Health Secretary Andrew Lansley – Speech to the NHS Confederation conference, Manchester Thursday 7 July 2011

Check against delivery

Thank you Sarah, and thanks to Mike and all the team at the NHS Confederation for inviting me to be with you today.

It’s great to be here with you in Manchester, where the NHS was born 63 three years ago at Trafford General Hospital, under what many people now accept was a Coalition Government, led by a Conservative former Prime Minister.

I mean, the great Winston Churchill didn’t lose his seat in 1945.

(Video footage of the speech will be available through this link.)

I forget about things, which is one way of making life more exciting.

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'Forward, the information-light brigade! In praise of Simon Burns', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

......................................................................

The excellent Guardian Politics LiveBlog main man Andrew Sparrow cleverly picked out the bones of Andrew Lansley's Commons statement in response to the Dilnot report on social care and its funding.

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'Forward, the information-light brigade! In praise of Simon Burns', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

Irwin Brown of the Socialist Health Association welcomes the advent of Market Stalinism to the NHS.

I was worried and even more confused when I read the latest amendments to the revised, revised Bill.

No longer – I have seen the light.

......................................................................

Health Policy Intelligence is our weekly subscription-based analysis service.

The fourteenth issue, 'Forward, the information-light brigade! Let us now praise Simon Burns', is now out.

Health Policy Intelligence is not available as free content. Subscription costs £8 a month / £69 a year for an individual. Increasing discounts are available to organisations wanting to subscribe for groups of more than 5 and 10 individuals.

Links to yesterday's sessions of the Bill Committee are here and here.

......................................................................

Click here for details of ''Forward, the information-light brigade! In praise of Simon Burns', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

The micro-blogging website Twitter, where I am to be found as @HPIAndyCowper, is proving itself a useful and amusing medium for micro-sized, 140-character-limited, health policy conversations.

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'Forward, the information-light brigade! In praise of Simon Burns', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

Words cannot do justice to the sheer surrealism of the recommitted Health Bill committee evidence session yesterday.

Fortunately, the wonderful people who do Hansard have the transcript of the morning session available here, and of the afternoon session here.

Thank you, Hansard people. You are lovely.

I attended an interesting session this morning thanks to Ipsos MORI, with input from a respected former health secretary. (Chatham House rules apply).

The theme was on a June 2011 survey on choice – the session’s title was ‘no decision about me without me – challenges for the NHS’. It focused on issues around information and choice.

......................................................................