Lib Dems push for major amendments in Health Bill
pharmafile | March 14, 2011 | News story | | Dr Even Harris, Health and Social Care Bill, Liberal Democrat health policy, NHS, NHS reforms
Liberal Democrats activists have rejected the government’s NHS reform programme, voting overwhelmingly in favour of a major amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill.
The party is the minority partner in the UK’s coalition government and the amendment calls for radical changes to the Health Bill – including an end to ‘top down’ reorganisation of the NHS and limits to opening up services to more private competition.
Former MP Evan Harris, who tabled the amendment during the party’s spring conference said: “It is now incumbent on Nick [Clegg] and his ministerial team to deliver the major changes to the government’s health policy and the significant amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill that the Liberal Democrats have overwhelmingly called for.
“Because the health reforms were not in the coalition agreement, today’s vote is the only view expressed by the party on the subject,” he said.
The Health Bill, now in the committee stage in the House of Commons, is health secretary Andrew Lansley’s flagship reform of the NHS.
If passed it will remove primary care trusts and strategic health authorities and replace them with GP commissioning consortia.
Mr Clegg said he would look “in detail” over the Bill and the proposed amendments, but insisted he was not ‘at odds’ with party members on the issue.
“Yes to reform of the NHS – but no to the privatisation of the NHS,” he told conference delegates.
He claimed changes already made to the Health Bill went “with the grain” of activist concerns, and would increase accountability and transparency.
These include amending the ‘any willing provider’ clause that saw the government backtrack on its policy for price competition in the NHS.
The Lib Dems form the minority of the Conservative-led coalition government and have been uneasy about the NHS reforms since the White Paper was published last summer.
Mr Harris said the vote taken over the weekend showed the Conservatives that the Lib Dems “will not accept market reform of the health service, any fragmentation or destabilisation of NHS services by new private providers or the lack of accountability for the spending of public money envisaged in the model of GP commissioning promoted in the bill”.
The new amendment seeks to remove “competition based on price to prevent loss-leading corporate providers under-cutting NHS tariffs,” he said.
During the election campaign in April last year the Lib Dems argued for a co-operative system for the NHS similar to John Lewis and would have looked to cut large numbers of DH staff to reduce overall spend.
Ben Adams
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