National Health Service

Debate between Alan Campbell and Norman Lamb

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

Let me make this point.

I acknowledge that several Members, including the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), raised distressing cases. I offer my personal sympathies to everyone who has been let down by the system. Such cases should motivate us all to strive to do everything that we can to improve how our NHS operates and to address the areas where it falls short.

The Opposition claim that the move from NHS Direct to NHS 111 has increased the demand faced by accident and emergency departments. There is no evidence to support that claim. Only 8% of calls result in a recommendation to go to A and E, and 30% of callers say that they would have gone to A and E if NHS 111 had not been available.

An accusation has been made about the impact of local authority cuts on social care. I remind the Labour party that the Government were faced with a £160 billion black hole in the public finances and had to act to sort that out. There is still no proposal from the Labour party to increase the funding for social care. The claims that it makes are hollow, without the money to go with them.

Let us look at one of the key indicators: delayed discharges from hospital. From August 2010 to November 2014, delayed days attributable solely to social care decreased from 38,324 to 37,000. The position is not as simple as some people suggest. Social care is performing incredibly well under difficult circumstances. In Cambridgeshire, there is the brilliant development of a service for older people to address their needs in innovative ways.

It has been claimed that the closure of walk-in centres has led to the current pressures on A and E. Again, we need to look at the evidence. A report by Monitor found that the reasons why local commissioners decided to close walk-in centres included that they were replacing them with urgent care centres co-located with A and E departments or other models of integrating primary care staff in A and E departments. The situation is not as simple as is suggested by the claim that walk-in centres have been closed and A and E has been left to pick up the burden.

The Opposition have said that the ambulance service is failing. In fact, ambulance services nationally are delivering nearly 2,000 more emergency journeys every day than in 2010. Ambulances respond to the majority of life-threatening cases in less than eight minutes. The Government have provided an additional £50 million to support ambulance services through this winter. It is right to take clinical advice to ensure that target response times are clinically based to avoid the unintended consequences of ambulance crews being driven crazy in the pursuit of targets, when it is patient safety that should be prioritised.

I come to the solution. In the short term, the Government have made an additional £700 million available to the NHS to cope with the pressures this winter. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) did at least acknowledge that. In the longer term, we need to focus on stopping the crises from occurring in the first place. We need a much greater focus on prevention, better integration of health and social care, and the implementation of Simon Stevens’s forward view.

I thank NHS staff for the amazing work that they do, often under great pressure, and the tremendous commitment that they make. We owe it to them and to the public to ensure that our NHS is protected and enhanced. Most people who use urgent and emergency care services receive effective, timely treatment. That is as it should be. Patients and their families should get the right advice and should get a response when they need it. We set the toughest standards in the world, and rightly so. We all know that those standards are under pressure across the UK, so let us be open and honest about that.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Main Question accordingly put.