Health and Social Care Bill

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron). Although I did not agree with much of his speech, I strongly agree with his last point about the importance of keeping the foot on the accelerator to try to narrow health inequalities. That is right at the top of the priorities of Health Ministers. This is a very important and complex Bill. We all want to see high-quality care and value for the taxpayer in the provision of health care. I think it is fair to say that there has never been a better-informed, more knowledgeable and better-prepared incoming Secretary of State than we have at the moment. The opening speeches by my right hon. Friend and by the shadow Secretary of State stood in stark contrast to one another. I feel rather sorry for the shadow Secretary of State. He is clearly an intelligent man, but he is cornered by the supplicatory role that his leader is playing to the trade union movement. I am sure that the shadow Secretary of State agrees with the Government's introduction of independent treatment centres. I am sure that he also agrees with the previous Government's introduction of the independent sector into provision and into commissioning, ““any willing provider””, practice-based commissioning, payment by results—although it was payment by activity then—and national tariff ceilings within quality standard frameworks. However, he could not say so because he is cornered. Listening to some Labour Members, one would think that there were no improvements to be made—that the national health service was a utopian structure prior to the last general election. Let me point to 10 things that I sketched out this morning: too much money spent on administration and bureaucracy and not enough on front-line patient care; too little patient-centric information to inform decision making; too little innovation; too little clinical input into decision making; too much inertia and hostility to reform, as we have seen today; too much process-driven target culture distorting clinical decision making; falling productivity; poor outcomes across a range of clinical indicators; too often, weak commissioning of servicing; and widening health inequalities in the past 10 years, in addition to the scandals that occurred in Staffordshire and Kent. That is hardly a situation that makes the status quo desirable.