In quotes: Debate on future of NHS

Some of the MPs' contributions to the Commons debate on the Health and Social Care Bill.

ANDREW LANSLEY, HEALTH SECRETARY

People trust the National Health Service and the values of the NHS are protected and will remain so. Paid for by general taxation, available to all, free at the point of delivery, based on need and not on ability to pay. But a system in which everyone is treated the same is not one in which everyone is treated as they should be. Our doctors and nurses often deliver great care but the system often doesn't engage and empower them as it should.

JOHN HEALEY, SHADOW HEALTH SECRETARY

These changes will break up the NHS, these changes will open up all areas of the NHS to price-cutting competition from private health companies. These changes will take away from all parts of the NHS the requirements for proper openness, scrutiny and accountability to the public and to Parliament. They are driving free-market political ideology into the heart of the NHS and this is why doctors are now saying that, as it stands, the bill now spells the end of the NHS.

STEPHEN DORRELL, CONSERVATIVE HEALTH COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN

This bill actually represents an evolution of policy which has been consistently developed by every secretary of state with a single exception since 1990... which of these key policies does Labour now wish to dissent from?

DAVID MILIBAND, FORMER FOREIGN SECRETARY

The choice is not between no reform and reform. The question is good reform versus bad reform. And my belief is that the proposals in front of us represent not a curate's egg of some good reforms and some bad reforms but actually a set of poison pills for the National Health Service.

ANDREW GEORGE, LIB DEM MP

Although I think that the bill is well-intentioned, I think in order for it to proceed and not to damage the NHS I believe that it needs some further major surgery during committee and report stage.

DENNIS SKINNER, LABOUR BACKBENCHER

Why on earth should the health service be changed? We had 13 years, we dragged the health service from the depths of degradation and hoisted it to the pinnacles of achievement.

NADINE DORRIES, CONSERVATIVE MP

Sixty-two years has passed since the NHS was first established and it's absolutely time for the NHS to be modernised. In those 62 years, drug research and development has advanced hugely, medical technologies have advanced in such a way that couldn't even have been imagined 62 years ago and patients now, as a result of the internet and information available to them, expect and demand to have a say in how their condition is managed... what this bill will do will put the patient right at the heart of the NHS.

FRANK DOBSON, FORMER LABOUR HEALTH SECRETARY

These proposals will divert people in the NHS from the job of looking after people, they are privatising the NHS, they are fragmenting the NHS and they will cost us a fortune and do little or no good for anybody.

NICK DE BOIS, CONSERVATIVE MP

Who do patients trust? Do they trust a remote PCT [primary care trust] or do they trust their local doctor? There really is no contest and I welcome these reforms because they will give the commissioning powers to the GPs and bring their patients closer to decisions about their future.

DEBBIE ABRAHAMS, NEW LABOUR MP FOR OLDHAM EAST

This Bill does not require GP consortia to work together, which leads to the possibility of neighbouring consortia taking different decisions about services, giving rise to a new postcode lottery.