NHS reforms face pressure from the Lords
pharmafile | September 21, 2011 | News story | | NHS reform
Peers are starting to voice their criticism of the government’s planned NHS reforms as the Health and Social Bill passes to the Lords.
The Bill cleared the Commons stage with a comfortable majority of 65 at the beginning of the month, and will now be debated in the House of Lords.
The reforms have had a difficult time and in June the government was forced to make a number of major amendments to the Bill in order for it to pass through the Commons.
Speaking during a Lords’ debate this week, Labour peer Lord Norman Warner came out against the plans, taking specific issue with the government’s wish to put GPs in charge of the NHS budget.
He said: “The original enthusiasm for GPs running more of the ‘commissioning show’ seems to be evaporating as the hospital specialists fight back to retrieve more ground through modification of the consortia membership.”
The amendments made to the Bill in the summer came after an eight-week listening exercise, undertaken by the Futures Forum.
But Lord Warner said this exercise had failed to inspire confidence: “The Forum seems to have helped the government further along a path of public confusion over who is really in charge of NHS commissioning and accountable when things go wrong.
“In my view, the Forum’s proposals make an already unsatisfactory situation worse, in terms of accountability, service needs assessment, and commissioning of services,” he said.
Lib Dem peers will push for further amendments
The Liberal Democrats backed the Bill in the Commons, but their peers in the Lords have been more critical.
Lib Dem peer Baroness Williams has said she wants to see further concessions on the government’s plans when as it goes through the Lords.
Speaking at the Lib Dem party conference in Birmingham, she said ‘major changes’ had already been made, but more amendments were needed.
“There is now a huge responsibility on the House of Lords to go through and scrutinise the Bill in vast detail – and they will,” she said.
“We reckon there is going to be something like 10 or 12 days on the committee. That means there will be detailed scrutiny.
“I promise you a lot of the Lords will want to ask questions on almost every aspect of the Bill. As well as having time it [the House of Lords] can determine its own time which isn’t true of the House of Commons […] The whips are much more powerful in the Commons than they are in the Lords.
“So the relatively easy passage that the Bill had – and I regret this – through its second reading in the Commons will not be duplicated in the Lords without some substantial further concession.”
Ben Adams
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