As part of its ongoing campaign against the Health and Care Bill, the LoveNHS Coalition welcomes the mitigating amendments passed in the House of Lords, and calls on MPs of all parties to ensure that the Bill does not pass without them.

Mark E Thomas, coalition member and founder of The 99% Organisation said:

“The LoveNHS Coalition has voiced profound concerns about the Health and Care Bill.

The House of Lords’[1] Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee described the Bill as ‘a clear and disturbing illustration of how much disguised legislation a Bill can contain’.

The LoveNHS Coalition has campaigned hard to spell out the hidden dangers within the Bill, sharing its analysis with parliamentarians, and encouraging the public to demand that their MPs defend the NHS and safeguard its future as a comprehensive and accessible health service, free at the point of use and funded through progressive taxation.

Since then, the Lords have tabled a series of amendments and secured several important Government defeats.. These amendments significantly reduce the potential harms of the Bill, and they must now be passed in the Commons. If the Bill were to pass without the Lords’ amendments, there would be nothing to prevent Ministers from migrating the UK healthcare system towards that of the US: the worst system in the developed world from the perspective of patients and taxpayers, but the most profitable from the point of view of healthcare corporations. The impact on many UK citizens would be devastating.”

As originally drafted, the Bill would have transferred power over the NHS into two sets of hands: those of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), and Ministers. Ministers would have been free from parliamentary and other scrutiny, and ICBs could have been driven by those whose fiduciary duty is to the shareholders of their companies, not to patients and tax-payers. While these concerns are not entirely alleviated, the Lords’ amendments circumscribe the powers of Ministers in relation to reorganising the NHS[2] and seek to prevent those with an apparent conflict of interest from sitting on ICBs[3]. They have also addressed the issue of sustained failure to provide adequate manpower for the NHS, the under-provision of mental health services, the protection of patient data[4] and the proposed funding of Care[5], which would have benefited the wealthy at the expense of the poor. There are several other mitigating amendments.

It is vital that MPs now ensure that the Bill does not pass without them.

ENDS

For more information

Please contact Heather Smith on 07710 294 845 or heather.smith@99-percent.org

Notes to editors

About LoveNHS Coalition

The Coalition comprises:

Dr Julia Patterson, CEO, Every Doctor

Lloyd Hardy, GOV2.UK
Alastair Fischer, Co-Chair, The National Health Action Party

Anthony Johnson, Nurses United
Mark Kieran and Mitchell Westra, Open Britain
Dominic Minghella, Take Back Britain
Mark  E Thomas, The 99% Organisation

And the following members of Independent SAGE are signing in a personal capacity:

Stephen Reicher, Wardlaw Professor of Psychology, University of St. Andrews

Kit Yates, Co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology, University of Bath

Helen Salisbury, Senior Medical Education Fellow, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Since 2021 the Coalition has been researching the Bill and its likely impact and has been campaigning Parliament to oppose the Bill in its current form, including by submission to the Bill Committee and the House of Lords and by open letter to parliamentarians, which was additionally signed by Stephen Fry.

References

[1] (Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, 2021)

[2] (UCL Constitution Unit, 2022)

[3] (Votes in Parliament, 2022)

[4] (Votes in Parliament, 2022)

[5] (Parliament, 2022)

Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. (2021, 12 16). 15th Report of Session 2021–22. Retrieved from https://committees.parliament.uk/: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/8311/documents/84578/default/

Parliament. (2022, 3 7). Votes in Parliament. Retrieved from https://votes.parliament.uk/: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Lords/Division/2717

UCL Constitution Unit. (2022, 3 10). Government Defeats in the House of Lords. Retrieved from https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/parliament/changing-role-house-lords/government-defeats-house-lords

Votes in Parliament. (2022, 3 7). Retrieved from https://votes.parliament.uk/: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Lords/Division/2715

Votes in Parliament. (2022, 3 1). Retrieved from https://votes.parliament.uk/: https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Lords/Division/2696?byMember=False