Economic Update

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Geraint Davies

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I will absolutely give that assurance. My hon. Friend’s own background is in mental health and he understands just how vulnerable people can get. Those concerns will be topmost in our mind.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before the Chancellor goes on a spending cut spree of public services, will he look at the analysis in today’s Financial Times that says that every £1 invested in the NHS generates £4 in growth? Will he also do what he can to protect poorly paid health workers who are facing much higher mortgage costs due to his Government?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Until the hon. Gentleman got to the end bit, I was going to say that that sounded like the question I should have been asking the previous Chancellor as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. I am very aware that the NHS does not just cost us money but can contribute to our growth. There is an enormous opportunity for this country to become one of the life science giants of the world.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Geraint Davies

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

It is, of course, 125 years since the birth of Aneurin Bevan, who famously said:

“Illness is…a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community”.

That cost, as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, should not be borne by the victims of genocide, abuse or slavery, so I support amendment 48 and, indeed, amendments (a) and (b).

I am the trade rapporteur of the Council of Europe in respect of safeguarding human rights, democracy and the rule of law. I very much hope that where there is abuse or slave labour, we pursue filtering out such imports from procurement in general. Curing illness should not be at the cost of creating illness and harm abroad.

Obviously we need security of supply. We have seen China use embargoes and trade sanctions against Australian wine and Lithuanian products, or whatever, so we need a safe supply, much of it home-grown, for when we face such a problem or a pandemic. I put it to the Minister that we need to look much more at generating production and procurement in the public sector. It is no good going to the pub landlord of the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) to get expensive PPE. We need both value for money and ethical sourcing.

Some of the proposals for integrated care boards involve corporations that have a vested interest. If we remove competitive tendering, waiting lists and costs would both go up. It is critical that we get value for money.

Looking at what happened in Wales during the pandemic, we find that the cost of PPE was, in fact, half the cost of PPE in England. The £1.1 billion given to Wales for test and trace was a Barnett consequential, but we spent only half of that, £533 million, because we used public sector procurement and production effectively.

Through a combination of ethical procurement and public sector provision, we can keep the light of the health service shining, we can keep the faith and we can build a stronger, more successful and cost-effective health service.

[Jeremy Hunt]

Like the shadow Health Secretary, I rise to speak in support of amendment 29, which the Government plan to vote down. This wholly innocuous amendment simply asks them to publish, every two years, independent projections of the number of doctors and nurses we should be training. The Government are rejecting the amendment because they think it would compel them to train more doctors, which is true, but it ignores the fact that this is the best way to reduce the £6.2 billion locum bill that is currently devastating the NHS budget.

The shadow Health Secretary was very generous to me, and I return the compliment by saying that I think he is doing an excellent job. I hope he remains shadow Health Secretary for many years.

I ask the House, in the nicest possible way, to reject the compromises proposed by the excellent Minister. The Government are publishing a 15-year framework, but he knows and we know that it will simply detail the number of doctors that the Government think they can afford, not the number of doctors we actually need. In the past—even last year—when the NHS has tried to publish the number of doctors it thinks it needs, it has been stopped by the Government. Why is there this reluctance to publish the number of doctors we are going to need in 15 years’ time, given that 97% of hospital bosses say that staff shortages are having an impact on the quality of care they are giving and there are 110,000 vacancies? The answer is simple: it is because the Government know we are not training enough right now. What message does it send to young doctors, newly qualified midwives and newly qualified nurses, who are incredibly stressed and pressured by the situation on the frontline, if we are saying to them, “Look, it is really tough now, but we are not even prepared to train enough doctors, nurses and midwives for the future to relieve that stress and pressure later on in your career”?