National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between Oliver Heald and John Healey

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman normally finds a common touch in the way he makes his points. I have to tell him that if he tries to trot out those sorts of figures on the doorstep in the next five months, he will find that they cut no ice with the public, because they know what is happening to their NHS day to day, and we will make sure they understand why it is happening.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

rose—

[John Healey]

I will give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman and then make some progress.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Why should I apologise for the £150 million of investment in Lister hospital in Stevenage or the £98 million in Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge—fantastic, world-beating facilities?

[John Healey]

We on the Labour Benches cannot wait for the debate on the NHS to be put right at the heart of the next five months of policy and political debate, and my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State will make sure that happens.

Let me return to my point about the way that we in this House were misled about the reorganisation and the legislation. I am disappointed to see that the man who led it, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), is not in the Chamber today to explain himself. He argued—it was completely wrong, but he argued it—in the debate on Second Reading in January 2011:

“It is about gearing the entire system towards supporting the relationship between doctor and patient”.—[Official Report, 31 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 617.]

Of course, it was not and it is not. As I argued, at the time from the Opposition Front Bench:

“The reorganisation and legislation is designed to break up the NHS, to open up all areas of the NHS to private health companies, to remove requirements for proper openness, scrutiny and accountability to the public and to Parliament, and make the NHS subject to both UK and European competition law.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 378.]

The Government were and are driving free market political ideology through the heart of our NHS.

The arguments that those of us on the Opposition Benches made then are those that we make now, and that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) makes especially strongly from our Front Bench. That is why the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) has introduced is so essential and why I am so pleased and proud to be one of his sponsors.