissioning groups, can be hugely valuable. What we have sought to do, in an amendment that is technically worded, for want of a better way of putting it, is to strike the right balance while also ensuring that the additional measures on the constitutions of the ICBs and ICPs have to be approved by NHS England to avoid any obvious conflict of interest. But we are not seeking to avoid GPs being able to operate in that space and sitting on ICBs.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I would like to make a little progress and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has been bobbing for some time.

We believe—this may not answer the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I will make a little progress and then if there is time—[Interruption.] Well, we will see. Hope springs eternal. A blanket ban on employees of private companies would also, we fear, be arbitrary. It would not cover the full range of people involved in non-NHS providers, some of whom may not be suitable candidates to sit on ICBs because of their involvement, but not employment, within the private healthcare sector. With the complex corporate structures that providers may have established, a narrow definition in the Bill could be unhelpful and risk not capturing the people we wish to capture.

[Edward Argar]

My right hon. Friend makes a point that came out in some of the oral evidence sessions on the Bill. Our aim was to create a minimum membership for the ICBs and ICPs, but it is not prescriptive—it can go beyond that—so there is scope for mental health trusts or other health trusts to have seats on those boards. Indeed, Dame Gill Morgan, who runs the integrated care system in Gloucestershire, said that that is exactly what she has done and that she would be surprised if any ICB did not wish to do it. But we wanted to set a de minimis membership to allow for local flexibility.

[Clive Efford]

We have GP practices that are being privatised now—they are being bought up by private companies, with some foreign interests as well. If the Minister is saying that those companies can have representation on ICBs, we have already seen circumstances where people have tried to redact minutes of meetings, so does this not open up the possibility of private interests being served at these meetings but not being accountable through public scrutiny?