Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The commission is to focus on the procedures and practices of this House as they are affected by devolution as we know it right now. The case for further devolution to Scotland, which I happen to believe in as the leader of a party that believes in home rule, can be made but not until we know whether Scotland is going to be part of the United Kingdom in the first place. That can and should be resolved only by a decisive, clear, fair and legally binding vote in a referendum.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

There is widespread concern that the NHS Bill lifts the cap for private patients from what is now typically 2% to up to 50%. That means half of all NHS beds and services being given over to private patients and half of all NHS doctors and nurses caring for private patients, which means that NHS patients will be put to the back of the queue. Will the right hon. Gentleman oppose raising the cap?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is important that the right hon. and learned Lady does not provide a misrepresentation of the current situation. She will know that some London hospitals, such as the Royal Marsden, have a cap of around 30%, which is not nearly as low as she implies. We are saying that no NHS hospital should be able to earn 50% or more of its income through private practice—it should be less than half—and that every penny and every pound raised should be ploughed back into improving services for NHS patients. The alternative is to condemn a number of hospitals into outright financial crisis. How would that benefit families or the thousands of NHS patients who would otherwise have benefited from the extra income coming into the NHS?

[Ms Harman]

It is clear that yet again the Deputy Prime Minister is simply going along with the Tories. Giving half the NHS to private patients is not reforming the NHS—it is destroying it. Is not this an abject betrayal of everything the Lib Dems claim they ever stood for? Will he now drop the Bill?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

What would be an abject betrayal of the NHS would be our condemning hospitals to possible closure because we were preventing them from raising money for the benefit of NHS patients. We are not—I repeat, not—suggesting that any NHS hospital should be able to earn private income as half or more of its total income. What is wrong with allowing hospitals that already do private work doing so in a manner that can only benefit NHS patients?