HEALTH secretary Andrew Lansley said criticism of his controversial NHS health reform bill was politically motivated, during a visit to Liverpool.
Mr Lansley was in Liverpool to launch a new strategy to improve child healthcare, but much of his speech to health professionals at the Liverpool ECHO Arena and BT Convention Centre (ACC) was devoted to the bill.
Alluding to groups opposed to the bill, including the British Medical Council (BMA), he said: “I don’t seek to fight with anyone. Time and again we have paused and listened.”
He said it was “ironic” that doctors were fighting proposals to offer more “independence”, when during the birth of the NHS in 1948 they “complained about Government taking independence away.”
He added: “The NHS is my passion, I would not do anything to harm it.”
Many health campaigners and doctors in Liverpool would disagree.
More than 30 prominent Merseyside doctors and experts signed a letter asking peers in the House of Lords to scrap the bill last October.
