Health and Social Care Bill

Absolutely, and the Bill will address that, in as much as care will be more easily accessed by the GP and the patient, in a much more streamlined process. When nurses sat their medical exams 62 years ago, when the NHS was first established, the answer to each question had to begin and end with the words: ““Reassure the patient””. It did not matter what someone said in the answer; if they did not emphasise the fact that the patient had to be reassured, they failed. That has gone. That demonstrates exactly how the patient has become invisible in today's NHS. I support the Bill because I support GPs working in consortia. A common myth—an urban myth—that we have heard in the few weeks leading up to this debate, and which has been thrown at us from the Opposition Benches, is that GPs are simply not up to the task of becoming business managers. The truth is that they already are business managers, because they all manage their own businesses. They will not be working as individuals or in individual practices; they will be working as part of a consortium, which is quite different from the impression given by the Opposition. Right now, 141 pathfinder consortia are demonstrating that they are ready and able to take on commissioning, and that they endorse patient involvement in the decision-making process. As a result of the ““any willing provider”” provisions, there will be a genuinely wider choice of care options available to the GP and the patient. I would like to rebut the argument that the private sector will come in and undercut the NHS. That is complete nonsense. There will be no undercutting of the NHS whatever. Services will be—[Interruption.] I can only say that Opposition Members have not read the Bill, because there will be a tariff. Charities and the private sector will be able to provide services, but with a tariff. I shall give an example. If a patient requires a surgical procedure, which they discuss with their GP, and the local hospital has no bed available for six weeks, two months or however long, but if the local private hospital can provide a bed the next morning at the same price, are the Opposition really saying that an ideological obstruction should be put in the way of that patient being admitted to that private bed for that procedure the following day?