Health and Social Care Bill

Stephen Dorrell Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am not sure the right hon. Gentleman even read the Deputy Prime Minister’s letter, judging from what he has just said. I will tell him exactly what the process is. The process is for detailed discussion in another place. There were 15 days of debate in Committee in another place. It is the habit in another place not to amend the Bill in Committee, but to use those debates in Committee as a basis for amendment on Report. The process is straightforward. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, together with Baroness Shirley Williams, explained to their Liberal Democrat colleagues some of the amendments on which we have been working together in order to make sure that there is further reassurance. [Interruption.] That is literally true.

Let me put the right hon. Gentleman right about something. What is at the heart of the Bill is improving the quality of care for patients. I note that he did not quote me or represent that he was quoting me. I have never said that competition is at the heart of the Bill. Competition is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The purpose of the Bill is to achieve quality. Where competition enables us to deliver better quality for patients, we should use it. Where integration of services and an absence of competition is in the interests of patients in delivering quality, that is the basis upon which the NHS should proceed. The Bill has been tremendously strengthened and is now a long-term sustainable basis for the NHS to deliver the quality of care for patients that we are looking for, while maintaining all the values of the NHS.

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend yet been able to understand how it can be that a party which, when in government, promoted practice-based commissioning that involved GPs in commissioning, promoted private sector investment in NHS institutions, and promoted the commissioning of care from private sector providers where that was in the best interests of patients now thinks all those principles undermine the national health service to which he, we and presumably the Opposition are still committed?

[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.