Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently ask the Minister to face the House? I am sure that Opposition Members will want to see his face.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

We do, Mr Speaker, very much; we want to see him squirm.

First, let me say that we welcome the Minister back to the Department of Health; he was a Minister in the Department 13 years ago. As I have said before, we trust that he finds the NHS in much better condition than when he left office. Last week we had an independent verdict on those 13 years. The independent and respected Commonwealth Fund said that the NHS was one of the best health care systems in the world, and, indeed, that it was top on efficiency: a ringing endorsement of Labour’s stewardship of the national health service. That verdict reflects the huge progress on waiting times that has been made over those 13 years. So does not the abolition of the 18-week target, which the Minister announced last week, put all that progress at risk? Will he today give us a straight answer to this question: can he guarantee that waiting times will not rise, and that patients will still be treated within 18 weeks?

[Mr Burns]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the kind comments at the beginning of his remarks; things went downhill thereafter, but that is politics.

The right hon. Gentleman needs to understand that patients have to come first in a national health service, and the trouble with the approach he took was that he wanted politicians and bureaucrats to micro-manage it from the top down, rather than having a bottom-up system that listened to local people. One of the key aims is to ensure that people get the finest and best treatment possible, and I am afraid that his approach—a straitjacket of targets in certain areas—did not work then, and will not work now.

[Andy Burnham]

I shall take that as a no, because the Minister did not answer the question; he could not give that guarantee. He says that we must put people and patients first, yet at a stroke he has taken power away from patients and handed it back to the system, turning the clock back to the bad old days of the Tory NHS. Let me quote some comments by Jill Watts, chair of the NHS Partners Network, which represents private providers. In the Financial Times on 18 May, she is reported as saying the following about the loss of targets:

“Waiting times will go up and if people want a procedure they have a choice: they can wait or they can look to pay”.

Is that not always the Tory choice on the NHS: wait or pay?

[Mr Burns]

The right hon. Gentleman is not right. We have not taken that attitude; we never have taken that attitude. We want to have a system whereby the health service is not in a straitjacket of targets that disrupt and distort clinical decisions. We want to empower clinicians and GPs to take decisions about who should be treated when according to their clinical judgment.

[Andy Burnham]

Waffle!

[Mr Burns]

It is not waffle. The right hon. Gentleman is clinging to an outdated philosophy, and he is in denial about the need to change it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who will know that I entirely understand and applaud the work of St Catherine’s hospice, because we have visited it together. She makes a very important point, because those whom I know in the hospice movement want to think not just about the service that they provide in their buildings, but about an holistic service for patients’ families and for those who require palliative care. I might just say that on Saturday I made it clear that up to £30 million will be available in this financial year to support children’s hospices, specifically, in extending their work so that they can provide a service in the community for children with life-limiting illnesses.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman will remember our exchanges at the election hustings, where there was a real difference between us: we said that we would protect the NHS budget in real terms, and I stand by that commitment; the right hon. Gentleman said that he would increase the NHS budget. After last week’s Budget, however, we now know the price of that commitment: 25% cuts to social care will mean vulnerable people either left without the support that they need or facing higher charges to pay for care, and huge pressure on carers. It means also that the NHS itself stops working, because it cannot discharge people from hospital when there is no support in the community. That unbalanced approach to public spending is dangerous and will decimate services on which the NHS depends. Is it not time to drop a pledge that had more to do with votes and nothing to do with people’s lives?

[Mr Lansley]

So there we have it, Secretary of State. [Hon. Members: “Secretary of State?”] I meant “Mr Speaker”—you are far more elevated than a Secretary of State, Mr Speaker.

The shadow Secretary of State’s belief is that the NHS budget should be cut. I fail to see how that could help social care. We are going to look much more positively at how we can join up the work of the NHS and social care. What my colleagues and I have announced on 30-day support for patients leaving hospital, including rehabilitation and re-ablement, will do precisely that, relieving some of the pressures on social care by seeing the NHS as a more holistic service for patients.