NHS Reorganisation

What is very clear from the Health Committee's report before the election is that, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, it criticised in strong terms the weaknesses of PCT commissioning, and that position has only been reinforced since then. One such example is out-of-hours services, for which PCTs were supposed to be the commissioners but did not properly scrutinise the services being tendered, and did not monitor the contracts or the quality of the contracts. PCTs have too often been responsible for simple cost and volume commissioning. What we are concerned with, because we shall engage clinical leadership in the commissioning of services through the NHS, is being engaged in commissioning for quality. Patients will be able to exercise choice based on real information that tells them about the quality of the services being provided, not the cost and volume—