Andrew Lansley’s ill-fated health bill ran into even more trouble this week when the government was defeated in the Lords on day one of its report stage. The Financial Times also reported a Conservative backbencher as saying ‘No Tory MP knows what the point of these reforms is.’ I couldn’t help thinking they’re not alone!

Doctors, nurses, the royal colleges, patients’ groups, in fact just about anyone working in or using the health service – says that this disastrous bill is damaging our NHS and imposing a top down reorganisation. And as the massive increase in the number of people waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment shows it is patients who are suffering.

Meanwhile a No 10 insider was quoted in the Times as saying the ‘health secretary should be taken out and shot’. This was quickly rebuffed by Downing Street in the Daily Telegraph who exclaimed ‘No 10 does not want to shoot the health secretary.’

The health secretary may have presided over the biggest legislative shambles and policy disaster in recent history but even I think shooting him is going a bit too far.

Given the prime minister can’t even get his story straight on whether or not he wants to shoot his own ministers is it any wonder they’ve made such a mess of running the NHS?

The deputy prime minister briefed this week he thought about vetoing the health bill but decided against it ‘for the sake of coalition unity’.

In the Commons this week, I questioned the point of these reforms and called on the government to recognise reality and finally drop the health bill.

The deputy prime minister also said this week he was asking Liberal Democrats ‘day in day out’ to vote for things that they ‘wouldn’t do in a month of Sundays’ were there a majority Liberal Democrat government.
At business questions on Thursday I said it might have escaped the deputy prime minister’s attention but we haven’t been voting for legislation ‘day in day out’ due to the government’s shambolic mishandling of parliamentary business.

And the few votes we have had were clearly too much for the children’s minister who fled London rather than going into the division lobby with the Conservatives to vote for the welfare bill. I asked the leader of the House if he agrees with his backbenchers who said the children’s minister should either have the courage to vote for the government’s business or the guts to resign?

Finally, I paid tribute to two remarkable women in the chamber this week.

Her Majesty the Queen has reigned for 60 years. Her commitment to the nation and the Commonwealth has rightly earned respect across the country and around the world. And Florence Green, who died this week at the age of 110, was the last known surviving service member from the first world war. Mrs Green was one of over 100,000 women to serve this country in the Great War.

I asked the leader of the House consider scheduling the traditional debate to mark International Women’s Day to pay tribute to the service of these remarkable women.

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Angela Eagle is MP for Wallasey and shadow leader of the Commons