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NHS Next Stage Review

I am tempted to ask—to echo the hon. Gentleman’s predictable response—““Is that it?””. It is a shame, because he thinks about these things, and he sent me a letter about having a dialogue on resolving these issues. His response will not be shared by NHS staff. NHS staff right across the country will be pleased that we are initiating the biggest consultation exercise we have ever had—a genuine dialogue about how we move to the next phase of the NHS. The hon. Gentleman said that we were asking Members on the Opposition Benches to sit silent for a year—but as I said in my statement, we are asking Ara Darzi to report first in October. The second part of the report will be next year, but certainly not 12 months away. The hon. Gentleman said that he thought this was going to be NHS independence day. I take issue with him about the Conservative party’s policy on independence for the NHS. It is a fundamental central plank— 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— I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I should say that the Rubicon has been crossed. Core principle No. 7 of the NHS core principles, which the hon. Gentleman’s party has now signed up to, says:"““Public funds for healthcare will be devoted solely to NHS patients””." We remain committed to that. It is a big change for the Conservative party to follow us across the Rubicon, and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) has left some Members behind on the other side. Sitting behind him is the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone), from the Cornerstone group, who still has to cross those perilous waters. Now we can decide together how we will take the NHS on to its next stage.