Now’s the challenge to protect our NHS – George

Expressing his disappointment at the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill last night, Liberal Democrat Health Select Committee Member and critic, Andrew George MP, warned that those who care about the NHS will have to fight hard to protect public services from the risk posed by the Government’s legislation.

Mr George said: “I regret that the Government has pressed on with this legislation. It is a grave error and puts the future of our NHS at risk.

“We will all now have a massive challenge to somehow protect our NHS from the high risk this legislation poses.”

Mr George warned that GPs commissioning services from themselves would be left in a vulnerable and “conflicted” position and that amendments requiring a declaration of interest merely represented “a sticking plaster on one of the already crumbling pillars which underpinned the edifice of this ill thought through legislation.”

Mr George had opposed the legislation since it was published as a White Paper in the summer of 2010 and has voted against the Government throughout.

Yesterday there were few opportunities to protest as most of the amendments brought forward from the House of Lords helped, as Mr George described it, to make the Bill “less bad.”

 

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