Blair's NHS shake-up plans survive major revolt
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Your support makes all the difference.The Government's flagship foundation hospital reforms tonight scraped through the Commons with Labour's 160-plus majority slashed to just 17.
But the mutiny by Labour backbenchers may encourage peers to again strike out plans to give top hospitals greater freedoms when the Bill returns to the Lords.
The majority was the lowest under Tony Blair's leadership and less than half the 35 recorded the last time MPs voted on the measures.
Tory health spokesman Tim Yeo complained that the Government was only saved tonight by the votes of MPs from Scotland, where there are no plans for foundation hospitals.
However, Health Secretary John Reid, himself a Scottish MP, called Mr Yeo a "pathetically bad loser".
Mr McCartney made his appeal for support at the regular meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
He urged them to undo the recent Government defeat in the Lords which struck out the provisions for foundations hospitals from the Bill.
Dr Reid later told MPs that peers had completely rejected "the principle of handing power in the NHS to frontline staff".
However, his defence of foundation status provoked a damaging intervention by former Cabinet minister Clare Short.
Most MPs believed in decentralisation but the measures would lead to greater inequality, she argued.
Dr Reid insisted the first wave of best performing hospitals included some from catchment areas which were "relatively underprivileged".
And he added: "We intend, within four years, to raise every hospital in this country to the level by which we can then free them up from some of the central restrictions."
Labour rebels such as former minister Frank Field insisted that they would not back down, warning that foundation hospitals would lead to the creation of a two-tier NHS.
However one Labour MP, Graham Allen, who opposed foundation hospitals in the earlier vote, said that he would be backing the Government for "political, rather than policy reasons".
"I refuse to help Michael Howard get off to a winning start just 18 months before a General Election," he said.
Labour chairman of the Commons Health Committee, David Hinchliffe, who opposes foundation hospitals, had predicted that MPs who abstained at the first vote would rebel tonight.
Downing Street earlier acknowledged the vote would be tight.
Mr Blair's official spokesman said: "Everybody recognises it's going to be close.
"The Government is determined to get its programme through. Foundation hospitals are an important part of our reform agenda for the health service. This is a bill which is one of the centrepieces of the Government's programme."
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