Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between John Healey and Jesse Norman

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman has already heard some of my hon. Friends mention the analysis of Dr John Appleby, published in the British Medical Journal online last week. He took to task those who had made the sweeping assertion that somehow Britain’s health service lags behind those of the rest of Europe. It is an argument that the Prime Minister advances. It is an argument for change, he says, because we are still a long way from European standards of care.

Let me read something to the House. We have been told that

“if you have heart surgery in England, you now have a greater chance of survival than almost any other European country – over the last five years, death rates have halved and are now 25 per cent lower than the European average.”

Those are not my words, or even those of Dr John Appleby. They are the words of the Health Secretary, published on ConservativeHome last week.

The Prime Minister argues that this is somehow an evolution and not a revolution. The Bill, however, is more than three times as long as the legislation that set up the NHS in 1948. The NHS chief executive told the Select Committee on Health:

“The scale of change is enormous—beyond anything that anybody from the public or private sector has witnessed”.

The Health Secretary argues that the Bill is somehow an extension of Labour policies. That is wrong, and it disguises again the fundamental changes to the NHS in the Government’s plan. Make no mistake, Mr Deputy Speaker: this is a revolution, not an evolution.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I note that the right hon. Gentleman failed to answer the question about the rate of increase in the number of managers. When I last checked, the NHS had 1.3 million employees, of whom almost exactly half were administrators and half were on the front line. Is he really willing to defend such an extraordinary level of overstaffing in management?

[John Healey]

Oh dear, the hon. Gentleman really has to get a better briefing from his Whips than that.