NHS Risk Register

Debate between Mike Freer and Richard Graham

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

The issues underpinning the debate are purely ideological, and no amount of amendment—[Interruption.] Exactly. It is not about making the NHS better; it is about purely ideological opposition to reform.

[Richard Graham]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) did not do.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the speech we have just heard from the right hon. Gentleman had nothing whatsoever to do with the motion under discussion? He did not mention the NHS risk register once, except to say that it was a “secondary issue”. To all the rest of us here, it is “the” issue under discussion. Was not the right hon. Gentleman’s speech simply a whitewash of his own time as Secretary of State for Health?

[Mike Freer]

My hon. Friend has made a very good point. The issues that have been raised have nothing to do with the risk register. This is simply a new stick with which to beat the Government. No amount of amendment and no amount of rational argument will appease those who are simply philosophically opposed to reform of the NHS.