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Private Sector (NHS)

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister is delighted today to be surrounded by his hon. Friends. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) on securing the debate. He has done a great service, because this issue has touched a deep and raw nerve among hon. Members on both sides of the political divide. I shall try to be brief, and I shall reiterate some of the points that have been made, but in relation to the Greater Manchester surgical centre. Like others, I am passionately committed to the concept of a public sector national health service, and think that it has served the nation well. The ideological arguments for it are sound, but those for the intrusion of the private sector have been neither well made nor properly researched or established. That concerns me because what is happening is an ideological move mainly by stealth. The Greater Manchester surgical centre is an example of that. When the idea of the surgical centre was first mooted, there was no public consultation with Members of Parliament or any proper consultation with the referential public bodies involved with health. The primary care trusts in Greater Manchester were effectively dragooned into playing a part—some were acquiescent and some were resistant. Hon. Members will understand that because of micro-politics in the health service, information was not always placed in the 19 Oct 2005 : Column 284WH public domain. Therefore, debate about the surgical centre was low key. At no point was any public justification or explanation given as to why that capacity was needed in Greater Manchester when existing hospitals could provide for the needs of local communities effectively. Indeed, had the investment from public money that went into the surgical centre been available to the health service, it is certain that we would have significantly improved the capacity and competence of those national health service operators. The main issue that I want the Minister to address today is that of contracts. Will he tell us which complete imbecile drew up the contracts governing the surgical centre? It might be invidious if Ministers were to name names, but questions must be raised about the competence of the people who draft contracts for the national health service. The contract for the surgical centre not only pays over the odds relative to the cost of treatment elsewhere, but gives a guaranteed minimum price to the surgical centre, which receives that money whether it performs the operations or not. That means that the national health service will spend about £1.4 million on operations that have not been performed in the surgical centre, because there are not the patients. Who in their right mind would draw up a contract that is so open-ended and unfair to the public and so massively favourable to a private sector provider? If present trends continue, the surgical centre will, in a year of operation, cost the national health service, and therefore the public, £6 million. One might say that that is a trivial amount in the grand scheme of the health service budget, but about 40 per cent. of the value of that contract is being poured down the grid. That is unacceptable. Hon. Members will have different views on the role of the private sector. I would sooner that that role were narrow, constrained and more tightly controlled than in the example that I have given, but I know that the surgical centre, now that it exists, will be offered protection into the future. The consequence of that, in an area where there simply is not the demand for those services, will be the erosion of services in our hospitals, which means cutting back the public national health service to defend the private sector. That is simply intolerable.