Integrated Care Regulations

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and Justin Madders

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, the Minister cannot give that reassurance because of the Lansley Act that Ministers voted for in 2011.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I am only sorry that I cannot be with my hon. Friend on the Front Bench tonight. I have really enjoyed working with him; he is a fine shadow Secretary of State, and I know that he will make an excellent Secretary of State. Unfortunately, I cannot be with him, because when we on these Benches vote against the Whip, we have to deal with the consequences.

As my hon. Friend knows from many debates I have taken part in for the Opposition, despite repeated questions to various Ministers, there has been no absolutely no reassurance that the private sector will not continue to be involved in these matters.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes his point typically eloquently and with force. May I say to him that we miss him on the Labour Front Bench? He was a real rock in the shadow Health and Social Care team. It is typical of him that when he decided last week that he could not support the Labour Front Bench position on a referendum, he took the honourable course of action and chose to leave the Front-Bench team. I think that he has the respect of many in the House for that position.

This is the nub of our opposition tonight. Contracts are still being put out to competitive tender, even when some commissioners claim that they do not wish to do this. Here lies the danger: nothing prevents, and some things might encourage, these integrated care partnership contracts being put out to tender and perhaps being won by a private sector provider. Ministers repeatedly tell us that ICPs, and before them accountable care organisations, are not about ushering in a further role for the private sector. If that is the case, and if patients and staff are to have confidence that the ICP contracts will not end up in private hands, the Government’s overarching competition legislation must be changed first. As that legislation has not been changed, and as we will still have commercial contracting for the delivery of medical services, there is a risk that a multi-billion pound contract covering hundreds of thousands of people and packaged up for 10 to 15 years could be handed over to a big provider. That is why the Health Committee, which is broadly supportive of these integrated care models, issued this warning in its report:

“The ACO model”—

it was using the terminology of the time—

“will entail a single organisation holding a 10–15 year contract for the health and care of a large population. Given the risks that would follow any collapse of a private organisation holding such a contract and the public’s preference for the principle of a public ownership model of the NHS, we recommend that ACOs, if introduced, should be NHS bodies and established in primary legislation.”

We agree.

The impetus for this contract comes from the example of Dudley, which I am sure the Minister will want to talk about. When the chief executive of Dudley CCG attended the Select Committee, even he conceded—although he said that it was unlikely—that because of the procurement rules, it would not have been possible to have kept out private providers applying for the contract. When asked whether the contract could go to a private provider, he said:

“In theory, it is technically possible for that to happen”.

Although Mr Nigel Edwards of the Nuffield Trust shared the Minister’s scepticism that the contract could go to a private provider, he did concede before the Select Committee that:

“To privatise in the sense of handing over all the assets and staff to a private contractor is a theoretical possibility.”

NHS England’s own analysis of the contract published at the end of last week concedes:

“However, it should be understood that current NHS law and EU and domestic procurement law prohibits CCGs or NHS England from taking steps, whether through evaluation criteria used in a procurement or otherwise, to disqualify certain categories of provider (e.g. independent sector providers) from bidding or being awarded commissioning contracts.”

This is our first objection, because Labour is not prepared to nod something through when there is a theoretical possibility hanging over us that, in the words of NHS England, an independent sector provider could not be disqualified from being awarded commissioning contracts.