Health

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

The legislative programme presented to Parliament last week by Her Majesty the Queen builds on four years in which we have not shirked our duty to the British people to restore confidence in disastrous public finances; to lead the country from the deepest recession since the second world war to the strongest growth in the G7; and to implement a plan that secures our long-term economic future. As part of that programme, we have been following a long-term plan to transform our NHS and help it to meet the challenges of an ageing population. However, we must remember that without the difficult decisions made to restore faith in our public finances, the NHS would have been in a very different position.

In Ireland, the health pay bill was slashed by 16% because it ran out of money. In Greece, health spending was cut by 20%. In Portugal, the public were asked to double their personal contribution to the cost of health care, but in England difficult decisions meant that we were able to protect the NHS budget, unlike the Labour party, which plans to cut it in England, and did indeed cut it by 8% in Wales, with disastrous consequences. Labour made the wrong call on the economy and the wrong call on NHS finances. Because we made the right call, the NHS is now doing extremely well in very challenging circumstances.

Later, Members will hear the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) talk about operational pressures facing the NHS. He is right: it is tough out there. This week, we will announce new measures to help the service to meet the challenges that it faces. We will no doubt also hear attempts to politicise what are essentially operational pressures, but what we will not hear is how much better the NHS is doing than it ever did when he was Health Secretary. The facts speak for themselves. Every single day—[Interruption.] This is difficult for Labour Members to listen to, but they would do well to listen. Compared with when he was Health Secretary, every single day we are referring 1,000 more people with suspected cancers to specialists. We are transporting 1,000 more patients—

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hunt]

I am going to make some progress and then give way. The right hon. Gentleman needs to listen. We are doing much more now compared with what was done when he was Health Secretary. If he listens, he might learn something.

This is what is happening every single day: 1,000 people with suspected cancers are being referred, and 1,000 more patients are being transported in ambulances in emergencies. Every day we are performing 2,000 more badly needed operations, we are seeing 3,000 more vulnerable people in A and E departments, and every day we are providing around 6,000 more GP consultations for members of the public and 10,000 more vital diagnostic tests. At the same time, MRSA rates have almost halved, mixed-sex wards have been virtually eliminated, and fewer people are waiting for 18 or more weeks for their operation.

[Andy Burnham]

The Health Secretary is standing there claiming everything is fine and giving a litany of successes. Let us just consider cancer care. He said the NHS was worse when we were in government. So that we are absolutely clear, will he confirm that the last set of figures show that the NHS is now for the first time missing its standard of treating cancer patients within 62 days?

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Gentleman should have listened to what I said: I said he was right to say it is tough out there, and I also said that this week we will be announcing measures to help the NHS deal with operational pressures. He talks about how long people are waiting for operations, so let us look at one particular statistic that sums up what I am saying: the number of people waiting not 18 weeks but a whole year for a vital operation. Shockingly, when the right hon. Gentleman was Health Secretary, nearly 18,500 people were waiting over a year, and I am proud that we have reduced that to just 500 people. Those results would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of front-line NHS staff, and whatever the political disagreements today, the whole House will want to pay tribute to their magnificent efforts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Last week, the Secretary of State told the NHS Confederation that patient safety was crucial to the future sustainability of the NHS. Let me begin on a note of agreement. The Health Secretary is right to continue to send the clearest message to the NHS that patient safety must be its top priority. He knows that he has our support in introducing measures to implement the Francis report and, indeed, learning all the lessons from the terrible failings at Stafford hospital. A question arises that is perhaps more for the Government to answer than the right hon. Gentleman: why is the Secretary of State’s important priority not reflected in the Gracious Speech? It is approaching 18 months since the publication of the Francis report, yet many of its recommendations are still to be implemented. The failure to make progress in this legislative programme undermines the Secretary of State’s message today.

The Francis report recommended new legislation to modernise the regulation of doctors and nurses and speed up the handling of complaints. The regulatory bodies said that progress is urgently needed, and they were expecting a Bill in the Gracious Speech to implement those reforms. Not surprisingly, both reacted negatively to the decision to drop it. Niall Dickson, chief executive and registrar of the General Medical Council, said:

“We are disappointed that the government has not taken this opportunity to improve patient safety”,

and Jackie Smith, chief executive and registrar of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, said:

“Both the NMC and the public it protects now continue to be left, indefinitely, with a framework that does not best serve to protect the public.”

I hope the Secretary of State will explain why that Bill was dropped and answer the concerns of Jackie Smith and Niall Dickson.

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Gentleman said he would start on a note of consensus on the Francis report, so does he now retract his comments last week that what happened at Mid Staffs was “a local failure” and that the Government were exaggerating its significance for the rest of the NHS? That was a very damaging thing to have said.

[Andy Burnham]

The Francis report found that the failing at Stafford hospital was principally a failure of the local board. I served in the previous Government, who inherited problems from the preceding one—care failings at Bristol royal infirmary and Alder Hey, and the Shipman murders. Contrary to what the Secretary of State said today, we acted on those failures to bring more transparency to the NHS. We introduced independent regulation to the NHS. He needs to look at the statements that he has made over the past year and consider whether his response has always been appropriate. He has used language such as

“Cruelty became normal in our NHS”—[Official Report, 19 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 1097.]

Does he stand by such statements and does he think that is fair to the thousands of NHS staff who give their all every day, doing their best to serve patients?

[Mr Hunt]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman once more, but he needs to answer those concerns of staff, who feel that he has been running down the NHS.

[Mr Hunt]

Let me be absolutely clear. I have never blamed NHS staff for what happened at Mid Staffs. I blame the policy failures of the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. It is not just I who say so. Robert Francis said in his report:

“Stafford was not an event of such rarity or improbability that it would be safe to assume that it has not been and will not be repeated”

in the rest of the NHS. He continued:

“The consequences for patients are such that it would be quite wrong to use a belief that it was unique or very rare to justify inaction.”

Will the right hon. Gentleman now retract his comment that this was “a local failure” whose impact has been exaggerated?

[Andy Burnham]

I am quite clear in what I said. I said that the finding of the Francis report was that it was a local failure, but of course there were lessons to be learned. That is why I brought in Robert Francis in the first place to begin inquiries at Stafford. The claim that we just brushed everything under the carpet could not be more wrong. The Secretary of State needs to drop it and start dealing responsibly with these issues.

The right hon. Gentleman wanted to distract the House from what I was saying—that a Bill should have been brought forward in this Gracious Speech to modernise professional regulation in the NHS. I quoted strong sentiments from Niall Dickson and Jackie Smith. There was no room for such a Bill, but it is hard to find measures in the rest of the Gracious Speech that may be considered more important than that Bill. The Speech found space, for instance, for measures on pubs and plastic bags, but not on patient safety. There was a time when the Prime Minister used to say that his priorities could be summed up in three letters—NHS. Not any more. Those letters did not appear in the Gracious Speech and received only a cursory mention when the Prime Minister addressed this House.

So what explains the relegation of health down the Government’s list of priorities? One commentator writing last Thursday offered an explanation. He said that

“there was no mention of the health service in the Queen’s Speech. Indeed, the Tories have had little to say on the subject at all recently.

I’m told that there is a precise reason for this: Lynton Crosby has ordered them not to.”

I do not know whether that is true, but it does not look good, does it? It creates the clear impression that the shape of the Gracious Speech had more to do with the political interests of the Conservative party than the public interest of the country.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is not another explanation for the absence of any mention of the NHS in the Queen’s Speech that the Government do not want it? They are quietly privatising the NHS by the back door, so they do not need legislation.

[Andy Burnham]

I think that that is exactly the reason. They introduced a reorganisation that nobody wanted, that nobody voted for, that put the wrong values at the heart of the NHS and that has dragged the NHS down, and all the while they are softening it up for accelerating privatisation. That is the record on which they will have to stand before the country in less than 12 months’ time. If the Secretary of State can justify that record and breaking the coalition agreement to his constituents, I would be very surprised indeed.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No, I am going to make some progress.

On the day of the Gracious Speech, 60 senior NHS leaders wrote to a newspaper to warn

“that the NHS is at the most challenged time of its existence.”

Just when it needs real leadership, it is being offered a period of drift from an increasingly dysfunctional Government and, sadly, the same is true on public health. The Government should have used this moment to regain the initiative and publish regulations on standardised packaging for tobacco and smoking in cars. Ministers announced on 3 April that they would publish the draft regulations on standardised packaging later that month—that was what the Minister responsible for public health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), said. They have not, and since then almost 40,000 children have taken up smoking.

The public health Minister wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), the shadow public health Minister, saying

“we will now push ahead”

with banning smoking in cars following the vote in this House, but we are still waiting. We did not hear anything on public health from the Secretary of State today. When will they show some leadership and set out a timetable for these important measures?

It is not hard to guess the reason for this pre-election period of NHS silence. On every measure that matters to the public, contrary to what the Secretary of State said, the evidence is clear that the NHS has gone downhill under this Government and that it is getting steadily worse.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the subject of preventive measures, my right hon. Friend might be aware that in Britain today child mortality among those below the age of five is the worst in the western world bar Malta, at one in 500? Washington university explains the cause as the welfare and austerity changes—food banks and the like. Will he comment on the impact of some of the welfare and other changes that have made the very weakest weaker, poor and unhealthier and are making them die earlier?

[Andy Burnham]

It is well documented that the policies of this Government in a range of areas are damaging the health of the nation, but what we get instead is drift from the Government on public health. There is no momentum at all to improve children’s health and the Queen’s Speech had absolutely nothing to say on it. Where are the measures that the Minister has been proposing? What has she been doing? Why does she not introduce them?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the legislation for both the measures to which he alludes has already been passed by this House.

[Andy Burnham]

But regulations are needed. If the Minister does not know that—[Interruption.] It was the Opposition who brought forward the vote on smoking in cars and she committed to introduce regulations to implement it. She cannot duck the question. When will she do that? If she does not realise that she is going to introduce regulations, she needs to go back and do a bit more homework.

It is not hard to guess why the Government want a period of silence. On every measure, the evidence is clear that the NHS is getting worse. When the Prime Minister was challenged—

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

No, I will not give way. When the Prime Minister was challenged on the wisdom of his reorganisation, he said that it should be judged by its effect on waiting times—[Interruption.]

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The shadow Secretary of State is clearly not going to give way at the moment.

[Andy Burnham]

The Prime Minister set his own test for his reorganisation: its effect on waiting times. This month, waiting times hit a six-year high. Almost 3 million people are now on the waiting list for treatment, up by half a million since 2010, but that is not all.

[David T. C. Davies]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The shadow Health Secretary does not seem to want to give way to anybody from Wales. Is there any reason for that, and could it be a case of discrimination of some sort?

[Mr Speaker]

I am always interested in the ingenious interventions of the hon. Gentleman, but that is not a matter for the Chair and I will not speculate on it or in response to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). We will return to the shadow Secretary of State.

[Andy Burnham]

I just gave way to somebody from Wales. What is the hon. Gentleman on about?

That is not all. As I said before, the NHS is now missing its standard to ensure that cancer patients start their treatment within 62 days. That will cause huge distress to thousands of families up and down this country.

Another way in which the NHS has got worse, and every patient knows this to be true, is that it is becoming harder and harder to get a GP appointment. It is a common experience for people to ring their surgery early in the morning only to be told that there is nothing available for days. A survey has found that almost half of GPs predict that the average waiting time will exceed two weeks by next year.

The clearest measure of growing problems in the NHS is what has been happening in A and E, which is the barometer of the whole health and care system. Problems or blockages anywhere in the health and care system will manifest, in the end, as pressure in A and E. If A and E is the barometer, what is it telling us? It is warning of severe storms ahead. Hospital A and E units have now missed the Government’s target for 46 weeks running. For the last four weeks, the NHS overall has missed the Government’s target, suggesting that the winter crisis has now been followed by a summer crisis.

Why is that happening? The fact is that cuts have been made to general practice, social care and mental health, which are pushing more and more people towards the acute hospital and placing it under intolerable pressure. Today, many hospitals are operating way beyond safe bed occupancy levels, and not surprisingly this is taking a toll on A and E staff. Today, we reveal that three times as many A and E consultants left the NHS in 2013, raising the worrying prospect of A and E now being trapped in a downward spiral.

[Barbara Keeley]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. May I just take him back to the point about GP access, because that is the start of the patient’s journey? In our survey in Salford, we did not find the situation that we had under the Labour Government, where 80% of patients could get an appointment within 48 hours. Now only half our patients can get an appointment within 48 hours, with one in seven having to wait more than a week, which is concerning, and one in five unable even to get through to speak to someone in their GP surgery. This is concerning us in Salford because these are people who may have worries—they may even have cancer and need tests—and they cannot get through to their GP.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—the deterioration in general practice has been marked during the past few years. There have been changes that have disadvantaged patients. Within weeks of taking office, the Government removed the guarantee that patients could have an appointment within 48 hours. That explains the situation that my hon. Friend describes, alongside cuts to funding of general practice to the point that some practices now say they are on the brink of deciding whether or not they can remain open. The Government have responsibility for that situation, but there is not a word from the Secretary of State about it and there is not an acknowledgement that people have severe problems in accessing their GP.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

In my constituency, the minor injuries unit at Guisborough hospital, the minor injuries unit at East Cleveland hospital in Brotton, a walk-in centre and medical centre in Skelton, and a medical centre in Park End—all primary or intermediary level facilities—will be closed, putting further pressure on the excellent but already outlying A and E unit at James Cook University hospital. When I write to Ministers to ask questions and for a meeting, I am told that I have already had too many discussions with them and that I cannot bring it up any further. Will my right hon. Friend please enlighten me about what he would do if he were in power?

[Andy Burnham]

I will move on to that point. Whenever there is a problem, we are told, “Speak to NHS England.” I am afraid that is not good enough. Up and down the country we are seeing services closed without adequate consultation. NHS walk-in centres continue to be closed, piling more pressure on A and E departments. It is just not good enough. We have seen top-down changes driven through, and the hospital closure clause is on the books, so sadly this will continue. It will only change when we have a Labour Government back in control—a Government committed to putting the public and patient voice at the very heart of the NHS.

I was talking about A and E and the reorganisation. We know that Ministers were explicitly warned about an A and E recruitment crisis by the College of Emergency Medicine a couple of years ago, but they said they were too absorbed with the reorganisation to listen or act. That brings me to the nub of the matter before the House: the root cause of the deterioration in the NHS is that reorganisation, which nobody wanted and nobody voted for. It threw the service into chaos just when it needed stability. As we warned, it has damaged standards of patient care. Four years ago the Government inherited a self-confident and successful NHS, with the lowest ever waiting times and the highest ever public satisfaction. Since then it has been destabilised, demoralised and reduced to an uncertain organisation that is increasingly fearful of the future.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman refers to cuts in funding. The only cuts in funding that we have seen in this country have been in the NHS in Wales. With regard to patient satisfaction, I can assure him that the targets left behind by the previous Labour Government did nothing to satisfy patients who were left on the ground by ambulance services because they had already gone past the eight or 19-minute limit. I am afraid that the focus on targets, rather than patients, is something that this Government have had to address.

[Andy Burnham]

I think that it would behove Government Members to have a bit more self-reflection and humility. The hon. Lady was not a Member of the House at the time, but she may recall that before 1997 people used to spend years on NHS waiting lists, and some never came off them. Over Labour’s 13 years in government we saw waiting lists come down, and down, and down, to the point that, when we left office, they were at their lowest ever level. I am not claiming that the NHS was perfect and did everything right, but it had the highest ever level of public satisfaction. We must have done something right. A bit of balance and accuracy in this debate is just what the NHS needs.

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this destabilisation has reached such an extent that very good hospitals, such as those in Huddersfield and Halifax, have a cloud over them because they might lose their A and E departments? What does that do for morale and culture, which have been so good in those two hospitals? Up and down the country, morale has been shaken to the roots.

[Andy Burnham]

What I find surprising is that all over the country plans are being developed to close A and E departments. How can that make sense when we are in the middle of an A and E crisis? In west London my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) has done much work to raise concerns about the changes to hospitals there.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Andy Burnham]

The question I would put to the Secretary of State is this: have the Government looked at the latest evidence? Are they looking at the fact that this year hospital A and E departments have missed his target for 46 weeks? If that is the case, is it safe to proceed with changes on this scale?

[Alun Cairns]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice. I am trying to raise a relevant point with the shadow Secretary of State. I want to point out that A and E waiting times in Wales have not been hit since 2009—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not use an attempted point of order to try to make a point that he would make in the debate if he got the chance to contribute. He said that he wanted my advice. My advice to him is that persistence pays and he should keep at it, as I am sure he will.

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman before the end of my speech, but not now; I will do so when I am ready, because I want to develop my point, which is this: a successful NHS was thrown into chaos by reorganisation. Four years after Lansley’s big bang, the dust has still not settled. People out there are struggling to make sense of the 440 NHS organisations that have replaced the 163 that the Government inherited. They cannot make it all fit together and so are still sweeping up the mess. It was always nonsense to commission local GP services from a national level. To correct that, NHS England is now suggesting a new round of structural changes. This is the reorganisation that never ends. It is now rumbling into the fifth year of this Parliament. In fixing one problem, I fear the Government are going to create another—a local conflict of interest with GPs commissioning GPs. The truth that they do not like to face is that the former Health Secretary presented a defective and confused plan, and they now know, in their heart of hearts, that instead of pausing it, as they did, they should have stopped it altogether. They did not, and however much they tinker it will never make sense.

That is why the only Bill in the Gracious Speech with any link to health is the one that tries to clear up the mess of reorganisation. The small business, enterprise and employment Bill restricts redundancy payments to public officials. If ever there were a Bill that locked the stable door after the horse had bolted, this is surely it. When the Health and Social Care Act 2012 went through the House, there were repeated warnings from Labour Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), that the reorganisation would result in primary care trust staff being made redundant and then rehired, with, as a result, a huge waste of NHS resources. In June 2011, the Leader of the Opposition challenged the Prime Minister in this House on precisely that point. The Prime Minister failed to act on the warning. As a result—these are shocking figures; Government Members should listen to them—over 4,000 people have subsequently been made redundant and then rehired within the NHS. In the first three years of the reorganisation, there have been over 32,000 exit packages, averaging £43,500, and 2,300 six-figure pay-offs, 330 of which were worth more than £200,000. The total bill is £1.4 billion and counting. What a scandalous waste of NHS resources when people are waiting longer for cancer care.

We always know when this Government are on the ropes: it is when they furiously try to blame the previous Government. This time, they cite employment contracts, but that excuse will not wash. Given that they were explicitly warned about this when their health Bill was going through the House before the reorganisation took place, people will ask why on earth they did not bring forward the measures on redundancy in this Queen’s Speech before the NHS reorganisation, not after it. It all adds up to mismanagement of the country’s most cherished asset on a spectacular scale.

[Alex Cunningham]

I would like my right hon. Friend to know about Port Clarence, a very isolated community in my area which lost the nurse it had for four hours a week. People are having to go through a tremendous tangle within the NHS to find out who is responsible. The local doctors cannot commission the service because they provide the nurse, so they have to go to NHS England, yet we cannot get any progress. It is a terrible state of affairs.

[Andy Burnham]

This is the point. The NHS is still struggling to make sense of the mess that the Government inflicted on it. Just when it needed clarity and leadership, what did it get? It got drift and chaos. That is the problem it is struggling to deal with.

The redundancy payments did not only cost £1.4 billion; they have also cost the NHS dearly in lost morale. I ask the Secretary of State to imagine how these redundancy payments and six-figure pay-offs look to the staff to whom he has just denied a 1% pay increase—an increase that would have cost a fraction of that £1.4 billion. The truth is that he does not know how they feel because he refused to meet front-line staff protesting about his decision at the NHS Confederation conference. Well, I did meet them, and I can tell him how they feel. They find it truly galling and feel that they have been singled out by the Secretary of State, whose decision seems like a calculated snub. May I suggest that he urgently reconsider this approach and find the time to sit down with staff representatives? Right now, a fragile NHS simply cannot afford a further drop in staff morale. The Chancellor promised this increase and the pay review body judged it affordable; the Secretary of State should honour it.

The truth is that a whole lot more is needed if the NHS is to be put back on track. It finds itself today in a dangerous place. It is facing escalating problems but has a Government who will not talk about them.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I want to alert the House as to why the right hon. Gentleman has not at any stage mentioned the performance of NHS Wales, which on every measurement but one is underperforming its equivalent in England, and which is run not by a previous Labour Government but a current Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

My shadow responsibilities do not extend to the NHS in Wales, but the Government have spent a year or more running it down. Just a few weeks ago, a Nuffield Trust report said that the picture was more mixed and that there were some areas in which the NHS in Wales was better than the NHS in England and vice versa. The Government need to look at themselves and to be fair to NHS staff, and not constantly repeat the mantra of running down the NHS in Wales and in England.

It was to prevent the NHS from being in this limbo—this silence—that we have brought this debate to the House. Until the Government face up to some of the problems caused by their reorganisation, the NHS will not be able to move forward. In the remainder of my time, I want to focus on two areas—leadership and competition—where uncertainty urgently needs to be removed.

First, on leadership, one of the major flaws of the Health and Social Care Act is that it has created confusion on that most fundamental question of all: who is in charge? Ever since the Act was passed, I have been told of continued tension between Ministers and NHS England. Ministers have repeatedly tried to instruct and overrule, ignoring the independence of NHS England for which they legislated. The problem is that thousands of NHS staff are left receiving mixed messages as to who is in charge.

I want to illustrate that point with reference to the growing crisis in mental health services, which the Secretary of State did not mention once. There are reports of growing problems in accessing mental health care and, in particular, a dangerous shortage of crisis beds. Despite that, NHS England has made a decision on the tariff which will lead to even deeper cuts to mental health care than to the rest of the NHS. This takes the NHS into new territory, because for the first time, as far as I can see, there is a direct contradiction between Department of Health policy and NHS England policy. The Government claim to support parity between mental and physical health, but their NHS policy is actively widening the disparity.

Therefore, in mental health—a policy of growing importance—we have complete confusion. People still look to Ministers to sort it out, but they have legislated themselves into the position of bystanders, shouting on the sidelines with the rest. The care Minister took to Twitter, no less, to vent his disgust at the “outrageous decision” by NHS England. People up and down the land will see that and say, “You’re the Minister! Don’t just tweet—do something about it!” The fact is that Ministers should have the power to enforce their own policy of parity, but in the interim NHS England should reconsider the decision to inflict cuts on a mental health system that is already in severe distress.

In the end, the answer to this uncertainty is simple: the Government should be legislating in this Gracious Speech to correct the flaws of the Health and Social Care Act and restore the Secretary of State’s duty to provide a comprehensive universal service. At a stroke, everyone would know where they stand and who is in charge, restoring grip and leadership in the NHS when it faces one of the most uncertain periods in its history.

The second area about which there is still considerable confusion is that of competition policy. When the Health and Social Care Act was going through, the Government’s mantra was that GPs would decide how best to organise care, but that is not what has happened in practice. Section 75 regulations are forcing commissioners to put services out to competitive tender when they do not think it necessary. That is leading to protracted legal disputes and millions spent on competition lawyers.

The nonsense that the Health and Social Care Act has inflicted on the NHS was plain for all to see last year when the then Competition Commission intervened in the NHS for the first time in its history to prevent collaboration between two NHS hospitals on the grounds that it was “anti-competitive”. What nonsense this is. It was succinctly summed up by the chief executive of the NHS, who said that

“you’ve got competition lawyers all over the place…We are getting bogged down in a morass of competition law causing significant cost in the system and great frustration for people in the service about making change happen. In which case, to make integration happen, we will need to change the law.”

That is precisely what this Gracious Speech should have done: change the law to help the NHS get on and make the changes it needs to make and remove the competition policy, which is fragmenting the NHS, not integrating it. That is the challenge the Government have ducked completely. The problem is that if they stay on this path, the NHS will head in the wrong direction. This Government and their Health and Social Care Act have placed the NHS on a fast track to fragmentation and privatisation when the future demands the integration of care.

The Opposition are clear that the market is not the answer to 21st-century care. The NHS now needs solutions of scale to rise to the increasing challenges that it faces. The NHS needed such leadership in this Queen’s Speech, but it was offered nothing. Instead, this Queen’s Speech leaves it lumbered with a Health and Social Care Act that puts competition before collaboration and the NHS on the wrong path for the future. The NHS urgently needs a Government who want to talk about the issues it faces and to get on with the job of securing its future. Let there therefore be no doubt that the next Labour Queen’s Speech will repeal the 2012 Act and pave the way for the full integration of health and social care.

I am coming to the end of my speech—I need only a couple more moments—but I will give way to the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), as I promised.

[Alun Cairns]

I appreciate that some light-hearted comments have been made on both sides of the House, but my constituents have to wait longer for treatment, particularly for cancer care, as they do not have access to a cancer drugs fund. Will the right hon. Gentleman use all his influence with the Welsh Health Minister to get him to look at introducing such a fund so that my constituents have the same access as people in England?

[Andy Burnham]

That is obviously a matter for the Welsh Government, but let me provide some clarity on the issue of cancer care. In Wales, 92% of people start their cancer care treatment within 62 days, compared with just 86% in England. I ask the Conservative party to think about that, given that it has constantly run down the NHS in the hon. Gentleman’s own country and constituency, and has misrepresented the outstanding job it does to treat patients with cancer.

We will legislate for an NHS that has the right values back at its heart: collaboration before competition, people before profits. We will ask the NHS to lift standards in social care, working to bring an end to the culture of 15-minute visits. We will make sure that people can access care closer to their homes, giving patients clear rights, such as the right to see a GP within 48 hours. This is a plan to put the NHS back on track, and it shows why a Labour Government cannot come a moment too soon for the NHS.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Lamb]

Well, let us just make sure that Opposition Front Benchers listen to the hon. Gentleman.

We can be justifiably proud, it seems to me, of the action we have taken in health and care over the course of this Parliament. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) made a speech that faded away from agreement, but at the very start he made the point that we should all pay tribute to a really remarkable work force in the NHS—1.3 million people doing incredible work. We want to free those people up as much as possible to do the very best they can.

[Andy Burnham]

Would not the best way to pay tribute to those thousands of staff in the NHS be to honour the 1% pay increase that the Chancellor promised them?

[Norman Lamb]

That is equivalent to about 6,000 nurses a year. The right hon. Gentleman has to demonstrate how that would be paid for. The fact is that there is an average wage increase of 3% as a result of annual pay increments under Agenda for Change. We have ensured that at least everyone will get a 1% increase. If he is arguing for something different, he has to say where the money would come from to pay for it and how he would cope with 6,000 fewer nurses, which would be the result of his action.

For the first time, it is this Government who have made decisive moves to join up the care and health system and focus more on preventing ill health. Contrary to the shadow Secretary of State’s claims, the better care fund has been widely welcomed, and it has initiated action across the country to join up a very fragmented system. We have sent out the signal that we encourage innovation and change, driven by clinicians from the bottom up, not from the top down. Brilliant pioneers across the country are ending this fragmented system that has interrupted patient care for so long and failed patients. Those pioneers are combating loneliness, which my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) spoke passionately about. It is so far removed from the caricature offered by the shadow Secretary of State and the tired old refrain about privatisation. It was, after all, a Labour Government who mortgaged the future of the NHS to the tune of billions of pounds with their private finance initiative programme, giving massive windfall profits to private consortiums—a scandal of historic proportions. Yet Labour Members continue to argue that the Government are privatising—an argument that is based on thin air, not substance.