The declaration was made yesterday as a panel of leading figures in health discussed the future of the NHS and the opportunities and challenges associated with greater local accountability, at the Conservative party conference in Manchester.
The event was hosted by KPMG in partnership with Localis - a think-tank dedicated to issues of local government, local politics, local authorities and devolution of power in the UK.
Former Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell, who resigned his Charnwood seat at the last election, reaffirmed the Blairite mantra of ‘what matters is what works,’ in terms of delivering public services.
The most important aspect of healthcare, he said, was the commitment to “high quality services, in a timely way, to those who need them, without regard to those individuals’ ability to pay. That is what I consider to be the core values of the health service.”
Those values, he added, must be “extended into the care system.”
Mr Dorrell revealed that proposals to better integrate health and care had been talked about by health ministers over the past 50 years at least.
“It is an aspiration that has been articulated but has not been delivered,” he said.
He encouraged local institutions to embrace the distinction between the “payer and provider” of services, which would enable public money to be used as effectively as possible.
Even Aneurin Bevan, the chief architect of the NHS, was a supporter of this concept, Mr Dorrell asserted.
Bevan, he said, had “introduced into public services the principle of a private contractor working for a public purchaser, which is of course precisely the model on which general practice is delivered in Britain.”
This was immediately disputed by fellow panel member and Labour politician, Tony Lloyd, who is Greater Manchester’s Police and Crime Commissioner and interim Mayor.
“I think Nye Bevan might have been a bit askance at the idea that he was the inventor of commissioners,” he said.
Current competition structures in Greater Manchester had fostered “wasteful competition,” that had been “a genuine drain on taxpayers’ money,” he added.
Mr Lloyd went on to express enthusiasm for the opportunities that devolution would offer to the region, but stressed the need for “upfront investment,” in order to achieve the “transformational change,” that was needed.
The interim Mayor said he was keen to create centres of excellence in Greater Manchester, replacing a culture in which all hospitals were under pressure to cover all areas of health.
This would allow the service as whole to “act strategically and remove duplication.”
According to Mr Lloyd, such significant changes “could not be delivered by central government. We need localism to be able to deliver the kind of change that we need.”
Responding to a question from the audience, other panel members agreed that housing should also play a role in healthcare.
Leader of Warwickshire Council Izzi Seccombe, said: “Housing is central. The best opportunity for people in life is to be able to have a roof over their head, a house that is warm and we have to be able to deliver that.”
Echoing this sentiment, Leader of Staffordshire County Council, Philip Atkins, outlined the need for a holistic approach to health, saying, “housing is key to that.”
Concluding the event, Mr Lloyd expressed his willingness to work cross-party to improve healthcare provision in Greater Manchester and capitalise on the Government’s devolution drive.
“We welcome the opportunity to work on this transformation. It would not be possible without the devolution agenda. I don’t think it would be possible for a siloed government machine to deliver with the level of sophistication and subtlety that we need to transform our health service.
“Working as a Labour politician with the Government we can change these things. It’s about partnership working and we don’t drive things by ideology we drive things by practicality. But the prize at the end it is a big one, because we will save lives.”