Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Burt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Lady gives an example of why it is so important to continue to seek to improve the quality of care in A&E and why it is so important to keep transparency going. This is one of the reasons that we have a new inspection regime, which has been designed to highlight these things, but the introduction of 1,250 new doctors in accident and emergency departments over the past five years will also make a difference to the improvement in quality of care. However, she is right to highlight this matter. The NHS does not do everything right, but what is important is that we value what is done with the vast majority of stuff and that, when things do go wrong, we say so, we examine them and we learn lessons.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

According to information that I have received, 16 of the 25 ambulances on duty in Leicestershire one evening before Christmas were queueing outside Leicester royal infirmary to discharge patients. I have written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about this issue. Please will the Minister update me and the House on the steps he thinks we should be taking?

[Alistair Burt]

The issue with ambulances and with quality of care elsewhere is the variation in quality. It is so important to ensure that local leadership addresses those local problems, because they are handled very differently in different places. It is right for my hon. Friend to raise this matter, and I am sure he has raised it with his local ambulance trust, as well as the hospital, to see how there can be better facilitation of patients going in and being discharged so that ambulances need not queue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alistair Burt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

That social care was an important part of the Chancellor’s spending review was noted by all. Up to £2 billion will be available through the social care precept—that will be added to council tax—and there is a further £1.5 billion available by 2020, so all in all £3.5 billion will be available by 2020. We all know resources for social care are tight; that is why we need best practice everywhere to make the best use of resources, which many leading authorities are already doing.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend considers integrating and improving care outside hospitals, will he discuss with the Secretary of State the medical system in the People’s Republic of China, which brings together western medicine, herbal medicine and acupuncture and which is bearing down on the demand for antibiotics? Before he responds to the Report on the Regulation of Herbal Medicines and Practitioners, will he look very carefully at dispensing arrangements for the small-scale assembly of herbal products, something the Government of the People’s Republic of China are very interested in?

[Alistair Burt]

Herbal products are slightly beyond my normal portfolio remit, but anything that assists in social care and makes people feel better and can add to their vitality and wellbeing is to be welcomed. I am sure in many local areas they are taken extremely seriously.