Health and Social Care Bill

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we have already heard today, the public love the NHS. and they are right to do so. Of course it is not universally perfect; of course there are times when it does need reform; but it is still something of which we are right to be proud, and we should not be proud of it just from a moral standpoint.

As economists of many different political persuasions have shown, a centrally funded NHS is a far more efficient way of providing a system of health care than the imperfect market of a system of health insurance. We need only look to America, where, until the recent reforms, more than half all personal bankruptcies were caused by people who were unable to meet their medical bills, to recognise how decent and effective our system of health care really is.

That brings me to the main point that I want to make. In my view, these proposals do not represent an evolution in the NHS reforms of the last Government. The principal goal of the Bill—to transfer commissioning from PCTs to GPs—is, in fact, a dangerous gamble with one of the country’s most-prized institutions. Bringing GPs closer to decision-making did not require the wholesale dissolution of PCTs and the transfer of their responsibility to GPs. When the Government promised no further top-down reorganisation, they should have meant it, because this reorganisation is ill judged and ill advised, as is spending the £3 billion that it will cost. However, now that they have embarked on this revolution, they should be aware of what has come about as a result of it.

Throughout the country, there is a pressure cooker of discontent in the primary care sector as PCTs struggle to balance their budgets and hand over what, on paper, will appear to be their stable financial footing. In order to do that, many have already implemented restrictions on procedures, described in the jargon as “procedures of limited clinical value”. I assure Ministers that they are not of limited value to people who are suffering and in need of care. In a number of areas, PCTs have asked GPs to suspend all but urgent referrals to secondary care. This prompts us to ask what kind of health service GPs will be inheriting. Patients are suffering now as a result of the actions of this Secretary of State.

I also fear that the commissioning of specialised services will create a real gap. For all the faults that some may ascribe to them, PCTs ensured equity for those who, if commissioning had been done on a smaller scale, would have struggled to have had their voices heard. There is a real question of scope here. Many GPs simply do not have sufficient sight of some types of work to commission effectively. The provision of mental health services is a particular concern. As ever with this Government, it seems that the most vulnerable will be most at risk.

If GPs really are better placed to commission services on behalf of patients, why were there shortages of flu vaccines this winter? GPs were responsible for ordering those vital supplies. They had the medical records of the people in their areas; they had the information that they needed in order to make effective provision. In my area it was the local PCT that remedied the situation, but who will be there to do that in future? GPs already have to balance financial and medical considerations. Have they really proved that they can do so effectively?

Finally, we must look at what exactly GPs will be expected to do and how they will go about doing it. In all the contracts they award, someone will have to monitor financial and clinical governance. That requires expertise, which GPs will have to buy in. Who will evaluate the tenders for services and deal with contractual issues? That will require yet more expertise to be brought in. Once we consider all that PCTs do across a wide geographical area, we see that GP consortia doing the same thing over a smaller area will result in an army of consultants, private companies and ex-PCT staff being contracted in by the consortia. We will, in effect, have the expense of PCTs as they work on the same things as now, but without the accountability and economies of scale currently enjoyed. Alternatively, GP consortia might achieve these economies of scale, but they will do so by ceasing to be the community-based practices with which we are all familiar. They will become faceless corporate entities, where doctors will be salaried members of staff with no connection to a specific practice or locality. That might be the Government’s intention, but it is not an evolutionary change to the NHS.

I do not wish to be entirely negative, because there are parts of the Bill—these do not deal with changes to commissioning—that I have to be more positive about. I welcome the ongoing commitment to patient choice, as I have never believed those who say that the public do not want to choose which NHS facilities they wish to use. As with other public services, the NHS must reflect the autonomy people now expect to be able to exercise over their own lives. I also welcome a stronger role for local government in scrutinising health outcomes in their area, provided that that is a real power, not a symbolic one, entailing the ability to force changes when outcomes are not good enough.

However, those are small consolations when we consider a Bill that risks the very future of the NHS as we know it. This is a poor Bill, which has been rushed out without scrutiny and which lacks a democratic mandate. It is not so much a hand grenade thrown into the national health service, as a commercial demolition designed to break the NHS as we know it in order to serve a set of interests which are—

[Stephen Lloyd]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am not going to give way. Other hon. Members wish to get involved in this debate and it is a disgrace that we have only one day to discuss this.

This Bill will break the NHS to serve a set of interests that are not those of NHS patients, not those of NHS staff and not those of my constituents. It is for those reasons that I shall vote against it today.