National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Andy Burnham

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

No. The hon. Gentleman needs to get his facts straight before he tries to shout the odds in my direction.

The Bill gives back to this House sovereignty over the national health service, which millions of people will welcome. The Bill means so much to so many people who are concerned about what is happening to the NHS right now under this Government.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend says that the Bill will mean so much to so many people. He will recall that in 1997 the waiting lists at Northwick Park hospital were the highest in the country, with people having to wait for 21 hours on trolleys. He will also know that the people in Brent and Harrow who rely on that hospital today are now enduring the highest waiting lists in the country again. Waiting lists came down on his watch, but they are back up again. What message does that send to the people of Brent and Harrow?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right to remind the House that in 1997 people were spending years on NHS waiting lists, and even dying while still on them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) said, we brought those waiting lists down, and by the time we left government in 2010 this country had the lowest ever NHS waiting lists and the highest ever level of public satisfaction in the NHS. That is Labour’s record, and we will not let the Government forget it.

What is happening now? NHS waiting lists are back at a six-year high. That is the result of the reorganisation that the Government ploughed through, which nobody wanted. The country did not want it. There are millions of people out there who are concerned about what the Government are doing. It will not have escaped their notice that scores of Government MPs have failed to turn up today to defend what was one of their flagship Bills. What a shower! There are people who kept a vigil outside the House last night, in cold temperatures, imploring Members to be here to pass this Bill because the issues it raises matter so much to them. Then we have the spineless MPs of a disintegrating Government, some loaded up to the eyeballs with links to private health care, who do not have the guts to come here today to argue for what they have done. Is it any wonder that people are losing faith in this place?

Accident and Emergency

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will make some progress because I am conscious that many Members want to speak in both debates.

The picture that emerged from our summit was of a health service on the edge, creaking at the seams, with corners being cut and A and E as the last resort for people failed by other services—people who, in an ideal world, ought not to have been there. We heard of people with severe mental health problems in A and E because of a lack of crisis beds, people with severe dental pain who could not afford treatment, disorientated older people with dementia and, perhaps saddest of all, palliative patients in A and E waiting areas.

It is clear that the cost of living crisis and this Government’s failure to support people through it might also be driving people to A and E. The House is soon to debate the scourge of food poverty that now blights our land. Food banks are growing at an exponential rate. Indeed, we now read that it is Government policy to ask councils to set up more, even though they have just cut the funding of the councils with the most food banks. It is unbelievable. It suggests to me that they expect food poverty to be with us for some time to come and have no real intention of tackling it. People will go on having to choose between eating properly and putting the heating on—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State chunters, but he has no idea what it is like to do that, has he?

People are making other impossible choices that might damage their health. I am told of the growing number of people now taking prescription medicines on an empty stomach because they cannot afford to eat properly. Dr Ellie Cannon, a GP who also writes for The Mail on Sunday, recently tweeted:

“I’m sad to say that at my NHS practice if we have a patient who has unexplained symptoms, we have started asking if they can afford to eat”.

How can that possibly be right in England in 2013? Has the Secretary of State considered reviewing the effect on people’s health of the growing problem of food poverty and has he discussed the effects of benefits policy on people’s health with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions? If he has not, I suggest that he does so immediately.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

As my right hon. Friend is talking about general practitioners, does he agree that the Government’s failure to honour the guarantee that we gave that people could see a GP within 48 hours means that more and more people are going directly to A and E?

National Health Service

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Andy Burnham

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I am interested in the argument that the hon. Lady is beginning to develop, which is that she wants to deliver pay cuts to NHS staff across her constituency. Presumably she wants the same as people in the south-west are getting. Is that what she is calling for? It is an interesting argument, and I would be interested to hear her expand on it later.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Andy Burnham]

In a moment.

What I found most useful about the book is that it answered a question that has been nagging away in my mind for some time. As a former Health Secretary, I remember clearly the warnings I received from senior civil servants about the sheer scale of the £20 billion efficiency challenge. “It would be a major undertaking,” they said. “The NHS would need to focus all its energy on that alone. To be negotiated safely, new policy initiatives would have to be put on hold.” Over the months that have followed, I have often had cause to recall those words, as I watch the Secretary of State add to the financial challenge with the biggest ever reorganisation in NHS history. Did the same civil servants issue the same apocalyptic warnings to the incoming Secretary of State as they did to me? Finally I have my answer, in a quotation in the book from an unnamed senior civil servant:

“The biggest challenge was trying to get the secretary of state to focus on the money—the £20 billion and the sheer scale of the financial challenge”.

According to that civil servant, however, the Secretary of State’s attitude was:

“I am going to do these reforms anyway, irrespective of whether there are any financial issues. I am not going to let the mere matter of the financial context stop me getting on with this”.

Another civil servant is quoted as saying:

“We did point out to him that his plans were written before the big financial challenge, and didn’t that change things? He completely did not see that at all. He completely ignored it”.

Then the question is asked: was the Secretary of State presented by the Department with alternatives to inflicting legislative upheaval on the NHS? A senior civil servant said that

“it was clear that having posed the question of did he want to see other options, that Andrew was not very interested at all in us presenting alternatives.”

A picture is emerging of a Secretary of State with an inability to listen, take advice or heed warnings, who is going to have his Bill regardless of the upheaval that it will cause to the national health service.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, although I fear that the moment might have passed. I simply wanted to ask him to reflect on the challenges that the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) issued to him about doctors and pay. Does he agree that those doctors are now the very people who are in charge of commissioning the services of which they are also the providers? I wonder whether the hon. Lady thinks that that is a good thing or a bad thing.

[Andy Burnham]

At the heart of the defective legislation that the Government rammed through the House of Commons is an unresolved conflict of interest, in which commissioners can also be providers who can remove services from hospitals and then provide them themselves. Under pressure in the other place, the Government came up with a requirement for a statement of such interests, but without introducing any mechanism for enforcement to ensure that decisions in the NHS are being made for the right reasons. I fear that that conflict of interest will return to haunt the Government.

Public Disorder

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Andy Burnham

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

We meet today as the country reels from the senseless and sickening scenes that it has seen. People’s feelings are raw, and the full enormity of events is only just sinking in, but at least Parliament has today begun to give voice to people’s concerns. It has articulated clearly the majority feeling in the country that this was a mindless spree of violence for which no excuses can be made, and which must be dealt with severely.

We have made a start on the long and difficult task of rebuilding communities shattered by the experience, bridging the divide between the generations, and bringing the country back together. For thousands of people, this has been the worst and most terrifying week of their life. Some have seen homes and businesses lost or damaged; others have felt real fear on the streets where they live, perhaps for the first time. Many of them will have been watching our debate today. They will have heard powerful contributions from my right hon. Friends the Members for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks); from the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell); and from my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), to name a few.

I hope that in the powerful words of those speeches, the people watching our debate have heard echoes of their own thoughts—things said that they feel needed to be said. It is small comfort, but perhaps they will end today with at least some sense that somebody is listening—that they are our priority. They must remain so over the coming weeks until Parliament resumes.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my hope that when Parliament resumes, those hon. Members whose constituencies have been affected but who have not been able to engage in this debate due simply to lack of time today will have a chance to revisit the issue and put on record their constituents’ concerns, including about their livelihoods, which have been threatened?

[Andy Burnham]

It is vital that hon. Members have that opportunity, as my hon. Friend suggests. The issues will not go away once the media crews depart, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said. People in the communities concerned will live with the issues for some time, and it is vital that we follow the matter through. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) said, we need to stand side by side with the communities affected. She spoke for not just her constituency, but every proud and right-minded person in Greater Manchester, and I thank her for what she said.

For the most part, the contributions have been well judged. They have avoided political point-scoring, self-serving or simplistic arguments, or excuses; people quite simply do not want to hear that. Instead, we must all focus on the job in hand, on a practical response, on lessons learned and on serious reflection on the deeper reasons why this happened. We have made a good start today on that task, and have sent a number of unambiguous messages. The first, to the courts and the legal system, is that all Members of the House expect them to bring the perpetrators to justice quickly and without leniency. The second message today, which is to the police, fire and ambulance services—and indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said, to unsung public servants such as council workers and youth service workers—is that we deeply appreciate their efforts in recent days to protect our communities, and that they will have full backing from across the House for an uncompromising response, should problems recur. Thirdly, we have sent a message to the victims of the appalling crimes.