NHS Next Stage Review

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 12:32 pm on 4 July 2007.

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Photo of Alan Johnson Alan Johnson The Secretary of State for Health 12:32, 4 July 2007

That was yesterday. I have had time to read it overnight, and I am deeply unimpressed. There is some tinkering around with detail that I would be pleased to talk to the hon. Gentleman about—particularly in the context of GP practitioners, which is an important issue—but the central plank of Conservative party policy is that we ought to hand the NHS over to some kind of 1960s public corporation, and it should be run completely independently by that huge quango. That will not work. I cannot think of a worse recipe for addressing the problems that we have in the NHS, which are about the work force believing that their views have been completely ignored in the context of the issues that have led to change, and that they are being talked down to by Whitehall, rather than their having a role in deciding the issues, based on clinical need, and patient care being an absolute priority.

The hon. Gentleman said that morale had reached rock bottom. I doubt whether it has reached as low a level as it reached during the 1980s, but I accept that morale is low. He cannot make up his mind whether he wants things to be top-down or locally decided. He quotes the example of A and E reconfiguration in Sussex. That is a local, clinically-driven decision happening in that area. It is absolutely right that we should allow those proposals to go on. Incidentally, nine out of 10 reconfiguration proposals are decided and agreed locally, and do not even get referred to me for decision by the overview and scrutiny committee.

We are not saying that the statement solves all the problems in the NHS. Of course there are problems in relation to junior doctors and problems to be tackled in a whole range of areas, but I hope that when Members on the Opposition Benches have had time to reflect, they will agree about using a team of highly respected clinicians who work in the NHS day in and day out. Incidentally, Professor Sir Ara Darzi will continue with his practice for two days a week, even while he is a Minister. It is right that he is a Minister, because if we handed the review to someone outside the NHS, and then outside Government when the review was delivered, that would be far less powerful than having someone conducting the review and being in government to ensure that the review is implemented.

The Conservative party has crossed the Rubicon. You have crossed the Rubicon in relation to getting rid of the patient passport. You have crossed the Rubicon in making the NHS a priority—