Results 1-20 of 46 for foundation hospital speaker:Liam Fox

Written Answers — Health: Foundation Trusts (8 Sep 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether foundation hospitals established in England will be required to treat patients referred by general practitioners based in Wales.

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Schedule 13 — Repeals and Revocations (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: .... Instead, he gave us a lecture about some strange and bizarre version of history and his party philosophy. He preferred that to facing his Back-Bench colleagues head on in the difficult debate on foundation hospitals. If the Secretary of State does not have the courage to do so, the Opposition cannot be held to account for it, but it is a great pity. We should remind the Secretary of...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Schedule 13 — Repeals and Revocations (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: No, we are not accepting plea bargaining tonight. We need to assess the basic elements one by one. On foundation hospitals, we do not have a problem with the concept. Indeed, we are keen on the model of foundation hospitals in other countries—Sweden, for example. Swedish hospitals have freedom to borrow according to their own plans and in terms of their own investment needs; they have...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Schedule 13 — Repeals and Revocations (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...further on Europe. We need to make progress on discussing the Bill, because we have only an hour to do so, courtesy of the Government's timetable. What do we see when we compare the freedoms of foundation hospitals in other countries with what we will have here? Here, we see borrowing curtailed by the Treasury. In fact, it is worse than that, because any borrowing will be curtailed within...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Schedule 13 — Repeals and Revocations (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: Purely on a technicality, can the Secretary of State tell us which part of the Labour party manifesto mentioned foundation hospitals?

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Clause 1 — NHS Foundation Trusts (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...what they are doing through the Bill. There is no logic in the Government's approach. I have a huge problem with the way in which the Government propose to take governance forward. Members of the foundation hospital board will be drawn from the public and the staff. The public members may be those who have attended an NHS foundation hospital as a patient or a carer. On the last two...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Clause 1 — NHS Foundation Trusts (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...the Minister before and we have still not received a proper answer. The provision will mean that when the new opportunities fund or a charity provides an MRI scanner for a national health service hospital, the foundation trust is prevented from selling to the private sector any spare time when that equipment is not being used to raise greater income. However, the private sector will be...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Clause 1 — NHS Foundation Trusts (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...is a perverse consequence in what the Government propose. It cannot be what Ministers intended and such provision will be unworkable. Finally, the Office for National Statistics has said: "NHS Foundation Trusts are a new type of organisation called a 'public benefit corporation'. . . This set-up has similarities with the model adopted for Network Rail. However, the trusts' ability to...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill: Clause 1 — NHS Foundation Trusts (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...'s closest coterie and lives in the Alice in Wonderland world where it is possible to believe two opposites at the same time. We have never made a secret of the fact that we favour the principle of foundation hospitals, especially the way in which they have been established in Spain and Sweden. Early in the debate on the Bill, we laid out what we wanted: foundation hospitals that can...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (Programme) (No. 2) (8 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...sheer volume of amendments and new clauses, but I doubt that there has been one that has been guillotined to this degree. Thus, in an extremely short time, we have to consider the whole issue of foundation hospitals, their complexity, their borrowing rights, the role of the regulator, cross-border matters, terms and conditions of service, asset disposal, governance, the role of centrally...

Oral Answers to Questions — Health: Foundation Hospitals (1 Jul 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: How much will it cost to elect foundation hospital boards and to maintain foundation hospital membership? Will that money be top sliced or come from individual trust budgets?

Oral Answers to Questions — Health: Accident and Emergency Services (3 Jun 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: The Minister must accept that the entire monitoring exercise on A and E was a charade. The hospitals knew when they were to be measured, and they knew that they had to meet the Government's targets or they would be punished, because this is the "Targets R Us" Government. More importantly, the majority of doctors—not just those in the BMA—have said that the waiting time for those...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...the case of Iraq, we give the Government our full support, whereas when we believe that the Government are going wrong—in this case, legislating not just for a timid imitation of what I hoped foundation hospitals might be, but for something that might be to the detriment of patient care—we will not give them our support.

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: I suggest that, for every consultant in favour of foundation hospitals, the hon. Gentleman will find many who oppose them, but he makes an interesting point. If he is suggesting that foundation hospitals move in the direction of the American health care system and the benefits that it brings, that is an interesting point of view. I think that he will find that his views are in stark contrast...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...to that of the Prime Minister. That is because his view is far closer to ours than it is to that of his own Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Opposition have always been supportive of the concept of foundation hospitals as developed in Spain and Sweden, for example. We have visited those countries to look at the foundation hospitals. An incoming Conservative Government would be comfortable...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: It is therefore sad to see the emasculated version of foundation hospitals presented in the Bill.

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...taxes have risen but who have seen no clear benefits. In answer to the question posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), I shall look at the details of the proposed foundation trusts. The first area for concern is borrowing. In May 2002, the Secretary of State said that the intention was that foundation trusts would "have greater freedom to decide what they...

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: When the model of foundation hospitals was first proposed, the freedom to borrow was exactly what the Prime Minister put forward as one of the biggest attractions for hospitals in becoming foundation trusts. The Chancellor of the Exchequer nobbled the Prime Minister's plans, and that is why we have the version in the Bill today. The second real disappointment is the independent regulator....

Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill (7 May 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: No, we want hospitals to have the freedom to borrow according to their own plans and their ability to persuade lenders to supply the money on that basis. That is what happens in other countries. It is absurd to suggest that those who run hospitals in this country are incapable of being subject to the same financial discipline as in other countries, where foundation hospitals have much more...

Oral Answers to Questions — Health: Foundation Hospitals (29 Apr 2003)

Dr Liam Fox: ...in pay and that the remits for the pay review bodies would have a stronger local and regional dimension. How will the Chancellor's regional pay operate in the NHS and what additional freedoms will foundation hospitals have in setting pay and conditions?