8/7/2019 Health and Social Care Bill Lib Dem Letter
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Mr Simon Hughes MPHouse of Commons
LondonSW1A 0AA
27 January 2011
Dear Simon,
I am writing to urge you to take a hard look at the Health and
Social Care Bill before the
second reading debate on Monday.
You will see next to nothing of Lib Dem health policy in this
huge top-down internal
reorganisation the Government is forcing on the NHS in England,
despite increasing concern
and criticism from patients groups, professional bodies and NHS
experts. It is also, of
course, precisely what the Government promised NOT to do in the
Coalition Agreement.
This is Conservative not Coalition health policy, and certainly
not Lib Dem health policy.
The main evidence of any influence of Lib Dem ideas on health in
the Coalition Agreement
was the commitment to ensure that there is a stronger voice for
patients locally throughdirectly elected individuals on the boards
of their local primary care trust (PCT). This was
swept aside just two months later when Andrew Lansley published
his NHS White Paper,which included the abolition of PCTs.
Your policy priorities before the election were to ensure that
local people have more control
over their health services. The Governments plan for the NHS
places sweeping powers with
a new national QUANGO the National Commissioning Board and a
national economic
regulator charged with promoting and enforcing competition to
open up all parts of the NHS
to private health companies.
Your principled concern was to strengthen local and public
accountability of health services.
The legislation seriously restricts openness, scrutiny and
accountability both to the public and
to Parliament. It will lead to an NHS in which commercial in
confidence will be stamped
on many of the most important decisions.
Full market competition, as the Conservative ideology at the
heart of this NHSreorganisation, directly conflicts with your
Partys long and proud commitment to the ethos
of essential public services. Doctors warn the Conservatives
plans will be the end of theNHS as we currently know it.
This internal reorganisation, which the NHS chief executive
himself has described asenormous beyond anything that anybody from
the public or private sector has witnessed,is a very serious risk
to the NHS. It is piling extra unnecessary pressure on the NHS,
and
comes at a time when patients and staff in some areas are
already starting to see waiting lists
growing and services being cutback. Led by the BMA,
organisations speaking for NHS staff
say the scale, speed and cost of the changes are extremely risky
and potentially disastrous.
As Lib Dem MPs, this is not your policy but it is being done in
your name and you will be
held responsible by the public for the consequences to our
NHS.
