“What we are doing, through amendments to the legislation, is to make it absolutely clear that integration around the needs of the patient trumps other issues, including the application of competition rules.”

So said Andrew Lansley last month in response to some challenging questions from the Health Select Committee about whether the amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill really amount to a significant shift in the role that competition will play in the health system.

It is true that the bill no longer includes “promoting competition, where appropriate” within Monitor’s main duties. Instead, Monitor must focus on preventing anti competitive behaviour in the provision of services, “which is against the interests of people who use such services.” The regulator must also act with a view to enabling integration of services where this would improve quality or efficiency, or reduce inequalities in access or service related health outcomes. The NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups are also to be tasked with “securing” integration where it would bring those benefits.

So far, so good. But is there something of a mismatch between rhetoric and reality here?
The government has announced that it plans to not only keep the principles and rules for cooperation and competition but to give them a new power by enshrining them in law. And, the Cooperation and Competition Panel (CCP) will no longer be an advisory body, but a decision making body situated in Monitor, whose powers for preventing anticompetitive behaviour remain relatively unscathed by the latest amendments.

If the CCP’s latest report on the operation of the “any qualified provider” policy in elective care is anything to go by, we can expect the new Monitor to place a lot more emphasis on competition than on cooperation. 

The CCP report contains some very confident – and evidence-light – statements about the benefits to be secured from choice and competition, if only those naughty commissioners would play ball. The authors believe willingness to support the policy will improve with time as its benefits are “more widely demonstrated, understood, and accepted … with the ongoing enforcement of the principles and rules and other relevant provisions.” One recommendation is that authorisation of new clinical commissioning groups ought to be contingent on their abiding by the principles.

The not very deeply buried subtext here is: you are going to learn to like this. And you will have to like it in an increasing number of service areas: last month the Department of Health announced that the “any qualified provider” policy (in which a diverse range of providers compete for the custom of NHS patients), would be extended into community and mental health services.  

Here at the King’s Fund, we have argued for a nuanced approach that promotes competition where it will benefit patients, but places collaboration and integration at the heart of the system. However, the tone of both the CCP report and the Department of Health guidance jars with the post pause rhetoric on the role competition should have in driving the new system. This casts doubt on whether the amendments to the Bill will really translate into a more nuanced approach that supports the use of cooperation as well as competition, recognising that each may be appropriate in particular circumstances.

To be fair on the CCP, their work is guided by the principles, nine of which relate to choice and competition, and just one of which refers to cooperation. Unless the balance of the principles is changed, we will surely see the new powers of Monitor drive more competition in the NHS.

Jo Maybin is a senior researcher, health policy, King’s Fund.

This blog also appears on the King’s Fund website at http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/