Government Policies (Wales)

Debate between Owen Smith and Baroness Primarolo

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State has just uttered an untruth in this Chamber. I do not know where he has come up with that untruth, but I ask him to rescind it immediately, and apologise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The Secretary of State will not have deliberately misled the House. If it has been pointed out that he is incorrect, I am sure that he is capable of making the correct entry in the record now.

Wales Bill

Debate between Owen Smith and Baroness Primarolo

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 9, page 1, line 5, leave out subsection (1) and insert—

‘(1) GOWA 2006 is amended as follows.

(2) Leave out subsection 3(1) and insert in substitution—

“( ) The poll at an election to the National Assembly for Wales is to be held on a Thursday on a date to be determined by a Resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.”.

( ) Subsection 3(2) is amended by—

(a) leaving out “If the poll is to be held on the first Thursday in May”; and

(b) in paragraph 2(a) by leaving out “that day” and inserting “polling day”.

( ) Leave out sections 4 and 5.

( ) Section 13 is amended by inserting after subsection (1)(c)—

“(1A) The order may not include provision about the date of an election to the Assembly.”.’.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 30, page 1, line 6, at end insert ‘and after the words “order under”, insert ‘section 1A or’.

Amendment 10, page 1, line 8, at end add—

‘(3) A Resolution of the National Assembly for Wales under subsection (1) may not determine a date for the poll at an election to the Assembly that is the same as the date known or reasonably expected for a parliamentary general election as derived from the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.’.

Amendment 31, page 1, line 8, at end add—

‘(3) After section 3(1) of the GOWA 2006 insert—

(1A) A poll for an ordinary general election to the National Assembly for Wales may not be held within six months of the date of a general election to the United Kingdom Parliament.”.’.

Clause stand part.

[Owen Smith]

It is a pleasure to serve under your Bristolian and neighbourly chairmanship, Ms Primarolo.

Clause 1 relates to the timing of elections to the National Assembly for Wales. It is a response to the five-year term that has now been established for elections to this House. Our amendments 9 and 10 are probing amendments that seek to explore the Government’s willingness to concede the principle that the Assembly needs to have greater control and command over elections to it. That is what we are testing with our amendments.

Future of the NHS

Debate between Owen Smith and Baroness Primarolo

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and to hear him say that, were this a Third Reading debate and the Bill had remained as it is, he would vote against it. He should not hold his breath, because we have not heard any indication from those on the Treasury Bench that they propose to listen to the reasoned and substantive opposition that we heard in the Public Bill Committee, of which I was a member and where the Government rejected all 250 to 300 suggested amendments, or to that in the rest of the country, where doctors and all the medical professions are united in opposing the Bill.

Earlier, those of us on the Opposition Benches were admonished for the sound and fury coming from us. Mr Speaker was right to admonish us for shouting, but that sound and fury is not born of cynicism; it comes from three things. The first is our outrage at how the history of what the Labour Government did in office is being rewritten and at the suggestion that this Bill represents an evolution of what we did with the NHS. It is not an evolution, but a revolution.

The second is the shameless way in which the Government are misrepresenting that which sits at the heart of the Bill. They present it as trying to bring about patient focus and GP-led improvements to the NHS, but in truth it is about competition and the Government’s belief that competition in health care, like in telecoms or the energy market, is the best way to drive improvements in the efficient allocation of resources, allowing consumer-driven demand to drive efficiency. We fundamentally contest that. We do not think that it is true in many aspects of life, but it is certainly not true in the NHS, a body built on collectivism, co-operation and integration. Those fundamental ethics—the ethos of the NHS—will be undermined by the Bill.

Thirdly, the Bill is a completely unnecessary intervention. We did not need a top-down reorganisation of the NHS, because we got record patient satisfaction and increased productivity in all the ways that matter, as described earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). Crucially, we have a far more efficient and better-resourced system than previously. That prompts the question of why the Government are pursuing this change. They are doing so because they fundamentally believe that the way to drive the NHS forward is an unfettered market and greater deregulation.

That brings me to my substantive point. I want to rebut the notion which we have heard repeatedly from the Government that competition will not bite harder on the NHS as a result of the changes. The Government have told us repeatedly that nothing in the Bill says that competition will impact on the NHS to any great extent. As we all know, however, in 100 of the 300 clauses Monitor is established as an Office of Fair Trading-style competition overlord for the NHS, because as soon as the NHS is opened up to multiple entrants in the market and there are multiple providers of health care services in this country, we will no longer be able to argue that it is a state service that ought to be protected and therefore should not be subject to the vagaries of the market and EU competition law. As soon as we allow multiple health providers into the market, we will have to apply EU competition law, and European case law and arguments between lawyers will inevitably lead to the progressive fragmentation of the NHS.

There is one other point with which I want to take issue. Privatisation is a pretty difficult word to bandy about in politics, but I do not shy away from using it in this debate. We are going to see a progressive and creeping privatisation of the NHS. To argue about marketisation and privatisation is to argue about semantics. We will increasingly see many more aspects of the NHS either in the hands of or being delivered through the private sector. Earlier, the Secretary of State asked us to point out where in the Bill it showed that there would be an increased number of private providers in the NHS. My challenge to the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who is now back in his place, is to point out to me where in the Bill it says that we will not see more private providers entering the marketplace. The Bill provides for that to happen and what will arise from that is the break-up, fragmentation and, eventually, privatisation of the NHS. Those on the Government Front Bench know that—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order.