High-Speed Rail

Debate between Rosie Cooper and Nadine Dorries

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Rosie Cooper]

My hon. Friend talked about connectivity generally and the fact that it takes quite a time to get from Liverpool to Manchester, which is a distance of 38 miles. In this general discussion I would like to drive that further. For example, Skelmersdale does not have a railway station at all, so in rail terms it could take for ever to get from Skelmersdale to Manchester, or Skelmersdale to Liverpool. Skelmersdale to Preston takes for ever. To go by road—by bus—from Skelmersdale to the local hospital in Southport takes one hour and 23 minutes. I have done it.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the Ormskirk bypass earlier. People can get up and down Lancashire, but not across it. I fought and fought on that.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. That is a speech, not an intervention.

[Rosie Cooper]

Sorry. Add to that the fact that there is no railway station, transport is poor and people cannot use the roads either: it is impossible. We are not talking about big things. We cannot move.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Rosie Cooper and Nadine Dorries

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nadine Dorries]

Absolutely, and the Bill will address that, in as much as care will be more easily accessed by the GP and the patient, in a much more streamlined process.

When nurses sat their medical exams 62 years ago, when the NHS was first established, the answer to each question had to begin and end with the words: “Reassure the patient”. It did not matter what someone said in the answer; if they did not emphasise the fact that the patient had to be reassured, they failed. That has gone. That demonstrates exactly how the patient has become invisible in today’s NHS.

I support the Bill because I support GPs working in consortia. A common myth—an urban myth—that we have heard in the few weeks leading up to this debate, and which has been thrown at us from the Opposition Benches, is that GPs are simply not up to the task of becoming business managers. The truth is that they already are business managers, because they all manage their own businesses. They will not be working as individuals or in individual practices; they will be working as part of a consortium, which is quite different from the impression given by the Opposition. Right now, 141 pathfinder consortia are demonstrating that they are ready and able to take on commissioning, and that they endorse patient involvement in the decision-making process. As a result of the “any willing provider” provisions, there will be a genuinely wider choice of care options available to the GP and the patient.

I would like to rebut the argument that the private sector will come in and undercut the NHS. That is complete nonsense. There will be no undercutting of the NHS whatever. Services will be—[Interruption.] I can only say that Opposition Members have not read the Bill, because there will be a tariff. Charities and the private sector will be able to provide services, but with a tariff. I shall give an example. If a patient requires a surgical procedure, which they discuss with their GP, and the local hospital has no bed available for six weeks, two months or however long, but if the local private hospital can provide a bed the next morning at the same price, are the Opposition really saying that an ideological obstruction should be put in the way of that patient being admitted to that private bed for that procedure the following day?

[Rosie Cooper]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nadine Dorries]

I cannot, because I have given way twice and I have no more time.

If that patient were in pain, why should they not be admitted into that bed if it were available? That is how the market will be opened up by GPs, to the benefit of patients.

We recently heard from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about an extra £60 million that will be available to fund the latest bowel cancer screening technology, with wider deployment of the flexible sigmoidoscope. That does not need to be provided in secondary care in a hospital; it could be provided in the GP practice under the “any willing provider” provisions, perhaps via charities with specialised trained technicians. The Bill will ensure a new approach to providing services to the patient. “Any willing provider” will give patients the choice that they have not had for 62 years, empowering them to make decisions over that choice and opening up health care that patients in this country have not had, certainly for the past 15 years. With new technologies coming on stream and new ways of delivering care, both in the patient’s home and in the GP practice, that has to be welcomed. The Bill has to be welcomed, and Government Members will vote for it because the most important person in the Bill is the patient. That is why I support it wholeheartedly.