NHS Funding

Debate between Andy Burnham and Julian Smith

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

We are discussing the hon. Gentleman’s Government today, but let me deal with Wales. His Government have given the Welsh Assembly Government a real-terms £2.1 billion cut. The Welsh Assembly Government have done their best to protect health spending in that context: they have protected the NHS budget in cash terms. May I also point out to the hon. Gentleman that since 2010 there has been no real reduction in front-line staff, particularly nurses, in Wales, which is quite unlike the position under his Government? Before he appears a bit too cocky on these matters he should read up on the facts. The Welsh Assembly is doing the best that it can with the awful hand of cards that he and his Government dealt it.

There is a mismatch between ministerial rhetoric and the reality on the ground in the NHS, and it is in danger of causing confusion. If left unchallenged, it may lead to unfair claims that the problems in the NHS are all down to its staff and have nothing to do with the Government. Today we need a bit of accountability and a bit of honesty. Once and for all, we will nail the myths, spin and sheer misrepresentation of the facts that roll off the Government Benches week after week.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

In North Yorkshire, we have some of the lowest spending per capita in Britain. Does the right hon. Gentleman regret the removal and reduction of health spending on old people and rural areas under his watch?

[Andy Burnham]

I think that the hon. Gentleman should withdraw that remark, because there was no reduction in health spending on my watch. I left plans for an increase, as I am about to explain. He illustrates the point that I am making: we are getting half-truths, spin and misrepresentation from Government Members on NHS spending. Indeed, we just got some more, and it is about time that we had a bit more accuracy in the House from them.

The story starts with the 2010 Conservative party manifesto. Let me quote from it:

“We will increase spending on health in real terms every year”.

NHS Risk Register

Debate between Andy Burnham and Julian Smith

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The Secretary of State says that it is not actually going to happen, but that assessment was made after mitigation. The assessment states that it is likely, that it is major and that mitigating effects have not taken the risk away. He should probably learn to understand the risk register before he refuses to publish it.

NHS Surrey warns of

“performance measures as set out in vital signs for 18 weeks are not met due to a loss of capacity or focus or availability of funding”.

The rating is 16: extreme, likely to happen, with major consequences. The risk has not been mitigated.

What do the local risk registers say about care for cancer patients? Worryingly, some predict—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State would do well to listen; he is not good at listening. He would do well just to listen to what I am saying. Worryingly, some predict poorer treatment for cancer patients.

NHS Lincolnshire’s corporate risk register states:

“New risk in December—the continuation of the Cancer Service improvement, cancer network and the achievement of cancer waiting time targets”.

The risk rating is 16: extreme, likely to happen, with major consequences.

At NHS Bradford and Airedale again, there is a similar risk, with

“poor patient access to cancer waiting times 62 days urgent referral to first treatment, resulting in poor patient care.”

Its rating was 16: extreme, likely to happen, with major consequences.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No, the House will listen to this information.

What do the risk registers say about patient and public safety and about staffing levels? South Central strategic health authority’s risk register warns—

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way one last time to a Government Member, then I will close.

[Julian Smith]

Last week, I met Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred earlier. To clarify, neither the chief executive nor the chairman raised any of the points that he has raised. Not only that, but the local GP commissioning consortia are perfectly happy and are asking me and other local MPs to push ahead with the Bill. Why is the right hon. Gentleman such a scaremongering buffoon?

[Julian Smith]

I withdraw it fully.

[Andy Burnham]

I do not know why the hon. Gentleman thinks that such an intervention is appropriate. Why did he not ask the chairman and chief executive about this matter? Why does it take me to go and research the risk register—[Interruption.] Listen to the answer. Why does it take me to research the risk register in his constituency and to tell him about the risks to the NHS in his constituency, which he clearly does not know about? I suggest that he goes away from this Chamber right now and searches online, where he will find that risk register. Perhaps he will learn something about his constituency.

We are told that the market will decide. Last week, the Government received a specific warning from more than 150 members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that the market-based approach envisaged in the Bill will have

“an extremely damaging effect on the health care of children”.

They went on to say:

“Care will become more fragmented, and families and clinicians will struggle to organise services for these children. Children with chronic disease and disability will particularly suffer, since most have more than one condition and need a range of different clinicians.”

They stated that:

“The Bill is misrepresented by the UK Government as being necessary”

and that it will

“harm those who are most vulnerable.”

Those are not my words, but those of clinicians. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) wants to dismiss them, that is up to her, but she would do well to listen to them.

Warnings do not come any more serious than the one that I have just read out. It shows why the Government will not publish the risk register: they know that the case for their Bill would be demolished in an instant. People watching this debate will ask how it is possible to proceed when experts make such warnings and when NHS bodies warn of fatalities. To press on regardless would be utterly irresponsible and unforgivable. That is what the Prime Minister said today that he plans to do.

The truth is that the Government are not listening, as we have seen throughout this debate. The Prime Minister is surrounding himself with people who say what he wants to hear, while closing the door of No.10 Downing street in the faces of those who do not. He will not listen to the doctors and nurses with whom he was once so keen to have his photograph taken. It could not be clearer: he is putting his political pride and the need for the Government to save face before the best interests of the national health service. He is gambling with patients, with public safety and with this country’s best-loved institution. The Prime Minister asked people to trust him with the NHS, but we have learned today that he is running unforgivable risks with it. What his Government are doing is wrong and they need to be stopped.

I call on Members across the House to put the NHS first tonight. Vote with us for the publication of the risk register so that the public can see what this reorganisation will do to their NHS. They deserve the full truth and tonight this House can give it to them and correct the Government who have got things so badly wrong. I say to people outside who are watching this debate, join this fight to save the NHS for future generations. The NHS matters too much to too many people for it to be treated in this way. People have not voted for what is happening. [Interruption.] Not a single Government Member who is shouting at me now can look their constituents in the eye and say, “I told you that I was going to bring forward the biggest ever top-down reorganisation.” The more people who join this fight, the stronger our voice will become.

We promised this Government the fight of their life for betraying that trust and that is what we will give them. Tonight, this House has an opportunity to speak for the millions of people who care about the NHS and are worried about what is happening to it. I implore this House to take that opportunity and I commend the motion to the House.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Andy Burnham and Julian Smith

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I said that I am prepared to sit down and talk about making savings as long as we maintain the principle of a national scheme that supports the kids who most need support. I made the same offer on school sports. I will have that discussion, but I am saying to the Secretary of State do not just dismantle the whole scheme and lose all the benefits that come with it. If we had been asked to make a reduction in EMA commensurate with the rest of public spending, we would have struggled to argue against it, but that is not what the Government propose. The hon. Gentleman stood alongside the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State at the last election promising young people that they would keep EMA. They are the ones with the questions to answer.

The truth is that the Secretary of State cannot will the ends without the means. That will not happen. However talented those young people are, they cannot live off thin air. They cannot have a part-time job and walk miles to college and still get straight A’s. I wonder whether he has much idea of what their lives are like. In 2003, he wrote an article in The Times that acquires a new significance in the light of this debate. He wrote that

“anyone put off from attending a good university by fear of that debt doesn’t deserve to be at any university in the first place.”

Those are difficult sentiments for an Education Secretary to be associated with, as are these, which appear in the same article:

“Some people will, apparently, be put off applying to our elite institutions by the prospect of taking on a debt of this size. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is all to the good.”

How genuine is his commitment to those people who want to get in to Oxbridge?

I have worries about the Secretary of State’s elitist instincts, but I read in The Times last week another interesting piece—from Mrs Gove—which contains insights from home that raise further questions about whether he is living in the same world as the rest of us—[Interruption.] He should listen to this. She says:

“Like all angst-ridden working mothers, I live in terror of upsetting my cleaner.”

Angst-ridden mums in Leigh talk of little else. I sympathise with Mrs Gove’s predicament, but I wonder whether the Secretary of State could pass on a bit of advice to all the wives of his Cabinet colleagues who fret about the same curses of modern living. May I respectfully suggest that the best way to stay on the right side of the cleaner might be not to clean the oven oneself, but to press one’s other half not to remove the cleaner’s kids’ EMA?

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

May I press the right hon. Gentleman a little further on exactly what percentage reduction he would make to EMA? He said he is open to reducing it, but by what percentage?

[Andy Burnham]

I said that I would make a reduction commensurate with the overall reduction in spending. I would be prepared to sit down and say, “Can we make the EMA scheme work for young people at that level?”, but the Government are not proposing that. They are proposing a scheme that is a tenth of the size of the current one. If the Secretary of State is making offers and rethinking, and if he has been ordered into yet another U-turn by the Prime Minister, I am prepared to talk about it, but the onus is on Government Members to tell us the details of what they are offering.