Oral Answers to Questions

David Wright Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the potential risks of NHS reorganisation.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

The Department monitors risks associated with the implementation of the health and social care reform programme on an ongoing basis.

[David Wright]

“An open, transparent NHS is a safer NHS”: not my words, but those of the Secretary of State for Health. Is it not amazing that Ministers do not want to release documentation relating to the reorganisation of the NHS? Is it not an absolute scandal that they will not publish the documentation? Is it not the fact that the reorganisation of the NHS is looking a bit like the Norwegian blue? Should it not shuffle off the perch?

[Mr Burns]

No, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. As he, or certainly the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), will know, the risk register is an ongoing document—discussions between Ministers and civil servants on the formulation, implementation and transition of policies—and it would be wrong, in my opinion, for it to be published. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State appealed to the tribunal following the decision of the Information Commissioner, in line with the precedent adopted by Secretaries of State in the Labour Government in both the Department of Health and the Treasury.