The Health and Social Care bill is to be revised after a number of recommendations from NHS Future Forum. This follows a 10-week listening exercise, instigated after a number of stakeholders expressed concern about the initial proposals.

The BBC lists the major changes that are expected to be accepted, including:

  • The legal responsibility of the health secretary for the NHS to be reinstated
  • The 2013 deadline for the new GP commissioning arrangements to be relaxed
  • The power of health and well-being boards, which are being set up by councils, to be beefed up and patients given a greater role on them
  • GPs still taking the lead in making decisions, but other professionals such as hospital doctors and nurses to be consulted more
  • The focus on competition to be "significantly diluted", with the regulator, Monitor, focusing on improving patient choice instead.

Stakeholders have broadly welcomed the proposals. Sean O’Sullivan, Head of Policy at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Much of this makes sense to us. Competition in the provision of maternity care is not an option we would support and would harm, not improve services.”

Royal College of GPs Chair Dr Clare Gerada said: “We are reassured that things are moving in the right direction; the emphasis on preserving the principles of the NHS and keeping it free at the point of need; freeing the NHS from political interference; clinical commissioning of local services led by GPs; and the real focus on reducing health inequalities are to be welcomed.”

The Royal College of Nursing’s Chief Executive & General Secretary, Dr Peter Carter said, “We welcome the report’s findings that Monitor must support the integration of care and that care must not become of secondary importance to cost.”

“However, it is disappointing that the Future Forum appears not to have accepted the view of thousands of our members, who are calling for a mandatory requirement for nurses to sit on the board of every commissioning consortium.”

Dr Chris Hanvey, Chief Executive of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, as part of a wide-ranging response on the various impacts on children, said:

“Our President Professor Terence Stephenson was a member of the Future Forum and we are encouraged that the final Future Forum report acknowledges the concerns he raised about the extent to which the impact of the Bill on children’s health had not been reflected”

BMA council chairman Hamish Meldrum said the way the government and the NHS Future Forum had engaged with the profession during the listening exercise on the bill had been "a refreshing experience’. He added: ‘It is vital that this constructive approach is maintained in the following months as the detail is worked on."

David Cameron, writing in the Daily Mail, admits parts of the bill were wrong but that the listening exercise has put this right.

Opinion writers have been divided over the merits of the changes. Christina McAnea in the Guardian says many questions remain following the exercise.

Philip Johnston in the Telegraph says the reforms are now muddled and will struggle to be effective - a view echoed more strongly in the paper’s leader.

ConservativeHome highlights a ComRes poll showing the impact the reforms have had on public opinion of the government's handling of the NHS.

George Eaton in the New Statesman reminds readers that this will be the beginning of more debate and changes to the bill within the government.

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