FINALLY, the Health and Social Care Bill has become law. There has been a lot of heat spoken about the NHS reforms, so now the measure has passed I want to reassure you by addressing some of the key points.

Firstly, the NHS will continue to provide treatment free of charge for those who need it.

Furthermore, the Government is making sure that despite the need for tough spending decisions, more money will continue to be found for the NHS. Secondly, the Bill gives power to GPs to get the best care for their patients.

It does so by abolishing two levels of bureaucracy – the Primary Care Trust and the Strategic Health Authority. Here in Thurrock we have been poorly served by our PCT.

A massive overspend which resulted from building an oversized and expensive PFI hospital at Brentwood and staff recruitment cuts to treatment in order to balance the books with the result that IVF and other ‘non-essential’ treatments were cancelled.

I do not mourn the departure of the PCT and believe that the GPs will make better decisions about the care their patients need.

Furthermore GPs wont be restricted about where they purchase care from. So our GPs will not be forced to refer patients to Basildon if they think there is a better alternative. I firmly believe these reforms will improve the NHS. If I didn’t believe this I would not have supported it.

There is too much inequality in health care provision and I believe that we have been less well served here in Thurrock than in many other areas.

We need to make sure that Basildon Hospital delivers on its improvement plan; we need to make sure that GPs step up to their new responsibilities and we need to make sure that the regulatory system takes action when there is failure.

I will be watching developments closely.