NHS Reorganisation

I should like a moment to get into my speech, I will give way later, but I am very conscious of the 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches and—like the hon. Member for Eddisbury—I want to keep my remarks to a minimum if I can. The phrases that I just used are the promises that we made in our manifesto. That is what these structural changes are set to achieve. I hoped that the hon. Member for Eddisbury would pay a bit more attention to the manifesto on which he stood at the last election. That manifesto pledged to implement the James report, which had a clear attitude to what should happen to PCTs. Only nine months ago, the Conservatives said that they would radically reduce the intrusive bureaucracy that the PCTs had become, removing 30,000 administrative staff and saving £636.6 million a year. We did not hear whether that was still the hon. Gentleman’s policy. The thrust of his argument consisted of an objection to the reorganisation that we are proposing.