National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I would expect these trade negotiations to stretch into at least the end of next year, so I hope and expect that the responsibility for making sure that this deal is good for Britain will become that of a Labour, not a Tory, Government and of Labour Ministers, not Tory Ministers.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

rose—

[John Healey]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman before finishing on the issue of the Prime Minister, which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) has just raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making a very important point about TTIP. I know that the Scottish Government want the Scottish health service excluded and I would hope that the Welsh Government would have the same position. Is there not an onus on the UK Government to make those representations on behalf of the devolved Governments?

[John Healey]

Indeed. There is an onus, a responsibility and, I would argue, a duty on British Ministers to make those representations and to secure those protections in any deal for the whole of the UK.

Finally, the Prime Minister made his most personal pledges before the last election to protect the NHS and to stop top-down reorganisations. He has broken those pledges to the British people, and the damage that he and his Tory Ministers have inflicted through this NHS reorganisation and legislation has been unwanted, wasteful and wrong. It will fall to a Labour Government, after May, to put right this damage and to rescue the NHS, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said in his opening speech, just as we did in 1997. This Bill—it is why I am pleased and proud to support it—is an essential step towards doing that, but the election of a Labour Government must follow if we are to do the job properly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

Yes, I am aware of the deal, and it is a great example of how a Labour council, working with the NHS, can take steps to improve funding for front-line patient care. It happened because of the deal that was struck in the latter stages of the previous Labour Government.

As a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, NHS hospitals can earn more money from treating private patients, while NHS waiting lists get longer. Those same hospitals have now been told by competition authorities that they cannot collaborate any more because it is “anti-competitive.” How did it come to this? That is not the health service that we have known for 66 years. Every day that this illegitimate legislation remains in force is a day closer to the demise of the national health service.

[Jonathan Edwards]

In response to an FOI request, I was told by my local health board that between December last year and July this year, 373 ophthalmology patients, 90 pain management patients, 165 neurology patients and 264 orthopaedic patients were transferred to private sector providers at a cost of nearly £600,000. What is the right hon. Gentleman’s message to his Labour colleague, the Health Minister for Wales?

[Andy Burnham]

I will give the hon. Gentleman my message now: the Labour Government in England and in Wales have taken steps to bring down NHS waiting lists. When we left office, they were at the lowest ever level. I make no apology to him for those improvements.

The 2012 Act has put the NHS in danger, which is why it has to go. Back on that March day in 2012, I pledged that the party that created the NHS would repeal that Bill at the first opportunity, and today we honour that promise. The Bill before us, presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), restores the right values at the heart of the NHS: collaboration over competition; integration over fragmentation; people before profits.