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Philip Gould to Labour: fight the NHS bill but never abandon mantle of reform



Architect of New Labour found strength to vote against NHS bill less than a month before his death on Sunday
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Philip Gould, who encouraged Andy Burnham to fight the government's NHS bill, said it was important not to abandon the mantle of reform. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian


In his last political act, shortly after he had been given just three months to live, Philip Gould found the strength to vote against the government's Health and Social Care Bill in the House of Lords.

One peer recalls that there was "quite a frisson" on all sides of the Upper House at lunchtime on 12 October as Lord Gould of Brookwood, who died on Sunday, voted against the second reading of the bill. A month earlier on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Gould, 61, had praised the NHS for its treatment of his throat cancer, saying that it had surpassed his initial treatment in the US.

In turning up to the House of Lords, Gould did a great deal more than vote in favour of an amendment by the Labour peer Lord Rea to deny the health and social care bill a second reading. He helped to shape the Labour party's approach to the bill after Lord Rea's amendment was defeated by 220 votes to 354.

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, telephoned Gould to thank him for coming in and voting against the bill. Burnham recalls that Gould apologised for failing to win the vote and said that Labour was right to campaign against the bill. But one of the architects of New Labour, who chronicled the early days of the project in his book The Unfinished Revolution, had another key message: never abandon the mantle of reform.

Burnham told me this evening that Gould helped to inspire his new campaign, which is called Drop the Bill. In an interview in his Westminster office, the shadow health secretary said:


Could there be a better expression of commitment to the fight symbolised in the Aneurin Bevan quote: the NHS will only last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it. What an example. It was incredible. I rang Philip after he came in to vote. He said his NHS care has been absolutely wonderful.

I said: 'Oh God we lost the vote, is there anything we can do? I'd like to run a campaign.' He said that is absolutely what you must do. Make it clear, make it simple, make it broad reaching in its appeal. Fight this with everything you have got, do a proper campaign on it. That was his final advice. He said you have got to launch the biggest ever campaign against it, have a proper campaign, get it worked out, grassroots, all parts of the country, pull everybody together. He said get back to those old days when we used to run campaigns that were clear, simple and to the point.

But Gould showed he had lost none of his reforming zeal as he told Burnham he was right to balance his opposition to the bill with an offer to the government to talk about reforming NHS commissioning. In an interview with the Guardian on 9 October, three days before the vote in the Lords, Burnham told my colleague Patrick Wintour that his message to Lansley was:


Drop your bill and we will work with you constructively to reform NHS commissioning.

Burnham recalls:


Philip said to me it was right to balance the criticism with the reform message. He said that helps sets the right tone for the debates in the Lords. Keep on that strong campaigning but keep the reform message. Our call is still that we will talk to the government about reforming commissioning. That offer remains. It is just that Andrew Lansley rejected it out of hand.

Burnham believes it is still possible to block the bill which will experience a "very difficult" period in the House of Lords when peers consider the issue of competition. The government moved last week to head off a rebellion by the veteran Liberal Democrat peer, Baroness Williams of Crosby, by agreeing to "reflect" on her concerns that the bill would take away the health secretary's "duty to provide" NHS services.

Burnham said of his campaign:


This is the final push. We want to bring it all together in a deafening cry, giving voice to what is the overwhelming view of the NHS. People do not want the bill, a case has not been made for it. It is a mess. There was this whole debate in the House of Lords last week about the secretary of state's powers – something as fundamental as that. It demonstrates how the bill shifts the NHS from its traditional structure for 62 years of being a planned system under full democratic control and accountability. The debate in the Lords illustrated how the bill moves it to an unaccountable market where it is managed by the biggest quango in the world. The fact that the government can't even answer the question about what are the secretary of state's powers in this new world almost 16 months after the White Paper indicates the mess they are in. I believe it is possible to stop this bill.

Lord Howe, the health minister, told the Guardian last week that the government was happy to accept amendments to offer reassurances about the role of the secretary of state. Paul Waugh reported on Politics Home on Monday evening that Howe had written to peers to say he would look again at clauses in the bill which cover the "duties" of the secretary of state.

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