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Liberal Democrat leader to set out substantial revisions to the health and social care bill
Nick Clegg will seek to maximise the Liberal Democrats' influence over the imminent changes to the government's NHS plans with a major speech on Thursday setting out his party's demands.
The deputy prime minister will outline the substantial revisions he expects to see made to the health and social care bill to ensure that his MPs feel able to support it when it returns to parliament.
He will also make clear why the NHS needs reform. Party sources say it will echo a keynote speech last week by David Cameron and endorse the prime minister's view that, although some of health secretary Andrew Lansley's proposals will be rethought, the service in England will still be expected to embrace far-reaching changes so it can cope with growing financial and clinical pressures.
John Healey, shadow health secretary, will accuse Cameron of refusing to amend the bill enough to ensure that it does not harm healthcare. "David Cameron is a PR man looking for a PR answer.
He must accept the problem is not the presentation of his NHS plans but the full-blown free market ideology behind them," Healey will say in a speech to NHS, medical and health policy experts.
"This Tory ideology is totally at odds with the ethos of the NHS and the essential way it works."
Meanwhile, leaders of Britain's doctors claim the bill as written poses such "an enormous risk" to the NHS that it should be withdrawn entirely or be significantly gutted.
The British Medical Association believes the service cannot undergo a radical restructuring at the same time as it is trying to save £20bn by 2015 and that doctors are worried that changes, such as the creation of consortiums of GPs, are going ahead despite the "pause" in the bill and setting up of the government's NHS listening exercise.
