Health Services (North-West)

Andrew Miller Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I follow the procedures of the House, and the right hon. Gentleman should know that we did nothing different from what he did when he was Health Secretary.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State cites social deprivation as a justification for his decision on the configuration for Cumbria and Lancashire. I fully support that principle, so will he take it further by ensuring that those of us who represent constituencies in which health outcomes are much worse than those in the south of England, for example, get larger allocations of cash in future distributions of moneys? If he is going to use the principle once, he must do so consistently.

[Mr Hunt]

That is already built into the funding formula. We made reducing health inequalities a duty of NHS England in the NHS mandate, and that needs to be done in a way that is also fair to socially deprived people living in the countryside, in rural areas and even in the fringes of affluent areas. We have to find a way of ensuring that the process is fair to everyone who is socially deprived and to do what we can to reduce health inequalities.