This debate is about one of the most important issues facing this House and this country: the future of our NHS. It has been an excellent and at times lively discussion, with important contributions from all parts of the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke with great passion about his recent experience of using the NHS and the importance of the NHS for his constituents. My hon. Friends the Members for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) gave compelling speeches about their concerns over what is really in the Health and Social Care Bill, including the implications of removing certain duties from the Secretary of State and of introducing competition law explicitly in the NHS for the first time. The hon. Members for Southport (John Pugh) and for St Ives (Andrew George) raised important and serious issues with regard to the Bill, including the implications of centralising services such as dentistry, pharmacy and primary care. It is far from clear how a national body will know what primary care services need to be commissioned in my constituency. They also expressed concerns about the dangers in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), whom I am proud to be following, raised the importance of the threats to the ““national”” in the national health service and concerns about patients with long-term and chronic conditions, of whom we know there are an increasing number in the NHS.
The debate has shown that, as on so many occasions with this Government, it is not their rhetoric but the reality that counts. They promised in their manifesto an end to top-down reorganisations, but instead they are forcing the NHS through the biggest reorganisation of its life. As the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell) has said many times, although unfortunately not in the House today, they are doing that at a time when the NHS faces its toughest ever period of funding, when jobs are already being cut and when, far from what the Secretary of State told the House earlier, waiting times are starting to rise.
The Government also say that they want clinicians to lead changes in the NHS, but their Health and Social Care Bill fails to guarantee even that GPs will be running consortia, let alone that hospital doctors, nurses or other NHS staff, who are so crucial to improving the quality of care, will be involved. As eight of the country's leading patient charities said in a letter to The Times last month:"““The reforms will place £80 billion of the NHS budget into the hands of GPs, but plans to make GP consortia accountable to the public are far too weak.””"
There is no requirement to have elected representatives on GP consortia, as the coalition agreement promised for primary care trusts. The new health and wellbeing boards will have no power to require GP consortia to do anything, and local councils' scrutiny committees will actually lose some of their powers to refer decisions to the independent reconfiguration panel in the case of services not on the safe list of designated services.
At the heart of the Bill are proposals to change the NHS fundamentally that the Secretary of State simply does not want to talk about: his plans to run the NHS along the same lines as the gas and electricity companies.
NHS Reorganisation
Proceeding contribution from
Liz Kendall
(Labour)
in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 16 March 2011.
It occurred during Opposition day on NHS Reorganisation.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
525 c411-2 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 15:15:50 +0000
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