NHS Reorganisation

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

This is such a big and fundamental change to the NHS that £140 million is the best guess. Clearly, as the competition role of Monitor increases and the competition legislation it has to deal with becomes stronger, those costs could increase. We simply do not know, because this is a leap in the dark for the NHS.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Having listened to the debate at our party conference on Saturday, the right hon. Gentleman will know that there were strong views that the Bill needed to be further improved and strengthened, but he will also know that there was no call for it to be pulled or paused. He will also remember that when his party and my party joined together to form the NHS, the doctors were not always on the side of the enlightened.

[John Healey]

The Liberal Democrats are quick to try to claim credit for other people’s successes, and quick to try to duck responsibility for some of the difficult challenges they face. However, the right hon. Gentleman is right—it was the BMA that called yesterday for the Bill to be withdrawn. Our motion calls not for it to be withdrawn but for a pause in its passage through Parliament to give the Government a chance to rethink, exactly as was requested by speaker after speaker at his conference in Sheffield on Saturday, and all but a handful of the members who voted at it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

No.

The fact is terribly clear that before the election the Labour Government said that in three years the NHS would have to save between £15 billion and £20 billion. The Labour party never said in government that that money, if saved in the NHS, would be reinvested in the NHS. The other point is that when we came to the spending review, in which we agreed £10.7 billion extra for the NHS over the life of this Parliament, the shadow Secretary of State’s friends, who were then responsible, said that we should cut the NHS. We do not need to speculate about what they said they would do, because we can look at the example of Wales. The Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government are proposing to cut the NHS budget in Wales by 5%, while we are increasing it. We know exactly what Labour would do if they were in charge of the NHS: they would cut it. We have not cut it and are going to protect it.

[Simon Hughes]

I share absolutely my right hon. Friend’s view that the protection of the budget and the commitment to the principles of the NHS, which he has just enunciated, are really valuable and that Labour’s record in forcing privatisation undermines its whole argument. He knows that there are concerns. Having come back from the debate in my party, I ask him straightforwardly whether he will take on board the concerns expressed and look at ways to strengthen and further improve the Bill as it passes though this House and the House of Lords.

[Mr Lansley]

My right hon. Friend was busy in Sheffield over the weekend, but he might have heard me say on Sunday that where there are legitimate concerns, founded in reality rather than myth, about how we will secure the NHS and its modernisation for the future, we will listen. We have listened and changed the policy before the Bill was introduced. We have already amended the Bill during the course of its passage so far and will always look to clarify and improve it as it proceeds.