| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
8.14 pm
Mr. David Ashby (North-West Leicestershire): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith), but his speech was typical of new Labour--full of sound and fury. The hon. Gentleman made all sorts of statements about the Bill being no good, but he gave no reasons and offered no sensible alternatives. That also is typical of the Labour party, which is always ready to oppose a measure but never seems able to offer anything constructive in its place.
Mr. Martlew: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Ashby: No, I am going on for the moment. I have just started.
I am grateful to be called today because I want to show that I may be down but I am not out.
I am astounded that the Bill is being opposed because it is a simple measure to ensure only an organisation to honour the national health service side of contracts, be what may. It does not demand much more than that, in providing confidence in the public sector. The Opposition's arguments would be much better put in Committee than now, so why are they opposing the Second Reading of this simple Bill?
I am reminded of a constituent who came to my surgery three or four weeks ago, who had experienced some trouble with a double glazing company. I will not give its real name but will call it Parliamentary Double Glazing. My constituent had paid a deposit and then, horror of horrors, he discovered that the firm had gone into liquidation. He submitted a claim to the receiver, but was told, "Sorry, there's no money." Then my constituent found that Parliamentary Double Glazing remained in
business, but was renamed Parliamentary Double Glazing Ltd. Mark 2. Then there will be mark 3 and mark 4. That experience gave my constituent no confidence in buying double glazing at all, let alone from Parliamentary Double Glazing. We have all heard of similar experiences in our surgeries.
What happens if trusts end and there are contracts to be fulfilled? Will there be nobody to honour those contracts and nobody to pay? Are we to have the National Health Service Parliamentary Double Glazing Ltd? Is that what we want? The Bill is highly technical and provides for the situation that I described. Why are the Opposition so keen to oppose it?
My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr. Luff) used a large number of quotations, starting with the Leader of the Opposition saying that the PFI is right in principle, then the great whopper from the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) that Labour had first thought of partnerships between the public and private sectors. There is no truth in that. There have been partnerships between those sectors from Conservative Governments for many a long day--but Labour likes, as always, to claim Conservative policies as its own. The Labour party loves to do that and it does it all the time, but the public will see through it.
The Labour party is like the emperor with his new clothes. But the problem is that the Labour party's background and credentials are completely different to ours. The Leader of the Opposition wears his new clothes. He came from Islington and was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a left-winger so he is wearing new clothes. What is underneath the new clothes? The same body is still underneath. That is transparent, and exactly the same applies to the Labour party and to the speech by the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith).
The hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) said that public assets would be used by private money lenders. We have also heard that the Bill would mean privatisation, but that does not square at all with the Labour party's argument that it is in favour of the PFI. It has said that it does not disagree with the PFI and has even claimed that it thought of partnerships between the public and private sectors.
There are two sides in the Labour party and that is why it opposes the Bill. There has been no change at all in the party. Behind new Labour, there is a whole army that would not, under any circumstances, want the private sector to help any public sector body, be it the health service or any other body. In the constituencies, there is a bigger army behind the wafer-thin new Labour. Underneath it all is old Labour.
I cannot help feeling--I think that many people agree--that the real truth about the Labour party is that it does not want the national health service to succeed. It wants to be able to say that the NHS failed under the Conservatives, when it has been a great success story. The Labour party wants to undermine absolutely everything that we are doing. Despite everything Opposition Members have said, they want to see the PFI fail. Tonight, the Labour party is pandering to its left wing, and that is why it is opposing the Bill.
New Labour is like my house in my constituency;it has an 1820 front, but behind the front it is 200 years old. Labour Members put up a front, but behind it the
house that they live in is the house of Keir Hardie and the unions, which brought so much disaster and unhappiness to this country. Disaster was caused by the over-powerful unions, especially in the national health service. The Labour party wants to return to its old ways. It pays only lip service to the direction in which we have gone.
I am delighted to speak in this debate because I, like others who are middle aged or entering into old age, use the health service more and more. My use of the health service has been rather public, I fear, and most people have read about it in the gutter newspapers. I use the national health service although I have BUPA. The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden knows more about the gynaecological side than the male side--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman must relate his comments to the specific Bill before us or to the reasoned amendment.
Mr. Ashby:
I hope that I have related my comments so far to the Bill.
I am proud of the NHS, because it is very good. I am proud about the direction in which the NHS has gone.I have always felt that private sector initiatives can be used by the NHS for the benefit of patients. That is the direction in which we should go, at our best and at our wisest. There is no demon in privatisation, although the Opposition would like to say that there is. What is good enough for the private sector is always good enough for the public sector and there is much to be gained from the private sector which would benefit the public sector.
The Labour party is anxious to build a wall between the public and private sectors. It pretends that they do not exist and fights any intrusion by the private sector, however good, into any of our institutions. The Labour party frightens the public about the national health service itself, but it also tries to frighten the public about private participation in the national health service.
The Bill is meant to give a morale boost to the private sector, yet it is opposed. We will not obtain private sector participation unless support is given to it. The private sector has to know that if it participates, it will not face bills that it should never have to face. The Bill would give the private sector a confidence that it should have.
It is a myth that the private finance initiative leads to delays. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health is a hard-working constituency Member in Leicestershire. I have known him for a long time and part of my constituency was in his constituency before the boundary changes in 1983. When I was selected, I consulted my right hon. Friend to find out what was happening and I asked him especially about the local national health service. We have done especially well. We have the new Glenfield hospital and various other hospitals in the centre of Leicester, but there were enormous delays in planning and financing those hospitals. It was a long time before we got the Glenfield hospital, even though I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State worked hard to try to push the new hospital through.
The situation would be very different today. The problems started in 1979 because so many hospitals were closed by the Labour party and there were long delays in building new hospitals. As soon as the Conservative Government came to power, many new hospitals were
built and new initiatives took place. If the PFI had been in place, those schemes could have come on much more quickly and we would have had more hospitals which would have been more successful.
A private sector of a sort has been involved in hospital building for some time. I have a marvellous community hospital in Coalville. Before the war, the local people started to collect for their community hospital. After the war, they collected harder, and then the project died away a little. Then there was a tremendous burst of energy and a great collection took place for the community hospital in Coalville. The people were able to participate, by their charitable efforts, in the building of the hospital. Such participation by the private sector in financing a community hospital gives the people involved a sense of belonging. After all, the private sector possesses a great deal of expertise and can do a great deal to help the public sector with its building programmes.
Another charge levelled at the Government is that no new money is forthcoming. The Government also stand charged--without a shred of evidence--of having cut funding for the NHS. We all know that that is not true. Changes in the health service and in the sort of provision of which it is capable have led to greater expenditure. We should always remember that all capital expenditure has a revenue implication, however.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |