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Health and Social Care Bill

No. The Government have not made such a case for change. They have not convinced the 1 million-odd people in the national health service that these changes are needed, and if they cannot convince the people on whom the service is going to depend, they are taking a real chance with its future. The Prime Minister attributes his commitment to competition, including outside competition, to some of the most worthless and shallow research that has ever been conducted at the London School of Economics—and that puts it in a pretty extreme category. The researchers said that they identified that hospitals they claimed competed with one another had achieved a 7% improvement in the period for which patients awaiting an operation had to wait once they got into hospital. A 7% improvement is a period of something less than an hour. Then, without any justification whatever, they generalised from the particular and said that the hospitals they claimed competed with one other were 7% more efficient right across the board. It is on that basis that the Prime Minister says that he wants to introduce competition into our national health service.