Nhs

The motion passed by Liberal Democrat conference this morning means that the party is neither supporting nor opposing the Health Bill. The rebels having lost the vote on whether or not to debate their ‘Drop the Bill’ motion, but managed to amend the so-called Shirley Williams’ motion to remove the line calling on their peers to vote for it. This is a blow to the leadership who were confident last night of winning the vote this morning. But it is nowhere near as bad as the conference — which, remember, still has the power to make party policy — deciding that the bill should be dropped. It is, though, another

Lib Dem Spring conference is turning out as the leadership would have wished. The support of Shirley Williams for the Health Bill seems to have been enough to reassure delegates that they should back the bill in its amended form; they’ve already voted to debate the leadership friendly motion tomorrow morning not the ‘Drop the Bill’ one. In a question and answer session with activists just now, Clegg — to huge applause — urged the party to side with Shirley Williams not Andy Burnham. This appeal to Lib Dem tribalism seems to be winning the day on the health issue. Clegg, as he always does at conference, used the Q&A

Nick Clegg pushed his members to ‘stop lamenting what might have been and start celebrating what is’ in his rally speech to the Liberal Democrat spring conference. He told them ‘now is the time to move on, to stop justifying being in government and start advertising being in government’. The debate over the Health Bill, though, threatens to dominate the conference. Clegg in his speech went out of his way to pay tribute to Shirley Williams, who is now on the leadership’s side on this issue, lauding the ‘outstanding work Shirley is doing in the House of Lords to protect our NHS’.  This was met with warm applause. But it

This weekend’s Lib Dem spring conference is the next big political hurdle for the Health Bill. If the conference votes against the Bill, then it will create a huge political headache for the government and be a severe embarrassment to Nick Clegg. Talking to Liberal Democrats ahead of the vote on Sunday morning, I’ve been struck by how worried some Clegg supporters are that the vote might be lost. Now, this could well be expectations management. But there are more than a thousand Lib Dem members who have signed the Lib Dem petition against the bill. On balance, I think it is more likely than not that the leadership escapes

The letter from Nick Clegg and Shirley Williams to Lib Dem MPs and peers raises several interesting questions. The first of which is why did Clegg champion these health reforms back in the day? Four days after the first reading of the bill, the deputy Prime Minister had this exchange with Andrew Marr: Andrew Marr: ‘Huge change to the NHS just coming down the line. Was that in the Liberal Democrat manifesto?’ Nick Clegg: ‘Actually funnily enough it was. Indeed it was.’ Second, how does the Clegg-Williams claim that ‘This is not the Bill that we debated as a party last March’ fit with the Tory line that the amendments to

Talking to a Downing Street adviser earlier this week, I was struck when they observed that a ‘2014 election wouldn’t be too bad really. David would have done his best, Nick would have done his best. But they just couldn’t make it work anymore.’   The Tories have spent some time recently contemplating the possibility that the coalition might not run for the full length of the parliament. At a recent Chequers away day, the prospect of the Liberal Democrats walking out in 2014 was openly discussed.   That this possibility is even being talked about is revealing of the mood inside the coalition, which is the subject of my

Let’s be honest. I shouldn’t say this but I can’t help it. I’m fed up. The NHS reform process has been dragging on for months, and still there’s no end in sight. Ed Miliband brought it up at PMQs for the third week running. The position remains the same. Miliband loves it. Cameron lives with it. The PM claimed that 8,200 GP practices are now practising his reforms and the Labour leader replied with a list of professional bodies — nurses, doctors, midwives, radiologists — who oppose them. And that’s exactly the trouble, for me, at least. If the issue were a race-horse some crazy campaigner would plunge beneath its

As I said last week, Nick Clegg is in a tricky position when it comes to this Health Bill. Thanks to the concessions that he secured and welcomed last year, he can’t now just slander it outright. But thanks to the concerns of his own party, he will also be reluctant to endorse it in full. The result is the sort of ambiguous performance that the Deputy Prime Minister put in on ITV’s Daybreak show this morning. He did get stuck into Labour for their ‘outrageous’ misrepresentation of the reforms. But when it came to actually supporting the Bill, it seemed to me that he used generalisations — such as,

It would be so much easier for Ed Miliband to attract headlines if he could shout in Andrew Lansley’s face. As it is, the Labour leader has had to make do with giving a speech today attacking the NHS reforms. Within the parameters of what he might say, it’s an okay effort. The predictable lines about ‘creeping privatisation’ are leavened by the admission that ‘the question is not reform or no reform. It is what type of reform.’ And he adds, by way of a cross-party sweetener, that he would ‘get round the table’ with David Cameron to discuss ‘the future of the NHS’. But the substance of the speech,

Tomorrow’s Downing Street meeting on the implementation of the health reforms is meant to send the message that the bill is definitely going ahead. Number 10 is keen to shore up the bill ahead of Liberal Democrat Spring Conference following the uncertainty caused by Rachel Sylvester’s column and Conservative Home’s call for the bill to be dropped. Indeed, I understand that at the Quad dinner on Monday night, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander made the basic political point that the Liberal Democrats would feel absolved of the need to support the bill if any Tory minister came out publicly against it. But Tory ministers still need to muster more public