NHS Annual Report and Care Objectives

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

No. Let me reiterate to the hon. Gentleman the point I have just made, because what he describes is not my policy. If there are proposals, they are proposals that have been generated in north-west and west London, and the safe and sustainable review is an independent review. It is not establishing the Government’s policy; it is an independent review in the NHS, looking at how services can be improved.

The review was not in any sense about costs; it was entirely about how we sustain the highest quality of excellent care for patients. The same will be—needs to be—true in relation to services in west London for emergency care. I will not go through this all again, but I reiterate that, if people object and say that such an aim will not be achieved, it is open to a local authority to refer the matter to a mere Secretary of State on the basis that the tests I have set down have not been met.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I welcome the encouraging and successful results of the work of our NHS staff in delivering the outcomes that the Secretary of State has reported in this first annual report. A vox pop in one of our local papers last month showed that everybody bar one thought that the NHS was doing a good job. The only complaint was that one person had to wait a little too long to be seen by their GP.

One thing that would encourage people also is to know that, if there ever are proposals to discontinue NHS services or to transfer them from NHS management to private or voluntary sector management, they will always be subject to consultation and proceed only with the consent of the public.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Let me just separate those two parts. First, when there are changes in a service, such as when there is a proposal to change the provider of community services from, for example, an NHS-owned provider to an independent sector provider, they will be a subject for local consultation.

Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman will recall that, when there is any proposal not to provide a service, the Secretary of State is responsible under legislation for the provision of a comprehensive health service. It is not open, as I have made clear to the right hon. Member for Leigh, to the NHS to discontinue the provision of NHS services. It has to—[Interruption.] He says from a sedentary position, “It is doing so,” but he is completely wrong. I wrote to him this morning.

We have stopped precisely the things that he said used to happen under the Labour Government, and it is precisely the case that trusts and future commissioners will have to maintain a comprehensive health service. They can apply clinical criteria and judge certain treatments to be of relatively poor value, but they must always maintain a service and show how they are responding to the clinical needs of their patients.