MP’s fears for the NHS grow

Oldham MP Debbie Abrahams, who campaigned for the Government to set out the risks to the NHS of its controversial changes, says a leaked document has shown the potential damage is even greater than she feared.

The Health and Social Care Bill, which will devolve 60 per cent of the NHS’s budget to new GP-led consortia, became law this week after more than 1,000 amendments and widespread opposition from medical professionals.

Despite a ruling that the register of potential risks should be published, the Government succeeded in keeping the assessment private. The local MP was one of Labour’s health team to repeatedly call for the risk register to be published.

Some of the higher risks included GP consortias going bust or having to cut services and costs being driven up using private sector organisations and staff. Mrs Abrahams said: “This is what I feared and worse. We kept pushing for this risk register to be published as we believed it would contain warnings like this.”


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