Cameron and Clegg strike deal on reforms

London: David Cameron and Nick Clegg have agreed changes to the government's NHS (Nation Health Service) reforms, allowing the deputy prime minister to launch a ferocious attack on Sunday on the original plans as a "disruptive revolution".

As the Royal College of GPs calls for a radical overhaul of plans to hand 60 per cent of the NHS budget to new GP-led consortiums, Tory sources indicated that the Cameron-Clegg negotiations have left Andrew Lansley an isolated figure in the government's "listening exercise".

Lansley, the embattled health secretary, who is still resisting some of their demands, has been left briefing colleagues that Clegg has embarked on a U-turn after declaring in January that "funnily enough" the NHS reforms were in the Liberal Democrats' general election manifesto.

Clegg gave a taste of the areas of agreement with Cameron on Sunday when he told The Andrew Marr Show that GPs should not be forced to sign up to the new commissioning consortiums and that a 2013 deadline for the changes should be relaxed.

"A lot of people have said to me, and I basically think they're right, they're saying ‘you're going too fast, you're trying to meet artificial deadlines, you're forcing GPs to take on commissioning roles when they might not want to or aren't able to'. I basically think they're right," the deputy prime minister said.

Evolutionary approach

"I think what we should now do is — which is a change — is an evolutionary approach that only happens... where people are willing and able to take on these new changes. If not, we shouldn't be forcing the pace according to artificial deadlines in a calendar."

In a sign of his confidence that real changes will be introduced, Clegg said the health and social care bill, which he praised on the same programme in January as an example of the fusion of Tory-Lib Dem thinking, was deeply flawed.

"As far as government legislation is concerned, no bill is better than a bad one, and I want to get this right," he said. "Getting these changes right, protecting the NHS rather than undermining it, is now my No 1 priority," the deputy prime minister said.

"I'm not going to ask Liberal Democrat MPs and Liberal Democrat peers to proceed with legislation on something as precious and cherished, particularly for Liberal Democrats, as the NHS unless I personally am satisfied that what these changes do is an evolutionary change in the NHS, not a disruptive revolution."

The Liberal Democrats hailed the deputy prime minister's tough language as a sign of a new assertive relationship with the Tories after the drubbing in the elections last week.

Clegg himself heralded this new approach when he said the Lib Dems would act as a "moderating influence" on the Tories.