This week, my colleague Andrew Lansley quite rightly corrected Ben Bradshaw’s misleading assessment of Conservative plans for NHS spending. Bradshaw has a tendency to be over-zealous in his role as the Department of Health’s attack dog, and this wasn’t the first time in the last year that the Minister has been somewhat economical with the truth.
During July 2008, the Government published a strategy for Primary Care with the intention of giving patients more choice over their GP. Obviously worried that it wouldn’t get much coverage, Ben Bradshaw duly went on the offensive against family doctors. The Minister, who, it would be reasonable to assume, held an extensive collection of data, barked: ‘There is no doubt there are some areas where gentlemen’s agreements operate that mitigate against lists being open to new patients and therefore work against real patient choice.’ But the evidence for this savaging was rather thinner than we might have expected.
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