Business of the House

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Thursday 5th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. Volunteers week, in the first week of June, provides an important opportunity every year to say a big thank you to the millions of volunteers across the UK for their fantastic contribution. We are putting in place measures and funds to grow volunteering opportunities. We have invested £20 million in 40 organisations through the social action fund. That in itself has created opportunities for more than half a million new volunteers. I hope that we will all, as he rightly says, take the opportunity this week to celebrate volunteers in our constituencies.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

The Crown court in Hull has come to a near standstill owing to the fact that criminal solicitors are refusing to apply for legal aid representation orders in Crown court proceedings. So bad is the situation that the recorder of Hull Crown court has issued a practice direction advising defendants who are unrepresented how to conduct the proceedings. May we please have an urgent debate on this issue and the fact that the criminal justice system is in complete chaos due to the Lord Chancellor simply not understanding the issues?

[Mr Lansley]

On the contrary. There is a central issue here: across Government, we must cut our coat according to our cloth. We must make savings, and that includes savings in a legal aid budget which, as the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, was by far and away the most generous in the developed world. Making those savings has entailed difficult decisions. However, the hon. Gentleman raised important points in relation to Hull. I entirely understand why he did so, and I will ask my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to respond to him on those points.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the Government’s latest plans to reform civil legal aid? Last Thursday we had an excellent debate in the Chamber on the reforms, but the issue of civil legal aid was largely missed, particularly with regard to judicial review and the Lord Chancellor’s barmy idea not to allow prisoners to access legal advice unless and only if they are opposing a parole decision.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman must recognise the requirement to reform legal aid; there are issues of fairness, of quantum and of the resources expended on legal aid, and there is also the need to secure savings. My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor rightly has made it clear that those savings had to be achieved, but has listened to the representations made in the consultation. The Law Society was very clear that it was able to accommodate additional choice while understanding that the need for savings had to be met. It was very fair on the part of the Lord Chancellor to respond positively to that.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Thursday 25th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

If I may, I will join my hon. Friend in expressing appreciation in this House for the activities of Interface, other groups and his borough council. I welcome what he does on behalf of his constituents and applaud it.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

The Lord Chancellor recently announced plans to introduce price-competitive tendering in criminal legal aid. The plans are ill thought through and will destroy the criminal justice system and the criminal law profession. May we please have an urgent debate in the next Session on that very important topic?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot anticipate debates in the next Session. What I can say is that what my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor and his predecessor have done in trying to secure better value and a much greater focus for legal aid is terrifically important. [Interruption.] We have a very generous legal aid system, compared with countries around the world. [Interruption.] The intention is not that we should become ungenerous, but that we must be more focused and ensure that legal aid supports those who genuinely require public support in order to undertake their cases.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Give way!

[Mr Lansley]

I will, but I have given way to the right hon. Gentleman before and it took about five minutes.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come to some of those points. However, I might just say that, in the space of the last few days, we have had an opportunity to demonstrate that Labour signed up to an enormous, centralised, top-down NHS IT scheme that was never going to deliver, was failing to deliver and was costing billions.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No.

In the space of under two years, my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department and I have delivered a reduction approaching £2 billion in the cost of the NHS IT programme. That will enable us to empower services right across the country to be better users and deliver better IT systems.

NHS Risk Register

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Let me put a quotation to the shadow Secretary of State again:

“Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1192W.]

I asked in an intervention on the shadow Secretary of State whether he recalled that quotation. It is what he said in an answer to this House in Hansard on 23 March 2007.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

I will in a moment.

Frankly, this is a broken-bat debate in the first place, because the shadow Secretary of State is trying to suggest that this Government should do something that he as a Minister and then as a Secretary of State steadfastly refused to do, using exactly the same arguments that the present Government have used.

I am afraid that the shadow Secretary of State’s bat was broken before he came to the crease, because at Prime Minister’s questions the Prime Minister put it to the Leader of the Opposition that, as he was devoting a whole Opposition day to this debate, he might want to make some argument or put some question to him on this subject, but such a point from the Leader of the Opposition came there none. The shadow Secretary of State is standing at the Dispatch Box without the support of his own leader.

[Karl Turner]

Does the Secretary of State think that his job is at risk and that it should perhaps be on a risk register?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not know about the debate being bad-tempered, Mr Deputy Speaker, but we at least have jokers in the House.

The shadow Secretary of State is out on his own. I will be kind to him and say that at least opposition is coming naturally to him. Whatever we propose, he opposes it, even to the extent of directly contradicting what he and his colleagues said in government. His contribution today was another shameless example. We have seen this before. The last Opposition day debate on this subject was a travesty of his previous views about the role of the private sector, the need for the private finance initiative and the role of competition in the NHS that he espoused in government. He has done a U-turn on those matters and now holds the polar opposite views from those that he held before. That may be a luxury of opposition and he may enjoy it for the moment—actually, I am not sure that he did enjoy it that much—but that kind of inconsistency will keep him in opposition for a very long time.

The shadow Secretary of State spoke for about 50 minutes and I heard not a word of appreciation for the staff of the NHS. We are asking the staff of the NHS to live in financially challenging times, but it is not mission impossible. He said that saving money in the NHS was mission impossible. That is certainly how the Labour party treated it in government. Spending money was about the only thing that it seemed to be capable of doing, but it never spent it well. We are asking the staff of the NHS to save and to reinvest, and to improve performance at the same time.

Did I hear one scintilla of appreciation from the shadow Secretary of State for what NHS staff are doing, or for the fact that we have the lowest number of hospital-acquired infections on record and the lowest ever numbers of patients waiting more than six months and more than one year for treatment? I did not. I put it on record again that whether we compare May 2010 with December 2011, during which time the number of patients waiting more than a year for treatment more than halved, or December 2010 with December 2011, in which time it went down from more than 14,000 to nearly 9,000, the number has gone down. For the shadow Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that it has doubled, which is transparently wrong, is a misrepresentation to the House and a travesty to the staff of the service. He ought to come to the Dispatch Box and withdraw it.

NHS (Private Sector)

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Answer came there none. The truth is, we are doing exactly what the right hon. Gentleman and his party intended to do. At the election, Labour said in its manifesto:

“Foundation Trusts will be given the freedom to expand their provision into primary and community care, and to increase their private services—where these are consistent with NHS values, and provided they generate surpluses that are invested directly into the NHS”.

That is what we are doing.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No.

We are giving foundation trusts freedom to generate revenue from other sources that can be invested directly into the NHS. When Moorfields, for example, sets up a clinic in the middle east in a joint venture, should we say, “No, you’re not allowed to do that, because it might imperil your ability to support NHS patients”? Actually, it will help their ability to do so, with NHS Global encouraging the NHS.

I believe in the NHS and in the ability of NHS hospitals and providers, which in the past have had their horizons limited, to move beyond those horizons and deliver much better care. That can include turning them into international providers of choice in joint ventures across the world, and even joint ventures in this country, whether in research or the provision of additional services. However, as I explained to the right hon. Member for Leigh in an intervention, under the Health and Social Care Bill the principal purpose of any foundation trust will be the provision of NHS services. Doing anything that would be to the detriment of its provision of NHS services would be unlawful. Foundation trusts cannot cross-subsidise from NHS services into private services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I do not agree with that characterisation of why we instituted the Health and Social Care Bill or of the current situation. For example, the OECD published in October its latest assessment of health in a number of countries. In too many respects—for example, in relation to serious respiratory disease—we have very poor outcomes relative to other countries. What we are setting out to do in any case is to deliver continuously improving outcomes and to get among the best in the world. In too many respects we are not yet among the best in the world.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

T4. If the Prime Minister really wants to help nurses to focus on patient care, should the Secretary of State not listen to those nurses and drop this barmy, unnecessary Health and Social Care Bill?

[Mr Lansley]

It is precisely because the Prime Minister and I listen to nurses that we met them and made it clear that we will support best practice. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues should support nurse leadership on the wards. Nurses can see—through best practice, if they talk to patients about their experience every hour—that they can deliver better care. We will support nurses to deliver better care; he should support us in doing so.

NHS Future Forum

Debate between Lord Lansley and Karl Turner

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I believe that as a result of our proposals the NHS commissioning board will be able to provide more consistency in much specialised commissioning, and I hope that that will apply to people with spinal injuries. I am well acquainted with the work of the Spinal Injuries Association: I think that it has done terrific work, and we have already worked closely with it in trying to ensure that we improve commissioning and services for those with spinal injuries.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

It is utterly disgraceful that Liberal Democrats and Tories are scrapping with each other to claim credit for the alleged listening exercise. Will the Secretary of State now apologise to my colleagues and me for not listening to us when the Bill was in Committee?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, in relation to the changes we are now bringing forward, I do indeed give credit to some of my colleagues—very much so—but I also give credit to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister for the time and trouble they have taken; they have spent a great deal of time listening, and engaging with people across the health service. We give credit, too, to the NHS Future Forum and the thousands of people across the NHS who have now made their contribution to the NHS’s future, and I think they will be very disappointed to hear Opposition Members just wanting to denigrate that, and to make political capital out of it, rather than supporting the NHS in its future objectives.