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NHS White Paper

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments. In his capacity as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Health, we will be responding to him very shortly regarding the Select Committee's report from before the election on commissioning in the NHS. What he has just said is absolutely right; we have to be able—this is a central task in commissioning—to bring together the responsibility for the management of patient care with the responsibility for the commissioning of services. The current situation is akin to a shopping trolley being pushed to the checkout while the primary care trust is standing there with a credit card, bleating about whether things should be taken out of the trolley. We have to ensure that the design of services follows the best clinical leadership in terms of the services that are required for patients. He and I very much agree on precisely that objective.