Andrew Neil: “There’s no mention in the Tory manifesto of 80 per cent of NHS budgets going to GPs.”

Mark Simmons MP: “Yes there is. It’s on page 46, I think.”

Daily Politics Show, 15 March 2011

Opponents of the Government’s proposed changes to the NHS were buoyed today by the British Medical Association’s (BMA) decision to call for the Health and Social Care Bill to be withdrawn. One of the sticking points for campaigners has been the perception that the Government’s intentions were not made plain in the party manifestos or the Coalition Agreement, alluded to by the fact that the BMA noted in its motion that there was “no electoral mandate” for the change.

However this was a charge that was denied by one Conservative backbencher on the BBC’s Daily Politics show. The MP for Boston and Skegness Mark Simmons instead claimed that current policy was clearly foreshadowed in the 2010 Conservative Manifesto.

So what did we find when we dusted down Full Fact’s dog-eared copy? This largely depends upon how precise we wish to be.

Andrew Neil is correct that there is no mention of the 80 per cent figure in relation to GP commissioning, however there is certainly a pledge to devolve this area of responsibility to local doctors.

The manifesto states: “We will strengthen the power of GPs as patients’ expert guides through the health system by putting them in charge of commissioning local health services.”

Furthermore, this pledge makes it word-for-word into the Coalition Agreement (page 24).

So whilst there may be areas of the proposed reforms which, in the words of the Select Committee on Health were “subject to little prior discussion and not foreshadowed in the Coalition Programme”, it appears that GP commissioning was not one of them.