NHS Strikes

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Barclay

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

It perhaps will not surprise the House to hear that the hon. Gentleman disagrees with his party’s leader on that, because the Leader of the Opposition says:

“I don’t think 35% is affordable”.

The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) is also wrong on the quantum, because the cost would be £2 billion, not £1 billion as he says. [Interruption.] Well, that has never been how departmental budgets operate—not when his party was in power, and certainly not now. He is wrong on the amount and wrong on the policy.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given that the terms “emergency care” and “intensive care” imply that the life of those who need them is at risk, does my right hon. Friend share my dismay that people in that predicament are now clearly being targeted by strikers? Will he—and hopefully his Opposition counterpart—represent to the medical unions that whatever other strike action they take, they should not endanger the life of people in emergency or intensive care?

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Patient safety should come first for all parties in this dispute. That is why I urge the Royal College of Nursing to wait for the NHS Staff Council decision on the offer. Voting is still ongoing, and it would be premature to announce strike action ahead of that decision.

Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Barclay

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As I said, we are not setting out that ambition in this statement, because the impact of the pandemic has been so severe. We need to set a target that is ambitious but achievable, which is what we have done. The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said:

“This plan is a welcome and significant step on the road to recovery and we are pleased to see it released.”

It is about taking best practice from the areas that are working and ensuring that they are socialised across the piece. It is obviously concerning to hear about individual cases, such as the specific one that the hon. Lady mentioned, which are very traumatic for the families. That is why we have set out this plan and why we are putting in the extra funding.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

From 2005 to 2006, there was a campaign within the NHS to close many in-patient beds in community hospitals. I was pleased by what the Secretary of State said earlier about beds in community hospitals having a role to play. In that connection, will he reconsider the future of the site of Fenwick Hospital in Lyndhurst in my constituency, where the in-patient beds were closed? The NHS is now proposing to sell it off, but I would have thought that, with a bit of imagination, such a site could increase capacity.

[Steve Barclay]

We are encouraging integrated care boards to take ownership of individual decisions, rather than trying to make all the decisions centrally from Westminster, so that those closer to the ground and to the issues are in power to make the trade-offs. I am sure my right hon. Friend will want to have those discussions with the chair and chief executive of his ICB. There is a wider issue of how we make greater use of community sites, not least given the workforce pressures and different staffing ratios that they have, and that is absolutely the way we help to get more people out of hospital who are fit to leave.

NHS Winter Pressures

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Barclay

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

That simply is not accurate. Let me give the hon. Lady some specific examples. Under the auxiliary contract with St John Ambulance, we invested an extra £150 million in the ambulance service, and we invested a further £50 million in additional capacity for call centres. Taxpayers spent £800 million on the new Royal Liverpool Hospital, and during 2018-19 a brand-new hospital was built at Aintree. However, this is not simply about investing in new hospitals; it is also about looking at the integration between health and care, and that was recognised in the autumn statement, which provided an additional £500 million. It is simply inaccurate to say that there were no measures in the summer. The St John Ambulance contract and the community first responders, and the service for frail and elderly people, will help with demand management and prevent people from going to emergency departments in the first place.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Do the Government recognise the danger of a major increase in pressure on the NHS as a result of any new variant of covid that may be imported from China? How quickly would we be able to identify such a variant and prepare a vaccine against it?

[Steve Barclay]

Let me first congratulate my right hon. Friend—along with the whole House, I am sure—on the knighthood that he received from His Majesty.

According to the analysis we have received, the variant in China is the same as the one in the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the data shared by China is often not as clear as we would like. That is why, over the Christmas period, my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Transport announced proportionate measures involving covid tests for travellers and, in particular, sequence variant testing for those coming into the UK, in order to identify any new variant quickly.

Urgent and Emergency Care

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Barclay

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

This obviously involves debates with Treasury colleagues about pay—not just on the social care side, but in respect of the NHS and the interplay with pensions—but it is not just about that; it is also about ensuring that we have the right data, and through the integrated care systems we are acquiring much better data to improve our ability to join up what is being spent on delayed discharge within the NHS with what is being done in the social care setting. I am sure Members will agree that not only is it often very damaging for frail elderly patients to spend a long time in hospital, but hospital is usually the most expensive place in the system for them to be. It is not just a question of having more money, although that is often the default; it is a question of thinking about how to get flow into the system in a way that will deliver not only patient care, but a more efficient service.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

On checking my website, I saw that it was in late 2005—not a period of Conservative government—that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), the then Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Romsey and I were complaining about the closure of in-patient beds in small community hospitals. Does the Secretary of State accept that there is a role for such beds in enabling appropriate discharge from the larger hospitals, thus dealing with one of the main causes of people being stuck in ambulances without being able to be given a bed?

[Steve Barclay]

That, I think, relates to the point that I just made about the need for flow in the system and an appropriate step-down capacity. Sometimes patients are not yet ready to be discharged to their homes, but some additional physio or other support may enable them then to go home, which is where they usually want to be. This is all part of taking a much more integrated approach, and part of that must be improving the quality of data in relation to the activity that takes place within community settings.

Self-employed Persons: Financial Support

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I refer to my earlier comments. We are trying to target the support towards those who are in need, in a way that is operationally as deliverable as possible, mindful of the issues that have been raised. We also want to accommodate the other point that colleagues from across the House have raised, namely that we must ensure that those who have legitimate needs are not excluded from the measures.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will Ministers consider suspending the application of the loan charge for the period of this emergency, thus stopping the hounding of the self-employed people who were the subject of an important debate in this place last week?

[Steve Barclay]

I can provide a degree of reassurance to my right hon. Friend that the self-assessment has been deferred from July to August. That is one of the areas where the Chancellor has taken action to address concerns.