Sayeeda Warsi: As Conservatives it is our duty to support the NHS Bill

Earlier Tim Montgomerie wrote that the NHS Bill was a grave threat to David Cameron's chances of re-election. Sayeeda Warsi, Tory Chairman, has submitted this article in response.

The Conservative Party has always been for putting power in the hands of the individual, rather than the state. It has been our mission for decades. We should not forget it now.

The Health and Social Care Bill represents the most radical decentralisation of power that the NHS has witnessed in its history. As Conservatives, it is our duty to support it. It passes power to patients. It gives control over the NHS budget to doctors and nurses, and gives greater freedoms to hospitals. It cuts out £4.5 billion of bureaucracy. It is in every way a Bill that hands power to the frontline.

First, the Bill underpins a patients’ right to choose. That has been a central tenet of Conservative thinking for decades. The Bill is needed to stop healthcare providers – whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors – from frustrating the right of patients to decide how and where to be treated.

Second, the Bill enshrines in law the power that frontline staff should have the ultimate say in where NHS resources are spent. That used to be called GP fundholding. We won that battle in the 1990s – so successfully, that when Labour won the 1997 election and overturned it in a fit of pique, they found they had to bring it back in 2004 – albeit half-heartedly, and without legislation. This Government is finally putting that power back in place. And that is why organisations like the NHS Alliance, the National Association of Primary Care, and the Family Doctors’ Association support us. We need to put power in the hands of doctors and nurses, rather than a remote bureaucracy.

Baroness Warsi: Ed Miliband is weak, indecisive and lacking a sense of purpose - and the Public Accounts Committee agrees

Baroness Warsi is Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Like the weather, Ed Miliband’s leadership finally froze over this week.

The temperature started to plummet when he said his leadership was a “blank sheet”. But during Prime Minister’s Questions this Wednesday Ed Miliwent stone cold. Trying to embarrass David Cameron, he was subjected to a crushing put-down:  “better a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown.”

Since then, it’s been open season on Ed Miliband’s leadership. But in many ways, the most damning indictment this week was something which got no headlines: a report by the Public Accounts Committee.

The report, which looked into the Department of Energy & Climate Change’s record on renewables and covered Ed Miliband’s time as Energy Secretary, has an oddly familiar ring. It highlights three things.

First, that Ed Miliband instilled no sense of purpose at DECC: ‘The Department needs a greater sense of urgency and purpose to drive the dramatic increase in renewable energy supplies’, the report concluded.

Second, there was a blank page where there should have been a plan: ‘We are concerned that the Department agreed to the legally binding 2020 target without clear plans’.

Third, there was no long-term strategy: “The Department published a renewable energy strategy in July 2009 that set out in broad terms how it intended to meet the 2020 target...It had not, however, started preparing a detailed delivery plan…’

No sense of purpose. No clear plan. No long-term strategy. Dithering. It all points to one thing: Ed Miliband’s start as Labour leader isn’t out of character; it’s just typical.

Whichever way you look, Ed Miliband is weak, indecisive, or wrong. He’s weak when it comes to agreeing tax policy with his own Shadow Chancellor and can’t even unite his own team. He’s indecisive on whether or not he wants to join the student protests and what he means when by his own “squeezed middle” tagline. And he’s wrong on the big question of our time: how to deal with our debts and get this country living within its means.

At PMQs on Wednesday, David Cameron pointed out that Ed Miliband’s been in the job for almost three months now, and everyone’s wondering when he’s going to start. But one look at this report suggests that with Ed Miliband, it’s simply a case of Groundhog Day.