Health and Social Care Bill

My hon. Friend is right. The more that NHS staff see of the changes and the consequences of this Government's handling of the NHS, the more concerned they are about the changes and the more they are starting to see the NHS go backwards. But the Government will not listen to these warnings that are coming from all sides. They are in denial about the risks: the risk that patients will see services get worse, not better; the risk that up to £3 billion will be wasted on internal reorganisation; the risk that innovation and improvements in care that come from greater collaboration will be blocked by the Office of Fair Trading, competition courts and the new market regulator; and the risk that the Bill will create the monster of a full-blown market in health care which GPs will not control and nor will Ministers or Parliament. If patients have been sold a false prospectus, that is true of GPs too. GPs are being told that they will call the shots on deciding who provides care for their patients, but they are being set up by the Government. They are likely to find their hands tied by Monitor and the Office of Fair Trading and by the courts enforcing competition law. They are likely to find their decisions challenged by private companies if they do not accept ““any willing provider””, especially one that offers to undercut on price. The chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners recently issued a warning to her colleagues. She said:"““I understood these reforms were about putting GPs at the centre of planning healthcare for their patients, not about making sweeping cuts, which will include shutting hospitals, making enormous redundancies, closing services””." Because the reorganisation will force doctors to make rationing decisions as well as referral decisions for their patients, they will make treatment decisions with one eye on their patient and the other on their budget and their consortium's bottom line. The Government say they are devolving power to front-line services, putting clinicians in control, making the NHS more accountable and improving the integration and quality of services, but in the Bill they are making the forces of competition and centralisation far stronger than those of devolution, democratic accountability or the development of quality in patient services. We will explain and expose the gap between what Ministers are saying and what they are doing in every debate at every stage of this legislation. Patients and staff are already seeing signs of strain in the NHS. They are starting to ask, ““What on earth are the Government doing with the NHS? Why don't they listen to the warnings? Why is the Prime Minister breaking the very personal promise he made to protect the NHS?”” The Bill puts competition first and patients second. That is why we will oppose the Bill tonight and expose this truth in the months ahead. These are the wrong reforms for the wrong reasons at the wrong time.