§ Mr. LawsTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the plans of his Department to utilise the private sector to deliver health care. [1636]
§ Mr. Hutton[holding answer 4 July 2001]: We believe unequivocally in the principle that the National Health Service should provide care to all, free at the point of use, regardless of ability to pay.
The areas where we will seek to use private sector expertise and finance, to help deliver care more quickly, may include: first, using spare capacity in private sector hospitals to perform operations on NHS patients; secondly, getting private sector management to run some of the new stand-alone surgery centres our manifesto commits us to building; thirdly, extending the private finance initiative and public private partnerships beyond the hospital sector into primary care, social services and the provision of imaging and laboratory equipment; and fourthly, using private sector management expertise such as information technology systems.