NHS Commissioning Board (Mandate)

Stephen Dorrell Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The redundancies in management and administration will save the NHS £1.5 billion every year—£1.5 billion that can be spent on the front line. We should compare that with the £1.6 billion the NHS must spend every year to deal with the right hon. Gentleman’s disastrous private finance initiative policies that left the NHS with £73 billion of debt overhang.

Let us talk about clinical networks, which are extremely important. We have four clinical networks—for cardio, cancer, maternity and mental health—and they will continue. The budget that the networks are using is increasing and not decreasing under the Commissioning Board.

The right hon. Gentleman said that ambulance services in Manchester would be run by a private bus company. I am sure the House will be interested to know who the Health Minister was when the guidelines that allow private bus companies to bid to run ambulance services were drawn up. It was the right hon. Gentleman. He was in post when that happened.

The right hon. Gentleman describes the mandate as a wish list. He should tell that to the 570,000 people who have dementia, for whom Government Members want to do a better job. He should tell it to people who suffer from cancer. They have below-average European survival rates, but we want them to have the best survival rates in Europe. He should tell it to the families and carers of people who are worried about the level of care they receive in certain parts of the system.

Government Members are determined to aim high for our NHS, because we believe in it. We believe it is doing incredibly well in difficult circumstances, but it can do even better. The right hon. Gentleman should also want an ambitious NHS. Just because he did not have those ambitions when he was Health Secretary does not mean that the Government should not aim high to make our NHS the best in the world.

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House for my inability to control modern technology.

Does my right hon. Friend think it striking that, when he presents the first mandate of the NHS Commissioning Board to the House of Commons, we hear a lot of synthetic rhetoric from the Opposition Front Bench, but not a single disagreement with any one of his propositions from the Dispatch Box or in the mandate? Does that not demonstrate—this has always been the Conservative case—that there is a shared commitment to the ideals of the NHS, and that the difference is our ability to deliver it effectively?

[Mr Hunt]

I hope my right hon. Friend is right that there is agreement on the goals in the mandate, because they have been drawn up after extensive consultation with the people of this country and are important priorities, particularly as we grapple with an ageing society. I agree with him that it does not the help the NHS to descend to the rhetoric we heard from the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). There is a very important and legitimate debate about the right way to achieve shared goals. Government Members do not believe the right way is through performance management from the Department of Health and trying to echo out every part of the system. We believe the right way is to empower local GP-led groups to make changes on the ground. That is at the heart of the reforms.