ANY QUOTES MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now David Cameron has said he is at one with Andrew Lansley, his Health Secretary, on his reforms of the National Health Service. Writing in today’s Sunday Times the Prime Minister said there was no alternative and it follows reports that three Conservative Cabinet Ministers privately attacked the handling of the Bill. Well in a moment I’ll be speaking to Stephen Dorrell, head of the Health Select Committee and the Cabinet Minister Eric Pickles. Just to let you know also watching the discussion this morning are our Twitter commentators, they are Oliver Wright, the Whitehall editor of the Independent, political correspondent at The Times, Anoushka Asthana and Mark Littlewood, Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs. They provide their reaction via Twitter and you can read that on the side panels and you can also follow on our website, skynews.com/politics and we want you to join in as ever using the hashtag #murnaghan. Well let’s say a very good morning to Stephen Dorrell who joins me from Worcestershire. Mr Dorrell, are you still convinced in spite of the flak it’s taking that this Health and Social Care Bill is the right prescription for what ails the NHS?

STEPHEN DORRELL: Well what I am convinced of is that the right way for the government to deal with the position now is to proceed and to put the Bill on the statute book. I can think of nothing that would further undermine and demoralise staff within the health service more than the thought that we’re going to have another six or twelve months discussion about how the health service is managed. What’s much, much more important than the management structure is getting on with the job of ensuring that healthcare changes, the delivery of healthcare changes in a way that reflects the needs of today’s patients, the opportunities provided by today’s clinical ideas and, very importantly, the need to deliver efficiency gain out of the health service on a completely unprecedented scale if we are going to be able to treat patients within the resources, much more constrained resources available in today’s world.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But you do seem to be giving it a qualified endorsement, you seem to be saying you wouldn’t have started from here but you are so far down the road that you’ve got to continue.

STEPHEN DORRELL: Well I voted for the Bill at every stage in its processes through the Commons but I’ve always said that I regard the change of healthcare, the change in the way care is delivered to patients, as more important than this endless debate about the management structure. There are some quite significant improvements in the management structure provided by the Bill – greater clinical engagement in the decision making about the health service, so doctors and nurses are more closely engaged in the future, better relationships with local government. Those are important changes brought forward by the Bill but they are not the principal challenge facing the health service and the sooner we get off discussing the things that the House of Commons have, that the political class loves to discuss, and get on with changing the way care is delivered, that is the priority.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: One way of getting off it would be to drop it, start again and take up Andy Burnham, the Shadow Health Secretary’s offer, and discuss this in a cross party way. Mr Burnham was saying this morning that he believes, and we’ve got to look at the political dimension here, he believes that it’s political pride now that’s driving Mr Cameron to back Mr Lansley.

STEPHEN DORRELL: But just think that option through for a second. It involves, as I’ve said, further month after month of discussion about how we take this forward. Actually these structures are not, as the Prime Minister makes clear in his article in the Sunday Times this morning, they build on 20 years of changes in the way healthcare is managed, they are not radical, they are evolutionary. In fact they tweak a policy that was first introduced, it genuinely was radical then, 20 odd years ago, by Ken Clarke as Health Secretary, they tweak that policy. It has been developed by every single Health Secretary over the last 22 years with the single exception, as I’m fond of saying, of Frank Dobson who never agreed with it. But every other Labour Health Secretary agreed with it, every Conservative Health Secretary has agreed with it for over 20 years. There isn’t a major radical departure in this Bill.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But isn’t there a problem with this Bill that it’s been amended out of all recognition from its original format and that nobody really seems to understand it, a lot of politicians don’t, health professionals – some of them say they’re bemused by it and I bet a lot of patients are scratching their heads and thinking ‘what does it mean for me?’

STEPHEN DORRELL: Well the answer is it means some modest developments of a set of structures that have been in place for over 20 years and rather than endlessly talk about those structures, wouldn’t it be more important to talk about, for example, as my committee was earlier this week, the importance of improving the linkages between the delivery of primary care, the family doctor service, social services, community health, so that we deliver better, more joined up care for elderly people? That seems to me to be much more important than endless discussion about the management structure.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Would you accept though, and you read the papers and listen to the radio and watch the television like the rest of us, that it is causing your party political damage? Reports of rumblings within the Cabinet itself and polls that now say that the public no longer trusts the Conservative party with the NHS after a lot of hard work in opposition on that very issue.

STEPHEN DORRELL: What I do agree with is that this is a political discussion, it’s not a policy discussion. The policy has been consistent for over 20 years, the principle that those who decide the future shape of healthcare services shouldn’t be the same people who are delivering it, you should involve doctors and nurses in future decisions but you should be open to new ideas about how care is best delivered. That’s a principle that Labour and Conservative governments have pursued over the last 20 plus years. What’s blow up over the last 12, 18 months over this White Paper and then the Bill, is a huge political discussion about a policy that’s changed remarkably little.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Just finally, Mr Dorrell, can I ask you briefly, if asked would you be open to serving in Cabinet again?

STEPHEN DORRELL: I’ve been elected to do a job as the Chair of the Health Select Committee for the lifetime of this parliament and that’s what I intend to do.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, Stephen Dorrell, thank you very much indeed. Stephen Dorrell there, live from Worcestershire.