Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between John Healey and Dan Byles

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

May I urge the hon. Gentleman to look very closely at the Bill and beyond what he hears the Health Secretary say when he talks about it? I urge him instead to look at how local hospitals could be undercut by private health companies, and at how GPs could be forced to put out work to those companies. That will undermine local hospitals such as the one in Burnley and lead to hospital closures driven not by proper planning and the development of better services in the community, but by hospitals being driven to the point of bankruptcy and closure.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand how the health service operated under his Labour Government. My constituents in Warwickshire have been suffering because NHS Warwickshire, under the rules we inherited from his Government, set up a fixed-price, below-tariff contract with one of the trusts in its area that has led to patients being drained from the George Eliot hospital trust in my area and the area of my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) to Warwick. It was Labour’s rules that allowed it to undercut the hospital in my constituency.

[John Healey]

If the hon. Gentleman was worried about the past, he should be a good deal more worried about the future, and, a bit like the Health Secretary, he should spend a lot less time talking about the Labour Government and what we did to the health service and more time talking about the plans and big changes to come.