The Prime Minister insisted the Government was “abolishing bureaucracy” in the health service and had ruled out price competition and the “cherry-picking” of services by private providers.

The Prime Minister insisted the Government was “abolishing bureaucracy” in the health service and had ruled out price competition and the “cherry-picking” of services by private providers.
But he failed to answer Ed Miliband’s questions in the Commons as to whether or not the controversial Health and Social Care Bill would be altered further after it was condemned by Liberal Democrat activists. Three backbench Conservatives and five Lib Dems have now signed amendments calling for the Government to listen to the concerns of health experts.
Mr Cameron also dismissed the powerful doctors’ lobby, the British Medical Association, as just another trade union supported by Labour, after its delegates called on the bill to be withdrawn at a crisis meeting on Tuesday.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, the Labour leader, Mr Miliband, devoted all of his questions to the planned reorganisation that will see two tiers of NHS management scrapped and GPs forced to consider any private or public provider when buying treatment for patients.
Asked if the Government would alter the legislation further in the face of growing criticism, Mr Cameron replied: “We have already made some real strengthenings to this bill. First of all we have ruled out price competition in the NHS and also the issued raised by the Liberal Democrats, that I completely agree with, which is that we must avoid cherry-picking by the private sector in the NHS.”
Asked again if more amendments would be tabled, the Prime Minister did not answer directly but instead told Mr Miliband he should not “set his face against reform in the NHS”.
The Labour leader asked why the new law was needed given that Mr Cameron had before the election promised “no more pointless top-down reorganisations” of health care, to which the Prime Minister replied: “We are not reorganising the bureaucracy of the NHS, we are abolishing the bureaucracy of the NHS.”