PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED Andrew Marr interviewed Shadow Health Secretary John Healey on the Andrew Marr Show on May 29th 2011. ANDREW MARR: The fate of the government's health reforms is still shrouded in mystery. Nick Clegg insisted again during the week he wants substantial changes, with the bill being rewritten, sent back to the commons to be picked over again, and irritated Tory backbenchers are talking about "red lines" and vowing to defend the ideas of giving more power to GPs and greater competition, which are at the heart of the original plan. So is this a private turf war between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, or can Labour join in as well? I'm joined by the Shadow Health Secretary John Healey. Good morning. JOHN HEALEY: Good morning. ANDREW MARR: Mr Healey, first of all what do you understand the position to be? The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has said that this is coming back to the House of Commons to a further committee stage and that the deadlines about GPs taking over all commissioning and about all hospitals becoming foundation hospitals, he suggests no longer apply. So do you think serious revision has already taken place? JOHN HEALEY: In truth it's hard to tell because we've had Nick Clegg saying one thing, Andrew Lansley saying another, and David Cameron saying another, and it's simply added to the sense of confusion and uncertainty that the NHS is having to live with at the moment. I mean the difficult thing really here for Nick Clegg is he's backed this bill to the hilt. He's been alongside David Cameron every step of the way until he had the catastrophic local election council results and the AV referendum, and you know his interest is really in saving his party and not saving … than safeguarding the NHS. ANDREW MARR: And yet the kind of rethinking that's going on is presumably the kind of rethinking that Labour would want to see? JOHN HEALEY: Well it is, and you know David Cameron's problem is not with Nick Clegg. It's the opposition of doctors, nurses, health experts, patient groups who are making the same criticisms as Labour has made and I've made since the autumn. And now they're making these criticisms, there is a crisis of confidence in the government's handling of the NHS and people can see through what ministers have been saying and see that this is a bill which will dismantle the NHS as we know it and turn it into a full-scale market, and that's why there's such opposition. ANDREW MARR: If we stand back and look at the NHS as it was when Labour left office, nonetheless things had to change, didn't they, because a huge amount of money had been spent on the NHS during the Labour years without getting the kind of improvement, productivity increases and so on that people would have expected or hoped? So something had to change. JOHN HEALEY: Well through the 13 years, of course, there was the big investment and the big reforms, the combination of which were necessary. And you know if you talk to … ANDREW MARR: But you didn't get the big results after that. That's the point. JOHN HEALEY: Well if you look at results, I mean people before 1997 were waiting often more than 18 months for operations they needed. You know when we left government, the average was about 7 or 8 weeks; you know waiting times at an all time low and patient satisfaction at an all-time high. You know that's part of the productivity, part of the better results in the NHS. Now that's not to say that the NHS can stand still. It can never stand still and there are some big challenges ahead, which these reforms are going to make harder to achieve, not easier, and at the moment mean nearly £2 billion of money promised to patient care this year being spent and wasted on the cost of internal reorganisation. ANDREW MARR: Yet looking at some of the problems in the past in the NHS, isn't the idea of giving hospitals more autonomy and giving the people running hospitals more authority a fundamentally sensible one? JOHN HEALEY: Well I think if you read the bill rather than the speeches that David Cameron makes, they're moving to the extreme. They're taking all cap off NHS hospitals treating private patients; they're making all NHS hospitals compete with each other; go through, if they run into financial trouble, a commercial insolvency system. Essentially they're making them not if you like part of the public service; they're making them into commercial operations. And that's the problem because what that means is that you have in future an NHS that will not be protected from the full force of UK and European competition law, and that will bring very profound changes. It will lead to the dismantling and fragmentation of the NHS at the very time actually when greater collaboration and integration is needed, as we showed during the 13 years in power. ANDREW MARR: At the moment you've got the Primary Care Trusts, which expect to be abolished, beginning to come apart and dissolve: people are leaving them in large numbers; it's difficult to get new people in, and why would anyone join an organisation that's about to be ended? A lot of hospitals don't quite know where they stand in terms of you know what their status is going to be. And so actually taking this bill back into the House of Commons for 6 months or a year of further political haggling, even if you don't like the bill, maybe that's bad for the NHS? Maybe the NHS needs certainty more than it needs anything else? JOHN HEALEY: It certainly needs certainty, it certainly needs a lead from the Prime Minister which it hasn't had at the moment. But it needs, above all, a health policy, an approach from the government that is right for NHS patients and right for the NHS, and these are fundamentally the wrong changes at the wrong time and for the wrong reason. So it's imperative and I think there's a great constitutional case for taking it back to square one in the commons, and I've laid a motion to persuade the government to do exactly that. Because the problem is … ANDREW MARR: And, sorry, and to say to the Primary Care Trusts you stay for now. We're not going to get rid of you. We're going to keep the entire structure as it is, even though it's partly fallen apart? JOHN HEALEY: Well we do have a strange system at the moment and really serious questions of competence over the government. You know normally governments consult first, legislate and then implement. It's been the other way round. But the combinations of Primary Care Trusts could be kept going if that's what the government chooses to do; but the reason that this needs full scrutiny again by the House of Commons is that what runs through this bill, like through a stick of rock, is that basic Tory belief that public sector is bad, private sector is good, and simply changing the words in some places of the bill won't remove that problem. ANDREW MARR: In tactical terms, you are in a you know clear minority in the House of Commons. Are you now forming alliances, relationships with worried Liberal Democrat MPs to try and get the changes you want? JOHN HEALEY: Well you know part of my job in this first year of opposition has been to talk to the doctors, the nurses, the health experts to try and sort of stiffen and strengthen their opposition, and we've been doing the same with politicians across all parties, including the Liberal Democrats. ANDREW MARR: (over) … that's right. JOHN HEALEY: And we'll see. The ball's in David Cameron's court now. The challenge is will he respond to the very serious criticisms we've been making and are now widespread, and will he make the fundamental changes that are required to this bill for the future. ANDREW MARR: I'm still not completely clear whether in terms of commons tactics, you are beginning to assemble what you think is a majority to actually change this bill on the floor of the House of Commons by talking to Liberal Democrats. JOHN HEALEY: We've been working behind the scenes in the commons … ANDREW MARR: (over) That sounds like yes. JOHN HEALEY: … in the commons and the Lords for months now, and everyone will make their judgement when they see the changes that David Cameron is prepared to make. That's the test and it's a test of the Prime Minister. ANDREW MARR: Alright. Just a very quick one before we end. A lot of criticism still of the Labour Party generally in the newspapers at the moment failing to cut through, failing to make an impact and so on. As somebody who's very much on the sort of Blairite Wing (if I can put it that way) of the party, what's your reading? JOHN HEALEY: I think we've got to have a degree of political patience, we've got to recognise this is the end of only the first year in opposition. And I think if anybody had said look after one year, following the second worst election result ever for Labour in the country, you will have more than 50,000 more members, a degree of unity and determination, a bad result in Scotland but more than 800 new councillors in England, and the Liberal Democrats' meltdown, which we might have hoped would take four years collapsing in one year - we're very clear I think now the tough task is the Tories. We've got a job to do. We're the only opposition in parliament. That's our job, as well as developing an alternative for people too. ANDREW MARR: John Healey, thanks for joining us this morning. JOHN HEALEY: Thank you. INTERVIEW ENDS
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