NHS Modernisation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:30 pm on 22 March 2000.

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Photo of Tony Blair Tony Blair Prime Minister 3:30, 22 March 2000

If anyone wants to know why the Tories should not be trusted with the national health service, they need only listen to that contribution from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). The Tories opposed the formation of the health service, and now they oppose the plan to modernise and reform it. It is unbelievable. [HoN. MEMBERS: "What plan?' What we have set out has been welcomed by every group in the national health service, but it is opposed by the Conservative party. As for the health record, we are putting in a 6 per cent. real-terms increase, which is double what the Conservative party put in. The right hon. Gentleman's priorities, which include tax cuts for a few, would mean that the Tories could not possibly afford that sum of money.

We know already that the right hon. Gentleman is opposed to the tobacco duty increase. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] That is right. [Interruption.] So that would be £300 million out of the £2 billion straight away. [Interruption.] Well, the right hon. Gentleman attacked the increase in tobacco duty yesterday, presumably not because he supported it. Let me state the position that we inherited. The number of beds had been cut by 40,000; the number of nurses in training had been cut; the hospital building programme had stalled; waiting lists for in and out-patients were at record levels, and there was a £500 million deficit.

If hon. Members want to know how good the right hon. Gentleman would be at managing the health service, let me point out his record when he was in charge of the Welsh national health service. When he was in charge of the health service in Wales, it lost doctors; it lost 1,200 hospital beds; waiting lists rose by 6,000; 300 nurses, midwives and health visitors were cut; and health spending increases were just a little over 1 per cent. So we know what would happen if the Tories were put back in charge.

The right hon. Gentleman goes on about private health care. We are perfectly happy to co-operate with the private sector, but we oppose forcing people to take out private health insurance. In case the right hon. Gentleman should deny that that is his party's policy—as Tories try to do occasionally—I shall quote his health spokesman. When he explained Conservative party policy, he said that people would look to the NHS to provide them with service when they had serious life-threatening conditions, and would look to their private insurance to help them with those things where the NHS had to ask them to wait. That is why the right hon. Gentleman's health spokesman called the policy a "Trojan horse". It is a Trojan horse.

However, I would have hoped that the right hon. Gentleman could support the process that we have set out today. Having delivered the money, we will now sit down with people in the health service and work out how it is best spent and how we modernise and reform the system. Of course it is right for us to talk to those people before we publish the plan. I make no apology for that; they asked for a promise, and we have delivered it. What the right hon. Gentleman has done today is put himself outside the consensus in the country that recognises that, yes, the health service needs more money, but it also needs to reform and change. We, the party that created the health service, will now work with people in the health service to rebuild it. From today's response, those people now know that the right hon. Gentleman would destroy it.