Andrew Lansley will not quit over health reforms, says Downing Street
Statement of support issued amid growing speculation over health secretary's cabinet future
Downing Street has moved to quash growing speculation that health secretary Andrew Lansley will quit if the government's review of proposed health reforms ends in wholesale changes.
It has been reported that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have been discussing how to handle Lansley's cabinet future when the review by Professor Steve Field concludes in mid-June.
Downing Street issued a statement of support for Lansley, saying: "The speculation in the papers is nonsense. Andrew Lansley is doing an excellent job."
Foreign secretary William Hague is said to be advising against pressing ahead with the reforms, while Nick Clegg has argued that the changes required to the health and social care bill are so widespread it will have to go back for a second line-by-line scrutiny by MPs. That would delay the bill by up to six months.
Cameron was caught apparently telling Clegg the reforms no longer had anything to do with Lansley, as the two men exchanged angry words about the reforms while waiting to hear Barack Obama address parliament last week.
In a sign Lansley has become fed up with horsetrading over his plans, he has said: "I've stopped being a politician I just want to get the NHS to a place where it will deliver results. I don't want to do any other cabinet job. I'm someone who cares about the NHS who happens to be a politician, not the other way around."
Cameron is caught between needing to show he has listened to the public and professional outcry over the changes, and his need to keep Lansley in the cabinet.
Lansley and his fellow ministers believe much of the reassurance required can be provided without big changes, arguing that much of the opposition was based on a misunderstanding of the bill in part created by the health secretary's failure to sell the reforms effectively.
Lansley is confident his key proposals for GP commissioning will survive! , with m embership extended to include nurses and possibly other health professionals, such as doctors in acute hospitals.
His aides believe the Liberal Democrats will not press for local councillors to join GP commissioning bodies but will demand they are subject to greater scrutiny by health and wellbeing boards on which councillors will sit.
Plans for Monitor, the health regulator, to be given a general duty to extend competition in the NHS will be shelved, something Lansley has been prepared to do. He is also likely to support Clegg's call for no sudden, top-down opening up of all NHS services to any qualified provider.
Lansley has been receiving support from the Tory right, as well as from Blairite health reformers including Lord Warner and Prof Julian le Grand of the LSE.
In a sign of support from the right, the defence secretary, Liam Fox, gave strong backing to Lansley's plans. "We have very clear common aims: that we want to get the outcomes of the NHS up, we have to get better health outcomes in this country for the money we spend. We also have to ensure that more decisions are taken by doctors and nurses and fewer by bureaucrats."
Fox is regarded as increasingly difficult to control by Downing Street. During Obama's visit he chose to go to Washington to speak at an anniversary marking the relationship between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. His speech included an apparent snub to Cameron and Obama, saying Thatcher and Reagan never saw the special relationship as "a dewy-eyed Disneyesque emotional love-in".
Fox added: "They were giants of history when history needed giants. We may never see their likes again in our lifetime."
Fox also praised competition, the principle in dispute in the health bill, saying Reagan and Thatcher "believed that competition is to be welcomed not feared that it is the means by which we judge our talents, one against the other, without recourse to conflict."
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