The Conservatives plan to scrap big chunks of Andrew Lansley’s 2012 Health and Social Care Act.
This is a damn good thing.
The specific sections which will be repealed are those requiring commissioners to offer NHS Services for tender to private sector contractors like Virgin or Circle
They will also remove NHS Services from the scope of the Public Contracts Regulations. This is a boring bit of Government procurement rules, but has a massive impact on the NHS. EU law, and WTO rules require Governments to offer up public contracts to private sector bidders. Historically UK Governments exempt the NHS from these rules (other Governments have similar excemptions). Cameron was the first to reverse this position.
Idiot.
This is essentially the same story that I covered previously:
This is all good news, and is part of a radical shift inside the NHS. We can now see a clear set of plans emerging to scrap the NHS internal market. More radical in many ways that a lot of Labour’s policies.
It also means that all of those “Evil Tories Privatisation the NHS” memes are even more out of date.
You can read the story in today’s Guardian.
Update: This is the NHSE board paper with the recommendations: