Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Bearing in mind the lack of popularity of the proposals among our constituents, is my right hon. Friend as worried as I and my constituents are about the £850 million that is being spent on redundancies and the projected £2 billion of primary care trusts’ budgets that is being held back from patient care to cover the risks and costs associated with the reorganisation?

[Frank Dobson]

I entirely agree. Nobody could possibly claim that redundancy payments constitute money being spent on improving services for our constituents. That is just money down the drain as far as patient care is concerned.

The fundamental problem behind the proposals is that the Government are, in effect, proposing a further major fragmentation of the national health service. In the past, up to the point at which the previous Tory Government introduced an internal market, the spending on administration in the NHS amounted to 4% of the total. That was largely because great big slugs of money were transferred round the system, and I am prepared to accept that there might be some disadvantages in that arrangement. Since then, however, under that Government and the Labour Government, the system has changed to one in which the money follows the patient. That has led to the creation of all sorts of exceptionally expensive systems to bring about individualised transactions, which has resulted in the cost of administering the national health service rising to 12% of the total—an increase of 8%. The NHS is spending about £100 billion a year at the moment, so an extra £8 billion that should have been spent on patient services is now being spent on the administration of the semi-fragmented system. What is now being proposed will involve yet further fragmentation, and I shall explain why I believe we will end up spending yet more money, but not on patients.