Shadow health sec blasts reforms

Andy Burnham MP made the vow on the second day of the RCM’s annual conference in Brighton this morning (16 November).

But he doesn’t believe it’s a certainty that the reforms will become law and said ‘I think we can still stop the bill’.

‘Labour may well inherit a very different NHS, but if this bill goes through we will repeal it,’ he said.

‘The NHS needs to change, but it is not structural reform that is needed, it’s service reform that’s needed, with more services closer to people’s homes.

‘It’s impossible to conclude that this is anything other than the worst possible time to reform the NHS,’ he said. ‘The last thing the NHS needs right now is to be turned upside-down.’

He added that the reforms would leave the NHS ‘overseen by the biggest Quango in the world’ and that instead of providing stability for the NHS, the Tory-led coalition has ‘thrown the pieces of the jigsaw in the air’.

He also discussed his time as the healthy secretary and called the NHS ‘the best expression of British values’.

‘I’m absolutely proud of Labour’s record with the National Health Service. We restructured its fabric and we invested in people,’ he said.
 
He said that midwife numbers increased by 18% over the years the Labour party was in office, but admitted the birth rate rose by 19% in this same period. 

He went on to say that progress was ‘patchy and, in places, it was painfully slow’ and that Labour ‘left office when there was still work to do’.

‘I think the NHS is best thing about this country – the best thing about Britain,’ he said.

‘It is the best expression of the values of my party and, I believe, the best expression of British values.’