NHS White Paper

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I will not go through the White Paper in detail now, but within it he will find that we look towards some GP commissioning consortiums taking an early adopter place from 2011-12, with consortiums generally taking, as it were, a shadow responsibility but not a legal responsibility in 2012-13, and then taking full responsibility, subject to the passage of the legislation to establish that, from April 2013 onwards—the point at which we anticipate that primary care trusts will be abolished.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that about 80% of patient contact with the NHS is in primary care. Will GP commissioning groups be allowed to commission GP and other primary care services from themselves, and if so, how will they be held to account for that decision?