National Health Service Funding
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham(8 years ago)
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Mr Hunt
The right hon. Lady is right that the Care Quality Commission was set up by the last Labour Government, but it did not have independence from the Government in its inspection reports. When we legislated for that, Labour tried to vote it down. We got it through and changed the inspection system, and it is working extremely well.
I want to move on to the substance of the debate, which is about the funding of the NHS. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) on his courage—indeed, his chutzpah—in confronting the issue of funding, despite inheriting a Labour policy to cut NHS funding by £5.5 billion a year by the end of the Parliament. He is right that there has never been greater financial pressure—we have had the financial crisis in 2008, the deficits and the growth in demand from the ageing population—but he must accept that that makes it all the more extraordinary that Labour wanted to cut the NHS budget in 2010 and to cut it from the current levels in 2015. I simply say that we could, as a Government, have chosen to cut NHS funding from this year’s level by £1.3 billion, as under Labour’s plans, but we would have had to lay off 11,000 doctors or 40,000 nurses.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
The problem with the Conservatives’ script is that they talk about NHS funding, but they completely neglect social care. There can be no debate about the fact they have cut social care every year for the last six years, taking support away from half a million older people, many of whom are now trapped in hospital beds. Greater Manchester says that it has a shortfall of about £80 million in social care; the figure is £1 billion nationally. Has the Secretary of State raised this issue with the Chancellor? Has he made an emergency bid for funding? Will there be more money for social care this year?
Mr Hunt
That is not the problem with our script; it is the problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s script, because as shadow Health Secretary he sanctioned a policy that would have given the NHS £1.3 billion less this year, and at the last election the then shadow Chancellor said he would give not a penny more to local authorities, whereas we are seeing social care funding go up by £600 million this year. More money is going into the NHS and the social care system under a Government who are committed to funding them both.
What is especially wrong with the argument made by the shadow Health Secretary, whom I welcome to his place for his first Opposition day debate, is his suggestion that the Government have not honoured their promises to the NHS. What did the independent commentators say at the time of last year’s spending review? Simon Stevens, whom he quoted, said
“our case for the NHS has been heard and actively supported.”
NHS Providers, which he quoted, said it was
“a good settlement for the NHS.”
The King’s Fund, which he quoted, said it was
“a good settlement for the NHS”.
In fact, because of the Government’s commitment to the NHS, we are spending 10% more on it as a proportion of GDP than the OECD average—that is more than Norway, Finland, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
Andy Burnham
The Secretary of State is trying to blame hospitals for the deficit, but the point is that the spend on agency staff has ballooned in England over the past six years. The reason is that the Government, and their predecessor, cut nurse training places and left hospitals in the grip of private staffing agencies. It is therefore simply not fair of the Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and blame hospitals for a problem of the Government’s making.
Mr Hunt
I am not blaming hospitals. We are supporting hospitals to deal with the problem. The root cause of the problem, set out in the Francis report, was hospitals covering up bad problems. We said no to that and said that we were going to sort it out by having more nurses on our wards. That is why, in the four years that I have been Health Secretary, we have had 10,000 more nurses on our wards.
Social Care
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham(8 years ago)
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Mr Hunt
I will give way shortly, but I want to finish my point about the critical role played by care staff. In total, 1.5 million people work in the social care sector, and I want to mention one group in particular: the 90,000 who come from the EU. They do a brilliant job and we value their contribution to the sector.
If the House will forgive me, I want to share one story from early in my time as Health Secretary about an absolutely brilliant manager, who is Polish, of a dementia care home in Swiss Cottage. The people at the home had advanced dementia and many were unable to talk or move, so the atmosphere in the home was challenging to say the least. I asked the lady how she motivated her staff every day, and she said, “If I can get a resident to smile, they won’t remember it the next day, but I do, and I go home with a smile on my face.” The care that was being provided was, to be frank, completely remarkable. This is a moment for all of us to reaffirm what the Prime Minister said today at Prime Minister’s questions: we want these people to remain and we are confident and optimistic that we will be able to get them to remain.
Mr Hunt
I absolutely want to be someone in this role who confronts poor care and does everything possible to fight for the highest standards. That is exactly why I am doing this job. Poor care comes in different forms and, yes, funding is an issue. As the health and social care system goes through perhaps its most financially challenging period since the founding of the NHS, I particularly want to ensure that we protect the high standards that the right hon. Gentleman cares about.
Andy Burnham
I heard the Secretary of State’s earlier words about EU carers. I am sure that they were genuine, but words are not good enough for them. The longer the Government leave them in limbo, the greater the risk is that they will leave. Our national health service and our care system could not cope with losing all those staff, so what more is he doing? Is he petitioning the Prime Minister for a decision now that will give them leave to stay and properly respects their contribution to our society?
Mr Hunt
With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, with whom I have enjoyed many debates in this House, neither he nor I wanted the Brexit vote to happen, but now that it has, we have to cope with a very changed world. The Prime Minister said that she is confident of getting an early agreement. I hope that what we are saying in this House this afternoon will resonate with people and make them understand just how valued they are.
Andy Burnham
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and the spirit in which he made it. He is absolutely right: that set everything back and meant that there was no possibility of a cross-party approach. There will have to be such an approach if we are to fix social care and, indeed, to give the NHS what it needs, because they will both need more funding during this Parliament. That is the real shame. I did not make my point about Andrew Lansley for political reasons; I just want people to understand what happened, so that the current generations of politicians might do something different.
The answers we have since had from the Government are wholly inadequate. We have heard today that the precept does not raise enough money, particularly for poorer councils. It is no answer; in fact, it just cynically devolves the responsibility for the whole issue to local government, even though councils did not create the problem. I still favour an all-in system. I will say it: I favour a system in which we ask older people to pay a set contribution, so that they have peace of mind in later life, with all their care costs covered.
Mr Jeremy Hunt
I am listening very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. In the spirit of wanting to rise above party politics, will he agree that it was totally wrong of him to suggest at any stage in the last Parliament that the Government wanted to privatise the NHS, when we have never had the intention to do so? It was wholly irresponsible to scare the public about that.
Andy Burnham
In a week when Virgin Care is taking on a huge community care contract, I do not think the Secretary of State should be making that point—particularly the Secretary of State who privatised ambulance services in Greater Manchester. I honestly do not think we need to go there.
The point that I am making is about funding social care. The Conservatives claimed that we were introducing a new inheritance tax. Do people not understand that just 3.4% of estates in this country attract inheritance tax? Why is that? Because the vast majority of estates are whittled down by the costs of care—tens of thousands of pounds, or hundreds of thousands of pounds for some people. That is not fair and it is not sustainable. We must be able to do better.
I feel so strongly about this because I saw my grandmother go through the care system in England 20 years ago and, frankly, it was nowhere near good enough. I arrived here saying that I would do something about it. I tried to do something about it, but we have not got anywhere near a solution to the scale of the challenge. People will need to put party politics aside and find common ground. The point scoring and failure to grasp big issues have led to a situation where people have low regard for this place.
We are left with a malnourished, privatised care system in England that is sinking lower as we speak. A culture of slap-dash 15-minute visits is entrenched, in which staff do not get properly treated, trained or respected. Standards in care homes have slipped even further, and stories of neglect and abuse abound—we hear them all the time. Countless vulnerable people and their families still have to pay these cruel dementia taxes, which have risen under this Government, losing everything they have worked for and going into later life with everything on the roulette table: home, pension, savings—the lot. That is not the care system we should have in 2016 in this country. At what point are we going to say, “Enough is enough,” and actually do something about it?
NHS Reform
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for advance sight of it. Let me say at the beginning that I support much of what he said. I will focus my remarks on his plan for seven-day working, and then touch on some of the other issues he raised.
Ensuring that our health services are there for everyone whenever they are needed—be that a weekday or a weekend—should be our shared goal across this House for a 21st-century national health service. Illnesses do not stop at the weekend and nor should our NHS. Although we support the principle of what the Secretary of State is trying to achieve with seven-day working, and will work with him where possible, I urge some caution in the manner in which he is attempting to drive through these changes. His remarks contain no acknowledgment that the NHS right now is in a very fragile condition. It has gone backwards, not forwards, in recent times. A&E is in crisis, and primary care services are overwhelmed. There is a shortage of staff and an over-reliance on agency workers. Staff are demoralised and worn out. If he does this in the wrong way, many may walk away and that would make matters even worse. Given all that, it is not immediately clear how seven-day services can be delivered in the timeframe he has set out without significantly impacting on the rest of the NHS.
The Secretary of State said that around 6,000 people lose their lives every year because we do not have a proper seven-day service. Of course that is an appalling statistic, but is there not a risk of implementing seven-day services by simply spreading existing resources more thinly? A recent study published in “Health Economics” concluded:
“There is as yet no clear evidence that 7-day services will reduce weekend deaths or can be achieved without increasing weekday deaths.”
Will the Secretary of State tell us on what evidence he has based his announcement and, crucially, what steps he is taking to guard against what the study warns could be an increase in weekday deaths?
If the Secretary of State wants to make changes on this scale, it is vital that he works in partnership with NHS staff. I gently say to him that briefing headlines such as “Declaring war on doctors” have not got us off on the right foot, as doctors are already feeling worn out and put upon. The British Medical Association said:
“Today’s announcement is nothing more than a wholesale attack on doctors to mask the fact that for two years the Government has failed to outline any concrete proposals for introducing more seven-day hospital services.”
Will the Secretary of State take care to avoid provocative statements such as “Declaring war” and will he rethink the manner in which he is pursuing these negotiations? Talk of imposing deals at this stage is not helpful; it is premature and it would be better to proceed in a more constructive manner.
Staff across the entire hospital system—not just doctors —will be needed to run these services, but the Government confirmed only last week that many of them will face another five years of pay cuts. In total, that will amount to a decade of pay cuts. Has the Secretary of State looked at the detail of the Chancellor’s announcement on pay for NHS staff? Will he tell the House what effect he believes this deal could have on staff numbers and retention?
The Secretary of State said very little about how he will fund seven-day services, but given that the NHS is struggling to fund weekday services, it is likely to need significant investment over the next five years, over and above funding attached to the five-year forward view. Can he confirm that the money allocated to fund the five-year forward view does not include seven-day working? That is not specifically mentioned in the “Five Year Forward View”. If so, what extra funding will be made available specifically to deliver seven-day working, and when will this funding be available? The announcement today appears to be unfunded and it will not escape the House’s attention that the 2010 Conservative manifesto also promised to deliver seven-day services. The Secretary of State has a lot of convincing to do if he expects people to believe him this time.
In a statement last week in another place, Lord Prior, the Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for NHS productivity, said he was establishing an independent inquiry into extending charges in the NHS. This has sounded alarm bells among many patient groups. Will the Secretary of State say more about the terms of reference for this independent inquiry and when it will proceed with its work?
The Francis “Freedom to speak up” report contained a number of important recommendations to foster a more open culture and we support his work to implement them. The right hon. Gentleman will know that there have been a number of appalling examples of poor care in recent times at Orchid View, Oban Court and Winterbourne View, and these scandals were exposed only when undercover reporters infiltrated the care home. Will he look seriously at the idea of an independent body to receive complaints from NHS staff and social care staff so that they are not faced with the problem of always going to their employer if they are to blow the whistle?
I welcome what the Secretary of State had to say about the Kirkup report and his acceptance in full of its recommendations. We, too, think of the families affected by the failures at Morecambe Bay. I supported steps to improve the regulation of midwives, but the big question mark over the right hon. Gentleman’s commitment is the failure to bring in a Bill on professional regulation. This was an important recommendation of the Francis report and the continued delay in implementing this proposal is putting patients at risk and preventing regulators from doing their job. Will the Secretary of State now commit to legislating at the earliest opportunity for the Law Commission’s reforms?
These are extremely serious matters and I do not believe that some of the Secretary of State’s more political comments today were appropriate, nor do I believe they will build the consensus that will be needed across this House to deliver these important changes. Labour introduced more transparency into the NHS with the establishment of independent regulation and the inspection of hospitals. I appointed Robert Francis to begin the work of looking at what went wrong at Mid Staffs. Where the Secretary of State seeks to build on these constructive changes, we will support him, but he will not achieve his goals by provoking confrontation with doctors or playing politics with patient safety.
Mr Hunt
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his support on many of the measures that we are announcing today. Where we can work together, we should. I thank him for his support for the principle of seven-day working, although I gently point out that this was in our manifesto in May and it was not in his. I shall deal in turn with the points that he raised.
On funding for seven-day services, the right hon. Gentleman has just fought an election on plans that would have meant that the NHS would get £5 billion less than this Government are prepared to commit. We are committing £10 billion to the NHS to implement the five-year forward view, which we can do on the back of a strong economy. That includes plans for a seven-day service.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about comments by Lord Prior in another place. There is no independent review on charging for NHS services. After the election, he should be very careful of such scaremongering. That is what he was doing for the whole election. When he makes such comments, he frightens NHS staff. He should think about the effect on morale when he does that.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the NHS has gone backwards, not forwards, but I have just presented figures showing that public confidence in the NHS is going up; the number of people who think that the NHS is one of the best systems in the world has increased. I gently point out that the reports we are publishing today are a response to problems that happened on his watch and that we are facing up to, so he should have a little modesty in this situation.
The right hon. Gentleman asked an important question about spreading services currently offered on five days over seven days. A lot of work has been done on this. The truth is that having services only on five days is not only dangerous for patients but incredibly inefficient for hospitals. For example, someone admitted to hospital on a Friday in need of a diagnostic test might not get the result until the following Monday or Tuesday so will have to stay in hospital for the weekend even though they could possibly have been discharged. That is bad for the patient and expensive for the NHS, so these measures will result in huge cost savings.
Most importantly, the right hon. Gentleman talked about carrying staff with us. Doctors go into work every weekend throughout the NHS and do a fantastic job, but often it is not recognised and they are not thanked. We want a more professional contract that recognises that contribution. That is why these measures are supported by the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
When the previous Labour Government changed the consultants’ contract in 2003, senior doctors did not like it. They said that it led to
“a loss of a sense of vocation and what it means to be professional”.
That quote is from a King’s Fund report. It undermined the basic relationship between doctor and patient. We are not blaming doctors, and actually we are not blaming unions, because unions will always ask to see what they can get—the right hon. Gentleman spends more time with unions than I do, so he knows that better than I do. The people responsible for that decision in 2003 were the Ministers who signed off changes to the consultants’ contract and the GPs’ contract. It was Labour politicians who were responsible for those changes, and they must take responsibility for the fact that it was the wrong thing to do.
Finally, this is the most important question of all, and we have not heard an answer today: does the right hon. Gentleman support the measures that the Government are putting forward to make our hospitals safer with seven-day working or not? Leadership is about making choices, and today’s choice is this: is he on the side of the patient or on the side of the union? We know whose side we are on. For Labour, once again, the politics matters more than the patients.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Hunt
Absolutely; I had the pleasure and privilege of visiting Plymouth during the election campaign to see some of the radical changes being offered in community care. There is huge enthusiasm for transforming the situation in Devon. It is a very challenged economy, but by bringing together the health and social care system and by putting more resources into primary and out-of-hospital care we will be able to give a better service to my hon. Friend’s constituents, which I know he will welcome.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
Ten years ago, this great city lived through one of the darkest days in its history. Our thoughts today are with all those who were affected and we pay tribute to the heroic staff of London’s NHS, who did so much to help them.
The latest GP patient survey is important for the simple reason that it covers the first full year of the Government’s GP access challenge fund. The results do not make good reading for the Secretary of State. The percentage of patients dissatisfied with their surgery’s opening hours has increased and patients found it harder to get appointments last year than the year before. Will the Secretary of State admit that his policies are simply not working and that GP services are getting worse on his watch?
Mr Hunt
First, I echo the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about the extraordinary bravery of the emergency services, particularly the London Ambulance Service, in response to the terrible tragedy of 7/7.
I do not accept the picture the right hon. Gentleman paints of general practice. The Prime Minister’s challenge fund has been extremely successful: by the end of this year, 18 million people will be benefiting from the opportunity to have evening, weekend and Skype appointments with their GP. We have also announced the biggest increase in the number of GPs in the history of the NHS. The Labour party left us with a GP contract that ripped the heart out of general practice by removing responsibility for evening and weekend care and by getting rid of personal responsibility by GPs for their patients. The right hon. Gentleman should show a little contrition and modesty about Labour’s mistakes.
Andy Burnham
People who have been ringing surgeries this morning unable to get appointments will not be convinced by what they have just heard. The truth is that the disarray in the Secretary of State’s primary care policy goes much deeper. Not only has he made it harder for people to get a convenient appointment, but he now wants to charge people who miss the appointments they are able to get. We all want to reduce waste, but there are many reasons why people do not turn up, including family emergencies. That is presumably why No. 10 slapped him down. He will have worried people, so for the avoidance of doubt, will he today confirm that he will not return to that idea in this Parliament?
Mr Hunt
There are no plans to charge people who have missed appointments. That is precisely the sort of scaremongering that the British public rejected at the last election. The right hon. Gentleman put the NHS on the ballot paper, and the country voted Conservative; he might want to think about the lessons from that. Missed appointments cost the NHS £1 billion a year. We want that money to be spent on doctors and nurses. Labour spent billions on wasted IT contracts and the private finance initiative, and did not spend enough on front-line staff. We are putting that right.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
On behalf of everyone on the Opposition Benches, I echo the Secretary of State’s warm tribute to Charles Kennedy. I cannot have been the only person this morning wondering why politics always seems to lose the people it needs most. Charles was warm, generous, genuine and principled. We will miss him greatly. We send our love and deepest sympathy to his family.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his reappointment, but I commiserate with him on the financial position in the NHS that he inherits from himself. He told The Daily Telegraph today that the NHS has enough money, but that is not true. The deficit in the NHS last year was nearly £1 billion. Can he tell the House what the projected deficit is for the whole of the NHS for this year?
Mr Hunt
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. We have seen many feisty disagreements on health policy, and that is just in the shadow Health team. Perhaps he no longer believes his mantra about collaboration, not competition—we know that the shadow care Minister has disagreed with that for some time. To answer his question directly, there is a lot of financial pressure in the NHS, and that is because NHS hospitals took the right decision to respond to the Francis report into Mid Staffs by recruiting more staff to ensure that we ended the scandal of short-staffed wards. As a temporary measure it recruited a lot of agency staff, which has led to deficits, and that is what we are tackling with today’s announcement about banning the use of off-framework agreements for recruiting agency staff.
Andy Burnham
It is a new Parliament, but there are the same non-answers from the Secretary of State. He did not answer; he never does. I will give him the answer: NHS providers are predicting the deficit to double this year to more than £2 billion. Why has financial discipline been lost on his watch? It is because early in the previous Parliament the Government cut 6,000 nursing posts. They cut nurse training places and, when the Francis report came out, they left hospitals with nowhere to turn other than private staffing agencies. The Bill for agency nurses has gone up by 150% on his watch. He even admitted on the radio this morning that it was a mess of their making. Will he now apologise for this monumental waste of NHS resources and get our hospitals out of the grip of private staffing agencies by recruiting the 20,000 nurses that the NHS needs?
Mr Hunt
I have here the figures on nurse training placements, which started to go down in 2009-10, by nearly 1,000. Who was Secretary of State at the time? I think it was the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] I have the figures here, and they show that planned nurse training places went down from 21,337 to 20,327. He talks about apologies, but where is the apology for what happened at Mid Staffs, which led to hospitals having to recruit so many staff so quickly? That is the real tragedy, and that is what this Government are sorting out.
Health and Social Care
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The big change we need to see in the NHS over this Parliament is a move from a focus on cure to a focus on prevention. In this Parliament, we will probably see the biggest single public health challenge change from smoking to obesity. It is still a national scandal that one in five 11-year-olds are clinically obese, and I think we need to do something significant to tackle that in this Parliament.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
There is a big difference between the Secretary of State’s view of the health service and mine—he believes in a market; I do not. It is as simple as that. But I want to correct him on something. He just said that privatisation was not happening, but I will not let him stand at that Dispatch Box and claim that black is white any more. Figures show that as many contracts are going to private sector organisations as to NHS organisations. Will he confirm that that is the case and stop giving wrong information to the people of this country?
Mr Hunt
I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that I believe in exactly the same use of the independent sector in the NHS as he did when he was Health Secretary; there is no difference at all. What has happened is that for whatever reason—I dare not think what—since he became shadow Health Secretary, he has changed his tune. The facts on privatisation are that it increased from 4.9% at the start of the last Parliament to 6.2% towards the end of the Parliament. That is hardly a massive change. Our approach is to be neutral about who provides services but to do the right thing for patients.
Mr Hunt
As I said earlier, I do not think these decisions should be made by politicians; I think they should be made by GPs on the ground, on the basis of what is best for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. That is a dividing line between me and the shadow Health Secretary, if not the shadow Health Minister, because I think there is a role for the independent sector when it can provide better or more cost-effective services to patients. It appears that the Labour party, under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Leigh, would rule that out in all circumstances.
Andy Burnham
The right hon. Gentleman said right there that there is a role for the independent sector and that he is neutral about it but wants to see it increase. Then he says that privatisation is not happening. Is he trying to take everybody for mugs? He needs to come to this Dispatch Box and be quite clear about what is happening. Section 75 of his Health and Social Care Act 2012 does not give discretion to doctors; it forces NHS services out on to the open market. That is why we are seeing privatisation proceeding at a pace and scale never seen before in the NHS.
Mr Hunt
I am afraid that this is exactly the sort of distortion and scaremongering that got the right hon. Gentleman nowhere in the election campaign. He knows perfectly well that the 2012 Act does nothing different from what the EU procurement rules required under the primary care trusts when he was Health Secretary. Yes, I do believe that there is a role for the independent sector in the NHS, but I think the decision whether things should be done by the traditional NHS or the independent sector should be decided locally by GPs doing the right thing for their patients. That is the difference between us.
Andy Burnham
That is exactly the point. When we are in a crisis like this, short-term, knee-jerk cuts are made, which make the situation wrong in the long term.
When I raised these deficits in the election campaign, the Secretary of State said I was scaremongering, but just two weeks after the election the truth emerged. [Interruption.] He says I was, but we now know the truth. There was an £822 million deficit in the NHS last year, a sevenfold increase on the previous year. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says he is dealing with it. That is not good enough. That is appalling mismanagement of the NHS. Financial grip in the NHS has been surrendered on this Secretary of State’s watch, and things are looking even worse this year. Far from scaremongering, these issues are real and should have been debated at the last election. The NHS is now facing a £2 billion deficit this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said earlier, that will mean cuts to beds, to staff and to services.
Mr Jeremy Hunt
The right hon. Gentleman talks about appalling mismanagement. Why did we have that growth in deficits? We had it because those hospitals were, in the wake of the Francis report and the appalling tragedy at Mid Staffs, desperately trying to make sure they did not have a crisis of short-staffed wards. If there was any appalling mismanagement, it was when the right hon. Gentleman was Health Secretary; he left behind an NHS where there were too many wards and too many hospitals that did not have enough staff. We are doing something about that. That is not mismanagement; that is doing the right thing for patients.
Andy Burnham
I am grateful that the Secretary of State has intervened because yet again he has got his facts wrong. Am I not correct in saying that in the first two years of the last Parliament the Government cut staffing further from the levels I left by 6,000? [Interruption.] No, he and his predecessor cut nurse places by 6,000 in the first two years of the last Parliament. Separately, they cut nurse training places, leading to a shortfall in nurse recruitment of around 8,000 in the last Parliament. When the Francis report was published, the NHS had fewer staff than it had in 2010 and fewer nurses coming through training.
The Secretary of State likes to blame everybody else, but how about taking a bit of blame himself for once? He left the NHS in the grip of private staffing agencies, and since the Francis report a small fortune has had to be spent on private staffing agencies. The figures have gone through the roof on his watch and he has failed to do anything about it. That is why people will not believe that the NHS is safe in his hands.