Political

Even the Daily Mail has nice things to say about Nick Clegg’s NHS speech

Earlier today Nick Clegg gave a major speech on the NHS, signalling big changes to the NHS Bill, something Paul Burstow had talked of on Friday.

The Daily Mail has a straight, factual report of the speech, which given its normal reporting of Nick Clegg almost counts as praise:

A huge shake-up of the NHS could be delayed by weeks if not months, the Deputy Prime Minister said today.

Nick Clegg said he believed the Health and Social Care Bill would need to go back to a committee of MPs for further scrutiny. This is where proposed legislation is examined line by line and substantial amendments can be made…

Mr Clegg told his MPs last week that making Monitor an economic regulator was a ‘misjudgment’ and that it should be tasked with securing NHS collaboration not competition.

Mr Clegg said he backed the use of private companies in the health service and that they had improved patient choice.

But he said: ‘It’s not the same as turning this treasured public service into a competition-driven, dog-eat-dog market where the NHS is flogged off to the highest bidder.’

Positive coverage of the speech has also appeared in the Evening Standard:

Nick Clegg went into battle today over Tory-led health reforms, vowing that the NHS would not be turned into a “dog-eat-dog market”.

In a landmark speech, the Deputy Prime Minister promised to protect the NHS as a “treasured public service” and stop it being “flogged off to the highest bidder”.

One point to watch out for is that the Department of Health itself is not (yet) fully behind sending the Bill back to committee in Parliament. There’s a bit of coalition debate being carried out in public here (which, as I’ve argued before, is good) – and we all need to keep up the pressure to make sure the debate comes to the right conclusion.

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