NHS Future Forum

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry the hon. Gentleman tried to characterise that as he did. The joint committee of primary care trusts is conducting a consultation. The Government are not doing it; I am not doing it; the committee is doing it, and the consultation closes on 1 July. People across the country are quite properly making representations to the consultation, including on the Royal Brompton and other units. The committee has not made recommendations to me; it will come to its conclusions after that consultation, which has absolutely nothing to do with the structure of the proposals I am referring to today.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

My constituents will not be interested in hard left, old school scaremongering. They simply want to know whether the Bill will put local health services under a greater degree of local control.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will know that many of us in the House were deeply frustrated in the past that Ministers would say at the Dispatch Box that primary care trusts were responsible for local decisions, and then nobody found locally that the PCT was in any practical sense accountable to them or the population they represented. In future, there will be proper accountability: clinical accountability through the commissioning groups and democratic accountability through local authorities.