David Ruffley MP to hold with GP commissioning group on radical NHS shake-up

David Ruffley MP is holding a meeting with the Board of the West Suffolk Commissioning Federation on 11 February 2011. The WSCF is based in Bury St Edmunds and comprises all GP practices in West Suffolk. Under the Government's NHS reforms over the next three years the Federation will take over the budgets currently administered by the Suffolk Primary Care Trust.

David Ruffley said: 'The Coalition Government's plans for the NHS are a real concern to many people. This is one of a series of meetings I am having with doctors, other healthcare professionals and the public about the reforms. The Government has said that the NHS is subject to too much, top-down control. Whilst it is true that tiers of bureaucracy continue to restrict the decisions of doctors and nurses many people are quite rightly worried that GPs either don't want to take on the extra responsibility or are not ready for it.

The Government's Health Bill will, it is said, give responsibility for the NHS budget to frontline family doctors - instead of remote Primary Care Trusts - so that they can shape services according to the needs of the patients they see every day. The Government's plans to modernise the NHS have a simple aim: to ensure everyone is provided with healthcare - free at the point of use and based on need and not ability to pay - which is the best in the world.

These are the broad objectives but in my judgment the devil is in the detail. And this detail has simply not been forthcoming. I will be digging into this issue in the coming months with one thing in mind: the protection of the good NHS provision at the West Suffolk Hospital that my constituents rely upon.'