Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I very much welcome the fact that my hon. Friend is becoming a real champion of this important international and national agenda. I am aware of the important work of the charity he mentions, and I believe it has already had some contact with the Department. I do not make the decisions on these sorts of funding issues, but I am happy to look at the issue he mentions and to meet him to discuss it.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

UK health and medical research projects benefit hugely from European Union funding, with the UK at the top of the table for approved grants. That funding is vital if we are to tackle global health challenges such as resistance to antibiotics. Does the Minister accept that pulling Britain out of the EU may have a detrimental impact on the UK’s role as a world leader in health research and development?

[Jane Ellison]

I reassure the House that the vital funds mentioned by the hon. Lady are protected in the spending review.

Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

It is, and that is why we need to move ahead in fairly short order. Ultimately, if staff contracts are not reformed across the service, those who will suffer most will be patients, and what will be most affected is the consistency of care that they receive at weekends.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The shadow Health Secretary asked the Minister if he could list the hospitals in which there were currently not enough junior doctors working at weekends. He could not answer that question, so I will give the Minister another chance. Will he name them for us now?

[Ben Gummer]

Evidence given to the Review Body on Doctors and Dentists Remuneration made clear that rostering was made more difficult by the current plain-time terms in the contract. That is why it has been on the table for several years and has been the subject of parts of our discussions with the BMA, when we have been able to have them. It is also why one of the leading chief executives in the country, Sir David Dalton, who led the latest round of talks, has pressed the BMA to come and talk about Saturdays specifically and plain time in general. The BMA has refused to speak about either.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)]

Clinical commissioning group formulae are based on advice provided by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. I can assure my hon. Friend that an adjustment per head is made for morbidity over and above age and gender, but as to whether or not one area is fairer than another, I am afraid that that is always a matter for local decision and discretion.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

T4. Can the Health Secretary explain how cutting £200 million from public health budgets is consistent with the emphasis on prevention and public health as set out in the five-year forward view?

[Mr Hunt]

I have already explained that, but I hope the hon. Lady will understand that we also need the Labour party to explain why it is committed to £5.5 billion less for the NHS over this Parliament than this Conservative Government, on the back of a strong economy that her party has never been able to deliver.

Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Friday 30th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) on this important and hugely needed Bill. Unfortunately, owing to the assassins on the Government Benches—one of them has just left the Chamber—more than two hours of time has, bizarrely, been taken up, and I do not think that I will be able to go into all the important issues that I wished to raise. People are concerned about this procedure. A lot of people, including my constituents, are looking forward to the consequences of what happens today, so I will certainly not take up as much time as that taken by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).

This is an important issue, as I know from my experiences over the past six years or so. Having suffered from renal failure and been in hospital on dialysis, I saw a lot of other people like me. On average, a person on dialysis spends at least five hours in hospital, and they mostly need some sort of support, including from carers who incur huge costs. That is three times a week on a regular basis. On top of that, those on dialysis have to come to hospital for the other procedures—blood tests and so on—that are required. That is just one group of people who need the service on a regular basis, but many other patients with long-term conditions need hospital appointments and procedures to bring them back to good health.

The people who support patients have a huge amount of responsibility and they provide a service to all of us who support the NHS and to hospital nursing staff. They do a huge amount of work with hardly any compensation and the Bill would allow us to support them. These are excessive charges. Some sit here and argue the point, but some of the people and friends alongside me for treatment were in very difficult circumstances. When they finished dialysis, they were hardly in a position to walk out on their own. A large number of people required support, and they were just those on dialysis for renal failure.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that carers provide an invaluable service to the people they care for, doing day-to-day tasks such as washing and feeding, and providing friendship and social interaction? All the things they do behind the scenes they do out of love, but in doing so they are working very hard for wider society. As that society, we should, in turn, support them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The extremely important report to which the hon. Lady refers was commissioned by the Government. It described the crisis care concordat, which is at the heart of dealing with mental health crises, as a “remarkable initiative”. It states:

“An extraordinary range of public services and other bodies have acknowledged their responsibilities”.

For me, it serves as a baseline for what we should do. The word “efficiency” is pointed out, not least in respect of A&E treatment of those with mental health crises. I regard it as a very good base on which to work and to gauge the success of what we do to deal with mental health crisis care over the next few years. I commend the crisis care concordat—it is in operation all over the country—as a first step towards ensuring that the sort of treatment we want in mental health crises becomes the norm.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

8. Whether he expects that the efficiency savings identified in NHS England’s most recent “Five Year Forward View” will entail a reduction in staff numbers.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

The “Five Year Forward View” is about meeting increasing demand through new models of care, not cutting staff numbers. In fact, we are planning an additional 10,000 staff in primary and community settings, including around 5,000 doctors.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The Secretary of State will be aware that Sir Robert Francis specifically recommended that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence provide guidance on safe staffing levels because it is independent and can establish guidance based on the needs of patients. The Government’s decision to suspend that work and transfer responsibility to NHS England has been met with criticism from patients’ groups right across the NHS. Will the Secretary of State please explain why he thinks NHS England is better placed than NICE to carry out that vital work?

[Mr Hunt]

The important thing is that that work happens. NICE did a very good job in delivering safe staffing guidance for acute wards. It is important to recognise that that guidance was interpreted as being about simply getting numbers into wards, but the amount of time that doctors and nurses have with patients is as important. The work will continue and we are proud of the fact that we are dealing with the issue of badly staffed wards. We will continue to make progress.