Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to what is, in a way, the most fundamental point of the five year forward view, which is getting care to people earlier to help them live healthily and happily at home. Perhaps the most significant announcement we have had in the past few weeks has been the extra £2.6 billion a year that will be invested by the end of the Parliament in general practice. That is a 14% increase that will allow us to recruit many more GPs and, I hope, dramatically improve care for her constituents and others.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Yesterday the Health Secretary admitted to the Health Committee that “we didn’t protect the entire health budget” in the last comprehensive spending review. I am pleased that he appears to have adopted a bit of straight-talking, honest politics, so in that spirit will he now admit that the very real cuts to public health budgets over the next few years will make it harder to deliver the “radical upgrade” in public health that his five year forward view called for?

[Mr Hunt]

In the spirit of straight talking and honesty, which I think is an excellent thing, perhaps the hon. Gentleman might concede that those cuts and efficiencies that he is talking about would have been a great deal more if we had followed Labour’s spending plans—that is, £5.5 billion less for the NHS than this Government promised, on the back of a strong economy.

Junior Doctors’ Contracts

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Gwynne

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

I do not have time to give way, I am afraid.

I echo those sentiments of sincere thanks, but we have heard of junior doctors who already work weekends, already work nights, already work holidays and give their all for their patients. Despite all this, the junior doctors now face a situation that has left them feeling deflated, demoralised and devalued.

Patient safety has been a key theme of today’s debate. Some Members have valiantly leapt to the Health Secretary’s defence, but those voices have been far outnumbered by Members who are deeply concerned that this contract is unsafe for doctors and unsafe for patients.

Members have argued that the removal of the financial penalties that apply to hospitals that force junior doctors to work unsafe hours risks taking us back to the bad old days of overworked doctors, too exhausted to deliver safe care. The BMA says this safeguard, which is built into the current contract, has played an important role in bringing dangerous working hours down. Removing this financial disincentive to overworked junior doctors is extremely alarming, especially at a time when junior doctors are already coming under an enormous amount of pressure and strain. If the Health Secretary would just listen, he would hear junior doctors shouting loudly and clearly that they cannot give any more.

Many Members highlighted the protests and marches that have taken place throughout the country in recent weeks. We had only to catch a glimpse of the placards that were waved as thousands of junior doctors marched against the contract to understand that those doctors now fear for their own health and well-being. I was struck by one banner which read, “I could be your doctor tomorrow, or I could be the patient”, and those doctors’ concerns have been echoed by many Members today. How can the Secretary of State possibly say that he is acting in the interests of patient safety if the very people who work in the NHS say he is putting safety at risk?

Another argument that has been advanced today is that the contract is necessary to ensure that our NHS works seven days a week. Not only does that argument do a huge disservice to our NHS staff who already provide care seven days a week and 24 hours a day, and reveal just how out of touch some Conservative Members are with the realities of working on the frontline in our NHS, but it is wholly inaccurate. If this junior doctor contract were imposed in its current form, it would have the opposite effect, as many independent clinical voices have warned.

It is a bitter irony that the problems that the new junior doctor contract was supposed to be trying to address when it was originally proposed back in 2012—the need to introduce better pay and work-life balance—are the very problems that will be made worse should the contract go ahead in its current form. In letters to the Secretary of State, the presidents of a number of royal colleges and faculties have made it very clear that they share those concerns, but he presumably thinks that they too have been misled.

The Secretary of State said that he did not intend to cut the pay of any junior doctor, but his sums simply do not add up, and everyone can see through the spin. No one with a GCSE in maths can believe that no doctor will be worse off as a result of the new contract. Let the right hon. Gentleman come to the Dispatch Box in the minute that I have left, and answer this question. To what percentage of junior doctors currently working within the legal limits will what the Secretary of State has said today apply? Is it 50%? Less than a quarter? What is it?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

All of them.

[Andrew Gwynne]

In that case, I ask the Secretary of State to explain this. If the pay envelope is not increasing, and if the pay is not being reduced, how can these sums add up? They just do not add up, and I suggest that he go back to night school and learn some basic arithmetic.

We know that the BMA has been conciliatory today: it has offered to speak to the Secretary of State again. I ask him, please, let us take this down a notch. Let us get him talking to junior doctors again. The simple fact is that these are the junior doctors who work in our A & E; these are the junior doctors who work in every department of every hospital on the frontline. They come in early and leave late, they already provide care for seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and they deserve a lot better than this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Last week senior officials at Monitor reported being leaned on by the Department of Health to suppress the publication of financial figures ahead of the Conservative party conference. This week the Health Secretary has been accused of vetoing the release of impartial independent reports on measures that could reduce our consumption of sugar. Does he not understand that leadership on transparency must come from the very top? Will he now commit to practising what he preaches on NHS transparency and release this report immediately?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I will take no lessons on transparency from the Opposition. Professor Sir Brian Jarman said that the Department of Health under Labour was a “denial machine” when it came to the problems of Mid Staffs. We have made the NHS more transparent than ever before, and we will continue to practise transparency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We have heard a number of fair questions from Opposition Members, and, I am afraid, nothing but woeful and inadequate answers from Ministers so far. Let me try again by asking the Secretary of State about GPs. As we have already heard, before the election he promised that there would be an additional 5,000 GPs by 2020. However, now that the election is over, he says that that promise requires “some flexibility”, and he was similarly evasive in an earlier answer. Given that there is, in the words of the Government’s own taskforce, a “GP work force crisis”, will the Secretary of State now clear things up? By 2020, will there be 5,000 extra GPs—on today’s figures—as he promised, or is this yet another example of the Conservatives not being straight with people on the NHS?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I think that those were woeful and inadequate questions. What I said after the election was exactly the same as what I said before the election, which was that a number—[Interruption.] Yes, we will have about 5,000 more GPs by the end of the Parliament, which is just what I said before the election. I said that a total of 10,000 more people would be working in primary care. I also said before the election that the woeful problems in general practice would be dealt with only if we unpicked the terrible mistakes made by Labour in the GP contract. That is why this year we are bringing back named GPs for every single NHS patient.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Gwynne

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome my hon. Friend warmly to his place; he hits the nail on the head. We had a big problem with diagnosis—less than half of the people who had dementia were getting a diagnosis—and we have made progress on that. It is still the case that in some parts of the country, although I hope not in Mid Dorset, when someone gets a diagnosis not a great deal happens. We need to change that, because getting that support is how we will avoid tragedies such as that in Weaver Vale, which we heard about earlier.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State knows that the availability of social care for vulnerable older people has a big impact on the NHS, especially for people with dementia, yet 300,000 fewer older people are getting help compared with 2010. Given that the Secretary of State has said that he wants to make improving out-of-hospital care his personal priority, can he confirm that there will be no further cuts to adult social care during this Parliament, which would only put the NHS under even more pressure?

[Mr Hunt]

I can confirm that we agree with the hon. Gentleman and the Opposition that we must consider adult social care provision alongside NHS provision. The two are very closely linked and have a big impact on each other. I obviously cannot give him the details of the spending settlement now, but we will take full account of that interrelationship and recognise the importance of the integration of health and social care that needs to happen at pace in this Parliament.