Ebola

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Monday 13th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. Clearly, it is important that anyone who comes from those countries, whether a student or a visitor, is treated with the same screening and monitoring process. Screening and monitoring people simply on the basis of their passport would not work. There will be people who have indefinite leave to remain in the UK but who have a Sierra Leonean passport, and it would not be appropriate to put them through that process. It is most important that we have a system in place in which we can check and find out who has been to the Ebola-affected areas in the past three weeks, so that we can give them help if they need it.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has given details of plans for extra Ebola bed capacity in regional centres such as Sheffield. Will he confirm that those regional centres will be used alongside the Royal Free hospital in London, or will they be used only when capacity there has been reached?

[Mr Hunt]

Essentially, the plan is to start with the Royal Free, which has capacity to go from two beds to four. Then we have six beds available in Newcastle and Liverpool and two beds available in Sheffield. Following that we can further expand capacity at the Royal Free.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We absolutely want to make primary care more accessible and that is why we are introducing named GPs for everyone aged 75 or more from April. This is a significant and important reversal of, I think, a mistake that everyone now agrees was made in 2004 when named GPs were abolished. Its purpose is to make GPs more accessible to the people who need them the most.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

T9. The father of one of my constituents passed away at the weekend, one of 8,700 people who are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year in the UK, of whom only 3% will survive beyond five years. That survival rate has not changed in over 40 years. Will my right hon. Friend update the House as to what the Government are doing to improve patient outcomes for those with pancreatic cancer?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to look into that matter, because it sounds like a very deserving case. I will look into the details carefully if the hon. Gentleman gives me the relevant information.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

T8. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to learn from the mistakes of the Safe and Sustainable review of children’s heart surgery services and improve the forthcoming review in two ways? First, we should make the process a lot more transparent. Secondly, areas such as neo-natal, paediatric and adult intensive care unit services and transport and retrieval services should fall within the scope of the new review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about the Keogh review before we have made our statement. I am particularly surprised because the Keogh review is the review that Labour never wanted to have, with high death rates in all those hospitals stretching back to 2005 and a record of inaction by Labour. As former—[Interruption.] I think the House might be interested to hear this. as former Labour councillor and Mid Staffs campaigner Ken Lownds said today:

“Can you imagine a Keogh review under Andy Burnham or any Labour Health Secretary? Not a chance.”

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

5. Whether the new review of children’s heart surgery units will cover adult as well as paediatric cardiac surgery.

Children’s Heart Surgery

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The cost to date of the Safe and Sustainable process is about £6 million and Members of this House will rightly ask whether that money has been spent well, given the flaws in the process identified today by the IRP. I would also say, however, that it is right to spend money on carrying out such processes properly. It would be the wrong approach to say that, based on the cost of the process, we are not prepared to consider how we can improve services.

On the timetable, now that the report is public—it is available to Members of the House and the public as of today—I have given NHS England and all stakeholders until the end of next month to come back to me with a revised plan.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I agree with the Secretary of State that families must come first. For me, that means the families of Ben Pogson and Joel Bearder, young constituents of mine who have been treated at the wonderful Leeds unit. Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that the new review will be based on the fundamental principle of patient choice and that doctors should go where the patients are, rather than the other way around?

[Mr Hunt]

Patient choice is very important, but it is also fair to say that there are other considerations in such a review, such as clinical best practice and what outcomes will get the best results for children. We need to be up front with the public that that will not mean specialist children’s heart surgery being offered in every major city in this country. There will be some difficult decisions at the end of the process. The broader point about patient choice, when it comes to considering mortality rates, is that it ties in very well with the concept of peer review. The way we can get better outcomes for children is by being able to compare what happens in different centres, and that is a very important part of the process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that children’s heart surgery units such as the one in Leeds now need certainty so that they can continue to attract the highest calibre of staff?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I agree with my hon. Friend and the sooner we can make a decision and announce it, the better. This issue is of huge importance to the people of Leeds and I want to do all I can to expedite the process.

Immigrants (NHS Treatment)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is right. One reason why we are tackling this problem is not just the health agenda we have been discussing this afternoon, but that abuse of NHS services fuels broader immigration problems. That is one of the core reasons the previous Government failed to get a grip of net migration in particular.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust spent £305,341 on interpreter services between 2009 and 2011. Will my right hon. Friend include the costs of translation services when working out the costs of health tourism?

[Mr Hunt]

I would want to be careful to discriminate between the needs of British citizens and people who are entitled to free NHS care who have not had the education or support they need to learn English but who should still continue to receive free, high quality NHS care, and foreign nationals who are not entitled to free NHS care and who should pay the cost of any translation required.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her interest in early-onset dementia. She is absolutely right: there is a widespread lack of understanding of dementia in general, and of early-onset dementia in particular. In addition to the research that I mentioned in my earlier answer, we are also looking at a major programme to engage GPs. Sadly, some GPs still think that it is not worth diagnosing someone with dementia, and there is a lack of understanding that we absolutely have to put right.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Government and charitable spending on dementia research is 12 times lower than spending on cancer research, with £590 million a year being spent on cancer research and only £50 million being invested in dementia research. What steps can we all, including the Government, take to increase the amount of investment in dementia research?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and he will be pleased to learn that the Government are more than doubling the amount of money that we put into dementia research. We need to catalyse the private sector companies because although they know that the size of their potential market of people with dementia is huge, they have been frustrated in their attempts to find the breakthrough medicine that we urgently need. We need to use the research to excite their interest and keep them focused on this truly tragic disease.

Social Care Funding

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The care costs that people have at their home will be included in the amount calculated towards the cap, so what we are hoping for is the opposite—that this proposal will lead to an expansion of domiciliary services. I think that people will welcome that. At the heart of controlling our social care costs, both financially and on a human level, is a structure that allows more people to live at home, happily and healthily, for longer than is currently the case.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, to be credible on social care funding, any package needs to be fully funded, unlike yet more random, pie-in-the-sky, unfunded spending commitments?

[Mr Hunt]

Absolutely. There was a time when the Labour party would have considered a package that will be worth £1 billion a year by the end of the next Parliament to be a significant investment, but after its free spending ways of a billion here and a billion there, we are now talking real money.

Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

That is obviously a matter for the First Minister for Scotland, but all politicians need to be open and transparent, and all politicians need to show humility in dealing with this problem.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Why did the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—I would never refer to him in an ungracious and ungentlemanly way as “dodgy Gordon”—never once raise the issue of phone hacking with Rupert Murdoch?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Jason McCartney

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

13. What representations he has received on the future of local and regional media; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

It is a fundamental priority for this Government to reform the regulatory structure to allow the emergence of a new generation of local media companies, including high-quality local TV companies, which we have never properly had in this country, and I have already taken steps to make that happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her position—I believe that she also name-checked the Express and Star in her maiden speech. If we had Wolverhampton TV, she could name-check that as well, which she should welcome, because that is very much a part of the Government’s vision. ITV news providers are obliged to continue under the terms of their current licences until 2014, as I told the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg), so we have a window between now and then in which to allow for the emergence of a new generation of strong, profitable, ambitious and successful local media companies. We are doing that by modernising the regulatory framework, which unfortunately was not done by the previous Government, and which was set up in the pre-internet era. That is why so many local papers are struggling. I hope the hon. Lady supports our plans, because I think that they would be good for local papers in her area and for a new generation of TV companies.

[Jason McCartney]

May I welcome the Secretary of State and his Ministers to the Front Bench? As everybody else is doing this, may I also name-check my local newspaper, the Huddersfield Daily Examiner? As someone who used to work in ITV regional news, I know the importance that Ofcom attaches to vibrant local and regional media for local democracy. Bearing in mind the current economic climate, what definite plans does the Secretary of State have for ensuring that ITV regional news provides strong competition for BBC regional news?

[Mr Hunt]

I also welcome my hon. Friend, and particularly as someone whose background includes working both as an ITV broadcaster and as a BBC journalist, because BBC journalists have often tended to be represented more on another side of the House. The answer to his question is that we have to ensure that BBC news provision has competition. That is essential, although it is not necessarily the case that that competition must come from ITV; it might come from more local news providers. That is why the plans that we are putting forward will be so significant.