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Blow To Clegg After Lib Dem Split On NHS Bill

Blow To Clegg After Lib Dem Split On NHS Bill

Nick Clegg has said the NHS bill was "stopped in its tracks" because of the Liberal Democrats - but party peers have been told to withhold support for it in the House of Lords.

Activists voted 314 to 270 to remove a crucial line in a pro-change motion calling for peers to back the final stages of the Health and Social Care Bill .

However, it does not mean Lib Dems in the House of Lords will vote against the bill and it does not bind MPs to vote against it in the Commons.

Regardless, it is an embarrassing blow to leader Nick Clegg at the party's spring conference in Gateshead.

Sky News political correspondent Glen Oglaza, reporting from the conference, said it showed "disconnect between Lib Dem activists and parliamentarians".

The Lib Dem leadership would have thought they had seen off any threat to the bill on Saturday when a motion to scrap it altogether was rejected by the conference .

But on Sunday, activists lined up to criticise the NHS shake-up and eventually rejected the call in the so-called "Shirley Williams motion" for peers to support the legislation in its final stages.

Former MP Evan Harris said that despite "sincere efforts" made in the Lords to reform the bill, it still did not contain a block on the wholesale outsourcing of commissioning work.

"It is still nowhere near the coalition agreement," he added.

St Ives MP Andrew George insisted the party could not go on "deluding" itself.

"Substantial opposition has still been mounting in spite of these changes. We cannot claim the bill has been hugely changed."

Dr Ann Morrison, from Birmingham, argued if the party had stuck to the coalition agreement "it would not be in this position now".

She added: "You should never turn supporting a bad bill into a political testosterone and virility test."

But speaking after the vote Mr Clegg told activists the health bill had been "stopped in its tracks and rewritten" thanks to the Lib Dems.

"The value of coalition has been proven because this is a coalition Government," he said.

"Competition will be the servant of health care, not the master because this is a coalition Government.

"This is a bill for patients not profits. It is not a Liberal Democrat health bill but it is a better bill because of the Liberal Democrats, a better bill because of you."

Speaking to Sky News' Dermot Murnaghan, the party's deputy leader Simon Hughes suggested the bill had not reached its "final shape".

"I think the conference reflected the mood of the party and the country to be honest," he said.

"The NHS bill is a controversial bill, it's not the bill we would have produced if we had been in government on our own," he said.

"It's a bill where conference made clear it wants other changes. And the conference, the party, are saying, we're reserving our judgment on the bill as a whole until we see the final shape of it.

"We want to be reassured that it shuts off privatisation, doesn't allow competition to dominate and puts patients' interests first. I think it could do that - but conference said, we want to see the final product before we agree to it."