Clause 2 - Primary care trusts

Part of NHS Reform and Health Care – in a Public Bill Committee at 9:30 am on 29 November 2001.

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Photo of John Hutton John Hutton Minister of State, Department of Health, Minister of State (Department of Health) (Health) 9:30, 29 November 2001

I have certainly heard the hon. Gentleman, but that does not change the fundamentals of Tuesday's debate. In breach of an earlier pledge to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), the hon. Gentleman and other Conservative Members consistently described the process as driven by compulsion. The current process is not driven by compulsion; it is evolutionary and will result in 100 per cent. coverage by October 2002.

Ministers have to make a judgment on PCT applications. I do not dispute the obvious point that when the Bill becomes law, the Secretary of State will have a legal duty to require establishment. That is vital. The hon. Gentleman rails against that, but on Tuesday evening, he did not say whether he thought that compulsion was necessary to ensure delivery of the devolutionary proposals.

The hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) and for Oxford, West and Abingdon made good points about that. They described the possibility of a vacuum developing between the establishment of SHAs and PCTs. In that case, SHAs would exist everywhere in the country but not PCTs. That will not happen. We will not activate these proposals. We could not as it would not be logical if there were to be such a vacuum because the whole structure would be incomplete. The structure needs to be complete before the proposals can be fully implemented. As I have said on many occasions in Committee, that will happen by October 2002. That is when all the PCTs will be established and so the vacuum that rightly concerned the hon. Gentlemen will not happen.