Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I have some sympathy with what my hon. Friend is saying, although it is important to recognise, as we have this debate about nursing, that the vast majority of nurses in the NHS do an outstanding job and we are very lucky to have them giving their lives to the NHS. Next week, at the chief nursing officer’s conference, we are launching a new vision for nursing, which will put compassion and the patient at the heart of what nurses do. I hope that will address some of her concerns.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Last week, official statistics revealed that 7,134 nursing jobs had been lost under the coalition—almost 1,000 of them in the last month on the Secretary of State’s watch. The very next day, the Care Quality Commission warned that 16% of hospitals in England are not meeting the CQC standard for adequate staffing levels. Is this not prima facie evidence that the NHS and patients are not safe in his hands? Will he urgently intervene to stop the job losses?

[Mr Hunt]

The reason why the CQC undertook its shocking investigation into the state of care in our country was that this Government introduced dignity and nutrition inspections, which never happened when the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State. He talked about numbers employed in the NHS, so let us look at them. Yes, there has been a 2% decline in the number of nurses, but there has been an increase in the nurse-to-bed ratio. There has been a 4% increase in the number of midwives, a 5% increase in the number of doctors and an increase of more than 50% in the number of health visitors—their number went down when he was in office. How much worse would those numbers have been if we had had the cut in NHS funding that he wanted?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Poulter]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is right to raise this, because it has been a very long-standing problem. I am sure that he would welcome, with me, the fact that under the current Government over 1.1 million more people are receiving access to NHS dentistry. However, this is a difficult case, and I am happy to meet him to discuss it further and see what I can do to help to unblock the problem.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Ministers have repeatedly promised to ban rationing of treatment by cost in the NHS. If the Minister is presented with evidence that this is still continuing, will he today give the House a categorical assurance that he will act immediately to stop it?

[Dr Poulter]

It has been very clear in all the criteria for NHS commissioners set by the previous Government and by this Government that decisions about local health care treatment have to be based on clinical need, and that those decisions are for local commissioners. The difference is that this Government will make sure that doctors, nurses and health care professionals are in charge of budgets and setting health care priorities rather than the managers the previous Government chose to favour, who did not always have experience of front-line care and did not always understand some of the challenges that patients were facing.

[Andy Burnham]

I will take that as a yes. The Minister is going to have a busy day, because this afternoon he will have on his desk new evidence that I will send him showing that an estimated 52,000 patients in England are being denied treatment and kept off NHS waiting lists because of new restrictions imposed under his Government on cataracts, varicose veins, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other serious treatments. Ministers boast of lower waiting lists, but that is because they have stopped people getting on to the waiting lists in the first place. Patients in pain and discomfort, unable to work, are being forced to pay for treatment. How many more people will have to suffer before he finally acts?