Lib Dem Bid For Anti-NHS Bill Vote Fails

Liberal Democrats opposed to the coalition's controversial NHS reforms have lost a bid to hold a vote to "kill the Bill" after Nick Clegg told Sky News he backs the changes.

Campaigners against the shake-up won enough support to have their emergency motion debated on Sunday at the party's spring conference.

But, under the party's alternative vote system, the attempt failed by a small margin when it came to second preferences.

A rival motion that calls on Liberal Democrats to support the Health and Social Care Bill , put forward by Baroness Williams, was selected instead.

The "kill the Bill" motion won 270 votes compared to 246 for Baroness Williams' motion in the first round but was beaten 309 to 280 in the second.

The defeat will come as a relief to Mr Clegg , who had earlier insisted to Sky News that the NHS was not under threat from the planned changes.

"Of course it's unsettling when you see lots of people saying 'it's going to privatise the NHS and destroy the NHS'. If I thought it was going to privatise or destroy the NHS, it would never have seen the light of day," he said.

"More and more people are living longer. We have an increasingly large ageing population. A lot of those older people have long-term health conditions which means they are spending an increasingly large time in hospital.

"We have got to try and change the NHS. We are not just having a strategy of mass hospitalisation. We are trying to keep people well and healthy in their homes and in their communities. That is what this Health Bill is all about."

The Bill was "paused" last year after a furious backlash and has since been amended more than 1,000 times but many prominent health organisations still fiercely oppose the changes.

This year's Lib Dem spring conference, which is being staged in Gateshead, has been dominated by two themes: health and wealth.

Amid an ongoing row in Westminster over wealth taxes, Mr Clegg has called for a fresh crackdown on tax avoidance by the super-rich.

He advocates a so-called "Tycoon Tax", although he admitted to Sky News that implementing such a crackdown would be difficult because the wealthy are so adept at avoiding payment.

The Deputy Prime Minister also said he is not "wedded" to the idea of retaining the 50p tax rate for top earners as long as the rich were still forced to pay their share.

And he said the overall thrust of the Budget later this month had to be to help the poorest in society while ensuring that the wealthy pay more.

He stressed that it remains a Lib Dem aspiration to raise the tax threshold to £10,000 "as soon as possible".

Raising the threshold to £10,000 would allow more than two million people to stop paying tax altogether and would also be a welcome boost for the "squeezed middle".

The Institute of Fiscal Studies, in research published this week , suggested homes with incomes of around £40,000 would benefit the most from the change.

Business Secretary Vince Cable , who addressed the Spring Conference on Saturday afternoon, told Sky News that scrapping the 50p tax rate was simply a matter of time.

He argued that it "makes sense to shift the tax base away from income onto assets, because that is where the real inequalities and unfairness are".

But the question of how wealth can be targeted remains unclear, especially because the Conservatives are opposed to a "mansion tax" - the Lib Dem idea to hit owners of homes worth more than £2m.