Anne Main backs the Bill which will increase local GPs’ powers to commission services and reminds MPs of past failures of centralisation and bureaucracy in the NHS, most notably the failed patient record system.

Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con): Does my right hon. Friend share my absolute astonishment at Labour Members’ collective amnesia when it comes to the 13 years of mixed-sex wards and rising levels of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and C. difficile that they presided over, along with a failed patient record system that has cost billions?

Mr Lansley: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come to some of those points. However, I might just say that, in the space of the last few days, we have had an opportunity to demonstrate that Labour signed up to an enormous, centralised, top-down NHS IT scheme that was never going to deliver, was failing to deliver and was costing billions.

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