No, I am going to finish my speech in a moment. I want everyone to have a chance to speak.
The national health service is something we can applaud and something to which we attach enormous importance locally. In my own constituency, the Addenbrooke's and Papworth hospitals are excellent examples of innovation and high quality care, and we attach enormous importance to them. But the NHS knows, and we know, that the route for the future is not just about things as they are. It is about achieving a stable organisational framework for the NHS that will allow real dynamism for reform and change. Under the twin levers of patient choice and a competitive environment among health care providers, information based on health outcomes, rather than on micro-management, will deliver the framework within which those levers can work most effectively.
Internationally, we can see that we have a treasure in the NHS. When I go to America or, as I did recently, to the Netherlands, I see that people are seeking to achieve a structure that will provide universal coverage, or a maximum risk pool, as they put it. They want to achieve the combination of equity and efficiency that everyone is looking for in health care. The scale of spending on health care in many of those countries is similar to our own or even higher. In America, for example, the scale of public spending on health care as a proportion of gross domestic product is almost exactly the same as it is in this country, but there is an additional 7 per cent. of gross domestic product on top of that in private contributions. That is not a situation that anyone could contemplate. The inefficiencies involved are not to be contemplated.
In the national health service, which is funded through general taxation, we have a vehicle that is highly efficient at raising resources for health care and highly equitable in regard to the potential distribution of, and access to, that health care. Unfortunately, over recent years in particular, it has become bureaucratic and monolithic. It does not exhibit the characteristics towards which all those other health care systems are moving in regard to exposure to efficiency. That exposure to efficiency, through choice and competition, is essential for the future, and I believe that NHS staff are happy to contemplate that. They are prepared for it, as long as the competition is fair and they are judged on genuine outcomes, and as long as they are given the opportunity to do the best for patients in a framework that continues to be supportive and true to the principles of the national health service.
In supporting the motion this evening in a non-partisan fashion—[Interruption.] It is entirely non-partisan. I hope that my colleagues and I will make it clear that its purpose is to give hon. Members on both sides of the House the opportunity to express differing views on the policy direction of the NHS, as well as a clear and unanimous commitment to its principles, its values and its future.
NHS (60th Anniversary)
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Lansley
(Conservative)
in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 24 June 2008.
It occurred during Opposition day on NHS (60th Anniversary).
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
478 c223-4 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
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Timestamp
2023-12-15 23:33:28 +0000
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