Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Fabricant Excerpts
Wednesday 11th February 2015

(9 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lord Maude of Horsham Portrait Mr Maude
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Mr Speaker, the

“failure of Circle at Hinchingbrooke hospital…where the company very nearly managed to remove an operating loss inherited from the public sector, was due to the failure of the NHS to deliver its side of the bargain”—

not my words, but the words of Tom Levitt, the former Labour MP for High Peak. Yes, a lot of NHS trusts have applied for the Department of Health and Cabinet Office mutual pathfinder programme, and all of that is progressing very satisfactorily. There are huge benefits for patients in this movement. We should all be concerned with that, not with an outworn, outdated ideology.

Michael Fabricant Portrait Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
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May I say how sad I was to hear that my right hon. Friend would be standing down at the next election? Singlehandedly, he has done more than anyone to reform the home civil service. What companies has he been in contact with to advise him on how public service mutuals might work better?

Lord Maude of Horsham Portrait Mr Maude
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I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s kind remarks. This will be the second time I have left the House of Commons—the first time was not entirely consensual—and I shall be sorry to leave, although I think I have one more outing this time before the House dissolves.

Many businesses in the private sector operate as mutuals—John Lewis prominent among them—and they have been generous in their support for this programme because they think that employee ownership and control also benefit service users, which should be our overriding concern.