Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Debate between Paul Burstow and Valerie Vaz

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

No, I will not.

I again ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he has had with the Cabinet Secretary about the change regarding accountability for the public money that will be transferred—£60 billion of it—to those quangos. If he is asked questions about this in the House he will say that it is an operational matter.

I want to show hon. Members what the scenario will be like, because this is already happening in my constituency and this is what it will be like throughout England. The out-of-hours GP and urgent care service provider Waldoc has just lost the contract to provide out-of-hours services after 16 years, without a right of appeal to the strategic health authority and despite a patient satisfaction rate of 95%. When the contract was lost and staff turned up to find out whether they had jobs, they did not even know whether they would have a job the next day. That is how they have been treated. This has been happening in most PCTs, as some Members will know from their constituencies. People have left, vital expertise has gone and no one from the Government side has been able to give us a figure for the redundancy costs. When I asked the Minister how much this whole reorganisation would cost, he said he did not know the figure and that there was no new money. That must mean that money has come out of services.

We have, however, had a figure—£1.4 billion—from Professor Kieran Walshe of Manchester university. No wonder waiting times have gone up. Members of the public need to know that in an increasing number of areas, consortia will be conducting competitive tenders in which, potentially, foundation trusts, the constituent members of consortia and commercial providers will be bidding. Clearly, there will also be a conflict of interest. It has been estimated that a single procurement process can cost from £5,000 to £30,000. That is a waste of public money, and the whole regime of procurement is a waste of costs.

[Paul Burstow]

rose—

[Valerie Vaz]

What is so extraordinary is that the Secretary of State does not want to be the Secretary of State; he wants to let the Future Forum consult and listen to people, but that is not how decisions are made in government. In government people hear the evidence from all sides—[Interruption.] I have made it pretty clear: the Minister has had his time, but I am a Back Bencher and I do not get much time to speak.

People in government hear the evidence from all sides and weigh things up. Then they make a decision reasonably and give their reasons. The Secretary of State is hiding not only behind the Future Forum but behind the NHS commissioning board. He is like Macavity the mystery cat:

“At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!”

I would like to draw hon. Members’ attention to a paper dated 29 August 2011 by Dr Lucy Reynolds, Dr John Lister, Dr Alex Scott-Samuel and Professor Martin McKee, “Liberating the NHS: source and destination of the Lansley reform”, which I will place in the Library. It draws a link between a paper written in 1988 by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin). It is therefore no surprise that when the Minister of State, Cabinet Office was called in to look at the proposals he endorsed them, because they were his. Paragraph 3 of the paper is entitled “Implementation of the Redwood/Letwin Plan in the Lansley reform”. The paper was sent to me by a young academic who said that his life had been saved twice by the NHS but would not have been saved under an American-style privatised health system.

The most recent satisfaction survey by Ipsos MORI last March showed 72% public satisfaction with the NHS, but it was not published by the Department of Health even though the Department had asked for it to be done. Members will have seen a report from Colin Pritchard and Mark Wallace which said:

“In cost-effective terms, i.e. economic input versus clinical output”,

the UK health service was “the most cost-effective” in reducing mortality rates, compared with the US health care system.

Finally, I say to hon. Members—including the hon. Member for Hexham—as they think about what has been said, “Stand up for democracy, stand up for the trust between elected representatives and their constituents, and stand up for the NHS: vote against this Bill.”