Business of the House
Debate between Lord Lansley and Paul Farrelly(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
I recall that in the later stages of the previous Session, there was a debate on community hospitals and I am pleased to see that Simon Stevens, the new chief executive of NHS England, has taken the matter up. When we took office, it was very important to us to have a greater focus on delivering care close to people’s homes, to improve people’s ability to step out of the high-cost acute hospitals so that they could concentrate on their job, and to give a focus to local commissioners. Often, it is the new local clinical commissioning groups that best understand how community hospitals can serve the people they look after.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
May we have a debate on compensation for losses caused by the passport fiasco? In my office over the past few weeks, we have been trying to help people left in a desperate situation by the chaos, and it will not have escaped the country’s notice that the word “sorry” did not once pass the Home Secretary’s lips. She did not address the issue of compensation, either. Is it not only fair for people who apply for passports in good faith and in good time and who suffer losses—for example, by having to cancel their holidays—to be compensated? May we have a debate on that?
Mr Lansley
I think that the Home Secretary fully responded to the questions raised just before business questions. I am sure that in future we will be able to look after our constituents much better, in the way that she described, by being able to raise urgent cases. In my experience as a constituency Member of Parliament, when we have had to raise cases we have been able to get through on the MPs’ helpline and resolve them rapidly.
National Health Service
Debate between Lord Lansley and Paul Farrelly(13 years ago)
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Mr Lansley
In this motion, there is nothing to recognise the contribution from NHS staff; it just denigrates them. It says nothing about people who rely on the NHS to care for them.
Mr Lansley
It is surprising that I am being embarrassed by so many interventions from the Labour Benches, because there are so few Labour Members here. I remember that before the election it was my recurrent experience that when we held Opposition day debates on the NHS, the Labour or Government Benches were nearly empty while our Benches were pretty full of Members who, because of our commitment to the NHS, were seeking to make points about it. Funnily enough, it does not seem to have happened in reverse. The Government Benches are still full while the Opposition Benches are nearly empty. [Interruption.]
Paul Farrelly
Staff of the High Street medical practice at Newcastle-under-Lyme are dedicated and hard working, yet that practice, which has 5,000 patients, is being forced to close. The Secretary of State has written me a letter, from which it is quite clear that closing directly run GP practices with salaried doctors is NHS policy. It is also clear that the closures are pre-empting proposed legislation to abolish PCTs, which is yet to go through Parliament. If the Secretary of State believed in a patient-focused NHS, surely he would be trying to save such practices, not encouraging their closure.
Mr Lansley
I will not delay the House at length with further explanation of what I wrote in my letter, as the hon. Gentleman quite properly raised the matter with me at topical questions. It is our intention to move to more consistent commissioning of primary care across the country through the NHS Commissioning Board, but the driver for that is still local decisions about what GP services should be available in an area and which practices are involved. The hon. Gentleman knows from my letter that this is the view of the local primary care trust. In future, it will be for the health and wellbeing boards, not least the clinical commissioning groups, to look at whether primary medical services can be provided with or without the sort of facilities that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Lansley and Paul Farrelly(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
PCTs in Staffordshire are pre-empting legislation by merging and reorganising now, which has led to plans to close the high street practice in Newcastle-under-Lyme simply because it is run by salaried GPs. Is that really NHS policy? If not, what will the Secretary of State do to help 5,000 patients rescue a much-needed surgery?
Mr Lansley
Nothing that is being done pre-empts legislation. What is being done in relation to primary care trust clusters is being done under existing legislation, and was necessary not least to enable us to achieve a reduction of £329 million in management costs in the first year following the election. In contrast, there was a £350 million increase in the year before the election under the hon. Gentleman’s right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham).
I do not know the circumstances of the centre to which the hon. Gentleman referred because the decision will have been made locally and will not have involved me, but I will gladly write to him about it.