Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Stephen Dorrell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

I thank my right hon. Friend.

When I raised these issues in the recent recommitted Bill Committee, the Minister suggested that I was scaremongering and, with the rest of those on the Government side, refused to accept any of our amendments—not a single one. Given what recent revelations are proving, perhaps he would like to withdraw some of his comments and concede that I have not been scaremongering.

I urge Liberal Democrat MPs who have felt compelled to support this Bill and their Front-Bench colleagues but whose conscience tells them that it is wrong to vote against the amendments and the Bill. This is not what they signed up to.

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

I welcome the amendments that the Government have tabled for consideration. I also welcome the very detailed way in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State introduced what is, as I am sure he will acknowledge, a substantial group of amendments. He emphasised that their purpose is to give effect to the undertaking that the Government gave when they set up the NHS Future Forum to ensure that the findings of that forum are reflected in the legislation, and that the Bill, when it reaches the statute book, is built on the work of Professor Field and his colleagues.

One purpose of the amendments is to respond to many of the points that have been made, throughout the passage of the Bill, about the role of Monitor. I completely agree with my right hon. Friend that many of those observations about the supposed role of Monitor have been based on a misunderstanding, whether deliberate or otherwise, of the intention behind the Bill when it was first introduced. Whether the misunderstanding was deliberate or accidental, the Government are responding to virtually all those points in order to make it clear that, in the context of the Bill, the central purpose of Monitor is not to be a blind economic regulator based on the assumption that the health service is simply another utility. Various loose words have been used that bear that construction—but never by Ministers, and the implications of those observations have never been accepted by Ministers. As I have understood it—this is why I have supported the Bill throughout its passage—the Government’s intention has always been to ensure that the new NHS envisaged by the Bill gives effect to the basic commitment on which the Government were elected to ensure that the health service secures equitable access to high-quality health care for all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

[Fiona O’Donnell]

The right hon. Gentleman referred to a misunderstanding of the original Bill. The Secretary of State said that that arose because he was a poor communicator. Do so many organisations still oppose the amended Bill because he is still a bad communicator or because it is still a bad Bill?

[Mr Dorrell]

In considering these amendments, it is important to refer to the individual functions of Monitor envisaged in the amended Bill and test them against the assertions that have been made, throughout the passage of the Bill, about what Monitor is there for. We must also test them against the Future Forum’s recommendations about how the role of Monitor should be clarified in order to remove these misunderstandings.

First—I warmly welcome this—it is made clear in the Bill as amended and the supporting documentation from the Department that although the Government intend to continue, as did their predecessor, to encourage the conversion of NHS trusts to foundation trusts, there will be no reduction in the standards required to qualify for the status of foundation trust. The registration principles established by Monitor, which are broadly welcomed throughout the health service, are intended to justify the independence that comes with foundation trust status. Those standards will continue as a gold standard under the new NHS, and achieving them, rather than meeting some artificial deadline, is the key determinant of whether a trust achieves foundation trust status. I welcome the fact that the Government have made that clear. It responds to a specific recommendation by the Future Forum, and it is exactly right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Simmonds]

As always, my right hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech. Does he accept the need for Monitor to ensure that foundation trusts not only continue to meet basic standards but continue to improve those standards year on year, and thereby improve patient outcomes?

[Mr Dorrell]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. One of the further important clarifications in their position is the stress that the Government have placed—rightly—on the importance of the link between Monitor and the Care Quality Commission to ensure that standards in foundation trusts are not just about the achievement of financial targets, but are about standards of care quality delivered to patients. The link between the two regulators—one of quality and the other of financial standards—is an important part of the regulatory structure that the Government are introducing.

[Andrew George]

I entirely endorse the point that my right hon. Friend makes about the need to uphold standards and the role of Monitor in that respect. However, with regard to the Secretary of State’s response to me about the sustainability of essential services—acute emergency trauma centres—does he agree that Monitor must safeguard those services and not allow them to be eroded by the competitive environment in which they will operate?

[Mr Dorrell]

I agree that the sustainability of essential services—or, in the Government’s wording, the continuity of essential services—is a key role of Monitor. If I may interpret what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the patient’s interest is continuity of service, but not necessarily from the same provider for ever more. There has to be a commitment to sustain the service, and if there is to be a change of provider, the service has to be sustained through the change of provider, but the service does not necessarily have to be sustained by the same provider. Nor has there ever been such sustained service. There are not many people who rely on the service once provided by the Westminster hospital, as it is now a block of flats. I believe, however, that the service delivered to patients in this part of London is better as a consequence of the change that resulted from that decision.

[Grahame M. Morris]

As always, the Chairman of the Health Select Committee, is making a powerful contribution. He has really hit the nail on the head. The fundamental point, as evidenced in the Bill, is not that the provider could change—that has happened in the past, as he said, although the provider has always been a public sector provider, either in an NHS trust or an NHS foundation trust—but that, under the Bill, the provider could well be a private sector provider.

[Mr Dorrell]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Select Committee, because he provides me with a link to my next point—I was beginning to wonder how I was going to get on to it.

The health service has not always provided services from a public sector provider. Until this Bill and the powers it gives to Monitor, regulatory bodies in the public sector had not had the opportunity to inquire into the sustainability of services provided by private sector providers. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made the point that the role of Monitor under the Bill is to ensure first—if I may repeat myself—that foundation trusts are of a high quality when they are launched; secondly, that they are accountable for retaining their high standards; thirdly, that we intervene early if they start to go off the rails; and, fourthly, that if they get into serious difficulty, we have the capacity, through Monitor, to continue to deliver continuity of service to those who rely on public health provision, whether from an NHS foundation trust or, as a result of the Bill, for the first time from the private sector. I regard that as a significant step forward in the delivery of continuity of care for NHS patients, whether provided, as the vast majority still will be, by public sector institutions or by some of the independent sector treatment centres introduced by the previous Government.

[Rosie Cooper]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that standards can be maintained, and be seen to be maintained, in foundation hospitals if they are allowed to do what they are currently doing, which is not to disclose all information relating to, for instance, complaints procedures or whatever? Furthermore, does he not think that board meetings should be held in public?

[Mr Dorrell]

My understanding is that the Government have clarified that foundation trust board meetings should be held in public and that, in future, it will be a requirement of licensing by Monitor. On the much broader point, I absolutely agree—the hon. Lady, who is another member of the Select Committee, knows that I agree—that providers of care to NHS patients, whether public or private, ought to have an obligation to provide information on the outcomes that they achieve and certainly on any complaints and other processes initiated by patients about the care they receive. That was one of the strong recommendations that the Select Committee made following its work on complaints. I think that that obligation ought to rest on all providers of care to NHS patients, whether they are foundation trusts or any other form of provider.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman provide some clarification? I think that he said “should” and not “must”. For other functions, particularly relating to local government, the Government seem to be into dropping standards and codes of conduct—that is certainly the case in local councils—but surely trusts “must” have meetings in public, not “should”.

[Mr Dorrell]

Ministers can correct me, but my understanding is that, under the obligation being introduced, they “must” meet in public. I have no authority to speak for the Government, but I believe that that is what the Government intend. For myself, as a patient of a trust or other NHS provider, whether in the public or private sector, my interest lies in ensuring that the information about my—

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Dorrell]

Of course.

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way and allowing me to clarify the point. Let me reassure him that, yes, such meetings must be held in public.

[Mr Dorrell]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who answers the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) with very much more authority than is at my disposal.

I want to make one final point and it is a direct response to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). Of all the misrepresentations about the intentions of this Bill that we have listened to since the White Paper was published over a year ago, the most persistent is that this is somehow a Bill—a ramp—for the privatisation of the health service.

I was first a Health Minister more than 21 years ago. Throughout that period I have listened to speeches directed first at my right hon. and learned Friend the current Justice Secretary, when he was Health Secretary, and subsequently at all his Labour and Tory successors, including me, although probably excluding the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). All their legislative and other proposals to introduce more flexible and patient and standards-oriented structures in the health service were opposed by somebody or other on the grounds that they were going to privatise the health service. If that was the purpose of those policy initiatives, the one thing that they all have in common is that they have been singularly unsuccessful. If it is the policy purpose of this Bill to privatise the health service—which I do not for one moment believe it is—it will, I am sure, be as unsuccessful as all the other measures that went before it.

[Frank Dobson]

I begin with a reminder. I was one of those Labour people who voted against the establishment of foundation trusts and the setting up of Monitor. In doing so, I was supported by those on the Conservative Front Bench, so I do not think that the Conservatives should claim any consistency in these matters.

My second point is that although one would never dream it was true from listening to Ministers or their supporters, it is quite clear that the national health service is now working very well and is more popular than ever; and yet we are told that it needs a radical overhaul. However, the popularity of the national health service at the time of the last general election probably explains why both the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats promised that there would be no top-down reorganisation of it. However, if neither the Bill as originally produced nor the post-pausal Bill that we have now is top-down change, God knows how one would define it.

The whole purpose of this Bill is to shift us away from the basic collaborative approach to the provision of health care in this country and to substitute a large amount of competition, gradually involving more and more of the private sector and, I believe, privatisation. In order to put things in perspective, it is worth pointing out that when the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), ceased to be the Secretary of State for Health, the national health service was performing 5.7 million operations a year in its hospitals. When Labour left office, it was performing 9.7 million operations a year, an increase of 58%. That was the result of improved working practices developed by—