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Open Public Services White Paper

My Lords, perhaps I can assist on this. While not agreeing with everything that has been proposed, on the matter of choice there are difficulties in getting information, in travelling away from your local hospital, in transferring records, but that has never stopped the rich exercising their choice. They have always been able to overcome these difficulties. Therefore, if there are obstacles in the way of consumer choice for patients, the answer should not be to remove that choice; it should be to increase facilities for the provision of information. On outcomes, I would simply say that, since the introduction of choice in the National Health Service, hundreds of thousands of people have been taken off the waiting list and the maximum waiting time has been reduced from two years to six weeks from diagnosis to operation. That was due to the element of competition and patient empowerment which was introduced into the National Health Service through choice.