Green MP has cross-party support for NHS reinstatement bill, which would abolish bodies such as NHS trusts and restrict commercial interests

The NHS is teetering on the brink of privatisation. We must stand up for it | Caroline Lucas Read more

Caroline Lucas, the Green party’s only MP, will present a bill to parliament which aims to reverse large parts of the last government’s Health and Social Care Act 2012.

The private members bill, named the NHS reinstatement bill, has received cross-party support, including the backing of Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn, Liberal Democrat MP John Pugh and the SNP’s health spokesperson Philippa Whitford.

The bill would reinstate the secretary of state’s responsibility for the health of UK citizens, something the Health and Social Care Act removed. It would also abolish bodies such as NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and clinical commissioning groups, allowing commercial companies to provide services only if they were essential to patient welfare and the NHS could not do so itself.

A private member’s bill can be introduced by any member of parliament or peer who is not a government minister, but few of them actually pass in to law because they are given little parliamentary time. In March this year, Lucas tabled a similar bill that had to be dropped when parliament was dissolved before the general election.

Labour MPs Cat Smith, Michael Meacher, Rob Marris, Kelvin Hopkins, John McDonnell and Roger Godsiff have supported the bill, but Lucas called for the whole Labour party and its leadership candidates to follow Corbyn in “standing up for our NHS” and backing it.

The Labour party pledged to repeal the act in its general election manifesto. A spokesperson for shadow health secretary and Labour leadership candidate, Andy Burnham, said: “Burnham campaigned vehemently against the health bill in the last parliament and spent three years promising to repeal it as health secretary.

“He has been very clear that Labour will reverse NHS privatisation and if we had won the election we would be repealing the Tories’ reckless health act this summer.”

A conference of the British Medical Association (BMA) backed Lucas’s proposed NHS reinstatement bill by 53% of the vote on Monday 23 June, but doctors and medical students stopped short of calling for the BMA to lobby the government for it to be adopted.

“The NHS we love is facing an existential threat,” said the MP for Brighton Pavilion. “The creeping privatisation of the last quarter of a century has introduced the fragmentation and the inefficiencies this brings into our health service.

“It’s time to take a stand for our NHS. I’m honoured to be presenting the bill with such strong cross-party support but, to take the campaign for a truly public NHS to the next level, it’s vital that the Labour party comes forward to back the bill.”