Today, the Lords had a once in a lifetime opportunity to demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that they are the peoples’ friend, the rock in the British system that stands against the tides of party politics – and they blew it. By allowing a second reading of the Health and Social Care bill, and failing to vote for significant amendments, they have, in effect, given free passage to the Bill and its inevitable consequence – the fragmentation and in due course destruction of our national health service.
This callous disregard not just for the will of the people, but also for the utterly overwhelming weight of professional opinion against the Bill, will cost the Lords dear. Familiar arguments that the Upper Chamber is a repository of the great and the good, of noble minds engaged on perfecting the interests of our historic nation and its people, are now revealed as hollow blandishments, the cries of hollow men and women. The British people – and Dr No says British, because although it is the English who will bear the brunt of pain, there has been remarkable solidarity from those less affected – will not forget this betrayal.
The numbers are notable. Right up to the vote, pundits declared result predictions were too close to call. There was sharp talk of knife edges, of desperate last minute talks, and of last-ditch letters. But when the time came, the votes were not so much knife edged as hammer faced. Peers rejected calls for the NHS reforms to be abandoned entirely by 354 votes to 220, and dished Lord Owen’s referral amendment by 330 votes to 262 – majorities, we might note, greater than that achieved at the Bill’s third reading in the Commons. Although it is too early to know which way individual peers voted, it seems not unlikely that main party affiliated peers voted on party lines, with many of the unaffiliated – mostly so-called crossbenchers – and uncommitted – the Lib-Dems – voting with the Tories (the Tories have only 218 peers, so to get to 354 and 330 votes, significant numbers of non-Tories must have voted with the Tories).
The NHS (Wrecking) Bill 2011 may have cleared another major hurdle, a result that does not surprise Dr No, but the battle against this monstrous tyranny, a tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of Tory crime, is far from over. For Dr No has…
…full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our NHS, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is our resolve. That is the will of medical and nursing professions, and of the nation. The British People, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their national health service.
Even though tracts of general practice and old and famous hospitals have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Tory thinking and all the odious apparatus of market rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in the fields, we shall fight on the wards and in the clinics, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the media, we shall defend our NHS, whatever the cost may be…