Plans being laid for call at Liberal Democrat spring conference for bill to be scrapped
The government's beleaguered health bill has run into fresh trouble after it emerged that plans are being laid for a call for it to be scrapped at the Liberal Democrat spring conference.
It is also expected that the influential Conservative Home website, seen as the voice of the party grassroots, will publish an editorial on Friday calling for the bill to be dropped altogether. It is understood that Conservative Home has been urged to make the call by three cabinet members who believe David Cameron is not listening on the issue. One source said: "We have almost been instructed to write this." It is extraordinary that cabinet members feel so frustrated at the political deadlock that they have resorted to urging Conservative Home to raise the flag of rebellion.
It has been widely canvassed within the government that non-contentious parts of the bill covering public health, social care and GP commissioning could be retained, while controversial parts dealing with an extension of the private sector could be abandoned altogether, something that would be a humiliation for the health secretary, Andrew Lansley.
Stephen Dorrell, Conservative chairman of the health select committee, has been one of many Tory MPs pointing out that many of the changes could have been implemented without the need for legislation or such controversy.
The shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, has offered to strike a deal to bring in wider GP commissioning. Labour tabled a vote on Thursday to force the government to publish a report assessing the threats posed by proposed changes to NHS finances and patient care.
Senior Lib Dems have acknowledged that they are in a terrible place over the bill, but in discussions at the beginning of the week with Cameron, Nick Clegg agreed to let the bill continue in the Lords.
There is frustration in Downing Street that the support of health professionals has been lost after they were laboriously courted and consulted during the pause last year, agreed after the Lib Dems' spring conference voted to oppose large tracts of the bill. The current move is being organised by the same group of party activists.
The Lib Dem leadership managed to keep a second health rebellion off the agenda of the autumn conference, but will face intense grassroots pressure if it tries to prevent debate again.
An emergency motion can be kept off the floor of the conference if it is not deemed an emergency by the federal conference committee, or it is not selected for debate in a ballot of delegates.
It is being argued by diehards in the cabinet that the struggle to get the legislation on the statute book will last only a few more months and after that it will be shown that the warnings of the protesters were ridiculously overblown. Cameron is trying to resell the package as a way of reducing bureaucracy in the NHS.
In an effort to keep up the pressure, the shadow cabinet agreed to hold an opposition day debate later this month on making the risk assessment public, in what Burnham said would be a defining moment in the campaign to get the bill axed.
Critics believe the risk register, which Lansley has repeatedly refused to publish, contains damning warnings about rising costs and confusion. Concern has been heightened after it emerged on Wednesday that a risk assessment by the London NHS warned some organisations could fail financially and care, including maternity and children's services and public health, could suffer. Such is the anger about the register that nine Liberal Democrats are already among 50 MPs who have signed an early day motion also calling for it to be published – and Labour believes more Lib Dems will support its move.
To put further pressure on the coalition, Burnham will urge Labour MPs to visit hospitals and surgeries during next week's half-term break, so they can recount their stories from the NHS front-line in the debate on 22 February. "The defining question in this debate now is, by pressing on and not listening, to what extent are they putting patient safety and quality of services at risk, and that's why the risk register becomes absolutely central to this," said Burnham.
Labour's move follows another torrid week for the government over the bill, with former supporters of the plans coming out against the current version – which has had more than 1,000 amendments – and the coalition's first defeat on the bill in the House of Lords on Wednesday.
Reflecting growing frustration inside the government at Lansley's handling of the bill, a Downing Street insider was quoted earlier this week saying the health secretary should be "taken out and shot". In response, the prime minister's spokesman said the Tory minister had David Cameron's "full support".
Lansley will face fresh embarrassment on Friday when a report by the right-of-centre thinktank Reform says the government's entire reform of public services is being undermined by the Department of Health's management of NHS changes.
The Scorecard report on 10 government departments with responsibility for different areas of public sector reform also singles out the prime minister for criticism for personally intervening with detailed promises on issues such as waiting times and nurses visiting patients' beds every hour. The criticisms by Reform will be particularly damaging because they accuse the health bill of causing exactly the opposite of what it is intended to achieve – holding back reform of the NHS and damaging services for patients.
Burnham has offered the government a compromise, that in return for dropping the bill Labour would enter talks about how to introduce GP-led commissioning of healthcare, without the wider reform of the NHS structure proposed by the bill. The Guardian
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