Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Gove Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 21st November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I have moved my seat. I wish to speak briefly as a member of the Select Committee who has not spoken.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I accept the noble Baroness’s position. Perhaps a High Court judge might resolve the issue, then.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 52, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I do so as the Government Chief Whip who helped ensure that the Serious Crime Act 2015 was placed on the statute book, and as the Justice Secretary who was responsible for some of its provisions thereafter.

I am hugely grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the vital question of domestic abuse and violence in the context of coercion. I do not believe that this has been suitably explored, canvassed or analysed before. I would be grateful for the reflections of the Bill’s sponsor on how we might protect some of the most vulnerable in our society.

I will respond very briefly to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who pointed out that there may well be inadequate protections for those people who are coerced or persuaded into declining treatment that might prolong their life at the end of their life. There may well be inadequate protection and a case for stronger protection but, as has been pointed out before, there is a world of difference between declining treatment that might preserve your life and having a lethal injection that will end your life. It is a point that the medical profession fully understands and one that should be firmly borne in mind.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

This is at the heart of the Bill. Is there really such a profound difference between an individual being able to say, “I’m going to stop chemotherapy” or “I’m going to stop eating because my life is intolerable”, and that person saying to the doctor, “I wish to have a potion that will have the same result”? There is a difference, but the main difference is that the person can die with dignity.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I think there is a profound difference, but the noble Lord has made his point and I shall allow others to judge whether the narrowness of the distinction that he draws is appropriate.

On the whole question of domestic violence, the legislation that was introduced in 2015 specifically introduced the idea of coercive and controlling behaviour as an aspect of domestic violence: the idea that domestic violence need not require physical harm. It was an advance in the law that was brought forward by my friend Robert Buckland in that legislation. It was absolutely vital and it made us a world-leading jurisdiction in recognising the danger of this particular type of abuse and violence.

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[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

The point that the noble Lord has just made—that people are committing suicide because they are in abusive relationships—is absolutely dreadful. But would he accept that there is more likelihood of their death being prevented under this Bill?

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I profoundly disagree with the noble Baroness on that, but I am grateful to her for making that point, and I am more grateful still to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for raising this issue. It is precisely the nature of coercive and controlling behaviour within domestic settings, as part of domestic violence and abuse, that needs to be addressed in this legislation. I have an open mind as to how it might be, but it must be.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group. They are important because, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, I do not know what the outcome of this debate will be at the end. She might have some other knowledge of how this House will vote, but I certainly do not know the answer. Therefore, it is vital that we spend the time and debate these amendments, because words are important. If anyone ought to know the value of individual words, it is noble and learned Lords in this House, because many of them spend their lives arguing on the edge of a pin about particular words. As a matter of fact, they make a considerable amount of money out of arguing about single words. Words are important, so let us not try to pretend that words do not matter. Therefore, on “coercion”, “influenced” and “encouraged”, I believe that we need to get this right, because the Bill could pass this House.

I know that there are those who do want to shut down debate. I sat in the House of Commons on Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions. I noticed earlier today that for a considerable amount of this debate the person who raised it at Prime Minister’s Questions was sitting here. He is the right honourable Member for North West Hampshire. He has left his position on the Steps of the Throne, but he was here for a considerable amount of the debate. He was indignant and incensed that this House wants to look at and scrutinise this Bill because it was passed by the Commons. I was in the other House for 25 years, and I know that in those 25 years, under successive Governments, the other House got Bills wrong and had to change those Bills. I do not believe it is correct to suggest that just because the other Members have passed the Bill, somehow we must bow and surrender to their superior knowledge, and therefore I believe that we ought to spend time—

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Gove Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, in my modest experience of six departments in both Houses of Parliament, I have always come to the conclusion and repeated that Whitehall does not do devolution. By the way, I declare an interest: I live in England but within 10 miles of the border of Wales. Therefore, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Harper, on raising this in a practical fashion that probably nobody else in the House is able to do. I doubt that Members of Parliament in the other place had the opportunity to raise it in detail, because there will be MPs running on both sides of the border. I commend him on raising it, and I resent the fact that he was interrupted at the end.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, in raising this question. Whether or not the suggestion from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, is the right way of addressing this issue is genuinely a moot point. But she is absolutely right to raise the whole question of the fitness for purpose of the Bill, given the nature of our devolution settlement.

I speak with a modicum of experience. For just over four years, I was the Conservative Government’s Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, responsible for seeking to make the devolution settlement work at a time when we obviously had a party of one colour in government in Westminster and parties of very different complexions in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. Prior to that, as Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I had to navigate the thickets of our devolution settlement.

It requires care to make it work. In order to do so, we have to take account of conventions, of legislative competences, of precedents and, as my noble friend Lord Harper pointed out, of the interwoven nature of the lives of communities that live on our borders. It is absolutely right that we should do so, both as a revising Chamber and as a revising Chamber considering legislation of such moment.

As everyone has pointed out during the passage of the Bill, strong feelings are engaged on every side. If we are thinking about fundamentally changing the responsibility of the state and our NHS when it comes to the balance between alleviating pain, prolonging life and, in certain circumstances, ending life, then we must proceed with care.

It was the explicit wish of many in the House of Commons, including in Committee, that the Bill takes seriously the operation of the legislation—so it is not finicky, an abdication of responsibility or something to be criticised when raising these specific and precise questions. It is our role.

Of course, many of us recognise, whatever our feelings on the Bill, that the House of Commons clearly gave its express wish that those who are living with a condition that means that their life will soon end in any circumstances should be able to choose the timing and manner of their death. I respect that clearly expressed wish. Some of us may take a different view about that imperative sent to us from the House of Commons as a matter of first principle, but all of us have a responsibility to look at how the legislation operates, because we are not in the business of simply recognising and respecting a sentiment, no matter how sincere; we are in the business of introducing legislation that must work and be made to work. Therefore, it is our responsibility in the days ahead to look in detail.

That is why I make no apology for specifically referring to the operation of the Sewel convention. Introduced by Lord Sewel of Gilcomstoun, a fellow Aberdonian and a former Labour Minister, it is a convention that broadly governs how we and the Government should legislate with respect to devolved matters. The Sewel convention makes clear that the Government should not normally legislate in areas that are strictly devolved without the full consent of the devolved legislative chambers—the Senedd Cymru, the Holyrood Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Because it is a convention, of course it is the right of Westminster—Westminster is ultimately sovereign—to legislate without that consent. But the broad convention, on which the success of our devolution sentiment rests, is that that should be exercised only sparingly. This point was made very well and repeatedly by the promoter of the Bill in this House himself, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. On a variety of occasions in the past, when the Government of which I was part sought to legislate in a way that may have caused disquiet or opposition in devolved legislatures, he has pointed out the importance of the Sewel convention, and he is not alone in doing so.

The former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in a report commissioned by the current Prime Minister in the other place on the operation of the Sewel convention, recommended that the Sewel convention be made justiciable and that it should be the case that it should move from a constitutional convention to be a legislative part of our constitution. The Government have not yet taken that step, but it is the stated intention and policy of the Government to ensure that, if one did choose to legislate without the consent of a devolved legislature, that would be capable of challenge in the courts, which it is not yet.

In stressing the importance of making sure that we proceed with care, I am doing no more than expressing not just my experience of how important it is to respect the devolved sentiment but my acknowledgement of the direction of travel that the Government had set out with their belief in making the devolved settlement work better.

The point has been made that our devolved settlement with regard to Wales is complex, and indeed it is, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out. Crime and justice are not devolved, but health is. But again, even in the area of crime and justice, there is no settled will.

I participated in the convention looking at the future of the constitution with regard to Welsh devolution, led by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams of Oystermouth—Rowan Williams. In it, he made the case—I believe it is a case that exercises the sympathy of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd—

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My understanding is that the Senedd is undertaking its usual processes around legislative consent, with reports from the health committee and the justice committee to be published soon. A date for agreeing legislative consent has not been set, but it is likely to be either shortly before or immediately after Christmas. It normally would take place before Report, so that amendments can be drafted in line with the feelings of the Senedd at the time. I wonder whether we need to look forward rather than historically.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for making that point, because it takes me to two of the points that I was about to make about the two committees in the Senedd that have looked at this: the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee. Both have explicitly raised concerns about this legislation.

The point that I was making about criminal justice is that, if there is a broad view among what one might call progressive parties in Wales—and certainly those parties that are likely to form a majority after the next Senedd election—it is that crime and justice should be devolved. That is not the case at the moment. It should not govern how we legislate in this House. But if we have to have regard to sentiment and to making the devolution settlement work, as I believe we should, we should be aware that legislating without the consent of the Senedd in areas such as crime and justice is certainly putting an additional strain on the devolution settlement. Let me put it no more highly than that.

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[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

Hold on. Consider whether it represents the right position.

Can I just deal with two other points? First, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, in a very clear speech, said maybe one should amend the Bill to give the Welsh Senedd the power to make a decision about the criminal law in relation to assisted dying. It was a point I thought the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, was sort of flirting with. We have not taken that view. We have taken the view that the right way to deal with this is in accordance with the existing devolution settlement.

If the noble Lord, Lord Gove, has not been satisfied with my answer so far, he may continue with his question.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for the clarity there. As a broad point, the devolution settlement encompasses not just inter-governmental relations but respect for devolved legislatures and their committees. With respect to that, the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee of the Senedd has expressed concern that the Welsh Government have said that only a narrow number of clauses in the Bill should be subject to commencement by Welsh Ministers in the Senedd alone and has expressed concern about the lack of detail from the Welsh Government on these matters. I would be very interested in the noble and learned Lord’s views about the adequacy of both the Welsh Government and the UK Government’s sharing of information. More broadly, the committee also pointed out that there is dubiety at the very least about whether Clauses 42(1), 42(2), 51(2) and 51(3) of the Bill will be implemented only by regulation of Welsh Ministers or will be subject to automatic commencement through the automatic commencement backstop in due course.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

In relation to the noble Lord’s first point, the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee’s point about the width of the legislative consent Motion is that it wants the LCM to extend not just to the health provisions but also to those that relate to the change in the criminal law and the safeguards. It argues that those changes in the criminal law should also be subject to it. My view—and it is a view I think shared by the Welsh Government—is that, no, you do not need a legislative consent Motion for the UK Parliament to do that which it is entitled to do, which is to change the criminal law. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Harper.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

Sorry, the noble Lord, Lord Gove, asked a second question which I did not answer.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

I am very grateful for that clarity, because it is clear that as a result of that, even though Westminster will be operating within its own legislative competence, it will be doing so in a way that violates the expressed wish of the committee. Again, as I pointed out in the previous section of this debate, it is also the expressed wish of many within Welsh Labour to see criminal justice devolved, but put that to one side.

The other key question was: can Welsh Ministers commence Clauses 42(1), 42(2), 51(2) and 51(3) of the Bill by their regulations only, or might the automatic commencement backstop apply in those cases?

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

It will depend on the decision made by the Welsh Ministers. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Harper.

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[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I speak briefly in support of the point made by the noble Baroness. I entirely understand why many Members of the Committee regard the suggestion to replace “capacity” with “ability” as wholly inadequate. The challenge that has been made by my noble friend Lord Markham and others is entirely fair enough, but the definition of “capacity” in the Bill itself is inadequate.

It is the case that the Mental Capacity Act was not designed for this purpose and that this legislation has been retrofitted to use the Mental Capacity Act because inadequate effort was put into defining the ability of an individual to make this decision in an appropriate way. It is the case that the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel has made it clear that the effort to put this Bill together was “done on a shoestring”. It is also clear, as the noble Baroness pointed out, that the Royal College of Psychiatrists—the people who are responsible for addressing mental capacity—said that assessing a person’s mental capacity to decide to end their own life is an entirely different and more complex determination requiring a higher level of understanding than assessing capacity for treatment decisions, which is the purpose of the MCA.

We have been told by those responsible for the mental health of vulnerable people that the safeguard that we are about to legislate for is inadequate. More people will be placed at risk by its inadequacy. We may feel that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, in putting forward “ability”, is failing to meet the needs of the legislation. However, it is not her responsibility, but our collective responsibility, the promoter of the Bill’s responsibility and the Government’s responsibility to ensure that psychiatrists and this House can be satisfied that the threshold is sufficiently high.

We all recognise that, while this Bill may be about respecting personal autonomy, personal autonomy is not sovereign. We recognise that there may be circumstances in which that right cannot and should not be exercised. The promoters of the Bill have been very clear that they want to draw the lines narrowly to ensure that this is available only to people who are consciously capable at a time when their life will automatically end within a certain period.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

Does the noble Lord agree with me that one of the issues, which has been sporadically mentioned, is the inconsistency of capacity or ability brought about by the interaction of certain drugs on an individual? They may be lucid at a particular point in time, but not lucid at another. Under our current proposals, the people who would be making that judgment do not even have to know or to have treated that person. Surely that has to be dealt with in any definition.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. Again, there has been some debate about the evidence from psychiatrists and the reasons why they expressed doubts, but that evidence is plentifully available to Members of this House.

As a number of Members have made clear, the work of Alex Ruck Keene KC and the Complex Life and Death Decisions group of King’s College, which is available to this House and was examined in the Select Committee, makes it clear that the Mental Capacity Act is inadequate. It is inadequate to deal with the concept of suicidal ideation that occurs. It is inadequate to deal with the fact that capacity fluctuates, and that fluctuation can be affected by mental health and well-being in its broadest sense, as well as by other syndromes and conditions.

The psychiatrists would not have intervened as they did if they had felt that this was a matter that could be left to one side, a matter that was entirely, as it were, within the scope of parliamentarians or legislators to shrug their shoulders and to accept. They have sent a message to us that the Bill as framed endangers those who are most vulnerable. Can we really proceed on the basis of the MCA, a piece of legislation conceived at a different time for a different purpose and rendered in the eyes of the professionals as not the correct way to go forward?

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to comment on the previous statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Gove. I am a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and I must have used the Mental Capacity Act dozens of times throughout my career. Capacity assessment, and how to do one, is included in very extensive codes of practice and in the training that people have. It includes ability in those things that have been mentioned. You need to know whether somebody has understood those elements that go to make up capacity to make a specific decision. It is a tried and tested piece of legislation. I will come back to it when we get to the amendments to Clause 3, but there is nothing in the capacity assessment that excludes making an appropriate judgment or having a really good understanding of the ability of the individual to grasp what is being proposed and all those things around it. It takes account of fluctuation—remember that this has to be a settled decision, and it takes account of that.

I did not want to say this, but noble Lords should understand that there has been internal politics inside the Royal College of Psychiatrists. There has been a serious shift towards against supporting this Bill, not since it came to the House but because of a change of personnel at the top of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The individuals who made up the report that now comes to the House, both from the GLAD group and from, for example, Dr Annabel Price. She has a personal view that she does not like the principles of the Bill and would not support it.

NHS Funding Bill

Lord Gove Excerpts

Legislative Grand Committee & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Programme motion
Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Chairman]

I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman does not quite explain the situation as it really is. You see, this Parliament, as the Parliament of the United Kingdom, passed certain rules some time ago, and it is not correct to say that Members from Scottish constituencies are locked out; far from it. Members from Scottish constituencies, and constituencies in every part of the United Kingdom, have not been locked out. They have been allowed to participate in the debate, but not to vote in it. Members from Northern Ireland constituencies and from Welsh constituencies are similarly categorised for the purpose of these particular Divisions.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Michael Gove)]

Further to that point of order, Dame Eleanor. Is it not the case that health is a devolved matter, and that the NHS in Scotland is the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament? Is it not the case that, therefore, Members of this House have no votes on, or say in, what happens in the NHS in Scotland, and is it not appropriate to point out to SNP Members that while they stage these stunts here, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh, for which they are responsible, remains closed, and cases of poisoning in hospitals in Glasgow for which they are responsible remain undealt with? Until the Scottish Government make sure that the health of the people of Scotland is looked after, the people of Scotland will regard this as a transparent stunt on the part of people who, instead of representing their constituents, seek to manufacture grievance.

[The Chairman]

I fully appreciate the point—[Interruption.] Order. This will not degenerate into a shouting match.

The right hon. Gentleman has expressed his view with his usual rhetorical flourish. My only comment must be that this is a very narrow Bill, specifically making provision for the funding of the health service in England. I have to go with what it says on the Bill, and it is therefore correct for it to be administered in this way.

National Health Service Funding

Lord Gove Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way in a moment.

The maintenance situation has got so bad that the NHS faces a backlog of £5 billion in repairs.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way in a moment. The former Education Secretary needs to calm down, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Public health budgets, which fund projects to tackle teenage pregnancy, excessive alcohol consumption, sexually transmitted infections and substance misuse and to provide anti-smoking interventions, will have been cut by 9.7% by the end of this Parliament. That is a completely false economy leading to greater demands on the acute sector. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) so brilliantly outlined last week, the adult social care budget has been slashed.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

My right hon. Friend is right and she is a brilliant campaigner for the health service in Enfield. The points that she makes about the staffing crisis in the NHS are well made. I hope that the Secretary of State will respond to her.

Things are so bad for the Health Secretary that even the NHS chief executive told the Health Committee that

“2018-19 will be the most pressurised year for us…will have negative per-person NHS funding growth.”

Those were the chief executive’s words. Will the Health Secretary sit up and listen, and respond to the chief executive, or will we get what we saw in the Sunday newspapers—briefing against him? We heard that the Government are “gunning for” Mr Stevens and are going to “fix” him. I hope the Secretary of State will repudiate that briefing when he responds to the debate and distance himself from it.

The only people who do not appear to accept the need for more money for the NHS are the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State. We anticipate what the Secretary of State will tell us from the Dispatch Box. The right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) alluded to it and I will now answer his question. The Secretary of State will not only tell us that we have a generous, munificent Conservative Government who have given the NHS the money it asked for, but persist with the fiction that the NHS is receiving an extra £10 billion. However, we all know—and I suspect that the Secretary of State knows, because he now distances himself from the figure when he does interviews—thanks to the Health Committee and others that this £10 billion claim is bogus. It is a claim universally derided and discredited, apart from in the drawing room of 10 Downing Street.

[Michael Gove]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It will be a pleasure to give way to the former Education Secretary.

[Michael Gove]

The chief executive of the NHS, whom the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned, welcomed that additional £10 billion and said that it gives the NHS the extra headroom we need. Will the hon. Gentleman repudiate his criticism now and make it clear that he associates himself with the chief executive of the NHS in welcoming that £10 billion of extra funding?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The chief executive’s comments to the Select Committee speak for themselves. Talking of repudiation, when are we going to get £350 million a week, or were the Tories typically saying one thing before the people voted and something completely different after they had had their say? That is what the ex-Education Secretary should be telling us.

Let me remind the House what the Health Committee said. I see the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) in her place, and she said:

“The continued use of the figure of £10 billion for the additional health spending up to 2020-21 is not only incorrect but risks giving a false impression that the NHS is awash with cash.”

She is sitting only a little further down from the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). Perhaps he can have a word with her if he disagrees.

The Secretary of State hopes we do not notice that he is stretching the timeframe over which he presents this funding allocation. He hopes we do not notice that NHS spending has been redefined by the most recent spending review. He hopes we do not spot that he is cutting billions from public health budgets and other Department of Health funding streams—a £3 billion cut. But we have noticed.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend is extremely knowledgeable about the health service and has been campaigning vigorously on the STPs. She is completely right. We will see hospitals merged in the Merseyside area and in London, hospitals lost in Durham, and efficiencies found by changing staffing levels. In fact, the STP for Cheshire and Merseyside, the area that she represents, talks enticingly of

“Exploration of a Factory Model”.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

With cuts to services and rock-bottom staff morale, we have the Sports Direct approach to the NHS, with the Secretary of State playing the part of Mike Ashley. The public deserve better than this bargain basement approach. Scaling back the acute sector while not investing in the community sector simply does not work. The Prime Minister might have ruled out extra funding—

[Michael Gove]

I have listened with great interest to the hon. Gentleman. He has spoken eloquently of his concerns about the NHS, but has not, in the course of 18 minutes, put forward a single positive policy or explained where a single penny of additional funding would come from. He has secured the time for this debate, so would he at least put forward a positive policy for the NHS, or a suggestion as to where the money should come from?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The right hon. Gentleman really does have a brass neck. We still do not know when we are going to get the £350 million from him, but next time he intervenes perhaps he will tell us.

[Michael Gove]

Answer the question.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will now make a bit of progress because I know that other Members are anxious to speak.

The Chancellor should respond tomorrow to the growing body of evidence that the NHS has not been given the money that it needs. Tomorrow, we need an end to the scandal of crumbling hospitals. Tomorrow, the Chancellor must put right the Government’s greatest betrayal on adult social care. Tomorrow, the Government must deliver the long-overdue investment that our NHS needs.

[Michael Gove]

Where is the money coming from?

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[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend is right. I congratulate him, because he was part of the shadow Health team that persuaded the then shadow Chancellor and Leader of the Opposition that we needed to make that investment, thanks to which the NHS is doing 5,000 more operations every single day.

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend has been very gracious in taking interventions from all sides, and also in citing independent voices. Has not the independent King’s Fund also pointed out that the sustainability and transformation plans that he is overseeing are the “best hope” of securing long-term improvement for both health and care in this country? Does he agree that the Opposition should pay rather more attention to those independent experts, rather than repeating their own press releases?

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend is right that just occasionally we should listen to experts—but only very occasionally. In the spirit of listening to experts, and as the Leader of the Opposition is here, I will tell my right hon. Friend something else the King’s Fund has said that he will agree with, which is that

“claims of mass privatisation were and are exaggerated.”

Let us not go chasing down rabbit holes.

The result of this Government’s commitment to the NHS is that real-terms spending per head has gone up by 4.6%, which is double the rate in Scotland and three times the rate in Wales. The hon. Member for Leicester South also mentioned the National Audit Office. He did not mention that the numbers quoted in the NAO report are last year’s figures. He chose not to mention this year’s numbers, which were published last week. They show that 40 fewer trusts are in deficit. Yes, a year ago, half of trusts were missing their financial plans, but now 86% are hitting those plans.

The latest figures, from Friday, show that the deficit will fall 73% from last year, and even lower than the year before. Why is that? It is because of a sustained effort by the NHS to tackle the problem. [Interruption.] The Opposition do not want to hear this, but the truth is that the NHS is gripping the very problem the shadow Health Secretary called a debate on. Agency spend, one of the biggest challenges, is on track to go down from £3.7 billion to less than £3 billion. The rates paid for agency nurses are down 18% on a year ago, and for locum doctors they are down 13%. Our procurement changes are on track to save half a billion pounds. The money we raise from international visitors is up three times, from £84 million to £289 million.

NHS Funding

Lord Gove Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

First, may I welcome the hon. Lady to her place in this House? I am sure that she will make an extremely important contribution. Yes, she is filling very big boots, but, if I may say so, she has made a very good start.

On what happens with A&E departments, changes in the pattern of the services we provide have been a feature, both when the hon. Lady’s party has been in power and when my party has been in power, because the needs of the people who use the NHS also change. We therefore need to strike the right balance between reassuring people that services are provided near where they live, while ensuring that they receive the right care when they get there. For strokes, that does not always mean going to the nearest hospital, but somewhere with 24/7 stroke care and the greatest chance of saving the patient’s life. If the hon. Lady has concerns about Dewsbury hospital, I am very happy to talk to her further.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

At a time when every Department, with the exception of the Department for International Development, has to reduce public expenditure, it seems a remarkable feat of political skill to have secured an increase for the NHS bigger than either the Home Office budget or that of the Ministry of Justice. Will the Secretary of State tell me whether there are parts of the United Kingdom where health expenditure is not rising as fast as in England? If there are, which political parties are in charge there?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my right hon. Friend, whose passion and commitment to higher standards for the constituents he serves have inspired me in this job, just as I know they have inspired many others in the education field. There are indeed parts of the United Kingdom that allow us to make a very good comparison of the commitment to and funding of the NHS. In Wales, funding went down in the first four years of the previous Parliament. In Scotland, funding went down over the course of that Parliament. Both the Scottish National party and the Labour party like to talk about the NHS, but when it comes to writing the cheques, they are nowhere to be seen.

Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond

Lord Gove Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point. She mentioned Scotland’s minor ailments programme. The announcement I made on that about a week ago was in many ways modelled on the Scottish model, because we know that pharmacies can do much more on minor ailments than at present. That will be commissioned separately from the other things we are talking about today, and paid for separately from the integration fund. We are a little behind Scotland in that regard, and we are going to catch up.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on recognising what Labour failed to: that NHS money is taxpayers’ money and the priority should always be patient care, not the profits of private equity firms. May I further congratulate him on making it clear that those living in our most deprived communities will be protected and have services enhanced as a result of this change, and may I invite him to say more?

[David Mowat]

I will not say much more because of time constraints, but I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. He is right to remind the House that this sector is quite concentrated towards public companies. That is not to say there are not some individual pharmacists that will be affected, but about 25% of pharmacies are owned by two or three public companies.

Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Lord Gove Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I do not have figures to hand for exactly what the number will be this year—I will certainly let the right hon. Gentleman know—but around 11,500 extra doctors will be trained during the course of this Parliament.

As I said in the statement, it is important to recognise that the changes involve not only junior doctors. We need more weekend consultant cover—that is particularly important—and more people who are able to do the diagnostic tests. A whole range of people need to take part in the changes to improve standards of care at the weekends.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his reasonable yet resolute approach throughout the negotiations, which has been reflected in the fact that the leaders of so many royal colleges chose to criticise the decision to go on strike. The suspension of the strike action is therefore wholly welcome.

My right hon. Friend made the point that clinical standards will be improved as a direct result of the move towards a seven-day NHS. Will he enlighten the House about which particular types of patient in which circumstances will benefit as a result of his welcome drive to improve patient care?

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do that. Indeed, I am delighted to take a question from my right hon. Friend, because it is after someone has long departed an office that people actually appreciate that big, important changes were made, which was certainly the case from his tenure as Secretary of State for Education.

One of the clinical standards states that people admitted at weekends should be seen by a senior doctor—a consultant or an experienced junior doctor—within 14 hours. They will be seen by a doctor much sooner than that, but they should be seen within 14 hours by someone experienced enough to know whether there is something to worry about. That would happen in most places during the week, but it does not happen in many places over the weekend. Another standard relates to the most vulnerable patients who are at real risk of going downhill. This is not the clinical term, but doctors say that spotting people who are going downhill is one of the most important things. Such people should be checked at least twice a day by someone experienced enough.

Those are two of the four clinical standards that we want our constituents to be reassured are in place across the country. We think that that will make a big difference.