Health and Social Care Bill

Robert Flello Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Valerie Vaz]

No, I am sorry. [Interruption.] Okay.

[Robert Flello]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. My persuasive charms work. Does my hon. Friend share the concerns of my constituents? They often find it difficult already to get a GP appointment. With GPs spending so much time with commissioning boards and more to come, will that not make it even harder to get time in front of a GP?

[Valerie Vaz]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. He should read the front page of the left-leaning newspapers, and he will see how much money is being spent on locums.

The GP in Walsall said that the pace of change is too fast. GPs are being forced into larger organisations. They have no experience of managing a business model. The Secretary of State says he wants to cut the numbers of managers. If the number of managers has been cut, why are the management consultants crawling all over the NHS? A group of consultants including McKinsey, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers sealed a £7.1 million contract with 31 groups of GPs. Pulse found that four in 10 clinical commissioning groups across England have begun to enlist commissioning support from the private sector. That was the work that the PCTs did.

The Secretary of State says that change is happening anyway. So why have the Bill? The Secretary of State says that Monitor did not have a duty to promote competition. So why did the Government not approve the amendment tabled by Lord Clement-Jones that sought to designate the health service as

“a service of general economic interest”,

taking it out of EU competition law? That was not accepted.

The Government said that the role of Monitor is like that of Ofgem, Ofwat and Ofcom. David Bennett said:

“We did it in gas, we did it in power”.

Who are the shareholders? Look at Centrica. Its shareholders include Bank of New York Mellon, the Government of Singapore, the Government of Norway, the state of California, the Government of Saudi Arabia, and Goldman Sachs. The shareholders of the NHS are the people of Britain—but for how long?

The Secretary of State says he wants integration, but the Bill will effectively repeal the integration that started with the Health and Social Care Act 2001. Torbay is a classic example of that. What about the cost, which is £1.2 billion and counting?