NHS Reorganisation

I beg to move,"That this House believes that the Government is pursuing a reform agenda in health that represents an ideological gamble with successful services and has failed to honour the pledges made in the Coalition Agreement to provide real-terms increases each year to health funding; further believes that the Government is failing to honour its pledge in the Coalition Agreement by forcing the NHS in England through a high-cost, high-risk internal reorganisation as set out in the health White Paper; is concerned that the combination of a real cut to funding for NHS healthcare and the £3 billion reorganisation planned by the Secretary of State for Health will put the NHS under great pressure and that services to patients will suffer; supports the aims of increasing clinician involvement and improving patient care, but is concerned that the Government's plans will lead to a less consistent, reliable and responsive health service for patients which is also more inefficient, secretive and fragmented; and calls on the Secretary of State for Health to listen to the warnings from patients' groups, health professionals and NHS experts and to rethink and put the White Paper reforms on hold, so that in this period of financial constraint the efforts of all in the NHS can be dedicated to improving patient care and making sound efficiency savings that are reused for frontline NHS services." The motion is set in similar terms to the motion standing in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the shadow Education Secretary, which we will debate a little later. That is because in both health and education we are seeing many of the same broken funding promises, much of the same free market ideology, many of the same problems of big changes forced through without considering or caring about the consequences, and many of the same risks that the poorest and most vulnerable will lose out and that comprehensive, consistent public services will be broken up. Beyond the spending cuts, we are starting to see the pattern of what public service reform means in Tory terms. The Prime Minister told Britain before the election:"““We are the only party committed to protecting NHS spending.””" In his coalition agreement with the Deputy Prime Minister, he went further, saying:"““We will guarantee that health spending increases in real terms in each year of…Parliament””." The Government whom the Prime Minister leads are now breaking the promises that he made to the British people. The Secretary of State has been caught out double-counting £1 billion in the spending review as both money for the NHS and money to paper over the cracks in social care. Let me quote from a Library research paper, which confirms:"““Including the (social care) funding is critical to the description of the settlement as a 'real terms increase'; without it, funding for the NHS falls by £500 million—0.54% in real terms.””" There we have it—the facts in the figures. There is no real-terms rise in NHS funding, but a real-terms cut over this Parliament by this Government—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, ““Nonsense”” from a sedentary position. If he wants to deny the figures in the Green Book, deny the report in the Library research paper, and take issue with the Nuffield Trust, who all say the same, he should do so. He should by all means take credit for funding social care, but he should not double-count the credit by including it for both NHS funding and social care funding.