NHS Reorganisation

Debate between John Healey and Margot James

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Let me finish. The Government’s explanatory memorandum is helpful on the issue of EU law. It says, about chapters 1 and 2 of the Bill—the one third of the legislation that sets up the new competition system—that

“The Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 prohibitions are modelled on Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which prohibit agreements that prevent, restrict or distort competition, and abuse of a dominant market position.

Monitor would have concurrent powers with the OFT to conduct investigations where it had reasonable grounds for suspecting that either of these two prohibitions—under either UK or EU law—had been infringed in the provision of health services in England.”

That means that a competition challenge in the NHS can be taken all the way to the European Court.

Helpfully, under pressure in Committee yesterday, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), confirmed that

“As NHS providers develop and begin to compete actively with other NHS providers and with private and voluntary providers, UK and EU competition laws will increasingly become applicable.”––[Official Report, Health and Social Care Public Bill Committee, 15 March 2011; c. 718.]

As GP consortia will be corporate bodies, not public sector bodies, and as hospitals will be competing with each other, will have no limit on treating private patients, and will have no support from the wider NHS if they run into financial problems, they will be bodies to which the EU competition rules and legislation apply. That means that the NHS will be tied up in the red tape of market regulation and competition law, and we risk decisions about who provides our health care services being taken not in England by GPs or Ministers, but in Brussels by the European Commission, and in Luxembourg by the European Court.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has already acknowledged that competition and markets were a hallmark of the Labour Government; they took them far further than the previous Conservative Government ever did. Of 475 acute care sites providing elective care, 175 are independent sector providers. The Bill proposes making the competition fair and putting it on a level playing field. No longer will we allow the private sector to be as favoured as it was under the Labour Government.

[John Healey]

This is a debate. People in the country and in the NHS are worried not about what we did in government—they saw the massive improvements under Labour—but about the application of competition law, domestic and European, in full force to the NHS for the first time. The hon. Lady is serving on the Public Bill Committee. She will have the chance to get her head around that, as she clearly has not done so yet.