NHS Reform

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We are not only developing communication with GPs in pathfinder consortia, but, more importantly, creating a learning network among GPs in pathfinder consortia, so that these groups across the country will not only learn from each other, but, we hope, arrive at a set of views that help us to design a service that supports them.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State, who tells us how much he studies the NHS, must know that the King’s Fund tells us that under the Labour Government, Britain’s NHS was the most efficient in the entire world. On that basis, a broad coalition of people, including health experts and the Liberal Democrats, is telling him that this policy is wrong. He apparently came here today to tell us why he is right and all those people are wrong. Is this a genuine consultation, or is it just a pause to get through the local elections before he does what he wants to do anyway?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong on almost every count. We have seen a decade of declining productivity in the NHS. The Office for National Statistics and the National Audit Office set that out recently. We have seen an NHS that, despite record increases in funding, which are welcome, is still not meeting the best European cancer survival rates, as was made clear by the NAO. We need to improve the NHS. The Government are not discounting anybody’s views on how we can best achieve that. In the spirit of continuous improvement in the NHS, there is a spirit of continuously listening about how to make that happen.