18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 228 / Noes: 312 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
What utter, disgraceful nonsense! I will rebut every single thing that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has said.
This has been a tough winter for the NHS, and I first want to pay tribute to the hard work of staff on the front line who have been working exceptionally long hours in very challenging circumstances. What they want right now is practical help, a vision for the future and a sensible plan to get there—all of which this Government are delivering. They do not want to be turned into a political football. The public have noted that while Labour Front Benchers sometimes sound restrained in parliamentary debates, they are the opposite in the TV studios, where they do everything possible to whip up panic and a sense of crisis. That is not the behaviour of a responsible Opposition.
As NHS England and the King’s Fund have said, the NHS is coping well under real pressure and, in the words of Dr Cliff Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, trying to weaponise it for political purposes is “toxic”. Indeed, Professor Chris Ham, of the King’s Fund, said this week:
“This is a long-term issue not to do with this particular government—the previous government faced many of the same challenges...patients who are really poorly will still get a very good and very quick service.”
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
In contrast to what we have heard from the Opposition, will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the seven-day-a-week GP surgeries opening up across Ealing and Acton and the plans for the new walk-in health centre for Acton? Will he join me in condemning the Labour-led council’s decision last night to cut the public health budget?
Mr Hunt
That is the reality: there are new and improved services for the NHS up and down the country, but what we get from the Labour party in my hon. Friend’s constituency is scaremongering leaflets saying that hospitals are being closed when they are not. Labour should apologise for scaring very vulnerable people. It claims to stand up for them, but by scaring them it is doing the exact opposite.
Mr Marcus Jones
Unfortunately, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) did not do me the courtesy of giving me a right of reply when he mentioned the walk-in centre in my constituency. Does the Secretary of State not think that it was completely irresponsible for the right hon. Gentleman to make such comments, given that the issue was raised by a whistleblower and that the information does not come from the clinical commissioning group that is considering walk-in centres in my constituency?
Mr Hunt
Exactly. My hon. Friend makes the point very well, and I will tell him something else about the hospital in his constituency. The George Eliot hospital was a failing hospital with very high mortality rates, and its deeply entrenched problems were swept under the carpet by the previous Labour Government, but this Government have turned it around and it is now a successful hospital. It is doing incredibly well because we faced up to the problems that Labour ignored.
Angela Smith
Sickness-related absence is going up around the country. In Barnsley, it has gone up by two percentage points in the past two weeks. A one percentage point increase equates to £1 million a year. Not only will that hit budgets, but it is a real sign that the NHS is under severe pressure.
Mr Hunt
The NHS is under pressure, so the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in her constituency has 34 more doctors and 74 more nurses, and that we are currently doing about 2,000 more operations every year for her constituents. Yes, there is pressure, but this Government are investing on the back of a strong economy so that we can put more money into the NHS and give her constituents a better service.
Mr Hunt
I am going to make progress, but I will give way later.
I want to look at the pressures that the NHS is facing, because the right hon. Member for Leigh asked about the direct causes. There are more than 1 million more over-65s than there were four years ago. Many older people become particularly vulnerable when it is cold, which is why winters are always difficult for the NHS. The truth is that over successive decades, we have made older people more dependent on emergency care by under-investing in primary and community care, reducing the responsibility of GPs for out-of-hours care, removing the personal responsibility for patients from GPs, and failing to integrate health and social care.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke as if that was nothing to do with Labour. However, he knows what damage was caused by the GP contract changes in 2004, he knows that his Government failed to integrate health and social care for 13 years, and he knows that where Labour runs the NHS today—in Wales—the performance is even worse. Instead of debating constructively, he chose to start this year by putting up a scaremongering poster that implied that the NHS would cease to exist if this Government were re-elected. That is not good enough. The whole country can see that, for him, it is not about the ward, but the weapon; it is not about the patients, but the politics. For this Government, it is about the patients.
Mr Redwood
Does my right hon. Friend understand Labour’s attack on privatisation? Under Labour, the NHS always had private-sector contractors as GPs— and nothing has changed; and it always bought all its pharmaceuticals from competitive, profit-making pharmaceutical companies—and nothing has changed. What is the shadow Secretary of State’s grievance?
Mr Hunt
Privatisation is one of the most pernicious fears that Labour is seeking to stoke up—not least because, as Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh allowed the decision to go through that Hinchingbrooke hospital should be run by the private sector. He has been running away from that decision faster than anything that anyone has seen before, because he is still trying to curry favour with the unions.
The companies on the shortlist for Hinchingbrooke hospital were Circle, Serco and Ramsay Health Care. He could have stopped that as Secretary of State, but he did not. He knows—[Interruption.] Those were the three bidders—the private sector-led bids. He could have stopped that process when he was Secretary of State, but he chose not to. That makes my point very well.
Barbara Keeley
The Secretary of State and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) asked what had changed. Under Labour, we did not have tendering for £1.2 billion of cancer and palliative care services, as we are seeing now in Staffordshire and Stoke, where the majority of those tendering are private companies. We did not have that.
Mr Hunt
What the last Government did, that was right, was to say that—[Interruption.] I am just saying what the last Government did right. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) might want to hear this, because I do not usually compliment the last Government.
To bring waiting times down to 18 weeks, the last Government said that they would support the NHS by allowing the private sector to do some operations. We have continued that policy, not changed it. The result, the hon. Lady will be pleased to know, is that 6,000 more operations are happening every year in her constituency under this Government than in 2010.
For this Government, it is about the patients. That is why we increased the NHS budget; why we hired 9,000 more doctors and 6,000 more hospital nurses; why we are doing nearly 1 million more operations a year than four years ago, with fewer long waits than ever; why we have increased cancer referrals by half, saving an estimated 1,000 lives every single month; and why we have learned the lessons of Mid Staffs by putting in place safe staffing, having independent inspections and turning around six failing hospitals.
Patients say—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Leigh should listen to what patients say, because he did not do that when he was Secretary of State. Patients say that their care is safer and more compassionate than ever, with the independent Commonwealth Fund saying that under this Government, the NHS has become the best health care system in the world.
Frank Dobson
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the only reason why he has been able to recruit British doctors is that the previous Government increased recruitment into medical schools by 35%?
Mr Hunt
I welcome the fact that the previous Government increased training places, but as the right hon. Gentleman will know, having been Secretary of State, those doctors have to be paid for. The NHS budget has not been cut, as the shadow Secretary of State wanted, so we can afford to pay for those doctors. There are 219 more doctors serving the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman because of the decision that this Government took to protect the NHS budget.
Even more important than what we have done for patients in this Parliament is the fact that, under this Government, the NHS has developed its own plan for the next five years, the “Five Year Forward View”. Because we have a strong economy, we can back that forward view with a record £2 billion extra for the NHS front line next year alone.
Part of our commitment to the NHS—this is a real difference between the Government and the Opposition—is that we face up to difficult decisions, including on pay. No one wants to be more generous to staff who work long hours than I do, but the official advice that I received as Secretary of State was clear: the cost of accepting the pay review body’s recommendation would be £450 million, which would mean that hospitals might lay off between 6,000 and 14,000 nurses.
It is easy for Labour to support a pay strike, but it is deeply cynical if it cannot pay for its promises, as it knows it cannot. Labour claims to stand up for staff, but will it today stand up for patients by condemning the strike right in the middle of winter, which was supported by only 4% of NHS workers, or do the votes and financial support of the unions matter more? The test of a party that aspires to govern is not the easy decisions that it makes, but the tough ones. We have seen nothing brave or principled from Labour today.
Andy Burnham
I have a direct question and I would appreciate a direct answer. If the agency bill in the NHS was the same as the one I left behind, would not the Secretary of State be able to afford the modest, below-inflation increase that the Chancellor promised to all NHS staff?
Mr Hunt
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman why the agency bill has gone up. It has gone up because hospitals are trying to recruit doctors and nurses to tackle the problems of Mid Staffs that he left behind. As they improve their staffing, they will gradually get more full-time nurses, but in the short term, they do not want to put patients’ lives at risk.
I want to return to the situation this winter. To relieve the immediate pressures, we have given the NHS a record £700 million, which has allowed it to recruit an extra 796 doctors, 4,700 nurses and 3,094 other staff, making a total of 8,590 additional staff, and to increase bed capacity by 6,400. We have more staff, more beds, more GP appointments and more GPs in A and E than ever before for winter.
What is the impact of the extra support that we have given the front line? The target is to see and treat people in A and E within four hours. Compared with the last full year for which Labour was in office, 3,000 more people are being seen, treated and discharged within four hours every single day. The mean time that people wait for a first assessment has fallen from 77 minutes to 30 minutes, and nine out of 10 people, even under the pressure of the additional visits, continue to be helped within four hours. That performance is better than anywhere else in the United Kingdom—and, indeed, better than in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and any other country in the world that measures A and E performance.
While the NHS is straining every sinew to meet high standards, the public will not accept the cynical politics that demands that we call it a crisis in England, while refusing to call it a crisis in Wales, where Labour is in charge and the problems are far worse. According to the House of Commons Library, in Wales, double the number of people are kept waiting in A and E, and nearly double the number of people wait too long for an urgent ambulance. For Labour, poor care matters only when there is a political point to be scored. For a party that aspires to run the NHS, that is simply not good enough. How Nye Bevan would turn in his grave if he knew that the party that founded the NHS was turning its back on patients with such contempt in his own back yard!
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Although I appreciate that there will inevitably be a battle between the two parties to a certain extent in this debate, the Secretary of State is at his strongest—this is what I hear from all the health care professionals in my constituency—when he talks about his patient-centred vision for the health service of the 21st century and when he looks away from the here and now and towards the future that we all know is desperately needed by all our constituents: a patient-centred NHS. I hope that he will say a little more about that.
Mr Hunt
I will, and that is what this is about—putting patients first. That is why we need important reforms such as ensuring that every vulnerable older patient has a named accountable doctor—I will mention that later in my remarks—and why we must remove barriers between the health and social care systems.
Sir Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
It has been well known in the NHS for decades that an ageing population means that more needs to be spent in real terms each year on the NHS than in the year before. In 2010, when the Government came to power, 8.2% of our gross national income was spent on the NHS, but that has now fallen to 7.9%. How can that possibly be an increase in the Conservative party’s commitment to the NHS?
Mr Hunt
Because the only way we could return the economy to growth was by tackling the deficit left by the Labour party—the worst deficit in the developed world. Labour left us with that problem; we have sorted it out and are turning the country round. If the hon. Gentleman wants to increase spending on the NHS, as I do, the only way to do that is through a strong economy, which is what the Government are delivering.
Mr Hunt
Let me make some progress. In A and E, as everywhere in our hospitals, it is important that whatever the pressures, people are given safe, compassionate care. Our NHS is one of the safest systems in the world, but we still have around 1,000 avoidable deaths every month. We still put the wrong prosthesis on someone once a fortnight, operate on the wrong part of someone’s body once a week and leave a foreign object in someone’s body twice a week. Just five years ago, we had the tragedy at Mid Staffs, which, we should never forget—[Interruption.] I am quite shocked that people are laughing when we are talking about harm that happens in the NHS every month and about what happened at Mid Staffs. We must not forget that Mid Staffs was hitting its A and E targets for much of the period that that same department was tolerating the most horrific care. Whatever the pressure to hit targets, the Government want every vulnerable person to be treated safely and with the highest standards of dignity and respect.
Two years ago, we introduced the toughest inspection regime anywhere in the world. The result was over 6,000 more nurses on our hospital wards, cases of MRSA and clostridium difficile halved over this Parliament and more than 200 NHS organisations have signed up to halve avoidable harm and avoidable death over the next three years. Care is getting safer. While we lead the NHS through that painful process, what is the reaction from Opposition Front Benchers? They criticise us for running down the NHS and still maintain—as the right hon. Member for Leigh did in December—that it was a mistake to hold a public inquiry into Mid Staffs. He talked about listening to patients, but this is what Julie Bailey, a Mid Staffs campaigner whose mother was a patient at Mid Staffs said about his comments in December:
“The message he is sending out is that it is better to cover things up than to criticise the NHS, however bad things are. The inquiry uncovered huge failings in the NHS and he thinks it shouldn’t have taken place at all. It is very worrying because if he becomes Health Secretary again at the election it is clear we would go straight back to the bad old days of covering up.”
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
One problem last month in my local hospital, the Princess Royal university hospital, was the lack of space, and ambulances were backed up. It is not just a staffing problem; it is a spatial problem. Does the Secretary of State agree that if we had more space in A and E departments, we could get people off the streets?
Mr Hunt
Space is a problem in some A and Es, which is why we have expanded A and E capacity. Other places have different problems, but the long-term solution is to have improved capacity outside hospitals in community care. That is the real challenge and what the “Five Year Forward View” is about.
Andy Burnham
Given what the Secretary of State has just said, may I gently remind him that I was the Secretary of State who appointed Robert Francis QC to inquire into what happened at Mid Staffs, against the advice of the Department of Health, and that report was published before the last election. If he is being fair, he should bear that in mind at all times.
The Secretary of State reeled off a list of things that are wonderful in the NHS today—everything has got better; everything is fine; and it is the best in the world. At the beginning of the debate, I reeled off cases of people waiting hours or even dying while waiting for ambulances, or being treated in cupboards. I hope that he will not conclude his remarks without addressing the very real suffering and poor care that is happening across England right now.
Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Hunt
I will give way to the former Secretary of State in a moment, but I want to finish—[Interruption.] Exactly. I have read the Francis report and I have acted on it. [Interruption.] I have just listed what we have done: £700 million, 4,700 more nurses and 800 more doctors.
Mr Hunt
But the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency has more doctors and more nurses who are seeing more people every year within four hours and doing 4,000 more operations every year. That is working for his constituents, but there is pressure out there and we need to support people through a difficult winter.
The right hon. Gentleman mentions stories that are, of course, very tragic, but never once has he brought up stories about the problems happening in Wales. Too often, we get the impression that, for Labour Members, poor care under a Labour Government—whether in Wales today or Mid Staffs previously—does not matter as much as poor care under this Government when they can make a political point. A party that really cared about the NHS would be as outraged about problems when they are in power as they are when in opposition. For this Government, poor care is poor care, and we will deal with it wherever and whenever it happens.
Alan Johnson
Does the Secretary of State remember the words of the Prime Minister when he stood at the Dispatch Box and presented the report from Stafford? He said that what happened at Stafford was not the fault of any previous Secretary of State, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). The Prime Minister was a statesman on that occasion; it is a shame that the statesmanship has slipped since.
Mr Hunt
I have a great deal of respect for the former Secretary of State, but if he had followed the debates on Mid Staffs in this Chamber he would know that my disagreement with the shadow Health Secretary is over the reaction to Stafford and whether we will learn from those mistakes. When I have made speeches talking about the problems of poor care in the NHS today, he goes straight out to the TV studios and says that that is running down the NHS. That is not acceptable when we are taking difficult decisions to turn round failing hospitals and face up to problems in exactly the way suggested by the Francis inquiry.
Mr Hunt
I will make some progress because I want to answer some of the questions asked by the right hon. Member for Leigh. One reason for the pressure I have outlined is that people increasingly expect to get medical care 24/7, just as they are able to bank, shop and book their holidays 24/7. The NHS cannot be King Canute and try to stop that—I am not blaming patients, but that is how patient expectations are changing, and we need to give them better alternatives to turning up in A and E.
Over the past two years, we have expanded weekend and evening GP appointments for more than 5 million people. We have also rolled out the 111 service, which now handles—these are the facts—three times more calls every year than its predecessor, NHS Direct. The right hon. Gentleman criticised 111, so let us look at the facts. Of those who call 111, 30% say they would have gone to A and E but decided not to as a result—that is 2 million journeys to A and E and around 600,000 ambulance call-outs avoided because of 111. Unlike NHS Direct, one third of all 111 centres can now access a summary of people’s GP records, and that will apply to nearly all 111 centres this year. Not only can people talk to a doctor or nurse, as they did with NHS Direct, but if they give consent they can do something that they could never do under NHS Direct and talk to someone who knows about them and their medical history.
Another big challenge facing A and Es is the increasing complexity of the illnesses that people are presenting with, including many older people with conditions such as dementia, diabetes or asthma. Such people often end up being admitted to hospital rather than treated and sent home, and that is not just challenging for the system; it is often wrong for the individual. A busy A and E can be the worst possible place for a frail, older person with dementia, which is why in our vision for the NHS every vulnerable person has a doctor who is continually responsible for their care, whether or not they are in hospital, and who ensures that they have proper care wrapped around them, thereby reducing the likelihood of emergency hospital admissions. Too often, that does not happen. Too often, the buck stops with no one. That is why, this year, we reversed the 2004 decision and brought back named GPs with personal responsibility for everyone aged 75 and over. That is helping 4.5 million people. With 800,000 of the most vulnerable people, we are going even further, giving them guaranteed rights to prompt and proactive care from their GP.
On social care, for too long, some of the most vulnerable people in our country have suffered from disjointed care with NHS and social care systems that, rather than talk to each other, constantly try to pass the buck. For the first time from this April, we have required all local authorities and NHS organisations to work together to plan care in a joined up and seamless way, as part of the better care programme.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Hunt
I am going to make progress.
When that happens, we should see, for the first time ever, not an increase but a reduction in emergency hospital admissions. For patients, that will mean something important: a doctor or nurse will be in charge of every person in the social care system; medical records will be shared, so that people get safer and more joined-up care; and joint teams will work together across the NHS and social care systems, rather than the silos and boundaries that have plagued the system till now.
The Government have never pretended that the challenges facing the NHS are straightforward, but with more doctors, more nurses, more operations and safer care than ever before, we have shown our commitment to that most precious institution. We have put our money where our mouth is, with protection for the NHS budget during cuts, financial help this winter and support for the NHS’s plan for the future. More important than the money are the values behind it: our passion for the highest standards of compassionate care for every person who needs the NHS. Good care, not clever politics, is the future for our NHS.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
My hon. Friend mentioned Professor Allyson Pollock. Is he aware that she particularly highlighted the extraordinary amount of money spent under the previous Government on the private finance initiative, mortgaging the future of the NHS to the tune of more than £80 billion? In the course of the next Parliament, that will cost more than £11 billion.
David T. C. Davies
I commend the professor’s book, and I hope Labour Members read it, as well as looking at the NHS comparators between England and Wales, which they obviously have not done so far. I would like Labour Members to tell us whether—if they ever are in government; I hope they will not be—they will guarantee to continue with the cancer drugs fund, which has allowed thousands of people in England to live longer and more productive lives than they otherwise would have.
The situation is not the same in Wales, where these cancer drugs are routinely denied to people. I am talking about people such as my constituent Ann Wilkinson, who is also trying to care for a very ill husband but who has been denied Avastin. She has had to find other means to get it, and other seriously ill people in Wales have had to move to England or find people’s spare rooms to sleep in.
We heard something about cuts, but the reality is that we have guaranteed the NHS budget in England while it has been cut by about 8% in Wales. Thousands of people are members of Action for our Health, a group comprising people campaigning in Wales to be treated in England. Some people say that the NHS is the envy of the world, and perhaps it is, but the NHS in England is very much the envy of Wales. To see that we need only ask the thousands of people—ordinary patients—in a campaign group who want to be treated by the NHS that is run by this coalition Government and not by the NHS that is run by Labour.
I wish to finish by saying to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I congratulate him on the better ambulance response times he is delivering in England than Labour is delivering in Wales; on the better accident and emergency turnaround times he is delivering in England than Labour is delivering in Wales; on the shorter waiting lists in England than people face in Wales; and on the cancer drugs fund, allowing people to live longer in England than they otherwise would in Wales. Most of all, I congratulate him on protecting that NHS budget—on standing up for the NHS instead of cutting the budget, as the Labour party has done in Wales. I very much hope that he is able to continue with that good work in years to come.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
The NHS across the UK, including urgent and emergency care services, is facing enormous challenges. By the end of this Parliament, there will be nearly 1 million more over-65s than there were at its start, which means substantially more patients with more complex health needs, but such pressures are not unique to England. All hon. Members need to think very carefully about how we pursue the debate on the challenges and pressures that the NHS is facing. Patients and the NHS do not need or want cynicism and party point scoring. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) were absolutely correct to make that point.
Sarah Newton
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the pioneer programme in Cornwall is really leading the way, with the provisional results showing a 41% reduction in A and E and in-patient visits?
Norman Lamb
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Cornwall pioneer programme is doing the most amazing work making innovative change, involving Age UK alongside local doctors, and it is delivering real results.
Why does the Labour party make constant claims that the NHS in England is in crisis, when the position is so much worse in Wales, where Labour is in power?
Norman Lamb
In a moment.
Why does the Labour party claim that the reforms are to blame when there has been no reform in Wales, yet the position there is worse? What people need and want is an open and honest debate about what should be done to secure the future of the NHS. The motion is about the pursuit of votes, not the interests of patients. If Labour Members—
Norman Lamb
Let me make this point.
If Labour Members are concerned about the interests of patients, why do they not agree to the suggestion by Professor Bruce Keogh, a respected clinician, for an investigation into safety in the Welsh NHS? Why do they remain silent?
Andy Burnham
The Minister accuses us of bringing politics into the NHS, but did not he and his colleagues put politics at its heart when they signed up to a Tory agenda to put market forces at the heart of the national health service?
Norman Lamb
That is absolute rubbish. Indeed, one of the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessors, the right hon. Member for Hull West and somewhere—
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, rather than “somewhere”.
Norman Lamb
I apologise, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) spoke very candidly about the role of the private sector under the previous Labour Government, which the shadow Secretary of State constantly seeks to deny.
Norman Lamb
No. I need to make progress, and I have very little time.
In a Guardian debate yesterday, in which I took part, Peter Carter, the respected chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, spoke of the need for political consensus
“so that we stop this ridiculous points-scoring”,
which
“frankly is destructive and does nothing to enhance the quality of the debate.”
Let us take his plea on board. I have argued for a non-partisan review of NHS and care budgets this year —whoever is in power—which would engage the public. We should all commit to that.
Labour claims that it will increase funding, but its proposed way of doing so appears to be unravelling before our eyes. Lord Mandelson has described the mansion tax as “sort of crude” and “sort of short-termist”. In the debate, the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) cast doubt on how much the policy would raise.
Before I address the main issues, I want to pick up the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, who raised important issues about mental health. He talked about the case of his constituent, Beth. It is intolerable that she has been shunted around the country. I have met the right hon. Gentleman, and I am happy to engage with him again. It is unacceptable for this to continue to happen. That is why there is an urgent need for children’s mental health services to be reformed, and our taskforce will soon report on the essential changes that are necessary.
Norman Lamb
I do not have time.
I am pleased that the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle endorsed the case for access and waiting times standards in mental health, which I think will have the same transformative effect as they had in cancer care when his party was in government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) said, why is mental health not in the motion? It certainly ought to be.
Norman Lamb
Let me make this point.
I acknowledge that several Members, including the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), raised distressing cases. I offer my personal sympathies to everyone who has been let down by the system. Such cases should motivate us all to strive to do everything that we can to improve how our NHS operates and to address the areas where it falls short.
The Opposition claim that the move from NHS Direct to NHS 111 has increased the demand faced by accident and emergency departments. There is no evidence to support that claim. Only 8% of calls result in a recommendation to go to A and E, and 30% of callers say that they would have gone to A and E if NHS 111 had not been available.
An accusation has been made about the impact of local authority cuts on social care. I remind the Labour party that the Government were faced with a £160 billion black hole in the public finances and had to act to sort that out. There is still no proposal from the Labour party to increase the funding for social care. The claims that it makes are hollow, without the money to go with them.
Let us look at one of the key indicators: delayed discharges from hospital. From August 2010 to November 2014, delayed days attributable solely to social care decreased from 38,324 to 37,000. The position is not as simple as some people suggest. Social care is performing incredibly well under difficult circumstances. In Cambridgeshire, there is the brilliant development of a service for older people to address their needs in innovative ways.
It has been claimed that the closure of walk-in centres has led to the current pressures on A and E. Again, we need to look at the evidence. A report by Monitor found that the reasons why local commissioners decided to close walk-in centres included that they were replacing them with urgent care centres co-located with A and E departments or other models of integrating primary care staff in A and E departments. The situation is not as simple as is suggested by the claim that walk-in centres have been closed and A and E has been left to pick up the burden.
The Opposition have said that the ambulance service is failing. In fact, ambulance services nationally are delivering nearly 2,000 more emergency journeys every day than in 2010. Ambulances respond to the majority of life-threatening cases in less than eight minutes. The Government have provided an additional £50 million to support ambulance services through this winter. It is right to take clinical advice to ensure that target response times are clinically based to avoid the unintended consequences of ambulance crews being driven crazy in the pursuit of targets, when it is patient safety that should be prioritised.
I come to the solution. In the short term, the Government have made an additional £700 million available to the NHS to cope with the pressures this winter. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) did at least acknowledge that. In the longer term, we need to focus on stopping the crises from occurring in the first place. We need a much greater focus on prevention, better integration of health and social care, and the implementation of Simon Stevens’s forward view.
I thank NHS staff for the amazing work that they do, often under great pressure, and the tremendous commitment that they make. We owe it to them and to the public to ensure that our NHS is protected and enhanced. Most people who use urgent and emergency care services receive effective, timely treatment. That is as it should be. Patients and their families should get the right advice and should get a response when they need it. We set the toughest standards in the world, and rightly so. We all know that those standards are under pressure across the UK, so let us be open and honest about that.
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.