NHS (Private Sector)

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

No.

Individual staff in the NHS have a duty not to allow their private activity to be to the detriment of their NHS activity. Foundation trusts will have an obligation to be transparent in accounting for the two sources of income, and they will have an obligation to report at their general meeting how they have used their private income to benefit their NHS patients.

I am afraid that what the right hon. Member for Leigh says is a tissue of nonsense. The 49% amendment was introduced only to make it abundantly clear that if the principal purpose of a foundation trust is the provision of NHS services, by extension that would not be consistent with the balance of its activity being private rather than NHS activity—hence 49%. There is no specific intention that NHS foundation trusts should increase their private income to any specific degree.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Is it not true that the cap is “up to” 49%? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best decisions are made not at the Dispatch Box by plucking numbers out of the air, but by patients, clinicians and hospital trusts?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Labour party appears to be going backwards. Its 2010 manifesto said:

“We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care”,

but tonight’s motion says that Labour has abandoned that policy. I quoted earlier the Labour party’s commitment to giving patients the choice of the best available provider. Its policy tonight is to abandon patients, including the 81% who told a survey that they want to exercise choice. Labour’s manifesto said it would give foundation trusts freedom to expand and increase their private services. It has now abandoned that policy.

Why does Labour do that? Why did it abandon those policies? Perhaps it is because the Labour party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the trade unions. Labour is interested not in patients or the NHS, but in the trade unions, because its policy is all about the protection of trade union interests—vested interests. The guarding of the vested interests is the remaining activity of the Labour party, but it will diminish over time.

Let me tell the shadow Health Secretary very simply what we are setting out to do. Under this Government, the power to choose will increasingly lie in the hands of patients, doctors and nurses, and incentives will encourage all providers to integrate their care and improve the quality of their care. The result is not a fragmentation of the NHS or inequalities, but better, higher-quality care, and integrated NHS care that offers everyone the very best care available. We will use choice—patients’, doctors’ and nurses’ interests in delivering that choice—and the best quality provision to deliver better outcomes for patients. That is why I urge the House to reject the Opposition motion.