NHS Future Forum Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateRonnie Campbell
Main Page: Ronnie Campbell (Labour - Blyth Valley)Department Debates - View all Ronnie Campbell's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(13 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend makes an important point. General practice—not just general practitioners but general practice—has a central role for patients because there is a long-term relationship with patients and an understanding of the whole population and the health of a whole area. However, GPs recognise that in order to get the right services for patients, they have to design services alongside the range of professionals whose job it is to deliver them.
Let us be clear: this is just a dog’s dinner and these amendments have proved it. What we have here is a slow-privatisation-of-the-NHS Bill that is backed by the Rag, Tag and Bobtail party—the Liberal Democrats. This is the beginning of the privatisation of the health service and it is time it stopped.
This Bill and our proposals were never to support privatisation; they are not to support privatisation and they will not be to support privatisation. The hon. Gentleman should have attacked the Labour Government who gave the private sector £250 million for operations it never carried out; they paid it 11% more than they would have paid the NHS for that. They tried to push the NHS out of the provision of services when it could have provided them and competed. The Labour Government did that, and we shall legislate to make it illegal for a Secretary of State or any regulator to engage in that kind of preferential treatment for the private sector in future.