Health and Social Care Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

No. That is what happened in the past and it is important that it does not happen in the future. We must have a health sector-specific regulator to see the health-related aspects of such matters. Labour's amendment 10 would potentially expose the NHS to practices that we do not wish to see. That would include paying over the odds for private sector services, as the previous Government did when they paid £250 million extra to the independent sector for operations that were never carried out; the cherry-picking of easier operations by the private sector, which is an issue in the NHS because the previous Labour Government let it happen; unreformed payment by results, losing the focus on outcomes and integration; and the retention of a system of payment based on price. We are not introducing payment by results; we are reforming it. Payment by results, as implemented by the Labour party, was simply payment for price and volume, not for quality. Amendment 10 would leave independent sector providers of NHS-funded services, which serve hundreds of thousands of patients a year, unregulated by Monitor and unprotected if the service in which they are being treated gets into financial difficulty. So Opposition Members will wish to consider whether all of those things are what they want to be voting for when they walk through the Lobby later on.