Health and Social Care Bill Debate
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Frank Dobson
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Health and Social Care Bill
Frank Dobson Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Mr Lansley
My right hon. Friend makes extremely good points. It is interesting that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) appears to be trying to represent us as not agreeing about matters. He is chronically incapable of agreeing with himself. In June 2006 the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said that what the NHS needed in future was foundation trusts, practice-based commissioning, more involvement for the private sector and payment by results. The thing is that Labour in office did not achieve any of those things. It is only through the mechanism of the legislation that we are putting together that we are going to enable the NHS to achieve those things in a way that does not entail all the difficulties that Labour had, such as getting the private sector involvement with the NHS wrong. We are going to get those things right.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the Salisbury convention requires the House of Lords not to reject a measure if it has an electoral mandate? As all the parties in the House were mandated not to totally reorganise the national health service, would it not be wholly proper for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords to have some guts, join with Labour and Cross Benchers and vote the whole measure down?
Mr Lansley
The right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong about that. Perhaps he was not here last Wednesday when we debated health matters. [Hon. Members: “He was.”] Well, then he did not listen. I set out very clearly how the Bill was responding to the manifesto mandate that we in our party had, and it was a manifesto mandate that the Liberal Democrats brought to the coalition Government, not least in relation to the role of local government, bringing greater democratic accountability, which is precisely how some of these things have been achieved. If the right hon. Gentleman is talking about a mandate in the Lords, he might like to tell his colleagues that at the last election his party was elected on the basis of supporting foundation trusts, for example, to be able to be free to increase their private income.