A LABOUR MP has seized upon a North-East hospital consultant’s critical comments about the Government’s health reforms to launch his own attack.

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Tom Blenkinsop said the views expressed in a national newspaper earlier this week by cancer consultant Clive Peedell showed that doctors were rejecting the coalition Government’s reform plans.

Dr Peedell told The Guardian that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has not won the hearts and minds of doctors with his plans, and said his ideology of using markets to deliver healthcare in the UK was not supported by the majority of doctors in the NHS.

The consultant, who works at The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, said the Government’s plans would force hospitals to compete with each other more and more, and this “goes against the grain” of usual medical practice of working together.

Dr Peedell said he was “very concerned” that the reforms would lead to fragmentation of care, with patients being referred to a number of different providers.

Far from reducing management costs, Dr Peedell said the new system was likely to push up such costs.

By introducing a payment-byresults system and opening up the provision of healthcare to more competition from the voluntary and private sectors, the Government has created what Dr Peedell described as “a roadmap to privatisation”.

The consultant’s comments appeared after a survey by the King’s Fund thinktank showed that only one in four of Britain’s doctors thinks the controversial health reforms would improve patient care.

Mr Blenkinsop said: “He is right.

“The plans will mean the scrapping of a tried and tested system of local primary care, linked to the services provided by new hospitals such as James Cook, which are managed by health professionals who know and trust each other, only to replace them with the nebulous prospect of groups of entrepreneurial GPs who will trade services between their practices and local hospitals.”

The MP said all the GPs he had met wanted to remain clinicians serving their local patients and collaborating with their hospital colleagues.

But Mr Lansley rejected this criticism.

“Reform isn’t an option, it’s a necessity,” the Health Secretary said.

“Our plans give the NHS and patients a clear direction for the next five years and beyond.

“We believe that both purpose and pace are vital to improve services for patients.”