Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that many migrants in the UK are not registered with GPs, yet now when they come to Britain they have to pay an NHS fine. What is he doing, with the Home Office, to ensure that migrants are registered with a GP and are aware of community health facilities?

[Mr Hunt]

I am not quite sure whether I understand the right hon. Lady’s question, but there is not a fining system for migrants; what we say is that people who come to the UK as visitors should pay for their healthcare, or pay the visa surcharge if they are coming for a longer period. There is an exemption for public health, because it is important for everyone that we make sure that we treat people for things like tuberculosis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend speaks wisely. Christmas can be a very lonely time for a number of people, so we all commend the work of voluntary organisations that do so well. I would be delighted to meet her.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

More than a third of my male constituents live until they are over 80, and yet next door in Windsor and Maidenhead the same is true of well over half of the residents. In the 10 years before 2010, that gap narrowed. What is the Secretary of State doing to narrow the gap in future?

[Mr Hunt]

The best thing we can do to narrow the gap is make sure that we continue to invest properly in the NHS and social care system, and make good progress on public health, which often has the biggest effect on health inequalities. That is why it is good news that we have record low smoking rates.

CQC: NHS Deaths Review

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Boards now have a legal duty of candour, and are obliged to tell patients the truth about what has happened when something goes wrong, but how can they possibly do so if they do not properly record deaths or avoidable deaths? That is why this is a very significant moment. From next year, on a quarterly basis, all trusts will be publishing how many avoidable deaths there are in the trust. Those figures will be compared with national benchmarks. That is how we will start to make boards feel that they have a critical responsibility on this.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I welcome the learning disability mortality review that the Secretary of State has announced, but I am keen to ensure that it includes unexpected deaths in care settings other than the NHS. When I was first elected, Longcroft, which purported to be a care home for people with learning disabilities, was actually a torture chamber for people with learning disabilities. We have ended that kind of thing, but we need to ensure that unexplained deaths of people with learning disabilities in other care settings are fully investigated, and that those investigations feed into this review.

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. I will take away with me the question of what the legal responsibilities will be for people in adult social care settings. One thing the report highlights, which I had not particularly anticipated, was the problem that a number of people with learning disabilities are cared for in multiple settings, so if there is a tragedy, the place where the tragedy happens may not be the place responsible for what went wrong. Often, the person’s previous care provider never even finds out that that person has died. One thing that Sir Mike Richards talks about is making sure that all care providers are informed promptly when something happens, so that there can be a multi-institution examination of what went wrong.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

T5. Deer Park medical centre in Witney faces closure, and patients will be dispersed a long way into other practices in an area where one in four already waits more than a week to see their GP. Duncan Enright, who is Labour’s candidate in the Witney by-election, is campaigning to save the centre. Will the Secretary of State reward his campaign by saving it today?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

The Conservative candidate in the Witney by-election will be saying very clearly that because of the extra funding from this Government we are aiming to have 5,000 more doctors working in general practice by the end of this Parliament, something that would not have been possible with the increase of less than half that amount promised by the Labour party.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We already commit huge resources to that, but we can do more. As I just said, we hope to announce something to the House before the break.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

8. How many staff working in the NHS have been recruited from other European countries in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We are very pleased with the progress that is being made in Herefordshire and in many other areas, and we are looking at how to maintain funding for those areas. Already, 16 million people are benefiting from enhanced access to GPs in the evenings and at weekends, and we would not want to see the clock being turned back on that.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Today I received a letter from the chair of Slough’s clinical commissioning group, in which he bemoaned the fact that GP practices were making 95% of patient contacts yet receiving only 8% of the NHS’s resources. He also claimed that there had been a 30% reduction in GP partners’ incomes in the past five years, and said that more and more GPs in Slough were turning to private practice. I have noticed that they are also resisting the creation of new GP practices. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that under-doctored areas such as mine get more GPs?

[Mr Hunt]

First, may I ask the right hon. Lady to congratulate, on my behalf, GPs in Slough, who have benefited from the Prime Minister’s challenge fund? Alongside a number of other schemes, it has had a significant impact on reducing emergency admissions in her area. The answer to the point she makes is that we are investing an extra £8 billion in the NHS over the course of this Parliament—it is £10 billion when we include the money going in this year. We have said that we want more of that money to go into general practice, to reverse the historical underfunding of general practice, which I completely agree needs to be reversed.