NHS Reform

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand that the public support the principles of the Bill. The public want patient choice. When they are exercising their choice over treatment, they want to be able to go to whoever is the best provider. Patients believe that general practitioners are the best people to design services and care on their behalf. Patients, the public and professionals support the principles of “no decision about me without me”, focusing on outcomes and delivering an outcomes framework, and the devolution of responsibility. What we are talking about now is ensuring that other important principles, such as governance, accountability, transparency and multi-professional working, are genuinely supported by the structure of the Bill.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

My constituents in Suffolk were very concerned at the last election about the fact that only two doctors covered them for out-of-hours care, and that was for 600,000 patients. They welcome the reforms in the Bill. Indeed, Waveney and Great Yarmouth have come together as one pathfinder consortium and resumed out-of-hours care. Will the Secretary of State assure me that such important changes will continue to be important for patient delivery in the new Bill?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, my hon. Friend makes an important point. When people talk about primary care trust commissioning, they might care to look at the report produced by the Care Quality Commission on how primary care trusts went about commissioning out-of-hours care. The answer is that they pretty much did it on the basis of cost and volume, rather than quality, and once they had a contract they did not monitor it, follow it up or ensure that the right quality was there, including the right calibre of doctors. It is clear that general practice-led commissioning consortia will take a wholly different and preferable approach to that kind of commissioning.