Andrew Lansley MP: I will not let patients suffer because of Labour's hospital mismanagement

Andrew Lansley is the Secretary of State for Health

All of us would hope that the NHS delivers effective, high-quality and efficient care to all. But sadly, there are hospitals in the NHS which do not. Even some that are delivering good care run up debts year-on-year - which then have to be financed by taking money from other parts of the NHS. Whether hospitals have good care and bad finances, bad care and good finances, or bad care and bad finances, patients suffer.

This week, the papers have covered my decision to consult with South London Healthcare NHS Trust on the proposal that they may be put into special measures, or 'trust special administration' in the jargon.

Although the action is specific to a particular hospital trust, the reason for it is part of a comprehensive, national programme of action to tackle the pockets of poor performance that still exist in our NHS. 

Rather than continue to sweep problems under the carpet, or hide the deficits with bungs and bailouts as Labour did, I have taken action. In 2010, I launched a programme of work to root out and tackle poor performance in the NHS, wherever it exists. I published information about hospitals on the things which really matter to patients – like mixed-sex accommodation, hospital infections, and the quality of care. I did this not only because it would help patients choose where to be treated but also to hold up a mirror to those hospitals giving poor care.

Andrew Lansley MP: We must give patients and doctors the power to achieve excellence

Andrew Lansley is the Secretary of State for Health.

This week, I have been in Washington talking to leaders of health systems around the world about the challenges we face and about how we in this country are going to deal with them.

While the week’s focus has been on the continuing fallout of the financial crisis and the long-term problems of sovereign debt, in healthcare the world faces similarly shared challenges: not just the immediate challenges of fiscal restraint, but also the longer-term challenges of an ageing population and of the rising costs of treatments and technologies.

We are in the relatively unique position of having protected spending on the NHS. But across the world, all countries are now coming to terms with the longer-term pressures that will be placed upon them. Because although healthcare is not the most pressing of challenges facing the world right now, without health we have nothing.

For too long, there has been a false trade-off in healthcare systems between equitable access and excellent treatment. This is fed by the misplaced belief on the one hand that the very best healthcare available anywhere in the world can only be provided through a fully-privatised system which strives to deliver the best for the richest but which excludes the poorest. And, on the other hand, by the equally misplaced belief that the most equal systems can only be delivered by a system in which everything is planned, organised, funded and run by the state without reference to the treatment that patients may want or choose.

Andrew Lansley: An open NHS will be a safer, stronger, better NHS

Andrew Lansley MP is Secretary of State for Health.

At the turn of the last century, the US supreme court judge Louis Brandeis argued that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ for any organisation acting in the public interest. A century on, his words continue to resonate with all public services – and particularly so the National Health Service.

The NHS isn’t always the easiest organisation to get answers from. A simple complaint can turn into a long struggle with an arcane bureaucracy. Sensitive decisions about moving or closing units or departments too often take place behind closed doors. The performance of individual doctors is hidden by a lack of published data.

And yet we know that a more open NHS can be a safer, stronger, better NHS. For example, if you have heart surgery in England, you now have a greater chance of survival than almost any other European country – over the last five years, death rates have halved and are now 25 per cent lower than the European average.

How did this happen? Cardiac professionals were open and transparent. They collected analysed and published their outcome data. They admitted weaknesses, shed light on good and bad practice across the NHS and encouraged all cardiac units to improve.

Today’s Health Bill will make this sort of transparency common practice by overhauling the messy and inadequate system of accountability.

First, we’ll reduce political interference, by removing ministers’ discretion to intervene in day-to-day decisions in the NHS.

In effect, I will be the first Health Secretary to gain power only to give it away – to a new independent NHS Commissioning Board, which will oversee the running of the NHS.

Andrew Lansley MP: It is my commitment to the principles of the NHS that is driving my desire to break open the state monopoly that is stifling innovation and improvement

Andrew Lansley is Shadow Secretary of State for Health and here he writes exclusively for ConservativeHome about the party's newly-stated priorities for the NHS and defends the pledge to increase NHS spending.

Yesterday morning, David Cameron set out a future Conservative Government’s five priorities for NHS reform.  With the public increasingly indicating that they trust Conservatives with the future of the NHS, and professionals consistently expressing confidence in Conservative policies, people are eager to know what a Conservative NHS will look like.

We welcome any opportunity to set out our vision for the NHS.  Rarely has a week gone by in the past five years where my colleagues in the Shadow Health team and I have not travelled up, down and cross country to visit hospitals, GP surgeries and dentists, to hear from those who serve in the NHS on the ground. Back in Westminster, we have sat through four Secretaries of State trying to dictate to clinicians from Whitehall.  We have witnessed the deleterious effects on professional morale and patient care.

Through this journey, we have developed a plan for change that puts patients in the driving seat and liberates professionals to focus on patients’ priorities.  We are determined not to make the mistake at the heart of Labour’s failure. They had a plan to win the election – but they had no plan for delivery. For Blair and Brown, the election was solely about getting into office, and their approach to office was simply about winning the next election.  In fact, the man who was head of the Government’s strategy for three years at the Department of Health, Professor Chris Ham, recently admitted there had been no strategy:

"When Blair's government was elected, it had no clear idea what it wanted to do with the NHS."

The time is approaching when we will ask the public to put their trust in us at the ballot box.  We are determined to live up to that trust by being ready to govern, and to deliver on our promises. That’s why we will always tackle head on any questions over our policy proposals.  I know that there has been robust discussion here on ConservativeHome over our pledge to increase NHS spending at a time of crisis in our public finances.

Andrew Lansley MP: Darzi’s review is centred on how NHS services should be managed rather than what they should achieve

Andrew Lansley, MP for Cambridgeshire South and Shadow Secretary of State for Health, responds to the Government's latest NHS review.

We all have a good reason to celebrate the diamond jubilee of the NHS this week. In a society in which many institutions are weakened, the social solidarity of the NHS has been a source of cohesion. Not just because we’ve experienced it first-hand as patients – the majority of us were born in an NHS hospital - but as stakeholders through the taxes we pay. Even if we we’ve never been treated in the NHS, we probably know at least one of the 1.3 million NHS staff who has dedicated their professional lives to serving patients. In a way, the NHS belongs to us all.

This shared-ownership is mirrored in the political arena where support for it has straddled political divides throughout history. The NHS was introduced by Aneurin Bevan (a socialist) but the groundwork, in the form of White Paper, came from Beveridge (a Liberal) and Henry Willink (a Conservative) in Winston Churchill’s coalition Government. David Cameron has made it clear in today’s Conservative Party, that in respect of all Labour’s policies, we will give support when they do the right thing and offer constructive criticism when they don’t. The publication of Lord Darzi’s review yesterday, presents an opportunity to do both.

When I met Professor Ara Darzi, I was impressed by his clinical expertise and passion for medical education. But no sooner was he brought into Gordon Brown’s ‘Government of all the talents’ (Goat) then it became clear that Labour were using him as a front for their centripetal administrative agenda. In an unguarded moment, Alan Johnson exposed as much when he said, “We don't have a goat problem in this department. Our goat (Lord Darzi) is tethered”.  How undermining and how indicative of a Government that won’t relinquish control and trust the professions. It’s a fault that courses through the heart of “Darzi’s” proposals.