NHS Risk Register

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to respect the ruling by the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill in order to ensure that it informs public and parliamentary debate.

These are extraordinary times for the national health service and, indeed, for our democracy. A top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for, which was ruled out by the coalition agreement and which Parliament has yet to approve, is happening anyway. From the moment the White Paper was published 20 months ago, the NHS began to change in every constituency represented in the House. From that very moment, the Opposition consistently argued that the Prime Minister was making a catastrophic error of judgment in allowing that to happen.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

Not at the moment.

When the Government chose to combine the biggest ever financial challenge in the NHS with the biggest ever top-down reorganisation, they gave the NHS mission impossible. The £20 billion so-called Nicholson challenge was always going to be a mountain to climb—it is an all-consuming challenge on its own—but with this reorganisation the Government have effectively tied not one but two hands behind the NHS’s back and taken away the maps and safety equipment. The Health Secretary began to dismantle the existing structures of the national health service across England before he had permission from Parliament to put new ones in their place. The result has been a loss of grip and focus at local level in the NHS just when it was most needed.

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[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

I had better give way now, and then that will be the end of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way; he has been very generous with interventions today. I am proud of what this Government have been doing for the NHS. Indeed, we can see what happens when we protect NHS spending and when we have a cancer drugs fund. We do not need a risk register to see the difference that that makes; we can just look at Wales, where waiting times are rising and cancer patients are being denied access to life-saving drugs and having to wait longer. That is the benefit of the Conservative policies in England.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is safely in Dover, a long way from Wales, when he says these things, but I go to Wales and he is absolutely right. It is staggering. The right hon. Member for Leigh and his colleagues can stand there and say, “Oh, well, you know, it’s only”—what is it?—“8% of patients who are not being seen within 18 weeks.” In Wales it is 32% of patients who are not being seen—

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[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The last time we saw the Government circling the wagons like this, it was in defence of the poll tax. Those present at the time will remember the fanaticism of the Conservative Back Benchers supporting a policy that was ultimately doomed. It is impossible not to feel sorry for the Secretary of State for Health. Nobody has ever coveted the position of Health Secretary for so long and then failed in it so quickly. The publication of the transition risk register will, I am sure, make his position even more untenable, but I doubt whether it will change anybody’s mind about this Bill.

For Government Members, I am afraid that the die is cast. They have a millstone around their neck called the Health and Social Care Bill, and they have to decide whether to carry on with the millstone or to take the difficult decision of unburdening themselves of it. As my former right hon. Friend, Alan Milburn, said in possibly the best description of this Bill, it is

“a patchwork quilt of complexity, compromise and confusion”.

Conservative Members will, I am sure, have deep concerns about how this issue has been handled. Some of them might agree with the Tory matinee idol, Daniel Hannan, who said that the NHS was a 60-year mistake, but I doubt whether that is the view of the majority of them. Indeed, I think they would have signed up to the principles set out in the coalition agreement. There is not much wrong with those principles, including that of no further top-down reorganisations. Now, however, they are forced by the political incompetence of their Secretary of State to turn this argument into a touchstone issue—if someone is in favour of the Bill, they are in favour of reform in the NHS; if someone is against the Bill, they are against reform of the NHS. Nothing could be further from the truth. [Interruption.] I see the nodding dogs on the Parliamentary Private Secretary Bench agreeing with that proposition.

I do not oppose this Bill because it aids reform. I do not oppose it because it will make no difference. I oppose it because it will hamper the reforms that the NHS badly needs at this stage of its development, and I suspect that the risk register will reinforce that belief.

[Charlie Elphicke]

On 31 July 2008 and on 17 September 2008, the right hon. Gentleman decided not to release risk registers or risk assessments. Why was he right then and the Secretary of State wrong now?

[Alan Johnson]

I see that the Whips’ brief dragged up something I did in a previous life. [Interruption.] The risk register is, with respect, a second-order issue. I cannot understand why the Health Secretary does not publish it. He is in enough trouble already, and the Government are in enough trouble already without adding an issue of transparency that simply makes the situation worse.