Hull MP in bid to reverse Coalition's NHS privatisation law

Hull North MP Diana Johnson is sponsoring a Commons Private Member's Bill to repeal the damaging competition rules inflicted on the NHS by the Coalition Government.

The Bill from Eltham Labour MP Clive Efford would rewrite rules in the Coalition's Health and Social Care Act 2012 that force market tendering of services. These rules are seeing millions of pounds wasted on competition lawyers instead of patients.

The Bill will be debated in the Commons on 21 November and Labour will use the intervening period to call on MPs from all sides to support Labour's Bill, highlighting how the current rules are wasting money and fragmenting care.

The Labour campaign for the Bill is launched on the eve of the 66th birthday on 5 July of the 1945 Labour Government setting up the NHS.

Hull North MP Diana Johnson said: "As we celebrate the 66th Birthday of the best healthcare system in the World this weekend, Labour is starting a campaign to save our NHS for future generations.

"NHS services in Hull and across the country are suffering the results of the Lib Dems and Tories tearing up their Coalition Agreement with a £3bn top-down reorganisation that was never put before voters, at a time when money was always going to be tight and demand is rising.

"In 2010 the NHS had its highest ever patient satisfaction rating. Only four years later, David Cameron's re-organisation has left the NHS, in the words of its former Chief Executive, 'bogged down in a morass of competition law', paying millions for lawyers and redundancy payments that should be going to patient services.

"If MPs do not reverse these changes soon, the NHS as we have known it for 66 years will not survive to be 70. This Bill will free the NHS from that morass and restore its founding values to its heart - collaboration over competition and putting people in medical need before profits.

"Later this year, the Lib Dem MPs whose votes forced these changes through a few years ago will have to decide whether they want to help Labour reverse them for the sake of all who need and value our NHS."

Clive Efford MP said: "I am introducing this Bill because we need to save the NHS. When out and about meeting my constituents time and again they tell me how worried they are about the privatisation of our NHS."