Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman is a specialist delicacy to whom I will come in due course.
Clive Efford
I do not know how to take that, Mr Speaker.
I have asked the Department of Health several questions on the process by which the Greenwich clinical commissioning group allocated a £74 million contract to Circle Holdings for our local orthopaedic services. In one of my answers from the Department of Health, I was told that there had been local discussions about the impact this would have on other national health services. Investigations I have undertaken into that answer have exposed the fact that this information, which was supplied to the Minister of State, Department of Health by NHS England, is incorrect. He therefore misinformed me in his answer—I accept that he did so inadvertently—as a consequence of the information he was given by NHS England. My point is that in many of the questions I have asked about this process, I have been told that it is a matter for the local NHS, and this dereliction of duty on the part of the Department of Health has even led to NHS England not scrutinising the process properly.
How can we get the record corrected? I will be shocked if you, Mr Speaker, have not heard that the Department of Health wants to make a statement to correct this error. I would like to know how it is going to improve its performance in scrutinising what is going on when such multimillion pound contracts are let.
Mr Speaker
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is to be shocked, but I am afraid that he will be because, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I have received no indication of any intention on the part of the Government to make a statement on this matter in the way and of the kind that he wants. I am grateful to him for giving me notice that he wished to raise the matter. Let me say this: as I repeatedly remind the House, the content of Ministers’ answers to parliamentary questions is a matter not for the Chair but for the Minister concerned. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s point has been heard by those on the Treasury Bench and will be relayed with alacrity to the Minister of State. If the Minister finds that his answer was inaccurate—that was not altogether clear to me—and therefore essentially agrees with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis, I am sure he will take steps to correct the record. It may be—I am not saying it is—that the Minister takes a different view of the facts of the matter, but I cannot arbitrate between different views. Meanwhile, however—we await events—the hon. Gentleman has succeeded in placing his concern on the record.