Clegg faces party faithful

Full coverage from the coalition partner’s conference in Sheffield, where Nick Clegg and NHS reforms are expected to come under fire 11.37am: Evan Harris, the former MP, is summing up now. He is backing the first amendment. He says it is unusual for him to be backing an amendment to which no one objects. He says he does not want Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow to be “relaxed” about losing the amendment go through. It will not be enough for Clegg to try to amend the bill. The conference will expect Clegg and Burstow to do what it says. Harris acknowledges that Lansley has intervened to stop private providers competing on price. But the argument about cherry picking is not just about price, he says. Private providers may provide a decent service. But if they take all the easy work, they will damage the NHS by leaving it responsible for the hard stuff. The Lib Dems want to see the bill changed “radically”, he says. We are not going to associate ourselves with the re-toxification of the Tory brand. 11.31am: Andrew George, the MP for St Ives, is speaking now. He pays tribute to the work Paul Burstow has done in government. But he says that he is speaking against the main motion tabled by Burstow. Voting down the motion would “send a very strong message”, he says. It would show the coalition has not turned the Lib Dems into “forelock-tugging automatons”. (George explained his case in more detail in an article today in the Independent.) 11.29am: Michael Ninnmey, a councillor, says that NHS staff are “demoralised” and that reorganisation will be a complete waste of money. Jan O’Hara, who describes herself as a health care professional, says that if politicians really want the NHS to succeed, they should “leave it alone”. 11.27am: The chair is now taking a series of one-minute interventions. So far, apart from Paul Burstow, we have not heard from a single speaker who is enthusiastic about the NHS reforms as they are now. 11.21am: Shirley Williams has just finished a short speech. She was supporting the first amendment. I’ve described it as a “rebel” amendment, although she said that nothing she was doing should be seen as an attempt to undermine Nick Clegg or the coalition. She said she was concerned about the government’s plans for three reasons. First, massive reorganisation would be very costly. Second, GP consortia who commission services under the Lansley plans will be unaccountale. Unlike primary care trusts, they will meet in private. And, third, the private sector will cherry pick the easy cases. She said she knew private hospitals in London that routinely passed their difficult patients onto NHS hospitals. It was a short speech, without any rhetorical flourishes, but she got a tremendous round of applause. 11.16am: The second amendment today says half the seats on the government’s proposed health and welbeing boards should be councillors. Miranda Whitehead, a doctor, has just told the conference that she thinks this would be a mistake. 11.09am: John Pugh, the Southport MP, is speaking now. He says that the conference should have had more than an hour to debate this topic. Reforming the NHS is like turning around an oil tanker, he says. But turning around an oil tanker is even harder if you are taking it apart at the same time. Pugh says the conference is being asked to endorse something that is not Lib Dem health policy, not Conservative health policy and not even coalition health policy. The coalition agreement says there should be no top-down health reorganisation. Any delegates with doubts about the plans should vote for amendment one, he says. Not supporting amendment one is not being loyal, he says. It would be “giving licence to the biggest political, financial and health risk ever taken with our treasured national asset”. 11.07am: You can read all the conference motions here (pdf). And the amendments being debated today are in this document (pdf). 10.56am: Charles West, a doctor, is speaking now. He is moving the first amendement, which is critical of the government’s plans. He says there are two main problems with what the government is doing. First, the plans involve a reorganisation that will cost £3bn. And, second, they will introduce market competition into the service. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has already said that he will amend the health bill so that the private providers cannot compete on price. He will change take out a clause in the bill referring to the “maximum” tariff which implies that providers can undercut the “maximum”. But West says tariffs only apply to 30% of NHS procedures. Even with the Lansley amendment, private providers will still be able to “cherry pick”, for example by picking up profitable training contracts. The amendment, which is also backed by the former Lib Dem MP Evan Harris, says private providers should only be allowed to provide NHS services “where there is no risk of ‘cherry picking’ which would destabilise or undermine the existing NHS service”. 10.52am: Paul Burstow says he would resign from the government if there was a threat of an American-style health system being introduced in the UK. He also says that he knows Lib Dem delegates are concerned about the prospect of private providers being allowed to “cherry pick” the most profitable work under the government’s health reforms. But the health bill will not allow this, he says. The government is closing a loophole that allows private providers to be paid more than NHS providers for the same work. 10.48am: I’m sitting in the conference hall at Sheffield City Hall. It has taken a little longer than expected to set up – the security here is much tighter than it was at the Conservative spring conference in Cardiff last week – but I got a seat just before the health debate started and the wifi seems to work, so we should be okay for the rest of the day. Paul Burstow is opening the health debate. He started with a joke about how the Lib Dems used to be able to debate policy at their spring conference without anyone taking any notice. Not any more. He also said that he would be listening to every word said during the debate, and that if he could improve the health bill as it goes through parliament, he would. 10.40am: Spring conferences tend to be low-key affairs. But the Liberal Democrat spring conference taking place in Sheffield may well turn out to be one to remember. In an interview in the Independent yesterday Nick Clegg said that those who “want to build this up into the Gunfight at the OK Corral” were wrong and that he was “very relaxed and very positive” about the row about the government’s NHS reforms that is expected to dominate the proceedings. But others believe that he is underestimating what’s at stake. In a letter published in the Guardian on Thursday, Michael Quinton, a long-serving party member, said the conference would be crucial to the party’s future. A Lib Dem walkout [from the coalition] might at least slam the door for a time on the early implementation of some of the most damaging policies, on the NHS, education, local government and several more, being promoted by some of the most ideologically motivated Tory zealots. I know I am not alone in believing that almost everything we hold dear hangs on the outcome of this weekend’s party conference and I just hope there are enough people there with the courage to save us. Even allowing for a little “letter to the editor” hyperbole, this is strong stuff. Clegg and Quinton were referring specifically to the debate on the government’s NHS reforms that will take place this morning. Paul Burstow, the Lib Dem health minister, is proposing a motion defending the government’s health bill. But two “rebel” amendments have been tabled demanding changes that would limit the role private companies could play in the provision of NHS services. The conference is expected to support the “rebels”. This would be embarrassing for Clegg, because the conference would effectively be voting against government policy, but Labour got used to this when it was in government and the amendments don’t reject the health bill outright. Clegg and Burstow would be under pressure to amend the bill, although quite what impact a “defeat” would have on government policy remains unclear. But this is not just about the NHS. The reason this issue has come to be seen as so important is that is has become a proxy for much wider concerns. In reality, what this debate is really about is: a) Whether the Lib Dems are essentially a leftish public sector party, or rightish free marketeers? b) Whether the Lib Dems can maintain an identity as independent party, or whether they will increasingly be identifed with the Conservatives? These two questions are, of course, linked, although there is not a complete overlap. They are likely to preoccupy Liberal Democrats for years to come and this weekend’s conference will not settle the matter for good. But it should provide some clues as to where the party is heading. The health debate is the most important event coming up today, but it’s not the only item on the agenda. Here’s a full list. 10.15am: Debate on disability living allowance. 10.45am: Debate on health. 11.45am: Q&A with Vince Cable, the business secretary, and Ed Davey, the employment minister. 2.20pm: Debate on a motion calling for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 14. 3.35pm: Q&A session with Nick Clegg. 4.20pm: Debate on a plan to set up a “leadership programme” of approved candidates to increase the number of Lib Dem MPs who are women or from an ethnic minority. 5.30pm: Debate on internal party business, with short speeches from Tim Farron and Vince Cable. Liberal Democrat conference Liberal Democrats Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

Posted by on March 12, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.