Simon Burns MP: The NHS is improving - but to continue progress we must press on with reform

Simon Burns is the Member of Parliament for Chelmsford and is a Minister of State at the Department for Health.

Right from the time the Government announced its modernisation plans for the NHS, we have always been clear about what we want the NHS to deliver.

We signalled a decisive shift away from Labour’s political targets and towards an NHS focused on outcomes: whether the care delivered by the NHS is effective; whether patients have a good experience of the care they receive; and whether it is safe.

Labour claim that the NHS has gone backwards over the last 18 months, but on any measures of success, the opposite is true. The NHS is improving all the time.

On how the NHS is delivering care effectively:

• We have delivered £7 billion of efficiency savings in the NHS since taking power – efficiency savings that have been ploughed straight back into patient care.
• We have recruited an additional 4,000 doctors and 600 midwives.
• We have reduced the number of administrative posts in the NHS by more than 15,000.
• We have increased by 820,000 the number of people seeing an NHS dentist.
• We have helped more than 10,000 patients get access to the cancer drugs they need through the Cancer Drugs Fund – people who would have been denied these drugs under Labour.

Simon Burns MP: Paul Goodman is wrong. The NHS Bill DOES cut bureaucracy.

Simon Burns is MP for Chelmsford and is a Minister of State at the Department for Health.

It is extremely disappointing to see a Conservative blog using arguments against the health bill which are so factually incorrect.

Paul asserts that it is 'hard to see' how the bill would make 'a cut in bureaucracy.'

The figures alone speak for themselves - we are reducing the admin spend in the NHS by a third, taking £4.5 billion out of the admin budget over the lifetime of this parliament.

Paul also claims there will be a whole host of new bureaucratic bodies, this is untrue:

• All remaining 50 PCTs will be abolished from next year.
• The NHS Commissioning Board will only commission national specialised services that cannot be done at local level and Primary Care contracts to avoid conflicts of interest. The vast majority of NHS work will be in the hands of local clinicians - last week we announced they would be responsible for £65bn of the NHS budget.
• Clinical senates are actually hosted by the National Commissioning Broad so they are not separate bodies.
• Health and Well Being boards will be part of local authorities so they will not be separate bodies either. They exist to increase integration across the three strands of healthcare: the NHS, social care and public health.
• Clinical Commissioning Groups are made up of frontline clinicians who have got together to make decisions about how best to address the health needs of  local people.  This is the very opposite of Labour's bureaucratic approach and should be applauded by Conservatives.

Simon Burns MP: Don't let Labour wreck the health bill in the Lords

Simon Burns is the Minister for Health and Member of Parliament for Chelmsford.

Yesterday, the Health and Social Care Bill went into the Lords. Delivery of the Bill is critical to our plans to modernise the NHS – to put the entire NHS truly on the side of patients and the doctors and nurses who care for them. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure and improve the NHS for everyone.

The Bill is essentially about something very simple. That it shouldn’t be bureaucrats in a remote system who make decisions about the treatment you get. It should be you and your doctors who have the power and the freedom to get the best possible care the NHS can offer.

And we know people want this. A new independent survey published yesterday by the Department of Health confirmed that 80% of patients want more choice over how they’re treated and where they can get NHS treatment from. The Bill will make sure this is delivered fairly, safely and sustainably.

As long as care is free and can meet NHS prices and standards, it shouldn’t matter if the NHS, a charity or an independent provider provides it – what matters is that it’s free, it’s on the NHS and it delivers the care patients want.

The 2008 Democratic Convention

Simon Burns, the Conservative MP for West Chelmsford, reports from the Democratic Convention in Denver, Colorado.

The mood of the Democrats meeting in Denver this week was a mixture of optimism and concern. Optimism because the polls show that they will do well in the Congressional elections - winning at least 6 Senate seats and between 15 and 30 in the House - and concern because Barack Obama was only level pegging with McCain in the polls and worried about what Bill and Hillary Clinton would do.

The concerns surrounding the Clintons were soon dispelled by the stemwinder speech that Hillary gave on the Tuesday night, followed by Bill Clinton the next day. They both fully supported the Obama-Biden ticket and the response from delegates showed that Bill Clinton has been forgiven for some of his hardhitting rhetoric during the primary campaign. Hillary Clinton won the hearts of delegates with a punchy speech attacking the Republicans and committing herself to Obama, but also leaving herself enough leeway that if Obama does not win she can reemerge in 2012. Her move the next day to go onto the floor of the Convention, join the New York delegation and interrupt the voting for the nomination for president to request the voting be suspended and Obama be nominated by acclamation was seen by many as a generous and unifying move.

Although I found many of the speeches to the Convention by elected Senators and Congressman to be poor, there were a number of outstanding speeches by Bill Richardson, the Governor of New Mexico, Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran and amputee, Beau Biden, the Attorney General of Delaware and Joe Biden himself.

The theme of the speeches was a deft combination of highlighting the positive in Barack Obama and laying into the Republicans - linking McCain with the highly unpopular Bush Administration on the theme of no to four more years of the last eight years.

The most poignant moment of the whole Convention was the tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy on the first night. A Lion in the Senate and beloved by delegates, it was uncertain, owing to his illness, whether he would be coming to Denver at all. The uncertainty added to the poignancy and when he appeared on the podium, following a film tribute and introduction by his niece, President Kennedy's daughter Caroline, the whole Convention erupted. He then wowed the Convention with a faultless and powerful ten minute speech in support of Obama. He brought the Convention to its feet by turning on their head the final words of his concession speech at the 1980 Convention, after failing to defeat Jimmy Carter for the Presidential nomination, when he declare that "the hope endures and the dream shall never die" now that the torch has passed to Barack Obama.

The climax to the week was the acceptance speech by Barack Obama. For the first time since John Kennedy's acceptance speech in 1960 in Los Angeles, this was held outside at Invesco Field, the home of the Denver Broncos. 85,000 people packed into the stadium to hear music from Stevie Wonder and Sheryll Crow, speeches from Al Gore, John Lewis and Martin Luther King 3rd (it was the 45th anniversary of King's 'I have a Dream' speech) before Obama spoke. By the time he arrived on the stage it was dark, which added to the piquancy of the moment. In a speech worthy of Martin Luther King he accepted the nomination, laid out his vision for America and laid into McCain. The crowd loved it but will it win him the general election on 4th November?

If the election is fought on domestic and economic issues then the chances of Obama are greatly increased because, economically, America is hurting. If McCain can turn the election into a fight on who wouiild be the best protector of America's security the situation becomes more tricky but by talking the fight to McCain, Obama has significsantly narrowed the gap and his selecion of Joe Biden as his running mate, with all his experience in foreign affairs, can only help him. However, if he had picked Hillary Clinton he would have created the dream ticket for the Democrats.

Simon Burns MP: Hillary's still in it to win it

Simon Burns, MP for West Chelmsford, explains why he thinks Hillary Clinton is right to stay in the Presidential race.

As the Democratic Party primary season enters the home stretch, with the last eleven primaries in the next six weeks, it has become clear that neither candidate will secure the necessary 2025 delegates to be the nominee before the Convention at the end of August. The reason for this is that they are running too close for one of the candidates to break out and secure enough delegates to pass the 2025 delegate threshold. Whilst Barack Obama leads in the ordinary delegate count, Hillary Clinton is ahead with superdelegates.

The problem facing the Democratic Party is that two large states, Florida and Michigan have had their primary election results disqualified because they defied the Democratic National Committee and held their elections on days not approved by the DNC. As long as this ruling stands and no compromise agreeable to both candidates and the DNC is found then the stalemate will continue. The irony of this situation is that in both primaries Hillary Clinton won them convincingly. She took 50% of the vote to Obama’s 31% in Florida and 55% in Michigan to undecideds' 40% as Obama’s name was not even on the ballot. If these results had been accepted Hillary Clinton would now be ahead in the ordinary delegate count, with the superdelegates and in the popular vote.