22 Feb 2012 : Column 892
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab): Given that this House and the other place are having to decide on the biggest upheaval in the NHS’s history, is it not absolutely essential that all the information and all the risks are in the public domain? In that context, and in the context of what my right hon. Friend has said, is it not absolutely imperative that the Francis report into the scandal at Stafford hospital is published before the Bill has completed all its stages in Parliament?
Andy Burnham: Of course, there are lessons to be learned for those in all parts of the House when the Francis report is published, and I can say, on behalf of Labour Members, that we will learn those lessons. However, this Bill goes to the heart of what happened in that case, because it is about autonomy in hospital services, and we know that when one makes an organisation autonomous it can sometimes fail as well as get better. I cannot understand how the Government can be legislating before they have even waited to hear the conclusions of the public inquiry that they set up. Surely that has implications for the Secretary of State’s Bill. Why has he not waited to hear what it says so that it can be properly reflected in the design of the service that he is creating?
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con): Given that the right hon. Gentleman opposed the public inquiry at the time, will he now agree with Government Members, particularly the Secretary of State, that it was vital that it took place and that the lessons be learned?
Andy Burnham: One of my first acts as incoming Health Secretary was to commission Robert Francis QC to conduct an independent investigation into the events at Stafford on a local level. [ Interruption. ] Government Front Benchers are saying that it was not a public inquiry. They are right, but let me explain why. I did not commission a full public inquiry because, in my judgment, such an inquiry at that time, with all the glare and focus that it would bring to the hospital, would distract the hospital from its more immediate priority of making services safe as quickly as possible. I said to the chairman of the independent inquiry that if, at any time, he wanted to come back to me and ask for powers to compel witnesses, I would be well disposed towards receiving such requests. Given all the events that have taken place, to hear that the hospital is again having difficulties—that the A and E department is temporarily closed—gives me genuine cause for concern that the fundamental and far-reaching problems there have not been adequately addressed. That should concern us all.
I was talking about the risks identified by the NHS Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes risk register regarding the loss of capacity and problems in carrying out statutory functions resulting from the chaos caused by the Bill.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Andy Burnham: Not for the moment.
The risk rating in that risk register was 16—extreme. Let me focus on the phrase, “statutory functions”, because it is important that the House fully appreciates what that involves. One of the statutory functions of the primary care trusts that have been wound down before new structures are in place is the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults. What does the NHS
22 Feb 2012 : Column 893
London risk register say on this point?
[
Interruption.
]
Government Members do not want to listen. I am sorry if it is inconvenient for the Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), but she will listen. The risk register makes the chilling prediction that the huge loss of named or designated professionals from PCTs across London, and the subsequent damage to information sharing, may lead to “preventable harm to children”. That risk was rated at 20 pre-mitigation and 15 post mitigation.
It is not just NHS London that is saying this. Let me quote again from the NHS Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes risk register; this time I ask the House to listen very carefully. It warns of a
“failure to deliver statutory requirements which leads to the significant harm or fatalities of children and vulnerable adults”.
That was originally rated as an extreme risk and, even after mitigation measures, it is still rated as “very high” with the possible frequency of occurrence being “monthly”.
This is what the national health service is telling the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister about the potential effects of their reorganisation. It is appalling and shocking. They are taking unacceptable risks with children’s safety and people’s lives. If this is what the NHS has been telling Ministers for 20 months, since the White Paper was published, how can they possibly justify pressing on with this dangerous reorganisation? Has not what remained of any justification for carrying on just collapsed before us? If this is what is published in local risk registers, that prompts the question of what on earth they are trying to hide in the national assessment. The simple truth is that they cannot publish because if people knew the full facts, that would demolish any residual support that this reorganisation might have.
That brings me to my third point—the Government’s claim that it is safer to press on with reorganisation than to deliver GP commissioning through the existing legal structure of the NHS. The evidence that I have laid out comprehensively dismisses that argument. If the Government were to abandon the Bill and work with the existing legal structure of the NHS, that would bring immediate stability to the system and, as the British Medical Journal has calculated, save over £1 billion on the cost of reorganisation. The Government’s claim that it is safer to press on is rejected by the overwhelming majority of clinical and professional opinion in England. The royal colleges and other professional organisations have given careful consideration to the pros and cons of proceeding and abandoning. Some disruption comes with either course of action, but given the terrible mess that we are now in, those royal colleges have concluded, one by one, that the interests of patients are best served by working to stabilise the system through existing structures.
It is not difficult to do that. PCT clusters could be maintained and the emerging clinical commissioning groups could simply take charge of the existing legal structure that is the residual PCT, and indeed any buildings and staff that they may still have. The painful truth is that delivering GP-led commissioning, which is where the Health Secretary began, could have been delivered without this Bill. Let me say to him again today that my offer still stands. If he drops the Bill, I will work with him to introduce GP-led commissioning using his emerging clinical commissioning groups.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 894
However, that must be done in the right way. The local NHS risk registers raise concerns not only about reorganisation but about fundamental flaws in the policies that the Health Secretary wants to take forward. NHS Lincolnshire warns of a
“conflict of interest in CCG commissioning and provision: perceived or actual conflicts of interest arising from GPs as both providers and commissioners may impair the reputation of the CGG and, if not managed, may result in legal challenge.”
That has a moderate likelihood of happening but a consequence rated as catastrophic. A GP surgery in West Sussex has written to all its patients offering them
“private screening for heart and stroke risk”
from Health Screen First, for which, in return, the surgery receives a nominal fee from Health Screen First. In Haxby, GPs tried to restrict minor operations that are currently free on the NHS and at the same time launch their own private minor operations service, sending patients a price list. More broadly, stories are emerging around the country of plans by clinical commissioning groups to stop purchasing services from local hospitals, such as dermatology in Southwark and out-patients in south London. There are also plans to remove services from Stafford hospital, which we talked about earlier.
This unstable market in health care could have a very real effect on the viability and critical mass of essential hospital services, resulting in full or partial hospital closures. I have never heard of any plans from the Government to mitigate these risks other than the simple statement, “The market will decide.”
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab): In view of what was said about Stafford hospital and the implications for patient care in North Staffordshire, may I say to my right hon. Friend and to the House that it is vital that we get the full information and full risk assessments that are required in order to be able to plan for the NHS that we need, and that this important debate is part of that?
Andy Burnham: What happened at Stafford gives us very important lessons about the dangers of autonomy, and this Bill is all about extolling the benefits of autonomy. As Health Secretary, I had to deal with that situation. In some ways, it was a legacy of problems with our own policy; I accept and acknowledge that before the House. Because of that situation, I proposed the power to de-authorise a foundation trust and brought it forward in the Health Act 2009. If a hospital gets into trouble, it cannot carry on being autonomous and unable to improve, but should be brought back and helped to improve. I proposed the duty of autonomy.
In fact, that duty was recommended by Robert Francis QC in the first stage inquiry that he delivered to me. I accepted his recommendation. The Health and Social Care Bill abolishes the power to de-authorise a foundation trust. A recommendation from Robert Francis is being abolished by the Bill before the Government even give him the courtesy of allowing him to report. I say again that I do not have a good answer to why they are legislating before hearing from his inquiry. As was said a moment ago, there are plans in Stafford for GPs to do more in the community. That might be a good idea, I do not know, but it might further destabilise that hospital. That should be a cause for concern.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 895
Julian Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Andy Burnham: I will give way one last time to a Government Member, then I will close.
Julian Smith: Last week, I met Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred earlier. To clarify, neither the chief executive nor the chairman raised any of the points that he has raised. Not only that, but the local GP commissioning consortia are perfectly happy and are asking me and other local MPs to push ahead with the Bill. Why is the right hon. Gentleman such a scaremongering buffoon?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that description.
Julian Smith: I withdraw it fully.
Andy Burnham: I do not know why the hon. Gentleman thinks that such an intervention is appropriate. Why did he not ask the chairman and chief executive about this matter? Why does it take me to go and research the risk register—[ Interruption. ] Listen to the answer. Why does it take me to research the risk register in his constituency and to tell him about the risks to the NHS in his constituency, which he clearly does not know about? I suggest that he goes away from this Chamber right now and searches online, where he will find that risk register. Perhaps he will learn something about his constituency.
We are told that the market will decide. Last week, the Government received a specific warning from more than 150 members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that the market-based approach envisaged in the Bill will have
“an extremely damaging effect on the health care of children”.
“Care will become more fragmented, and families and clinicians will struggle to organise services for these children. Children with chronic disease and disability will particularly suffer, since most have more than one condition and need a range of different clinicians.”
“The Bill is misrepresented by the UK Government as being necessary”
“harm those who are most vulnerable.”
Those are not my words, but those of clinicians. [ Interruption. ] If the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) wants to dismiss them, that is up to her, but she would do well to listen to them.
Warnings do not come any more serious than the one that I have just read out. It shows why the Government will not publish the risk register: they know that the case for their Bill would be demolished in an instant. People watching this debate will ask how it is possible to proceed when experts make such warnings and when NHS bodies warn of fatalities. To press on regardless would be utterly irresponsible and unforgivable. That is what the Prime Minister said today that he plans to do.
The truth is that the Government are not listening, as we have seen throughout this debate. The Prime Minister is surrounding himself with people who say what he wants to hear, while closing the door of No.10 Downing street in the faces of those who do not. He will not listen to the doctors and nurses with whom he was once so
22 Feb 2012 : Column 896
keen to have his photograph taken. It could not be clearer: he is putting his political pride and the need for the Government to save face before the best interests of the national health service. He is gambling with patients, with public safety and with this country’s best-loved institution. The Prime Minister asked people to trust him with the NHS, but we have learned today that he is running unforgivable risks with it. What his Government are doing is wrong and they need to be stopped.
I call on Members across the House to put the NHS first tonight. Vote with us for the publication of the risk register so that the public can see what this reorganisation will do to their NHS. They deserve the full truth and tonight this House can give it to them and correct the Government who have got things so badly wrong. I say to people outside who are watching this debate, join this fight to save the NHS for future generations. The NHS matters too much to too many people for it to be treated in this way. People have not voted for what is happening. [ Interruption. ] Not a single Government Member who is shouting at me now can look their constituents in the eye and say, “I told you that I was going to bring forward the biggest ever top-down reorganisation.” The more people who join this fight, the stronger our voice will become.
We promised this Government the fight of their life for betraying that trust and that is what we will give them. Tonight, this House has an opportunity to speak for the millions of people who care about the NHS and are worried about what is happening to it. I implore this House to take that opportunity and I commend the motion to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): Before I call the Secretary of State for Health, I say to the House that in my time as Deputy Speaker, this is easily and by some margin the worst-tempered debate that I have chaired. I ask Members on both sides of the House to lower the temperature so that we can have a decent and full debate.
1.55 pm
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley): Let me put a quotation to the shadow Secretary of State again:
“Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1192W.]
I asked in an intervention on the shadow Secretary of State whether he recalled that quotation. It is what he said in an answer to this House in Hansard on 23 March 2007.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Lansley: I will in a moment.
Frankly, this is a broken-bat debate in the first place, because the shadow Secretary of State is trying to suggest that this Government should do something that he as a Minister and then as a Secretary of State steadfastly refused to do, using exactly the same arguments that the present Government have used.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 897
I am afraid that the shadow Secretary of State’s bat was broken before he came to the crease, because at Prime Minister’s questions the Prime Minister put it to the Leader of the Opposition that, as he was devoting a whole Opposition day to this debate, he might want to make some argument or put some question to him on this subject, but such a point from the Leader of the Opposition came there none. The shadow Secretary of State is standing at the Dispatch Box without the support of his own leader.
Karl Turner: Does the Secretary of State think that his job is at risk and that it should perhaps be on a risk register?
Mr Lansley: I do not know about the debate being bad-tempered, Mr Deputy Speaker, but we at least have jokers in the House.
The shadow Secretary of State is out on his own. I will be kind to him and say that at least opposition is coming naturally to him. Whatever we propose, he opposes it, even to the extent of directly contradicting what he and his colleagues said in government. His contribution today was another shameless example. We have seen this before. The last Opposition day debate on this subject was a travesty of his previous views about the role of the private sector, the need for the private finance initiative and the role of competition in the NHS that he espoused in government. He has done a U-turn on those matters and now holds the polar opposite views from those that he held before. That may be a luxury of opposition and he may enjoy it for the moment—actually, I am not sure that he did enjoy it that much—but that kind of inconsistency will keep him in opposition for a very long time.
The shadow Secretary of State spoke for about 50 minutes and I heard not a word of appreciation for the staff of the NHS. We are asking the staff of the NHS to live in financially challenging times, but it is not mission impossible. He said that saving money in the NHS was mission impossible. That is certainly how the Labour party treated it in government. Spending money was about the only thing that it seemed to be capable of doing, but it never spent it well. We are asking the staff of the NHS to save and to reinvest, and to improve performance at the same time.
Did I hear one scintilla of appreciation from the shadow Secretary of State for what NHS staff are doing, or for the fact that we have the lowest number of hospital-acquired infections on record and the lowest ever numbers of patients waiting more than six months and more than one year for treatment? I did not. I put it on record again that whether we compare May 2010 with December 2011, during which time the number of patients waiting more than a year for treatment more than halved, or December 2010 with December 2011, in which time it went down from more than 14,000 to nearly 9,000, the number has gone down. For the shadow Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that it has doubled, which is transparently wrong, is a misrepresentation to the House and a travesty to the staff of the service. He ought to come to the Dispatch Box and withdraw it.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con):
Of course the views of staff are desperately important, but this is our NHS, and what is really important is the outcome
22 Feb 2012 : Column 898
for patients. It is because of the catastrophic decline in productivity that I say to my right hon. Friend that we urge him to keep going, with no more watering down of the Bill. His parliamentary party is 120% behind him.
Mr Lansley: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and when he was Chair of the Public Accounts Committee he constantly told the last Government that they should do something to ensure rising productivity in the NHS. He was not alone in that.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Lansley: I will in a moment. Perhaps the hon. Lady would like to explain the views of not only my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) but his successor as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), who said:
“Over the last ten years, the productivity of NHS hospitals has been in almost continuous decline.”
[Interruption.] I hear Labour Front Benchers ask, “What about the risk register?” I will tell them what the risk to the NHS was before we came into government. It was that a Labour Government would carry on failing to increase productivity in the NHS. Productivity would have declined, and the NHS would have been unable to provide patients with the service and care that it should provide, because Labour wasted money on bureaucracy instead of spending it on patient care.
Emma Reynolds: I am proud of our record on the NHS, given that patient satisfaction with the NHS is at an all-time high. Does the Health Secretary agree with the analysis of Professor Black in his report in The Lancet that Tory Ministers’ claims that productivity declined between 2000 and 2009 is based on a myth?
Mr Lansley: I have just quoted what the Labour Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said on the basis of advice from the National Audit Office, which is precisely in line with data published by the Office for National Statistics. I think I will rest on that.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I appreciate what NHS staff do and the fact that they are delivering improving outcomes. We published 30 indicators of NHS outcomes just two months ago, and 25 of them showed that performance had been maintained or improved. They had not all gone up, but that is why we are focusing on those outcomes, and not just waiting times. However, the average time for which in-patients waited for treatment was 7.7 weeks in December 2011, down from 8.4 weeks at the last election. For out-patient treatment, the average is down from 4.3 weeks at the election to 3.8 weeks now.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD) rose —
Mr Lansley: I know that my hon. Friend will join me in appreciating the success of the NHS in improving waiting times.
Andrew George:
I do indeed welcome that news, and I do not question what the Secretary of State says about it. However, I am curious about the fact that on one hand the shadow Secretary of State says that it is all going terribly badly but opposes reform of the NHS,
22 Feb 2012 : Column 899
and on the other the Secretary of State says that outcomes have never been better but is pressing on with the Bill. Why is he doing so?
Mr Lansley: The curious thing, as I know my hon. Friend will appreciate, is that even the Leader of the Opposition says that reform is needed in the NHS because of the challenges that it faces. Of course we can debate what the nature of the reform should be, but the idea that we can simply stand still and that nothing in the NHS needs to change is not the view of NHS staff, patients, the Labour party or the Government. We therefore have to consider what the nature of that reform needs to be, and I believe in patient choice and empowering doctors and nurses on the front line to deliver care. I believe in cutting bureaucracy and removing whole tiers of management to enable that to happen, and in common with my Liberal Democrat friends and colleagues I believe in strengthening democratic local accountability in the NHS and strengthening public health services through local government operations.
The worst possible thing for me to do would be to say, “We need to reform the NHS because it is doing so badly.” I do not believe that, but I do believe we have to root out poor performance. I was shocked to hear the shadow Secretary of State and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who has disappeared, talking about Stafford hospital. They were the ones who never appreciated the risk of what was happening there. They know that they went through reorganisations without ever addressing the risk. The dreadful things there happened on their watch, so they might at the very least have come here and apologised. The right hon. Member for Exeter came to the Dispatch Box when he was a Minister and said, “Oh, it’s nothing to do with me, it’s all to do with the management of the hospital.”
I believe in foundation trust hospitals, which apparently the Labour party now does not. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State is trying to have it both ways. He is trying to say that he is in favour of foundation trust hospitals, but that if they get into difficulties the best thing is for them to be run by the Secretary of State. He might talk to the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who was the Secretary of State when, in the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, dozens, perhaps hundreds of patients died of clostridium difficile infection at the Kent and Sussex hospital. That was an NHS trust, not a foundation trust. The Department of Health and the Secretary of State have no God-given ability to run hospitals directly and do so better than they can be run by the doctors, nurses and managers in charge. The point is that there must be proper accountability, and through HealthWatch, local government and the responsibilities of Monitor we will have a proper accountability structure in the Bill.
Andy Burnham: I said that we would learn the lessons of what happened in the Mid Staffordshire trust, and I apologised at the time on behalf of the Government.
The first-stage Francis inquiry recommended the de-authorisation of foundation trusts. Why is the Secretary of State removing that power in the Bill before Robert Francis has reported again?
22 Feb 2012 : Column 900
Mr Lansley: It is because we are clear that the reason he said that was that there was no mechanism available to Monitor in legislation for the maintenance of services and interventions. The Bill will mean that there is.
I sometimes think that the shadow Secretary of State has not actually read the Health and Social Care Bill. He keeps saying that this or that is in it, or that it does or does not do this or that, but for the first time since 2003, when his predecessor’s legislation stated that there should be a mechanism for dealing with hospitals that are failing, we are setting out a proper structure for the continuity of services. He says that it is just about de-authorisation, but it is not.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) rose —
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab) rose —
Mr Lansley: I am sorry, but unlike the shadow Secretary of State I have taken a lot of interventions. I will take more before I finish, but I need to say one or two things without trespassing too much on Back Benchers’ time.
The shadow Secretary of State does not really have anything of substance to talk about, so he wants to talk about the risk register. Let me tell him about our approach to transparency. We are international leaders in openness and transparency in government. Across government, we publish business plans, departmental staffing and salaries, full details of departmental contracts and summaries of departmental board meetings. We are legislating for foundation trust boards to meet in public, which the Labour Government never did; they resisted it. We are opening up the workings of government in ways that Labour rejected outright.
We have set our sights higher than that. In the NHS, we have opened up more information about services than was ever done under the last Government, shining a light on poor performance and promoting better performance. The NHS atlas of variation has been published for the first time, exposing the variation in outcomes for patients in different parts of the country. That was covered up by Labour, which would have said, “Oh, no, that’s the postcode lottery, we mustn’t publish that information.” We have set it out, because that is the route to improving performance.
I remember the shadow Secretary of State’s predecessors as Health Secretary going on the “Today” programme and saying, “Oh, no, nobody’s in mixed-sex accommodation any more. We’ve eliminated all that.” Well, we have published data on that for the first time, showing that 12,000 patients a month were being put into mixed-sex accommodation. Now, because we published those data and acted, that figure has come down by 95% since December 2010. The previous Government covered that information up; we are publishing and dealing with it.
Mr Lansley: I will give way in a moment.
We have published situation reports and real-time information on winter pressures, but the previous Government never did so. We are investing more in new information collections on A and E performance and new clinical quality indicators for A and E. We are collecting more data on ambulance performance and increasing the number of clinical audits. We are publishing
22 Feb 2012 : Column 901
the data on the things that matter to patients, all of which is helping the NHS understand the actual quality of care. We are open and transparent because we believe, as the previous Labour Government did not, that putting information out is in the public interest.
Mr Lansley: I will give way to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey).
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab): In January 2011, the Secretary of State's Department set up the audit and risk committee with a commitment to publish minutes of its meetings within three months. The last note of any meeting of that committee published on its website is from February 2011. Is that international leadership or the same cloak of secrecy that prevents him from publishing the transition risk register?
Mr Lansley: When the right hon. Gentleman was a Minister he and his colleagues never published such information, so I will not take any lessons on that. As a Treasury Minister, he refused to disclose a Treasury risk register.
Let me explain what risk registers are for, because an hon. Lady on the Opposition Benches keeps chuntering about them. A high-level risk register, such as those being considered by the tribunal on 5 and 6 March, is a continuously reviewed and updated document that enables officials, advisers and Ministers to identify and analyse the risks of, and to, particular policies. Risk registers present a snapshot of the possible risks involved at any one time. Their purpose is to record all risks, however outlandish or unlikely, both real and potential, and to record the mitigating actions that can ensure that such risks do not become reality.
For such a register to be effective and for it to serve the public interest, those charged with compiling it must be as forthright as possible in their views. The language of risk registers must be forceful and direct. That is essential for their operation, to enable Ministers and officials fully to appreciate those risks and to take the steps to mitigate them, or to redesign policy to avoid them.
It is important to note that such high-level risk registers are different to the risk registers of the organisations from which the shadow Secretary of State quoted, such as the risk registers of strategic health authorities. The latter concern operational matters and not matters of developing and designing policy, and they are written with publication in mind—they are intended to be published. By contrast, there are very clear reasons why Departments—under not just this Government, but previous ones—do not publish their high-level risk registers while they are still active and while policy development is ongoing.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD): The Justice Committee is currently inquiring into the workings of the Freedom of Information Act. It must identify where the proper boundary lines should fall to protect the ability of civil servants to advise Ministers, but that must be set in the context of legislation that the Government have committed themselves to supporting, and which the previous Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has now publicly disowned.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 902
Mr Lansley: I entirely understand my right hon. Friend. My colleagues and I very much look forward to the conclusions of the Justice Committee’s post-legislative scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD) rose —
Mr Lansley: Further advice from my right hon. Friend, not only to me but to the Prime Minister, is always welcome.
Simon Hughes: I defend the Government’s record on the openness of information, and I am a clear believer that the Freedom of Information Act, which I and many Liberal Democrats supported, is the right way forward. Will the Secretary of State therefore confirm that the Government are doing nothing other than following the policy provided for in the Act, which is that when there is a dispute, including when the Government and the Information Commissioner have a different view, the matter properly goes to the tribunal, and the Government respond positively to the tribunal’s decision?
Mr Lansley: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because I had not intended to quote the Information Commissioner, who wrote an article in The Observer in which he rightly states that he is not infallible. The Government have the right to appeal to the tribunal and we have exercised that right. The tribunal is a proper place in which the public interest test can be applied.
Let me return to the reasons why we do not publish high-level risk registers, the first of which is candour. To be effective, a risk register requires all involved—not necessarily the officials responsible for the policy, but others—to be frank and open about the potential risks involved. It is their job to think the unthinkable and to look at worst-case scenarios. It is vital that nothing is done to inhibit the process of identifying risk. If people are in doubt about the confidentiality of their views, they will inevitably think twice before committing themselves to such direct and candid language in future. Without full candour, risk registers across the Government would be bland and anodyne. In effect, they would cease to be of practical value. Inevitably as a consequence, that would lead to a reduction in the quality of advice given to Ministers.
The second reason is that disclosure can increase the likelihood of some risks happening—it is like a self-fulfilling prophesy. When some risks are made public, those potentially affected are likely to act in a way that could increase the likelihood of the risk actually happening. Let us imagine publishing the risk registers of banks—no doubt the shadow Secretary of State would tell us that the risk registers of banks owned by the Government should be published. The consequence of publishing such risks would be to precipitate financial events.
Lord Turnbull, former head of the civil service, and not under this Government, said in another place:
“Managers might be reluctant to be frank in public about operational difficulties if that would undermine their ability to make contingency plans or could trigger an event before their plans are ready.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 December 2011; Vol. 733, c. 729.]
The purpose of a risk register is to secure mitigation of those risks, not to precipitate them.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 903
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab): To see a sick baby survive in a specialist neo-natal unit is a joy; to lose a sick baby is a tragedy. Does the Secretary of State understand the concern expressed by Bliss, which represents the parents concerned, at more than 140 specialist nurses going, and at the risk and uncertainty inherent in the Government’s proposals? Will he agree to meet Bliss and me so that he can hear first hand the concerns of the parents?
Mr Lansley: I hope the hon. Gentleman knows that I attended Bliss receptions under the previous Government, at which it raised exactly the same issue.
Jack Dromey: So you have never met Bliss.
Mr Lansley: I have met Bliss—I just said so—and we discussed exactly those kind of issues. I would happily do so again.
The objective of the NHS—this is precisely what we have set out in our focus on outcomes—is to ensure that we seek a continuously improving quality of service for patients. I have many times been on specialist neo-natal intensive care units precisely to understand that. I remember having a long discussion just last year with the staff, including the neo-natal staff, at my local hospital, Addenbrooke’s, and hearing of the importance to them of recruiting an additional neo-natal nursing complement to ensure that they provide the right service. That is nothing to do with the Bill. It is about focusing in the service on delivering quality. That is why we are getting resources into the front line.
The third reason is that the publication of a risk register could take away directly or distract from policy development—the process that it is intended to support. Departmental officials and Ministers should work directly to deliver the policy rather than react to the risks associated with the development of policy before the policy has been agreed.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD): Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Lansley: I will give way in a moment.
Fourthly, the publication of the risk register would distort rather than enhance public debate. We should remember that a risk register does not express the risks of not pursuing the policy—[ Interruption. ] Hon. Members should think about it. A risk register does not include the risks of not pursuing a policy and ignores the benefits of a policy—it presents only one side of the cost-benefit equation and is deliberately negative. Effectively, it is a “devil’s advocate” document, not a balanced one.
What is the balanced document associated the Bill? The impact assessment. I have with me a summary of the impact assessment, but there are hundreds more pages. We incorporate all relevant information in the impact assessment because it not only captures the same risks, but puts them alongside the benefits, costs and impacts, including the impact of not taking action.
The impact assessment is the proper evidential and informative basis for parliamentary and public debate. If any hon. Member is in any doubt about the public interest served by not releasing the risk register, I remind them of the advice received by the House nearly five
22 Feb 2012 : Column 904
years ago from the shadow Secretary of State. The argument that he put was precisely the argument that we are now putting.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD): When pressed earlier, the shadow Secretary of State seemed to recognise some of the issues. He said that the publication of any document should be considered on its merits. May I invite the Secretary of State to stand by a simple principle and ensure that his Department always honours the full terms of the Freedom of Information Act?
Mr Lansley: We will, of course, fully abide by the terms of the Act. As my hon. Friend knows, and as the Information Commissioner himself said, we are proceeding precisely in line with the provisions of the Act.
Andy Burnham: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Lansley: Let me make one additional point, and then I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman—again.
All the information was in the original impact assessment. Information was put into the revised impact assessment in September, as is customary on the introduction of a Bill to another place, but in recognition of the Information Commissioner’s decision on 2 November, the Minister in another place, my noble Friend Lord Howe, described—[Interruption.] I will if I need to, but I do not intend to read it all out. He set out the issues covered by the transition risk register to make Members in the other place aware of precisely what those risks were.
Andy Burnham: As I mentioned, there is a precedent here under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. I refer to the request for the risk register on the Heathrow runway. The Information Commissioner having ruled on it, the previous Government published the register. The Government are not following that precedent but instead fighting it in a tribunal. If, on 5 and 6 March, the tribunal does not find in the Government’s favour, will he publish the risk register, or will he carry on fighting?
Mr Lansley: I heard the right hon. Gentleman mention his precedent, but it was not a precedent, because that was a risk register relating to an operational matter. I explained to him that the risk registers published by strategic health authorities relate to operational matters.
Andy Burnham: This is operational.
Mr Lansley: No, the risk register that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about relates to policy development, not an operational matter. It is a high-level risk register akin to others across Government that, if published, would be prejudicial to frank advice in policy development. [Interruption.] I am only repeating the position that he took when Secretary of State. Let me quote him:
“We have determined that the balance of public interest strongly favours withholding the information”.
I will take his advice and stick to my view: the release of the risk register does not serve the public interest, even if it might serve his political interest to make a song and dance about it. I have been clear about it, as has my
22 Feb 2012 : Column 905
noble Friend. The information on which any debate about the Bill should be conducted is already in the public domain.
Rehman Chishti: Will the Secretary of State clarify something? The point made by the shadow Secretary of State is complete nonsense. For him to give a commitment on something that might happen at a tribunal is bizarre, because the Secretary of State can use the rules under section 59 of the Freedom of Information Act to appeal to the High Court on a point of law. So he cannot give that commitment.
Mr Lansley: I bow to my hon. Friend on the procedures under the Freedom of Information Act. We have made it very clear that we are proceeding as the Act provides, as the Information Commissioner himself set out. I want to make it clear to the House that there is no information that it would be proper for the other place to have access to when considering the legislation, that it does not already have access to. The tribunal will be an opportunity not for politicians but for the likes of Lord O’Donnell, the former head of the home civil service, to set out clearly the process by which the free and frank expression of advice to Ministers in policy development needs to be protected under the Act.
I will tell the House about some of the risks that the NHS faced. It faced risks relating to the £67 billion private finance initiative repayment bill left to us by the right hon. Gentleman. He talks about hospitals being under threat, but we have had to offer exceptional financial support to seven hospitals to help them to back up their PFIs. Members might be interested to know that when I announced that decision on 3 February—just a fortnight or so ago—the shadow Secretary of State, who puts his view of these things on Twitter, wrote:
“I didn’t sign them off.”
He did not even use 140 characters. He managed it in even fewer. He said he didn’t sign them off—but oh yes, he did. What about Whiston hospital in St Helens and Knowsley? He signed that off. It is a pathetic attempt to escape responsibility for leaving the NHS in debt. [Interruption.] Oh, he is blaming his junior Minister now. It had nothing to do with him! When he refused to release the departmental risk register back in 2009, did he do that, or is he going to blame one of his junior Ministers? I have such excellent Ministers that I will never have to blame them for anything, but frankly I would never attempt to do so, and I hope they know that.
Grahame M. Morris: Will the Secretary of State give way?
The NHS faced the serious risk under Labour of declining productivity, as has been so powerfully illustrated. Labour turned a blind eye to inefficiency. The reason why we have to plug a £20 billion productivity black hole in the NHS is that Labour let productivity fall year on year before the election. We are pushing productivity up, and already efficiency gains of £7 billion have been delivered.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con):
My right hon. Friend cited the large PFI contracts that the Labour party landed us with. Does he agree that those contracts
22 Feb 2012 : Column 906
have put under threat not only the PFI hospitals themselves but wider health economies and smaller district general hospitals, such as the George Eliot in my constituency? They have been affected too.
Mr Lansley: My hon. Friend makes an important point that I understand precisely. He has been a strong advocate on behalf of not only George Eliot hospital but the whole health service in his constituency. I appreciate that.
I shall give a practical example. When I was at the Stobart centre meeting hundreds of general practitioners from across the north-west, those from St Helens said, “We’re really worried about Whiston hospital”—a PFI approved by the previous Secretary of State—“and we can’t deliver the service that we want to for our patients, because all the money will be eaten up by the PFI project at Whiston.” That is precisely why we are tackling the risks that we inherited from Labour.
The NHS also faces risks from Labour’s failed approach to public health. Under Labour, public health budgets were raided and alcohol-related admissions to accident and emergency departments, and levels of obesity and sexually transmitted infections, all rose sharply. I was staggered to hear the Leader of the Opposition talking about fragmentation of sexual health services at the last election. The last Conservative Government—I hope that my coalition colleagues will forgive me for a moment, because I am talking about the Conservative Government before the Labour Government—acted on sexual health, not least in relation to HIV. As a consequence, not only were HIV rates among the lowest anywhere in Europe but sexual infection rates fell for a decade. After the 1997 election the Labour party failed on sexual health, and sexual infection rates rose for a decade. Labour’s position has no basis. We had some of the highest HIV rates at the end of the previous Government’s term. It is outrageous. The Opposition have completely wiped out their recognition of what went wrong under the Labour Government, including on sexual health matters. That is why we are dealing with those risks.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con) rose —
Mr Lansley: I will mention one more risk, and then give way to my hon. Friend.
There is one more risk: Labour’s IT programme—not a small risk, but a risk of £7.4 billion-worth of contracts, and a risk not just of money not being spent properly or being wasted, but of the opportunity cost to the NHS of not getting high-quality IT in place. This morning I had the pleasure of launching a “Maps and apps” event, showing how we are promoting the use of the latest technologies across the NHS, not on the basis of the Government saying, “Here’s the single app that everybody must use in the NHS: it’s a centralised system,” but by allowing literally hundreds of people—enterprising people from across the NHS and beyond—to bring in new technology applications for the benefit of patients and clinicians across the service.
Henry Smith: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Going back to the Labour PFI burden that we have been left with, can he confirm a figure that I heard recently, which is that the burden on the NHS budget amounts to about £3,000 a minute?
22 Feb 2012 : Column 907
Mr Lansley: I am sorry, but I cannot confirm that, short of being able to do that calculation very quickly in my head, but the simple fact is that a £67 billion commitment was made for the future. It is staggering that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and his colleagues used to say, “Look, we’re spending more than ever on the NHS,” and, “Look at all these brand new hospitals”—102 hospital projects. One might have thought that they were spending more than ever in order to build the hospitals. It turned out that they were not even building the hospitals with the money that the taxpayer was providing. The last Government left an enormous post-dated cheque for the NHS to deal with after the election, when they left a deficit for the whole of this country—a country mired in debt by a Labour Government and an NHS with a £67 billion debt around its neck.
There is one more risk that the Labour Government left us with: the escalating cost of bureaucracy. The right hon. Gentleman was in charge of the NHS in the year before the election. The cost of bureaucracy in the NHS in that year went up 23%. At the same moment that he was telling the NHS that there was going to be a £20 billion black hole, he launched the so-called Nicholson challenge, to save up to £20 billion. We did not launch it; it was launched when he was—[ Interruption. ] Actually, it was launched when the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle was the Secretary of State, but it was pursued when the right hon. Member for Leigh was the Secretary of State, and at the same time he allowed the cost of bureaucracy to go up by 23%.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con): There is a further risk to my constituents in Ipswich as a result of the PFI scheme in the east of England, which is that services had to be stripped out of Ipswich hospital in order to provide funding and patient flow through Norfolk and Norwich hospital, which was the largest PFI scheme at the time.
Mr Lansley: It was, and it was staggering—my hon. Friend will remember this—that all the difficulties associated with building the Norfolk and Norwich PFI were evident to the last Government and yet they carried on. They carried on signing up to PFI projects that were frankly unsustainable, including, for example, the project in Peterborough—which, sadly, we had to include in the support that we are offering to unsustainable PFIs—which was signed off although Monitor had written to the Department to say that it did not support the project. I do not know, but perhaps the shadow Secretary of State wants to say something about that.
From my point of view, that is why we need to reform the NHS. It is why we were in the position of undertaking the work as the risk register was being published, because we had to avoid all those risks, reform the NHS and move forward to put doctors and nurses in charge, give patients and the public more control, strengthen public health services and cut bureaucracy.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) rose —
Mr Lansley: I had better give way now, and then that will be the end of it.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 908
Charlie Elphicke: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way; he has been very generous with interventions today. I am proud of what this Government have been doing for the NHS. Indeed, we can see what happens when we protect NHS spending and when we have a cancer drugs fund. We do not need a risk register to see the difference that that makes; we can just look at Wales, where waiting times are rising and cancer patients are being denied access to life-saving drugs and having to wait longer. That is the benefit of the Conservative policies in England.
Mr Lansley: My hon. Friend is safely in Dover, a long way from Wales, when he says these things, but I go to Wales and he is absolutely right. It is staggering. The right hon. Member for Leigh and his colleagues can stand there and say, “Oh, well, you know, it’s only”—what is it?—“8% of patients who are not being seen within 18 weeks.” In Wales it is 32% of patients who are not being seen—
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab): In Wales!
Mr Lansley: If the hon. Lady wants more, I will give her more. In this country—in England—we are increasing the NHS budget, despite the fact that her right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh said it would be irresponsible of us to do so. We are increasing the NHS budget in this Parliament in real terms each year. In Wales—
Mr Lansley: Perhaps the hon. Lady ought to talk to her friends from Wales, because she is deriding Wales. The Wales Audit Office said that the Labour Government there were going to cut the NHS budget in Wales by over 6% in the course of this Parliament. The Wales Audit Office said that on present trends, by 2014-15—before the next election—expenditure on the NHS would be lower in Wales, under Labour, than in any other part of the United Kingdom. Come the next election, it will be Labour that has to defend its neglect of the NHS in Wales, while we in the coalition Government will be able, together, to defend and promote our stewardship of the NHS, including resources for the NHS.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. As Opposition Front Benchers mock the statistics about Wales, my constituents, sadly, have to experience the performance of the NHS in Wales. Is it not the case that the ultimate risk to the NHS is Labour management of it, which is what my constituents have to put up with?
Mr Lansley: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why, according to the latest work force data, we have increased the number of clinical staff since the election by some 4,500 and reduced the number of administrative staff by some 15,000, including 5,800 fewer managers. The risks of not modernising the national health service are the greatest risks. Without clinical leadership, patients sharing in decision making or a relentless focus on improving outcomes, patients would have received worse care, and the changes needed to save and reinvest £20 billion across the NHS budget over four years would never have been achieved.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 909
Barbara Keeley: Will the Secretary of State give way?
The Health and Social Care Bill underpins those reforms. We need to safeguard the NHS for future generations. The Bill does simple things—many things, but simple things. It cuts out two tiers of bureaucracy. It empowers the NHS Commissioning Board, which we promised in our manifesto. It empowers clinical leaders in local commissioning groups, which we promised in our manifesto. It empowers patient choice and voice, which we and Labour promised in our manifestos, but which only we are doing and Labour is now against. The Bill supports foundation trusts, which Labour said it was in favour of, but which we are going to act on. It introduces local democratic accountability, which the Liberal Democrats promised in their manifesto. It creates new, strong duties to improve quality continuously, reduce health inequalities, promote research and, yes, integrate services around the needs of patients. No fragmentation, no failure to connect up; for the first time, integration as part of the responsibilities, including those of Monitor; no change to NHS values; no undermining of the NHS constitution; strengthening the NHS constitution; free at the point of use, based on need; no privatisation, no charging—
Mr Lansley: I will give way shortly.
The only change in the legislation in relation to the private sector is that the Health and Social Care Bill outlaws discrimination in favour of the private sector, which is what happened under the Labour Government, when the private sector treatment centres got 11% more cash for operations and £250 million for operations that they never performed. Perhaps the hon. Lady will explain that.
Barbara Keeley: I thank the Secretary of State for giving way—eventually. I want to get back to the risk register, which is the topic of this debate. I understand that staff from McKinsey and Co. attended meetings of the extraordinary NHS management board, which was set up to implement the Health and Social Care Bill. Can the Secretary of State tell us what parts of the transition risk register McKinsey and Co. has been given access to?
Mr Lansley: I am not aware of McKinsey getting any access to it, and I have to tell the hon. Lady that since the general election, I can personally say that I have not met McKinsey, so if it is involved in any of this stuff, it is not involved in it with me.
Mr Lansley: No, I am not giving way again.
I asked about expenditure by the Department of Health on contracts with McKinsey, because I read about it in the paper and I thought, “Well what’s this all about?” I was told, “Ah, well, £5.2 million was paid to McKinsey in May 2010,” because it related to work done before the election—work done for Labour.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab): Will the Secretary of State give way?
22 Feb 2012 : Column 910
I asked, “How much money has the Department of Health spent on contracts with McKinsey since the election?” The answer is £390,000. Well, I know McKinsey well enough from the past to know that we do not get an awful lot of advice for £390,000.
Mr Lansley: No, I am not giving way.
Before the election, in 2009-10 when the right hon. Member for Leigh was Secretary of State, more than £100 million a year was spent by the Department of Health on management consultants; now less than £10 million is being spent on them, so we will take no lessons from the right hon. Gentleman.
We are managing the risks to the NHS. We have delivered £7 billion of efficiency savings and recruited 4,000 extra doctors, and there are 896 more midwives in the NHS than there were at the last election. We have cut the number of managers, 900,000 more people have gained access to an NHS dentist, and nearly 11,000 patients have had access to cancer medicines through the cancer drugs fund, which they would not have had under Labour. As I have said, waiting times are down, mixed-sex accommodation is down, and hospital infections such as MRSA and C. difficile are at record lows.
That is the progress we are seeing in the NHS today, but instead of celebrating it, the right hon. Member for Leigh has brought us a pointless debate. He talks about risk registers, which he himself refused to release. The debate is pointless, as the issue will come before the tribunal on 5 and 6 March, which is the proper place to examine these issues. It is a waste of Labour’s parliamentary time in an opportunistic attempt to divert attention from its lack of any alternative to the reform processes that the coalition Government are putting forward for the NHS. It is a futile motion, a pointless debate on Labour’s part, while we are supporting the NHS with reform through a Bill that has had unprecedented scrutiny. It has been consulted on through the NHS Future Forum, and through other routes continuously with thousands of NHS staff across the country, and we have listened and responded to everything they said. We are taking the responsible route by taking the NHS away from Labour risks towards a stronger future. I urge the House to reject the Labour motion.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): Order. Will Members please resume their seats? I am introducing a seven-minute limit, with the usual injury time for up to two interventions. Clearly there is a lot of interest in this debate, and if Members do not use up their full seven minutes, I am sure it will be greatly appreciated by Members towards the end of the list of speakers.
2.42 pm
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab):
The last time we saw the Government circling the wagons like this, it was in defence of the poll tax. Those present at the time will remember the fanaticism of the
22 Feb 2012 : Column 911
Conservative Back Benchers supporting a policy that was ultimately doomed. It is impossible not to feel sorry for the Secretary of State for Health. Nobody has ever coveted the position of Health Secretary for so long and then failed in it so quickly. The publication of the transition risk register will, I am sure, make his position even more untenable, but I doubt whether it will change anybody’s mind about this Bill.
For Government Members, I am afraid that the die is cast. They have a millstone around their neck called the Health and Social Care Bill, and they have to decide whether to carry on with the millstone or to take the difficult decision of unburdening themselves of it. As my former right hon. Friend, Alan Milburn, said in possibly the best description of this Bill, it is
“a patchwork quilt of complexity, compromise and confusion”.
Conservative Members will, I am sure, have deep concerns about how this issue has been handled. Some of them might agree with the Tory matinee idol, Daniel Hannan, who said that the NHS was a 60-year mistake, but I doubt whether that is the view of the majority of them. Indeed, I think they would have signed up to the principles set out in the coalition agreement. There is not much wrong with those principles, including that of no further top-down reorganisations. Now, however, they are forced by the political incompetence of their Secretary of State to turn this argument into a touchstone issue—if someone is in favour of the Bill, they are in favour of reform in the NHS; if someone is against the Bill, they are against reform of the NHS. Nothing could be further from the truth. [Interruption.] I see the nodding dogs on the Parliamentary Private Secretary Bench agreeing with that proposition.
I do not oppose this Bill because it aids reform. I do not oppose it because it will make no difference. I oppose it because it will hamper the reforms that the NHS badly needs at this stage of its development, and I suspect that the risk register will reinforce that belief.
Charlie Elphicke: On 31 July 2008 and on 17 September 2008, the right hon. Gentleman decided not to release risk registers or risk assessments. Why was he right then and the Secretary of State wrong now?
Alan Johnson: I see that the Whips’ brief dragged up something I did in a previous life. [Interruption.] The risk register is, with respect, a second-order issue. I cannot understand why the Health Secretary does not publish it. He is in enough trouble already, and the Government are in enough trouble already without adding an issue of transparency that simply makes the situation worse.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con) rose —
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) rose —
Alan Johnson: I will give way again later.
The most important reforms that are necessary now are to integrate health and social care, to improve care for people with long-term conditions and to move from a hospital-based service that was designed for a different age. All three reforms—
22 Feb 2012 : Column 912
Richard Graham: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As the business of the day is specifically focused on the publication of the NHS risk register, is it in order to describe the register as a secondary issue?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): May I advise all Members that they should not resort to a device such as this, as it is an argument in continuation of the debate. Many Back Benchers want to get into the debate, so Members should not misuse points of order. That was not a point of order for the Chair.
Alan Johnson: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I believe I heard the Secretary of State say that he did not really want to talk about the risk register, and neither do I, but I think it is important to the Government’s basic problem and the threat to the national health service.
Three important and interlinked reforms can be summed up in five words: “better outcomes for lower costs”. Does the private sector have a role? Of course it does.
Let me say a word about the introduction of independent treatment centres, which seem to have been used by some in this debate to suggest that this Bill simply carries forward policies pursued by the Labour Government. ITCs were introduced to deal with the perennial problem in the NHS—long waiting lists. We should remember that in the late 1990s about one in 25 people on the cardiac waiting list died before they were operated on. Rudolf Klein, in his seminal history of the NHS, said that ever since it was created, there has been a tail of around 600,000 people on waiting lists. He said that the captain shouted his order from the bridge and the crew carried on regardless.
In 1995, after 16 years in power, the Government before the last one decided to reduce the guaranteed in-patient waiting time under the citizens charter from two years to 18 months. That was the best they could do after being so long in power. For us, it was an absolute priority. Let me say to Members of all parties that independent treatment centres transformed behaviour in the NHS. Suddenly, it became possible for surgeons to operate on Fridays and on Saturday mornings as hospitals reacted to the threat of competition.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend agree that performance in the NHS was transformed only because the NHS published clear data on the costs and outcomes of procedures in independent treatment centres, compared with those in other NHS hospitals? If the present Government do not publish comparable information from all providers, including private providers, we will get chaos, confusion, declining standards of care and rising costs.
Alan Johnson: My hon. Friend makes an important point.
As Health Secretary, I cancelled ITC contracts where there was sufficient NHS capacity, and I approved them where there was not. I recall a visit to the Derwent centre in Bournemouth, where the NHS had taken over a hospital from BUPA and was doing knee and hip replacements more quickly than the private sector. That transformed elective surgery, but although competition is good for elective surgery it is far less important than
22 Feb 2012 : Column 913
collaboration in managing chronic disease. I agree with the NHS Future Forum, which said in a report last year:
“The place of competition should be as a tool for supporting choice, promoting integration and improving quality. It should never be… an end in itself.”
The NHS is not a collection of separate and autonomous units of varying degrees of independence, responding to the invisible hand of the market. It is, above all, an integrated health care system. The fear of the vast majority of clinicians is that the Bill will damage that crucial principle.
Alan Johnson: I shall not be taking an intervention from the hon. Gentleman.
When it comes to integrating social care with health, people want an adult social care system that resembles the NHS, not an NHS that resembles the current adult social care system. The very real fears about the Bill, particularly in respect of commissioning, were highlighted recently by the Health Committee. If the necessary economies are to be made, the provision of health and social care must be planned together, and, despite its title, the Bill is hindering that process. Yes, it includes the word “integration”, at a late stage, but the word just sits there doing nothing more than suggest that this is the spirit that the Bill will introduce, and it is not.
The one sensible decision made by the Health Secretary was the one to retain the services of Sir David Nicholson as chief executive of the NHS. The goal of achieving efficiency savings of 4% a year to reinvest in patient services is a noble one, but its achievement will be particularly difficult for the acute sector. What seems to be happening at present is that hospitals are cutting services to save money. What needs to happen, and what the Nicholson challenge envisaged, is the transformation of services to eliminate waste by, for instance, reducing readmissions and bringing care much closer to the patient. Of the £80 billion spent by PCTs in 2009-10, nearly half went to hospitals, the most expensive form of care, while primary care received only a quarter.
When I asked the distinguished colorectal surgeon Ara Darzi to lead 2,000 clinicians in moving the NHS to the next stage of its development by focusing remorselessly on quality, he produced a report that was radical in its concept if a little boring in its detail. Government Members could do with a bit of “dull and boring” on the NHS at the moment. The proposals required no reorganisation and very little legislation.
At that time, the Conservative party was promising a bare-knuckle fight to defend the district general hospital, and siding with the British Medical Association to stop patients accessing GP surgeries later in the day and on Saturday mornings. If the Nicholson challenge is to work, it must be accepted that the vision of the district general hospital as all-singing, all-dancing, and capable of providing all clinical procedures must change. There is no political leadership on that, there is no leadership from the Government—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): Order. I call Mike Freer.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 914
2.53 pm
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con): The issues underpinning the debate are purely ideological, and no amount of amendment—[Interruption.] Exactly. It is not about making the NHS better; it is about purely ideological opposition to reform.
Richard Graham: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) did not do.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the speech we have just heard from the right hon. Gentleman had nothing whatsoever to do with the motion under discussion? He did not mention the NHS risk register once, except to say that it was a “secondary issue”. To all the rest of us here, it is “the” issue under discussion. Was not the right hon. Gentleman’s speech simply a whitewash of his own time as Secretary of State for Health?
Mike Freer: My hon. Friend has made a very good point. The issues that have been raised have nothing to do with the risk register. This is simply a new stick with which to beat the Government. No amount of amendment and no amount of rational argument will appease those who are simply philosophically opposed to reform of the NHS.
Jack Dromey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mike Freer: I will give way later. I want to make a little progress first.
I do not believe that the Opposition’s call for publication is remotely to do with transparency. If it were, they would themselves have published risk registers in the past. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said earlier that the present was not the same as the past, and that the past had not involved major reorganisations. Let me refresh his memory. In 2008 and 2009, in London, there was a major reorganisation of hyper-acute stroke units and a major reorganisation of major trauma centres. When the clinicians and the public opposed that action, what did NHS London do? It did not make the risk register public; it did not make details of all the risks fully available so that we could make an informed judgment, as the Opposition are trying to persuade us to do. It simply rewrote the consultation results, and what did it say? “The consultation results from the people of Barnet were inconvenient, and we are therefore inserting a new chapter so that we can ignore the clinicians and the patients.” That is the track record of the Labour party.
The Opposition may come to regret—
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mike Freer: I said earlier that I would give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey).
Jack Dromey: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. When he stood for election and went to the good people of Finchley and Golders Green—the doctors and the nurses in the constituency that he now represents—did he say to them, “Vote for me, and we will undertake a top-down reorganisation of the national health service”?
22 Feb 2012 : Column 915
Mike Freer: I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I did say. When I met GPs, I said that I would support putting patients first. Moreover, reform of the NHS was clearly specified in the Conservative manifesto on which I stood.
The previous Government sought to involve the private sector. Where was the risk register then? Was it published when the private sector was involved in the NHS? No, it was not. Will we get to see that risk register now? I doubt it.
Risk registers are, by definition, meant to explore everything that could possibly go wrong. They never make happy reading. The Secretary of State has already published more information than has ever been published before. He has already published relevant risks connected with the Health and Social Care Bill in the combined impact assessments, which consist of 400 pages of detailed analysis. The Opposition see the release of the risk register as simply an opportunity to cherry-pick the doomsday scenarios that it may contain. It is no more than a charter for shroud-waving. Every risk register contains such scenarios, and opponents would present them as fact.
I oppose the publication of risk registers because it would be impossible to pick and choose which were to be published and which were not. Once the Pandora’s box has been opened, it is open. The Opposition may argue that the publication of this risk register is in the public or the national interest. No doubt Department of Health risk registers examine what could go wrong, as in the case of other threats. What about threats relating to terrorism or outbreaks of infectious diseases?
Clive Efford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mike Freer: I have already given way twice.
There are clearly good reasons why the details of such threats should not be open to public scrutiny. Some might argue that their publication too is in the public or national interest, but we are not hearing that argument today; we are hearing only about this register, and not about the others. The Opposition’s stance is strong on opportunism and weak on intellectual coherence.
Let us look at their record in government. In 2009, when the shadow Health Secretary was Health Secretary, he refused a freedom of information request for publication of the Department’s strategic risk register. According to the Department,
“'a public authority is exempt from releasing information, which is or would be likely to inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or the free and frank exchanges of views for the purpose of deliberation'”.
There was also reference to the neutering of the free exchange of opinions between Ministers and advisers. That held then, and it holds now.
There is another issue, which was touched on by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. If the Department of Health is forced to issue all risk registers, what about other Departments? Will the Treasury have to release all risk registers involving the economy? Would that not cause financial havoc in the international markets? That explains why past Administrations have also refused to publish such documents. From a governance perspective, the Government’s stance is entirely right.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 916
One of the problems of risk registers is that they are meant to be frank about what could go wrong. Any Member who has served on a project board will know how valuable such registers can be and how invaluable completely blank ones can be, and will also know that if the authors of risk registers are afraid to be open because of what might be misinterpreted, routine publication will cause them to become bland and anodyne and will render them useless.
The motion is simply posturing at its worst, and I will be voting “No” this evening.
3 pm
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab): I should like to tell the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) that it is hard to take seriously all the points that he made, as the strategic health authority in London has published a risk register. I want to devote my contribution to that issue.
That risk register lists 18 areas of risk. It describes the risks to the improvement programmes agreed by the strategic health authority, including London’s contribution to the Government’s £20 billion efficiency savings, and to the public health transition programme, in which some mitigating actions would be beyond the direct control of NHS London. It goes on to list the risks involved in the transition to the reorganisation that the Government plan for the NHS. It makes devastating reading. I shall highlight a few of the 18 risk areas. On the risk to the efficiency savings and improvement plans, it says that they
“may not be realised in full or are delayed, thereby undermining significant improvements in the health of Londoners.”
On the public health transition, which involves NHS public health staff dispersing into local government, it says:
“The consequence of this risk would be a negative impact on the leadership and structure of the public health workforce, and thereby delivery of public health services.”
On the abolition of primary care trusts next year, it says that the result
“may be poor, both in securing the best health outcomes for London’s population and in maximising value for money.”
In all cases, I am quoting directly from the reports.
Sajid Javid: We have heard from two former Labour Health Secretaries, both of whom refused to release the risk register. Does the right hon. Lady think that they made the right decision?
Dame Joan Ruddock: The decision that was made was about strategic health risks, and reference was made to things such as nuclear war, climate change and pandemics. We are talking about the transition, and we want to see a risk register on that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said, the London risk register goes on to describe risks to the safeguarding of children and maternity services as creating possible harm to patients. On patient safety and clinical quality, it concludes that the risks are such that the consequence
“could be poor or unsafe care for patients and loss of public confidence in healthcare in London.”
I understand the argument made by Members from all parts of the House that the point of a risk register is to enable mitigation measures to be applied to those
22 Feb 2012 : Column 917
risks. That is exactly what the London document does, but in half the risk areas the original red risk is still red after the mitigation measures are proposed. In all areas, the risks after mitigation are still amber. That is an extraordinarily serious matter of which we have to take account when we look at how the planned reorganisation will affect the health of Londoners and of my constituents.
How is it possible, I ask the Secretary of State, for staff already under pressure to deliver more with less, to carry on doing their job against the change programme that their strategic managers believe poses such risks? With so many issues raised by the London risk register, is it any wonder that the British Medical Association, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Nursing have all called on the Government to publish their risk register, which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh pointed out, relates specifically to the transition required by the Health and Social Care Bill and, presumably, the very changes already under way that are forcing people to wait longer and most definitely undermining confidence in the service?
In Lewisham alone, nearly £21,000 has been spent reorganising the PCT, and now the number of those patients waiting more than 18 weeks has gone up by 73%. How can that be the improvement of which the Secretary of State speaks? Even more worrying for my constituents are the difficulties faced at Guy’s and St Thomas’ foundation trust, where the latest available figures showed that over 20% of patients urgently referred by their GPs and subsequently treated for cancer in those hospitals waited more than two months for hospital admission. I tell the Secretary of State that if I had a diagnosis of cancer, I would be terrified of waiting more than two months to begin my treatment.
I do not blame the Guy’s and St Thomas’ foundation trust, where I myself have had excellent treatment in both hospitals, but I do blame this Government. I blame them for this top-down reorganisation that is already under way at a time of straitened financial circumstances.
I could not end without paying tribute to two of my constituents—Jos Bell and Dr Brian Fisher—who have mounted a superb local campaign, with thousands and thousands of people signing their petition. In 2010, the NHS was shown by the World Health Organisation to be the most efficient health service, and one of the best health services in the world. Patient satisfaction in that year was at its highest ever rating. We now face rising waiting lists; a fragmented service; a focus on finance, profit and private patients; and poorer health outcomes for those of us who cannot pay or who refuse to pay for private health insurance. The Secretary of State, I suggest, faces two challenges: he should either publish that risk register and let us make our own decisions or, frankly, he should just drop the Bill.
3.7 pm
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD):
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock). In fact, I approach this debate in many of the same ways as the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). I will not speak for seven minutes on the suggestion that the debate is a sideshow, but if the information were
22 Feb 2012 : Column 918
published it would, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, be unlikely to change a single mind on the issue. That reflects our heated debates and the entrenched positions that people inevitably take. It is the nature of the process of politics—
Andrew George: I will give way in a moment. I want to make my philosophical point first. In contrast to academia, which begins with a question or inquiry, gathers evidence and comes to a considered opinion, the pity of politics is that we begin with a prejudice and backfill with the evidence that suits our case.
John Healey: The hon. Gentleman said that the publication of the transition risk register would not change one mind, but does he not accept that the Information Commissioner, who has read and studied the risk register, is of the view in his decision notice that it would aid public understanding of the reforms and help to reassure the public that all the risks have been properly considered?
Andrew George: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and I have signed the early-day motion supporting the release of the register. The biggest ever reorganisation of the NHS is being undertaken and it is best not to do that in the dark. It is best to have as much information available as possible. I am not suggesting that we are completely in the dark—[Interruption.] I am just saying that it is best to cast as much light as possible upon the information, so that we can have an informed debate, rather than a semi-informed one. He makes a good point about that.
I guess that publication will eventually result from this process, and I do not think it will help the Secretary of State or the Government if it is dragged out rather than conceded. If and when that happens, the Opposition and people who oppose the Bill will inevitably highlight worst-case scenarios and throw them at the Government, and the Government will inevitably look at the best-case scenarios. The nature of political debate will not be improved by this process, but I hope that debate will be better informed.
Much of the debate throughout the course of the Bill’s progress, a process in which I have been involved through the Select Committee and elsewhere, has been about trying to anticipate the effects of the reforms. It would be far better to try to anticipate these things on the basis of the best information given by people who are inside the service and providing that advice. That is why I believe the risk register should be published. The impact assessment perhaps represents the selected highlights of that process. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State may intervene on me, if he wishes to do so.
The underlying core concern—this is in the nature of how we examine these issues—is about whether publishing the risk register will negatively affect the technical delivery of Government policy and services or whether it will affect the political prospects of a party or those in government. The nature of this debate means that we assume that if publication is being resisted, it will have political rather than technical consequences. Obviously, if we thought that the risk register’s publication would have technical consequences for the effective delivery of
22 Feb 2012 : Column 919
government—that is the primary point that the Secretary of State is advancing—we would clearly need to think carefully about the release of such information.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House of the criteria the former Secretary of State used when he rejected publishing the register in 2009?
Andrew George: I am grateful for that intervention, because it plays into my next point, which is on my general concern about the nature of Opposition day debates. It is not that I think that Opposition parties should not have the opportunity to debate issues, but such debates tend to over-dramatise the political tribalism of this House. It is in the nature of government that when in government people tend to have to face up to and take unpopular decisions, whereas in opposition they tend to avoid them. Equally, on this issue, those in opposition tend to say that they would be more open, because they look at the matter from a different perspective and take the view that they would have more open government. When people come into government, they tend to err on the side of seeing good technical reasons for why they cannot engage in the process of open government.
Andrew George: I will give way, although I am going to lose time.
Clive Efford: I shall be brief. This transition risk register refers specifically to the Bill, about which there is widespread concern. The register is unprecedented in that regard so, with due respect to the hon. Gentleman, his argument really does not hold.
Andrew George: I am cantering around the issues. I have signed the early-day motion, so I judge that disclosure is better than non-disclosure. However, I wish to make a further point about the kid psychology of this whole thing. We all tend to want what we cannot have and if we obsess about this issue, we might take our eyes off the ball of what the debate ought to be about. That brings us back to the point made by the former Secretary of State.
I ask the Minister who is winding up: when has the disclosure of such documents actually harmed Government public services? If we were given examples of where disclosure of information has actually harmed the delivery of effective government, we could begin to mount a case for trying to define the lines of where and when such documents should be published. On the basis of the debate so far, I am not sure that we have demonstrated that if we were given the new toy in this political playground—the publication of the risk register—it would necessarily improve the quality of the debate.
Of course, the main show, rather than the sideshow, is the Bill itself. I am concerned that if the risk register were to be published soon, and we were to have information that would perhaps help to change people’s minds and enable a more informed debate, it would not be possible to come to a considered conclusion that it would be best to withdraw the Bill because of the nature of the prism of the Westminster village. Given the virility contest in
22 Feb 2012 : Column 920
which such decisions are taken, the climbdown needed for a Secretary of State to withdraw a Bill such as this would be catastrophic both for himself and for the Government. So we end up continuing on with something that I believe could be catastrophic for the NHS—I have put my views in the public domain on many occasions on this issue.
The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) may want to win over Liberal Democrats, but describing us as “spineless” will not necessarily get many of us into the Lobby with him. If he does not want to contaminate his party with people he believes are so infected with such a disabling condition, I am not sure that it will help.
3.17 pm
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab): It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), a fellow member of the Select Committee on Health.
Valerie Vaz: I thank the Minister for making his sedentary intervention.
Obviously, I rise to speak in favour of the motion and I humbly request the Secretary of State for Health to publish the risk register, as recommended by the Information Commissioner. I thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for taking up this issue. As most people will know from their e-mail inbox and their postbag, and from letters that have gone into various newspapers, the professionals are behind us, as are the public.
I have an image of the Cabinet sitting round the table singing the classic Irving Berlin song, “Anything you can do, I can do better”, as each Secretary of State tries to please the Prime Minister by showing how far they can go beyond what was agreed in the manifesto and the coalition agreement. The Secretary of State for Health, who obviously does not want to hear a good argument, is not so much nudging the NHS—to use his favourite phrase—but giving the NHS a great big shove off the end of the cliff; this is more about the chaos theory than the nudging theory. There is a fundamental flaw at the heart of his reasons not to publish the risk register, which is that it contains the information that the public need to see whether the decision that he has reached in the Bill is without risk to the NHS. The Information Commissioner has deemed this to be in the public interest but the Secretary of State chooses to hide it from the public. The public have a right to know that when a decision is taken in their name the relevant considerations have been taken into account. If this reorganisation goes wrong, as it is doing—the good people in the NHS who are working hard are leaving now—could that possibly amount to misfeasance in public office?
In the Health Committee, we have seen what can be done with co-operation. We visited Torbay and saw public sector leadership at its best. I have absolutely no idea who the staff there voted for—nor do I particularly care—but I know that they saw a system for elderly people that was not working, and they worked hard, not
22 Feb 2012 : Column 921
thinking about their pensions or asking for overtime, to devise a system in which there was one point of contact for elderly people. Under the system, the risk is shared, 50% with the NHS and 50% with the local authority. They devised a system with consistency of leadership and long-standing good relations across the system. A care package that might take eight months to deliver elsewhere can now be delivered in two hours. By spending £l million on community care, they saved the hospital £3 million. A seven-step referral is now down to two steps. All of that is at risk, however. The NHS and local authorities could learn from that good practice and evolve in that way.
Some people say that, as a result of the Bill, the people around the table will be the same; they will just have different titles. People need to know that the risk is not just about getting rid of managers. The Secretary of State might say that he is reducing the number of managers by making them redundant, but the NHS still needs some managers—so step forward McKinsey and KPMG to help the GPs who do not have, or might not want, management skills. Members of the public need to know the risk associated with the loss of expertise that has stayed in the public sector for the common good, but which will now be lost by the dismantling of structures.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab): My hon. Friend says that there is a danger that we will end up with the same people sitting around the table. Does she agree that the Government should publish the number of people who have been made redundant and received redundancy payments from PCTs, only to be re-engaged to work for clinical commissioning groups? What has that cost the NHS so far?
Valerie Vaz: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I have asked about this in a written question, and I have not had an answer. This is fiscal incompetence.
The public need to know that this is not GP fundholding revisited. They also need to know that, when they visit their GP, as my constituent Inayat did, the decision whether to prescribe antibiotics will be made on the basis of clinical need, not as a result of financial pressures. When Mrs Bennett needs to go to the Manor hospital, she needs to know that she will be next on the list, and that she will not be giving her place to someone who is able to pay, as a result of the cap being raised to 49%.
People need to know that when Nick Black wrote in The Lancet that productivity in the NHS had risen in the past 10 years, he ended his article by saying that he had no conflicts of interest. He was right, and the Secretary of State is wrong. The Secretary of State might not have taken into account relevant considerations when he declared that productivity had fallen. The public need to know of the risk that the Bill will be taking in replacing lines of management. At the moment, we have the Secretary of State, the Department of Health, strategic health authorities and PCTs. We are going to have the Department of Health, the NHS Commissioning Board, clustered SHAs, 50 commissioning support groups, 300-ish clinical commissioning groups, clinical senates, Health Watch—and, I could add, a partridge in a pear tree.
Thanks to the House of Commons Library and the Public Bill Office, I can tell the House that the Bill has had 1,736 amendments: 474 in Committee, 184 on
22 Feb 2012 : Column 922
recommittal and 1,078 on Report. The Bill Committee divided 100 times—the first time that that has ever happened. This is a bad piece of legislation. The public need to know the risks to the taxpayer. They need to know that costs have been saved, and not just shifted to another level or outsourced.
We are in this place to serve the people of this country. History does not judge kindly those who do not act in the public interest, and people will not forgive those who save face by continuing with the Bill only for reasons of vanity. The risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill should be published. The Information Commissioner has decided that that is in the public interest. The people want it and should have it. I support the motion.
3.24 pm
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow two of my fellow Health Committee members. The Chairman of the Committee wrote to the Secretary of State on 16 November 2011 to ask for the Government’s reasons for not publishing the risk register. In response, the Secretary of State wrote:
“It is important to understand that the risk register sets out all of the potential risks identified by the Department of Health for the entire range of areas for which it is responsible. These include financial risks, policy risks and sensitive contractual risks. It is a means by which the Department focuses on risks and acts to mitigate them. If the Department were to release risk registers in the future, there is a genuine possibility that the most significant risks will no longer be recorded, and no solution or mitigating action will therefore be identified. Any action that could deter staff from articulating and addressing business risk to their senior management and ministers carries with it the potential for highly damaging consequences.”
That is remarkably similarly to an answer given in Hansard on 23 March 2007 by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) in response to a parliamentary question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). The right hon. Gentleman stated that the Department’s risk register dealt with
“emerging risks to the Department’s programme and the national health service, and what can be done to control and mitigate these risks. It also informs discussions between the Department and top management in the NHS about addressing key issues in policy, resourcing and service management. Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers. We therefore cannot agree to place a copy of the current version of the register in the Library.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1191W.]
We had a similar example on 31 July 2008, when the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) responded to a freedom of information request by stating:
“Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers.”
The Department of Health also refused a freedom of information request for copies of any presentations given by the director of public health concerned with the risk of not delivering on targets to reduce health inequalities, so it is not only risk registers that the Department has previously refused to reveal.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 923
Members have talked today about the risk register in apocalyptic terms, as though it were a document that should remain within the confines of MI5 or MI6. The Health Minister, Earl Howe, has revealed details of the broad issues that are covered by this risk register. I should like to read them out, so as to set the debate properly in context. They include:
“how best to manage the parliamentary passage of the Bill and the potential impact of Royal Assent being delayed on the transition in the NHS; how to co-ordinate planning so that changes happen in a co-ordinated fashion while maintaining financial control; how to ensure that the NHS takes appropriate steps during organisational change to maintain and improve quality; how to ensure that lines of accountability are clear in the new system and that different bodies work together effectively, including the risk of replicating what we already have; how to minimise disruption for staff and maintain morale during transition; how best to ensure financial control during transition, to minimise the costs of moving to a new system, and to ensure that the new system delivers future efficiencies; how to ensure that future commissioning plans are robust, and to maximise the capability of the future NHS Commissioning Board; how stakeholders should be engaged in developing and implementing the reforms; and finally, how to properly resource the teams responsible for implementing the changes”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 November 2011; Vol. 733, c. 16.]
John Healey: The hon. Gentleman is right to draw the House’s attention to that fact, but does he accept that that is information that has not been published elsewhere and that the Secretary of State’s argument that the impact assessments that have been published are sufficient therefore simply will not wash?
Chris Skidmore: It is interesting that the right hon. Gentleman raises that point, because Earl Howe was mentioning the transition risk register, which is continually updated. That is an important point, because the appeal to the Information Commissioner to release the risk register was made on 29 November 2010, in the autumn when the register was live. The Information Commissioner made his ruling based on the fact that there was an issue of public interest at the time of the request. If the risk register is released today, it will be the risk register from autumn 2010 rather than that from February 2012. That is the moment when the wheels come off the bandwagon. The Opposition are asking the Information Commissioner to release the risk register from autumn 2010, not the risk register from February 2012. The risk register that would be released is that from the time of the White Paper, before the changes were made and before the listening exercise. It is complete nonsense. If the document was released, it would be out of date, inaccurate and would scaremonger among the population.
John Healey: So the hon. Gentleman agrees with Lord Henley, the Minister in the House of Lords, who told the House in January that if the Government lose the appeal next month they will publish not only the risk register from November 2010 but the updated risk registers, too?
Chris Skidmore:
The Government do not have to publish the updated registers on the basis of the Information Commissioner’s verdict, which was on the autumn 2010 register. That is the Information Commissioner’s advice
22 Feb 2012 : Column 924
that is referred to in the motion. The Opposition are asking for an out-of-date document—we might as well give up and go home.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab): Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the comments made by David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS Commissioning Board, who said:
“I’ll not sit here and tell you that the risks have not gone up. They have”?
Chris Skidmore: I am, as I have the parliamentary Labour party brief—I can see that that is on the back of it.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con): My hon. Friend’s point about the Information Commissioner’s decision is vital, because the public interest test is the test applied at the time of the request. That makes the decision interesting but, frankly, historical rather than relevant to the issues raised by Members today.
Chris Skidmore: Absolutely. We are debating whether we should release a register that is no longer relevant and that was written in autumn 2010, at the time of the request on 29 November. The topic is completely irrelevant, as the debate has moved on. We ought to be talking about reform and why we need it. We have wasted six hours of parliamentary time today discussing an out-of-date risk register.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con): Does my hon. Friend envisage that some of the amendments and changes to the Bill that the Government have introduced since that time would deliberately have taken account of some of those risks and that the situation would therefore have moved on?
Chris Skidmore: Yes, the situation has moved on. We have had the listening exercise under Steve Field and various Select Committee on Health reports. The name of the commissioning bodies, which were called consortia, has changed. Nurses have been added and we have opened things up so it is not just about GP commissioning.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab): If the register is as irrelevant as the hon. Gentleman says, why not publish it?
Chris Skidmore: The Opposition are asking—[ Interruption. ]The shadow Secretary of State has already said that risk registers should not be published because they are confidential documents that must be used by policy makers. The Opposition are asking for a risk register that is out of date when what we should have been discussing today was reform of the NHS and how we can deal with an ageing population at the same time as dealing with a rise in chronic diseases.
I thought that it was striking that the shadow Secretary of State said at the end of his remarks that he would put the NHS first, without any mention of the patients. That is what these reforms are here for. They are allowing patients to be put in the driving seat and to sit down with their doctor, to understand what treatments they need and to have a choice of treatment through the opening up of providers. We could have had that debate—we could have spent six hours discussing that instead of this irrelevant document that you want to have a look at, which is out of date and from November
22 Feb 2012 : Column 925
2010 when it is now February 2012. You are two years out of date, you are out of time and you are out of touch. I urge everyone to vote down the motion, simply because it falls outside the point.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that I am not out of touch, and I am sure that he was not suggesting that I was. Others might think so, but I want to reassure him that I am not.
3.33 pm
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab): May I start by placing on the record my appreciation for all the staff who work in the national health service? I also want to make a declaration, unashamedly, that I love the NHS and will campaign tooth and nail to prevent any fragmentation, privatisation or postcode lottery or any diminution in the service to patients.
I tabled early-day motion 2659 calling on the Health Secretary
“to respect the ruling by the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill reforms in advance of Report Stage in the House of Lords”
so as to inform that debate. The motion we are debating in today’s important debate echoes the wording in my early-day motion, which almost 100 people have signed, including 15 Lib Dem MPs at the last count. I hope they will back up their signature with their vote in the Lobby today. Many Members on both sides of the House have received letters about this issue and there has been an e-petition from 38 Degrees, which has had tremendous support in very few days. In case Government Members need any encouragement, let me refer to a poll from this week showing that 70% of Lib Dem supporters trust NHS professionals more than the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary on the Health and Social Care Bill.
Mr Marcus Jones: The health professionals will be in charge.
Grahame M. Morris: Most of the health care professionals—indeed 90%; the ones who were not invited to the summit—oppose the changes in one form or other. Also, 80% of Lib Dem voters want the risk register published—an even bigger percentage than that of Labour voters.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab): Does my hon. Friend agree with the Secretary of State about the huge support for the Government from GPs over these reforms?
Grahame M. Morris: A number of Members on the Government Benches have referred, in Health questions and at other times, to the huge support among clinicians and GPs in their area, but Clare Gerada, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, has said that just because GPs are compelled to man the lifeboats does not mean they agree with the sinking of the ship. That sums things up.
Hon. Members on the Government Benches should be particularly concerned by some recent polling figures. According to a poll by ICM, the over-65s—the category of people who are most likely to use the NHS and most
22 Feb 2012 : Column 926
likely to vote—want to drop the Bill by a margin of 56% to 29%, or two to one, which is the largest such margin. Sadly, not one Conservative Member, as far as I am aware, has had the courage to sign the early-day motion or to call publicly on the Health Secretary to publish the risk assessment. I know that, privately at least, some of the more thoughtful Conservative Members have been advising the Secretary of State to publish, but he seems to be flatly ignoring them. The risk register contains an objective list of the Department’s view of the risks, an estimation of the likelihood of each specific risk occurring and an estimation of its severity if it did occur. To be clear, what the Health Secretary is determined to conceal are the severe and likely risks of his own reckless attack on the NHS.
The Prime Minister must also be held to account for his broken promises on the NHS, for allowing his Health Secretary to put the NHS at risk and for standing by him while he tries to cover up the mess that is the Health and Social Care Bill. I remind the House that the coalition agreement that was signed by the Government parties stated:
“The Government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.”
How does that statement square with this decision? Where is the accountability now? No one in the country voted for these health reforms, the Health and Social Care Bill has no mandate and we in the House will be asked to vote on reforms in the knowledge that the Department of Health and the Health Secretary are complicit in hiding the associated risks.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Yasmin Qureshi: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Grahame M. Morris: I am only going to give way twice, so I shall give way to the hon. Lady.
Charlotte Leslie: That is very kind; I thank the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that if we want to debate the health reforms, this is not the place to do it because we are talking about the risk register? Also, does he agree that all this is slightly disingenuous because Governments do not publish risk registers for good reasons, in that it would be far more risky for patients, whom we should all be considering, if Government Departments could not have frank and open discussions? The risks we should really be looking at are those to patients.
Grahame M. Morris: I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but if she had been present for the whole debate, she would know that we have covered much of that in discussing the nature of a fundamental change—the biggest ever shake-up—in the national health service since it was established. We are not calling for the nationalisation of the railways or the abolition of the House of Lords. We are simply calling for the risk register to be published, in the interests of openness and transparency, to identify the risks associated with the changes proposed by the Government.
The changes are a matter of the most serious consequence. If the Health Secretary is suppressing a report that shows that the reforms could put patients at
22 Feb 2012 : Column 927
risk and worsen the functioning of the NHS—if that is in the report, which I do not know, as I have not seen the strategic risk register, at least the national one—he would be guilty of the biggest political cover-up in a generation.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) mentioned, in his ruling back in November the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said of the Secretary of State’s reasoning:
“Disclosure would significantly aid public understanding of risks related to the proposed reforms and it would also inform participation in the debate about the reforms.”
But almost three months on, we as parliamentarians are still being kept in the dark. We were told that releasing the risk register would jeopardise the success of the policy, but the Information Commissioner refuted that and said it would only enhance the quality of the debate and allow for greater scrutiny of the policy.
We were then told by Ministers that they had published the relevant risks associated with the reforms in the impact assessment. If that was the case, why would the Information Commissioner rule that they should be published to inform debate and why would the Health Secretary fight tooth and nail to prevent that?
Finally, we were told that publication would risk the frankness of future risk registers, another point that the Information Commissioner specifically ruled out. Before the general election, the Conservatives promised to “unleash an information revolution” in the NHS, yet in government they are giving us the biggest cover-up in the history of the NHS. The Prime Minister once described his priorities in three letters: NHS. So we should not be shocked by the professional and public outcry of “OMG!” since he has broken his promise of
“no more top-down reorganisation”
and deployed WMD—weapons of mass deception—to conceal the true nature of his reforms.
Opposition Members know the dangers for the future of the NHS with up to 49% of work carried out in NHS hospitals being done by the private sector, and every service provided by the NHS, whether it be radiotherapy or speech therapy, put out for competitive tender, making it vulnerable to private sector takeover. It is no wonder we are debating the threat to the NHS when so many pre-election promises have been broken.
I conclude by offering some advice to the Health Secretary. I leave him with this thought: history is littered with examples of people who have fallen from grace, not for their crimes, but for the cover-up. He should end his terrible attack on the NHS and have the courage to be open about his plans to fragment and privatise our beloved national health service.
3.43 pm
Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness) (Con):
I draw the attention of the House to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The only thing on which I agreed with the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) was the commitment that he has, I have and all Members on the Government Benches have to the national health service and its future as a taxpayer-funded service, with access based on need, not on ability to pay.
22 Feb 2012 : Column 928
I think I speak for everybody on the Government Benches when I say that I would not vote for any Bill that privatised the national health service. The Health and Social Care Bill is not about that.
I can also confirm that my personal experience of using the national health service recently, both at Pilgrim hospital in my constituency in Boston and at Peterborough hospital—which, as the Secretary of State said, is highly indebted because of the previous Government’s PFI scheme—was first class and excellent.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour party’s suggestion that we are privatising the health service is not only utterly disingenuous, but extremely cruel and frightening for elderly and vulnerable individuals, of whom there are many in my constituency, who are perturbed by what is being said, which is untrue?
Mark Simmonds: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right. Certainly, some of the communicating that both Government parties need to do will be myth-busting on what is being portrayed as the future of the NHS and its services. They will be improved and enhanced, as will patient outcomes and services, as a direct result of the reforms that we hope to implement though the Health and Social Care Bill. They will not go backwards, as Opposition Members suggest.
Two distinctions can be drawn between the Government and Opposition sides of the House on this matter. First, we on the Government side are committed to increasing resources and investment in the NHS—in contrast to the Labour party. We can see that distinction in the enhancement of services in England and the deceleration and paucity of services in Wales. Secondly, Government Members understand the necessity of reform, whereas Labour Members do not. I accept that there are some exceptions, such as the previous Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who I think understands the importance of reform. Maintaining the status quo in the NHS is the greatest risk; it is not an option.
I think that today’s debate is a red herring and a cloak. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) completely destroyed the argument about the necessity of publishing the risk register, because it is no longer relevant. I am sure that the ministerial team would have been looking at that risk register and changing policies in order to mitigate and negate the initial impact of the risks recorded in it. Every former Government Minister who has spoken from the Labour Benches today, whether in a speech or an intervention, has form in refusing to put risk registers in the public domain when they had a chance to do so in office, and they know very well that risk registers can be misleading. Even the Information Commissioner, in his judgment, said that safe space was required.
Hugh Bayley: The hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago that he believed that increased competition, with private providers competing against NHS providers within the NHS, would improve outcomes. Does he therefore agree that there should be a common standard by which all care providers paid for with NHS money report on the cost and outcome of procedures? If so, why is that not in the Health and Social Care Bill?
22 Feb 2012 : Column 929
Mark Simmonds: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is not exactly what I said, but I will get to the nub of what he is talking about. I do think that comparable information is needed to inform patient choice, and not just on cost, but on outcomes and patient satisfaction and experience, so that it is on a comparable level—
Hugh Bayley: Why is it not in the Bill?
Mark Simmonds: I am sure that the information centre in Leeds is working on that as we speak, because I know that it is important to the ministerial team.
Charlotte Leslie: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mark Simmonds: I will not give way, because I have done so twice already.
Finally, it was made clear in an earlier intervention that the shadow Secretary of State, were he ever to be Health Secretary again, would not by necessity publish all risk registers, so it is nonsensical to suggest that this out-of-date risk register either informs debate or is necessary for discussing the future reforms of the NHS. Of course, that is not really what this debate is about. It is a cloak to try to put obstacles in the way of what I believe is necessary reform. We know why reform is necessary: a growing and ageing population; increasing levels of co-morbidities and long-term conditions; rising health care costs; and the impact of lifestyle choices. However, listening to the shadow Secretary of State, one would think that the NHS was falling apart. It absolutely is not. It is performing very well at the moment. We are reducing in-patient and out-patient waiting times. The backlog of patients waiting more than 18 weeks is going down, and the number of patients waiting more than a year is half what it was in May 2010.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mark Simmonds: I will not, because I have done so twice already.
I could go on with the achievements that the national health service has delivered since the election, but while progress is being made we need to put in place the policy architecture that will enable the national health service to deliver improved patient outcomes, satisfaction and experience and to continue as a free taxpayer-funded service.
So what are these reforms that get Opposition Members so excited? First:
“Patients…will have the right…to choose from any provider.”
Interestingly enough, that was in the 2010 Labour party manifesto. Secondly: