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Mr. Hutton: I shall deal with the GP clauses in a minute. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) also has a problem with that matter, and I must say to him that the number of sittings that the House has allocated for consideration of the Bill in Committee are broadly proportionate. He is concerned that we will have only 20 sittings, but I think that that is a proportionate number of sittings.
I wish to make the obvious point, which the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) also sought to make, that the number of Committee sittings are fixed. If he or anyone else proposes an adjustment at some later point to the programme motion, which I hope we will approve in a minute, he will have to find give up time allocated to other matters to allow us to consider other clauses more extensively. All right hon. and hon. Members must be aware of that reality.
Mrs. Gillan: That is not the understanding that I had. I understood that if we wished to spend more time scrutinising the Bill, there was the offer of sitting
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on Wednesdays or late into the evening. Will the Minister to confirm that that is the case.
Mr. Hutton: That certainly is an option for the Committee. However, the Committee itself must address that. At the end of the day, the Bill must be out of the Committee on 19 June. It is for hon. Members to decide how they want to use their time within that available slot.
9.15 am
Mr. Streeter: The Minister said that Committee stage must be completed by 19 June, but surely that is only if the Committee agrees the programme motion. If that is not the case, perhaps he will explain the current procedure.
Mr. Hutton: The hon. Gentleman has uncharacteristically failed to grasp an important element of parliamentary procedure. The House decided that the Bill will be reported on 19 June, and the Committee, as I understand it, does not have the locus or competence to change a decision of the House. If the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) or other hon. Members want to sit on extra days, evenings or mornings, a Programming Sub-Committee can investigate that. However, that is not my preference, and I am probably not alone in that regard.
Last week, I apologised to the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon for not responding when he raised the issue of GP clauses in the House. When hon. Members can debate the GP clauses will depend very much on when the British Medical Association starts the ballot on the proposed new general medical services contract, and it will also depend on the result of that ballot. That may or may not be within the time scale of the Committee's consideration of the Bill. I do not know the answer to that question. However, if the ballot produces a yes vote—which I hope will be the case because it is a good contract for GPs and patients in primary care—and GPs decide to endorse the contract, if there is sufficient time the necessary amendments will be tabled during the Committee stage. That is probably the strongest assurance that I can give, but I realise that it may not be as strong as the hon. Gentleman would like.
The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) raised a fair point about the amendments being tabled in sufficient time for the Committee to consider them properly, and I assure him that that will be the case. If he reads the amendment paper, he will realise that we tabled amendments last week to part 1 of the Bill, and the Committee has two weeks to consider them. We started fairly, and we will continue fairly.
I know that there are concerns about the timing and allocation of sittings, but my strongly held view is that a fair attempt has been made to ensure that the Committee has sufficient time to consider the various clauses and amendments. I hope that the Committee will now endorse the sittings selection.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chairman: I remind Members that there is a money resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of
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which are available in the Room. I also remind hon. Members to give adequate notice of amendments, because, as a general rule, my co-Chairman and I do not intend to call starred amendments, including any starred amendments that may be reached during an afternoon sitting of the Committee.Clause 1
NHS foundation trusts
Mr. Burns: I beg to move amendment No. 65, in
clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out 'benefit corporation' and insert 'interest company'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendment:
No. 66, in
Mr. Burns: These are probing amendments, as we simply wish to tease out from the Minister more information on the Government's thinking behind clause 1.
Paragraph 44 of the explanatory notes to the Bill explains quite straightforwardly that
''Clause 1 sets out that an NHS foundation trust is a public benefit corporation which is authorised under this Part to provide goods and services for the 'health service' in England.''
Paragraph 45 states:
''Under subsection (2), a public benefit corporation is defined as a body corporate.''
It will not escape the notice of Committee members that the language is businesslike and corporate. That may come as a surprise to some Government Members, who have always—rightly, I suspect—considered the national health service to be not so much a business as a national provider of services for the people of this country.
It is interesting to see how the Government's original intentions have changed. Ours is simply a probing amendment—I will not seek to press the matter to a Division—to reinstate, ironically, the status quo of Ministers' intentions. When the Secretary of State addressed the New Health Network early last year he outlined his vision of the future of the health service in several areas, and he spoke about his concerns on certain aspects where he felt the health service was failing at present. He went on to outline his views about foundation trusts and the way forward to free hospitals from political control at the centre and to devolve power to the people. I have no problem with those sentiments providing that the institutions remain within the NHS.
Unlike some of the Minister's hon. Friends, I take it at 100 per cent. face value that neither this clause nor the Bill are, in any shape or form, measures to seek either to begin, or aid, the process of privatising the health service. It is unadulterated claptrap to suggest that, and this clause reinforces that view. Equally, it is unadulterated claptrap to suggest that these provisions could be a springboard for the Conservative party to
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begin that process when it returns to Government. That never has been, and will not be, its intention.
Mr. Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green): As the hon. Gentleman is in such a generous mood at this early stage, will he tell us what method he will use to privatise the health service if he ever does get into power?
Mr. Burns: As I am in such a generous mood, I will not treat that ridiculous intervention with the contempt that it rightly deserves. In many ways, the hon. Gentleman has a justified reputation as a Member of this House but, on occasions, he misses the plot and gets waylaid by introducing cheap, party political jibes that are without foundation.
Let me reassure the hon. Gentleman that, as I said on Second Reading, I believe, as does my party, that this country should have a national health service that is free at the point of delivery for all who are entitled to use it. That has been the policy of the Conservative party since it returned to office in 1951. It was definitely the policy of the Conservative party from 3 May 1979 until 1 May 1997, and it will remain our policy.
I must warn the hon. Gentleman that it does his intellectual reputation no good whatever to peddle ludicrous smears and inaccuracies that have no foundation. In a generous spirit, I hope I have reassured him, and I hope that between now and the 19 June we will not have to listen to any more ludicrous interventions like that made by the hon. Gentleman.
In his important speech to the New Health Network last year about his big idea, which is before us today, the Secretary of State said:
''The middle ground between state-run public and shareholder-led private structures is where there has been growing interest in recent years.''
He went on to say that people have been
''examining the case for new forms of organisation such as mutuals or public interest companies within rather than outside the public services and particularly the NHS''
That was picked up in the Department of Health publication of December 2002, ''A Guide to NHS Foundation Trusts''. In the foreword and elsewhere, the Secretary of State said:
''We will shortly be bringing forward legislation to establish NHS Foundation Trusts as independent public interest organisations modelled on co-operative societies and mutual organisations''.
All of that is straightforward and plain sailing. I understand—the Minister may be able to enlighten or correct me—that the phrase ''independent public organisations'' had been used as well as ''public interest companies''. That caused concern because of the association of the word ''company'' with private sector business. Now that the Bill is finally published, instead of any reference either to independent public interest organisations or to public interest companies, why do we see the phrase ''public benefit corporation'' in clause 1(1)? Subsection (2) goes on to say that
''A public benefit corporation is a body corporate which, in pursuance of an application under this Part, is constituted in accordance with Schedule 1.''
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In its entirety, the clause is straightforward, but I should like the Minister to elaborate on how the original phrase became the ''public benefit corporation''. Is it literally and solely a change in language, or is there any subtle difference between a public interest company-cum-organisation and a public benefit corporation? Will the Minister explain the Government's thinking and the evolution from their original ideas—as put forward in their guide to foundation hospitals and in the Secretary of State's speeches—to what is in the Bill?
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