Liberal Democrats say in leaked email: keep challenging &#39;bad&#39; NHS plans

Evan Harris, leader of Lib Dem rebels, vows to keep fighting even after partial Tory climbdown on NHS reforms

The "Yellow Bastards", as the Tories now call the Liberal Democrats, are still not happy with the government's NHS reforms plans.

In a leaked email the former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris, who has led the charge against the original Andrew Lansley blueprint, has condemned the revised plans as "bad".

This is what Harris wrote in the email, part of an email chain seen by the Guardian:

There is a view that we should keep quiet, say we had a victory and hope no-one notices this stuff - but I think that is not realistic. The plans remain bad for the NHS, go beyond the coalition agreement and we must insist on sovreignty (sic) of conference on major issues not in the CA [coalition agreement].

Harris has already indicated publicly that he is not happy with the revised plans which were launched by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley at Guy's Hospital on 14 June. On 18 June Harris told the Guardian there were "new threats" hidden within the reworked NHS.

The Harris email identifies those threats. This is what he wrote on Wednesday this week. I've kept his spelling mistakes:

I agree with Charles * and Andrew ** and would say further...
(Shirley *** shares the views below broadly I believe)
1) We achieved a victory - but that was a battle not the war
2) There are still very key issues that have not been satisfied
3) These are
a) Duty on Secretary of State to provide or secure the provision of the NHS - which remains abolished (not in our original motion in terms)
b) the privatisation of commissioning work (in our original motion but not yet achived
c) having prevented the marketisation and promoting of competition via Monitor we now face exactly the same via the NHS Commissioining Board being given a mandate by the Secretary of State to promote competition. In other words we put Monitor back in its box but not the driving of competition.
d) Still no safeguard against the undermining of existing NHS services by the contracting out of related services which provide the income or case-load needed to sustain an essential or remaining service. (eg losing elective orthopaedics means no trauma service, losing head and neck means no peadiatric service, etc.
e) No guaranteed majority of cllrs on HWBs even though still zero cllrs on commssioning groups (breaches motion, manifesto and coalition agreement)
4) There are other issues relating to laxity on co-terminosity and then further concerns about the quality premium, public health, education & training.
5) Our approach should be to have another motion to conference saying
a) well done Nick et all on achieveing key changes - listing them
b) note that conf said stick to coalition agreement on health and not accept Tory policies
c) there are new threats from the Tories.
d) calls on LD MPs and peers to oppose 3(a) to (e) above
6) There is a view that we should keep quiet, say we had a victory and hope no-one notices this stuff - but I think that is not realistic. The plans remain bad for the NHS, go beyond the coalition agreement and we must insist on sovreignty of conference on major issues not in the CA.
I hope that is agreeable.
Best
Evan

The email is unlikely to amuse Tory backbenchers who believe that Downing Street has bent over backwards to appease the Lib Dems by watering down the health and social care bill. Tory MPs are concerned that the main duty of Monitor, the health service regulator, will no longer be to promote competition. But they are biting their tongues out of respect for Andrew Lansley who was cheered to the rafters at a meeting of the 1922 committee last month.

John Healey, the shadow health secretary, disagrees with the Tories. He believes the government's "listening exercise" was a PR exercise which led to little substantive changes.

Healey says the Harris email illustrates his point:

The Prime Minister's calibrated climbdown last week was designed to buy off opposition to his NHS reorganisation but keep in place the Tories' long-term ideological plans. It looks like Lib Dems are waking up to Labour's criticism of Cameron and Clegg's political fix on the NHS. From the start I've warned people to judge what David Cameron does not what he says on the NHS.

It looks like Healey is preparing to do battle when the government's amendments to the bill ? more than 180 have been tabled ? when it is examined again at committee stage from next Tuesday.

This is what Healey says:

The amendments confirm the quagmire of new quangos, contradictory duties and bureaucratic fudges in the government's NHS reorganisation. But they still show that the long term Tory plans to break up the NHS and introduce a full scale market remain intact. This process has been botched from the start. It is a disgrace for the government to think that patients' groups, professional groups and experts can properly scrutinise these amendments in just two days.

* Dr Charles West, a GP, who was the Lib Dem candidate in Shrewsbury and Atcham at the last general election.

** Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, was one of two MPs from his party who abstained when the health and social care bill received its second reading on 31 January.

*** Baroness Williams of Crosby, education secretary in Jim Callaghan's government who left Labour to help found the SDP in 1981. Williams and Harris were the driving forces behind the vote against the Lansley blueprint at the Lib Dem spring conference in March.

Nicholas Watt

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