Further opposition emerged to the government’s controversial health bill this week and it wasn’t just from those protesting against Andrew Lansley’s dangerous reorganisation outside Downing Street. Sources close to No 10 suggested the leader of the House was one of the Cabinet’s ‘heroic three’ who briefed the ConservativeHome website about their opposition to the bill. So at Business Questions on Thursday I welcomed Sir George Young to a just cause!
I told him that he joins the company of patients, doctors, nurses, midwives, Royal Colleagues, health managers and just about anyone who has anything to do with the NHS -all the people in fact who were locked out of No 10 when the prime minister’s held his self-styled ‘summit’ on Monday.
A year ago the prime minister said he had to listen to the NHS. Now he shuts the door on them if they dare to disagree with him. Meanwhile Gareth Johnson, Tory MP for Dartford, showed just how out of touch the Tories are with public opinion when he said the views of the Royal Colleges should be ignored because GPs had been opposed to Labour’s 1948 bill founding the NHS.
I said in the chamber, this is not the best argument for a Tory MP to advance because if Labour had listened to the Tories then there would be no NHS at all! They were wrong then and they are wrong now.
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats again abandoned their principles and shamefully scurried thought the government lobby or sat on their hands if it came to voting on the risk register this week. This is despite 15 Liberal Democrats signing an EDM stating ‘That this House expects the government to respect the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the health and social care bill’. In the end only four Lib Dem MPs joined Labour to vote for the motion.
This week Russian scientists announced they had grown an extinct plant from seeds frozen in the permafrost for the last 30,000 years. I said in the chamber that the Liberal Democrats have clearly decided to put their principles into deep freeze.
I said they are kidding themselves if they think they can store them away until the next election and asked the leader of the house find time for a debate on coalition unity – to give Liberal Democrats a chance to make up their minds, whether they’re in government or not. They can’t be a bit of both.
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Angela Eagle is MP for Wallasey and shadow leader of the Commons