Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will know that health care and social care support workers do responsible jobs and that the responsibility for them lies principally with their employers and the staff who supervise them. We made provision in the White Paper we published last December for a process of assured voluntary registration. What I announced and referred to a moment ago will give a code of conduct and standards that will form a basis for an assured voluntary registration scheme in future.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

One key care standard is the time that people have to wait for their treatment. Labour got waiting times down to an historic low, and we warned the Secretary of State what would happen if he relaxed the 18-week standard. Figures show that the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks is up by 43% and, despite the U-turn that the Government have made on the use of targets, is not the problem that they have been so fixated on their top-down reorganisation that they lost control of waiting lists? Surely it is time for them to drop the Health and Social Care Bill and focus on the things that really matter to the people using and working in the NHS.

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry, but that was all completely synthetic anger on the hon. Gentleman’s part. The average time that patients have been waiting in the NHS for treatment continues to be between eight and nine weeks. It has been so ever since the last election. The operational standard under the previous Government and now for the 18-week waiting time is that at least 90% of patients who are admitted for treatment should be admitted and treated within 18 weeks, and 95% of outpatients. Both of those operational standards continue to be met. Last week I made it clear that whereas the previous Government abandoned people who went beyond 18 weeks—and there were 250,000 of them who went beyond 18 weeks—we will not abandon those forgotten patients. We will make sure that they, too, are brought into treatment as soon as possible.

King George Hospital

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Brady, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) on securing this important debate on the issues facing his local hospitals. I know that he, my right hon. and hon. Friends, and other Members across the party divide have campaigned extensively for their local health services, and I commend them for it.

The Government are implementing a number of much wider changes in the health service—I will touch on those later—but my hon. Friend must be disappointed with the recent decisions made about the hospitals in his area and the health services used by his constituents. He and others have mentioned the recent Care Quality Commission report on the standard of care received by people under Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. The report had immediate concerns in relation to maternity services, identified failings in emergency care and radiology, and demanded widespread improvement.

As Members have mentioned, Queen’s hospital had the most serious concerns, including poor clinical care, verbally abusive and unprofessional behaviour by staff towards patients and colleagues, and a lack of learning from maternal deaths and incidents. The report states:

“Despite some signs of improvement in recent months, patients remain at risk of poor care in this trust”.

It also notes that the trust addresses issues on a short-term basis, under instruction, rather than proactively looking for longer term solutions. The report also states:

“There is past and current evidence of poor leadership from some managers and a culture among some staff of poor attitude and a lack of care for patients, especially in maternity.”

That is of extreme concern, and those views have been reinforced in this debate. The report also confirmed that attempts to cut the financial deficit at Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust led to reductions in the quality of care.

About three hours after the CQC report was published, the Health Secretary made an announcement about King George hospital, which now looks set to lose its A and E and maternity units. We know that the Health Secretary backed the IRP’s proposal for services to be expanded at nearby Queen’s hospital in Romford. That raises the question why, when the report on King George hospital was presented to the Secretary of State on 22 July, it then sat on his desk for more than three months and he chose to release its conclusions and recommendations on the same day, three hours after the CQC report.

From articles in the Ilford Recorder, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South, I see that there is a great deal of concern and consternation about that decision. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) described the decision in the press as “sheer madness”, outlining how Queen’s hospital is already having difficulty dealing with existing pressures—an issue which she raised today. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South previously described the decision as a disaster and is quoted in the Ilford Recorder as saying that the decision on King George hospital showed an

“absolutely contemptuous attitude to local people’s wishes and concerns”.

The proposed changes will not take place until the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs both sites, tackles the issues raised by the CQC. The Minister went into a little more detail about that in the debate. However, it is not just the disruption, but the uncertainty of local people, who will no longer have access to A and E and maternity services on their doorstep, that should be of concern to all hon. Members.

Yes, we need to acknowledge that reconfigurations are unpopular. We went through that a few years ago in Greater Manchester. Nevertheless, given public opposition and the views of the overview and scrutiny panel, local MPs and members of the local authorities across party, will the Minister say what account has been taken of the level of local opinion on the local health services by the IRP? My hon. Friend says that it was in its report, but what weight did the IRP and the Secretary of State give to that level of opinion?

[Mr Simon Burns]

May I help the shadow Minister? The consultations—not on the IRP level when it was doing its work, but on the proposals themselves—have, since 20 March 2010, had to fulfil the four conditions for reconfigurations set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which include consulting local people within the health economy and local opinion.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I appreciate that, but we heard today that there is a great deal of concern across local authorities and the communities, and I would like to know what weight was given to their views.

[Margaret Hodge]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it appears that money has been the key factor in forming the decisions, and not the care of people? The views of bureaucrats have taken precedence over the views and experiences of local communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely. We recognise that reconfiguration is sometimes necessary in parts of the country for reasons of financial efficiency, safety and better health outcomes. However, people are rightly disappointed by the way in which the nature of the debate changed in the run-up to the general election. As hon. Members rightly said, the general election was fought with a pledge about hospital closures and reconfigurations that is not being met. Back in 2010, the now Prime Minister clearly promised a moratorium to stop closures. Indeed, in opposition both he and the Secretary of State toured the country making promises to overturn some very difficult reconfiguration decisions taken by the previous Labour Government. Yet, as we have seen, the moratorium has not materialised, and there is now evidence of major changes to hospital services across the country.

I do not want to stray too far from the subject, but it is worth remembering that the Prime Minister gave a firm pledge not to close services at Chase Farm hospital, but in September 2011 the Secretary of State accepted the recommendations of the IRP and approved the downgrading and closure of services at Chase Farm. Similarly, at the Fairfield maternity department near Bury, we were told on a visit by the now Secretary of State that the service would be kept open. We now know that the maternity department at Fairfield general hospital is scheduled to close in March 2012.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South raised concerns about the ability of Queen’s hospital to improve when the NHS faces tough financial challenges in the years ahead. That is fair comment. At the general election, Labour promised to guarantee to maintain NHS front-line funding in real terms. In contrast, the Prime Minister offered real-terms increases. We can debate that another time, but I would suggest that that was just an electoral gimmick. The Treasury figures show that in 2009-10 health spending was £102,751 million in the last year of the Labour Government. In 2010-11, actual health spending was £101,985 million.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Will the hon. Gentleman be kind enough to tell hon. Members that the health spending figures for the financial year 2010-11 were set by his own Government, and that, for the lifetime of this Parliament and thereafter, we are increasing health spending in real terms, albeit a modest increase because of the financial mess we inherited, which needs to be sorted out?

[Andrew Gwynne]

I said that that was the actual health spend for the first year of this Government, which represents a real-terms cut of £766 million, according to Treasury figures. That includes the GDP deflator, which so excited the Minister during the Opposition day debate when my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) tried to raise this issue. That is the first cut in health spending for 14 years. Indeed, that is the first real-terms cut since the last year of the previous Conservative Government in 1996-97. The Government promised a real-terms increase in health spending; they have delivered a real-terms cut.

There are wider concerns about how the Health and Social Care Bill will impact on local health services. The extensive reorganisation of the NHS was not put forward by either party in government in their manifestos, or in the coalition agreement. Clearly, such a massive reorganisation will make it harder for the NHS to tackle the sorts of problems identified at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, and the wider issue of social care for older people by the CQC. The Prime Minister has clearly gone back on his promise on NHS reorganisation. The coalition agreement could not have been any clearer:

“We will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS”.

It is difficult to see how the coalition Government could have said that, when only weeks later they published a White Paper outlining the biggest reorganisation of the NHS since 1948. It is clear that such a change on this scale is the last thing that the NHS needs right now.

Returning to the more specific question about Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust and the future of King George hospital, given the CQC report and what hon. Members have said today, what consideration has the Minister given to the ability of Queen’s hospital to deal with the added pressures on its services when King George hospital closes its A and E and maternity services? On the face of it, no consideration has been given to the local support for keeping A and E and maternity services at King George hospital. If services are to be transferred—the Minister says within two years—does he recognise that people need certainty and that NHS staff need proper expectations to plan and manage those changes? If those time scales are not met, what plans are in place for NHS services in that part of London?

The concerns expressed by Members today are right and need to be addressed by the Minister. Also, the wider changes to the NHS will make it much harder to identify such failures in care in future and to deal with them effectively. That is why we are so against what the Government are doing to our national health service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong about that. In procurement throughout the NHS, what we have had is fragmentation, and what we need is better co-ordination. That is precisely why, since the election, for example, we have instituted a consistent bar-coding system, allowing procurement throughout the NHS to be undertaken more effectively; and why under the quality, innovation, prevention and productivity programme, the improvement in procurement —reducing the costs of procurement—is intended to achieve those savings and more.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Labour is proud of its legacy, with more than 100 new hospitals built to replace the crumbling Victorian buildings that we inherited in 1997, and it is not just the National Audit Office that has blown a hole in the Secretary of State’s assertion that 22 hospital trusts are on the brink of financial collapse due to PFI. John Appleby of the King’s Fund said:

“The…pressures on hospitals are not to do with PFI but…the need to generate £20bn worth of productivity improvements.”

Is not the real issue that the Secretary of State has tied up the NHS in a distracting and wasteful reorganisation that will cost more money than it will save, and take money away from patient care?

[Mr Lansley]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Opposition Front-Bench position. We are looking forward to the exchanges with him and his colleagues, including during questions today.

Twenty-two trusts have told us, in the course of our looking at where the impediments are to their financial sustainability for the future, that the nature of the PFI contracts entered into by the previous Government is a significant problem in this respect. It is absolutely right for the NHS to build hospitals, which is why we are, for example, building a new hospital at Whitehaven in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. [Interruption.] I beg his pardon—in the constituency of the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed); we are building so many new hospitals. The nature of the PFI projects we enter into must be to provide value for money and be sustainable in the future. That is something that the previous Government failed to achieve.

Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

No. I shall move on now. We have debated the topic long enough.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to be concerned about the way this part of the Bill is drafted. It is incredibly open-ended for the consortium to decide what is exempt from public knowledge. That is quite different from the situation in local government in England, where the Local Government Act 1972 prescribes what is exempt from the press and the public.

[Owen Smith]

Indeed. The key difference is that it is for the clinical commissioning groups, in establishing their constitution, to determine what the rationale will be for allowing the public in or not. That is not set down in statute or in direction from the Minister or the Secretary of State. It is for individual CCGs to determine when they should let the public in. I give way to my colleague on the Bill Committee.

Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful that that information has been put on the record.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to talk about the potential role for overseas health companies. He might have seen the article in The Guardian yesterday stating:

“A German company has been in talks to take over NHS hospitals, the first tangible evidence that foreign multinationals will be able to run state-owned acute services”.

That has become apparent only through freedom of information requests. Does my hon. Friend think that this is the slippery slope that this Bill is going to usher in?

[Grahame M. Morris]

That point was raised during the Secretary of State’s earlier remarks. [Interruption.] Well, it came in response to a freedom of information request. I thought that his response was illuminating, as he assured us that that would not involve the transfer of NHS real estate, although he did not rule out the possibility that private sector providers would take over the running of these things. The report that I saw said that they would take responsibility for the management and staff, and he gave no rebuttal of that report.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We have made it very clear that, contrary to the practice of the previous Government, we are not looking for dentists to deny access to NHS dentistry to children whose parents are not registered with them. Alongside increasing access to dentistry as a whole, we intend specifically to secure increased access for children to NHS dentistry. That will be even more the case in the pilots that we will start this month, which are specifically intended to secure a more preventive approach to dentistry, which maintains good oral health. That is especially important for children.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State not understand that there has been real progress with the Tameside and Glossop primary care trust and their “access, booking and choice” facility, which guarantees access to NHS dentistry when they require it for anyone not already registered with an NHS dentist? Does he not understand that there are real concerns that with his reorganisation, and without that priority focus by the primary care trust, those advances may be lost?

[Mr Lansley]

On the contrary, with the progressive transfer of responsibilities to the NHS commissioning board there will be much more consistency in contracting for access to NHS dentistry, which at the moment is often a lottery in different places across the country, with the amounts paid per unit of dental activity varying dramatically between neighbouring practices. The new pilots are intended to achieve something that was not achieved under either of the two previous dental contracts, by securing a much stronger preventive approach based on capitation and registration for dentists. It has been welcomed by the dental profession and it promises a great deal for a new contract.

Southern Cross Care Homes

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

In the spending review last year, the Government took our responsibilities very seriously. As a result, we identified and agreed that by 2014-15 an additional £2 billion would go into social care to support those budgets. We know from the work that has been done by others that with efficiency savings, such as those I was talking about earlier as regards reablement and telecare, that resources are sufficient to sustain the system while we do the necessary work to reform it.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

There are nine Southern Cross homes across Tameside and Stockport and still more in adjacent Manchester. Although some good work might be being done at an individual district level, I am not convinced that much contingency planning is being done across city regions such as Greater Manchester. What encouragement and, more importantly, financial assistance, can the Minister give local authorities to ensure that there is cross-city regional co-operation so that residents are certain of keeping their homes?

[Paul Burstow]

It really is not a question of financial assistance; it is about the co-ordination of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the Department’s regional directors of social care, who are working with those colleagues at local authority level, and about making sure that they are co-ordinating their activity with the Care Quality Commission. All those things are happening, have been happening and will continue to happen to ensure that we do what the Government are committed to doing—ensuring continuity of care and that people can stay in the homes they are currently in with the knowledge that the Government really are committed to making sure that they have no doubt that they are not going to be thrown out on the streets as a consequence of this business’s restructuring.

Health and Social Care Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I did not intend to speak, but I have been provoked into making a few brief comments. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), I have concerns about programme motions, despite having been here only a short time. I, too, have never been successfully placed on a Bill Committee, although his failure is perhaps greater than mine as he has been here a bit longer than I have.

Before I was elected to this place, I spent 10 years as a local government councillor in perpetual opposition, being one of only two Conservative councillors on an authority of 60 members. We spent all that time criticising the administration for not listening to us and not giving us the opportunity to scrutinise decisions correctly. Perhaps it is the role of an Opposition to make a great deal of noise about the issue of scrutiny, and I understand that that is partly the approach of Labour Members today.

Since being elected, I have been incredibly frustrated by how little time there is to debate anything. Everything seems to be time-limited, and one sometimes sits for hours and cannot get called. I hope that if anything comes out of these discussions, this issue will be looked at in future years and we will have a different way of doing things in this place so there is proper debate.

When I talk to members of the public and health professionals, they tell me that they want clarity in knowing where we are heading with the NHS. Having listened to the Secretary of State, I want to know what the provisions will be to prevent cherry-picking.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that recommitting only the parts of the Bill that the Government want to recommit, and not considering the knock-on impact on other parts of it, will create uncertainty about the aspects that are not going to be debated?

[Andrew Percy]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. That has already been discussed. The key thing now is to debate the parts of the Bill that the Government have said they intend to amend, and perhaps that will mean that we can debate them in more depth. I want to know what the provisions are going to be to prevent cherry-picking. The shadow Secretary of State said that this is an attempt by the Government to break up the NHS and bring in market forces. I would not want to be a member of any political party that attempted to do that, so I want to know about the Government amendments.

Public Health White Paper

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Yes. I know that the GPs in Cheshire are a very go-ahead group and I am looking forward to seeing how they take on these responsibilities. I have seen GPs recently make presentations showing that they can really take a grip on referral patterns. They can see referrals not just in terms of trying to interpret patterns and numbers, but on the basis of clinical judgment. The combination of clinical judgment and understanding and knowledge of commissioning and contracting leverage is the basis from which we can improve overall the commissioning of activity for patients.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State mentioned that the Government are investing £560 million in encouraging sustainable forms of transport, such as walking and cycling, but given that the Department for Transport is systematically un-ring-fencing many of the transport budgets for local government, what guarantees can he give that that pot of money will be spent on that specific purpose?

[Mr Lansley]

We have been very clear in the spending review and subsequent announcements that we will take the ring fence off many of the grants provided to local government, because we trust local government and we expect those in local government who are responsible for such things to be accountable to their electors. Where public health is concerned—this is separate from the point the hon. Gentleman makes—NHS money will be ring-fenced in the hands of local authorities for health gain. There will be many appropriate uses, so the ring fence will in no sense, I hope, have a constraining effect.

NHS White Paper

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, exactly. Last Thursday I was in Cumbria, and that is exactly what has happened there. The GP commissioners have collectively taken over responsibility for the Cockermouth community hospital. Instead of its being run down, as was intended, they have built it up as a base from which they are providing services for their area.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Given that not all primary care trusts are coterminous with local authority areas, how will the public health aspect of the reorganisation be dealt with in areas such as Tameside and Glossop? It will not be as simple as just moving functions across to a single local authority in an area where a single health economy is greater than just one district.

[Mr Lansley]

As I am proposing to abolish primary care trusts, the problem of a lack of coterminosity will no longer apply. Health improvement plans, led by local authorities, will be set out on a basis consistent with many of the other services that make a significant contribution to delivering the kind of health and well-being that we are looking for.