Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. As Members will see, we have only a very short time before I put the Question, so could they please be very pithy and short in their contributions in order to get as many Members in as possible?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Wollaston]

I will not, because so many Members are waiting to speak.

There has been real scaremongering about, in particular, the difference between the duty to provide and the duty to secure provision, but I believe that the wording simply reflects the reality. The key issue is the line between the ability to step in if things go wrong, and the very real need for politicians to step back and let clinicians and patients take control.

I shall cut my speech short because I have been asked to be brief, but let me end by saying that, for three clear reasons, I would not be supporting the Bill if I thought that it would lead to the privatisation of the NHS. [Hon. Members: “Have you read it?”] I assure Members that I have read it in great detail.

Let me give those three clear reasons. First, clinicians will be in charge of commissioning. Secondly, the public will be able to see what clinicians are doing. Thirdly, neither clinicians nor the public will allow privatisation to happen. They do not want it to happen, and neither do Members of this House.

PCTs and foundation trusts did not meet in public, but they will do so in future, and it is the public and patients who will ensure that the NHS is safe in the hands of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That is the length of speech that we like.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

In yesterday’s debate the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said of the NHS that he believed that in most parts of the country and most of the time it does a good job for people, but I want to see it doing an excellent job for people in all parts of the country all the time, and that is what this Bill will achieve. Having served on the Bill Committee, it is a great sadness to me that that message, and the fact that patients will be at the heart of the NHS, has been lost in the months of scaremongering—a word used by the last speaker—and wrangling by those who have campaigned against it and have obscured all such messages. That has been totally unfair to the patients who rely on the NHS.

I briefly want to make two points. First, Members who served on the Committee will know of my passion for getting the right treatment for mental health patients, and at a meeting of the all-party group on mental health yesterday the Bill was described by GPs as a great opportunity: an opportunity for the integration of primary and secondary care—something they have not had before, and that will now be achieved.

Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said, the Bill puts clinicians at the heart of commissioning. When the Bill was recommitted, my researcher said to me, “This Bill is a gift that keeps on giving.” Now it is time for this present to be handed over to the other place, but it needs to reach the statute book and we need to implement it on the ground. I have heard nothing from the Opposition in the past eight months to convince me that this Bill should not receive its Third Reading and get on to the statute book, and I urge all hon. Members to support it.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am grateful for that short speech. I ask for another short speech from Kevin Barron.