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• Ministers will talk to staff at a hospital in home counties • Nick Clegg rules out any moves towards privatising NHS David Cameron and Nick Clegg are joining forces with Andrew Lansley to launch the government’s “listening exercise” on the controversial NHS reforms amid conflicting signals from within the coalition. The three ministers will answer questions from medical staff at a hospital in the home counties as they seek to show that the government is responding to concerns about plans to hand 60% of the NHS budget to GP-led consortiums. Lansley was forced to take the rare step on Monday of making a statement to MPs, during the middle of a passage of a bill through parliament, to announce that the government would “pause” proceedings to listen to people’s concerns. Amid fears in Downing Street that Lansley’s failure to explain the reforms has provoked a damaging backlash, the health secretary said that the government would reassure voters in a series of areas. Ministers will show that the GP-led consortiums would be transparent, accountable, properly overseen and that the reforms would not allow private providers to “cherry pick” the most lucrative NHS services. Lansley appeared to indicate that the changes would not be far-reaching when he said the health and social care bill would be amended “in the normal way” when it is revived, probably in mid June. But Clegg made clear on Tuesday that major changes would have to be made. “This is a question of making substantive changes to the legislation at the end of this two-month process,” the deputy prime minister told Radio 4′s The World at One. “For example, we have talked about the governance of GP consortia. That is one area that we are clearly going to look at. But the other area where there have been concerns is the role of the private sector in the NHS. I absolutely do not want, and would never accept, any scheme which could lead to the privatisation of the NHS. We are not going to privatise the NHS. We are not going to flog off bits of the NHS to the highest bidder and we don’t want the private sector simply to cherry pick the easy bits, undermining the integrity of the NHS.” The deputy prime minister agrees with Cameron that Lansley is guilty of a spectacular failure to communicate a core message: that the NHS must be reformed to meet the twin challenges of an ageing population and tight budget settlement. This failure has prompted a backlash among Liberal Democrats who voted against the reforms at their spring conference last month. The prime minister fears that years of campaigning to persuade voters that the NHS is safe in Tory hands have been undermined. Clegg made clear that he supports the basic principle of the reforms. “Of course there is a lot of controversy. But the basic idea that GPs who know patients the best should be given more responsibility for the way the system works, I think that is relatively uncontroversial. What is controversial is the detail, and that is why we need to get those details rights, including increased accountability and scrutiny and transparency of the way in which they manage those responsibilities. It is a dilemma which we want to address. We think there should be proper transparency and accountability of the way in which GPs discharge this new role that they will have.” NHS Health Andrew Lansley Nick Clegg Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk