National Health Service

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have always to correct the record when these statements are made. I apologise for delaying the House, but I am going to carry on doing it. I did not put it out to tender; it was a process I inherited, and in the middle of that process I changed the policy from “any willing provider” to “NHS preferred provider”. Contrary to what the Secretary of State said at the Dispatch Box, NHS Peterborough and Stamford was still in the race.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

You have certainly corrected that. It is a point of correction, rather than a point of order. It is all on the record now and everyone can continue. Let us see whether we can turn the heat down a bit.

Managing Risk in the NHS

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope that his intervention will not be about Wales. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I want to hear Mr Cairns.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Mr Cairns, do not take advantage of the situation; it is not fair to other Members who also want to intervene. We want this debate to be heard in the best possible way.

[Andy Burnham]

This is debate is about the NHS in England, and if the hon. Gentleman has concerns about the NHS in Wales, why does he not have a word with his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and get a better deal for the Welsh Assembly so that a bit more money could be put back into the Welsh national health service?

As I was saying, the Government have put staff morale at rock bottom, and where are the promised benefits of this reorganisation? Clinical commissioning groups are not, as we were promised, the powerhouse of the new NHS; they are embryonic at best and anonymous at worst. Members of all parties, I am sure, write letters to CCGs that get passed to NHS England, which then either does not provide a proper answer or passes them on again. [Interruption.] I hear the public health Minister saying it is dreadful that Members do not get proper answers. When my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) wrote to her about cancer services in his constituency, she also brushed it off to NHS England. Is this proper accountability? No.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. If the right hon. Member wants to give way, he will give way. We do not need people standing up, shouting and bawling. I want to hear what the shadow Secretary of State has to say, just as I want to hear what the Secretary of State has to say. Let us have a little more courtesy from everyone.

[Andy Burnham]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Alarming patients, demoralising staff and casually trading figures about deaths in the pursuit of political advantage is no way to run the NHS, and those are not the actions of a responsible Government. Today people are asking what kind of Government this is, if they are willing to cause further damage to fragile hospitals for their own self-serving political ends. Yesterday the Secretary of State told the BBC that he had no idea who had put the 13,000 figure in the public domain. Does he seriously expect us to believe that?

Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is a laudable aim. I do not think it is going to solve the A and E crisis right here, right now, but I do not disagree with it as an aim.

Drawing on what was said at the summit, I have developed an A and E rescue plan with five practical proposals. [Interruption.] Government Members do not want to hear it. Okay, later on they can give me their plan. I am putting forward a plan and calling this debate. They are not calling this debate. Why are they not doing something to take a grip on the situation? It is no good just sitting back and saying, “Oh”—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I want to hear the right hon. Gentleman, as I am sure that people on both sides of the House do, and all the shouting is not going to allow any of us to do that.

[Andy Burnham]

It has been left to us to call this debate, and now Government Members sit there and groan. Well, it is not good enough. They are going to hear what I have to say because they need to do something about what is happening.

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[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. He is absolutely right: areas such as Stoke-on-Trent have had their budgets slashed and destroyed year on year under this Government. In Stoke-on-Trent, which is the third hardest hit area, the local authority is expected to spread the money it does have even more thinly across a population that is not only deprived, but ageing. The sniping and comments from those of the Government Front Bench are totally inappropriate. Does my right hon. Friend know when the Government got the NHS to write to accident and emergency departments to ask for their plans?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. A lot of Members want to speak, so we need very short interventions.

[Andy Burnham]

That is part of my point. NHS England wrote to clinical commissioning groups on 9 May. What is going on here? They were all in the chaos of reorganisation until then—no one could have received a letter, because CCGs were not in place. In the crucial period between January and March, when the NHS was under intense pressure, primary care trusts were on the way out and CCGs were not in place. As a result, the NHS was in limbo; at the precise moment that it needed grip and leadership, it was drifting. That is absolutely shocking.

As I have said repeatedly, the Government must act to shore up social care in England, which is collapsing. Our solution is for the Secretary of State to use about half of last year’s underspend in the NHS, £1.2 billion, to provide emergency support to councils over the next two years to maintain integrated, home-based support. As he knows, the Budget revealed a £2.2 billion underspend in last year’s Department of Health budget. No use was made of the budget exchange scheme. In other words, he handed that money back to the Treasury. I call on him to reconsider his decision, reopen negotiations with the Treasury and act to prevent a social care emergency.

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[Andy Burnham]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State has just said at the Dispatch Box that the budget for the NHS has increased in real terms. In December, I referred the Secretary of State’s comments to the UK Statistics Authority and I received a letter back saying that they were incorrect. Will you ask the Secretary of State to correct the parliamentary record and ensure that when the statistics commissioner makes a ruling it is adhered to by the Secretary of State?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order, but the right hon. Gentleman has certainly made his clarification for the record.

NHS Funding

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I enjoy every moment in which a blow is landed on the Government; they squirm and try to come back. Will my right hon. Friend comment on how much of the budget is being thrown away and wasted on top-down reorganisation, redundancy payments and everything else that is going on?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We need short interventions. There are a lot of Members who wish to speak. I am a little bothered by the comments made; I am sure that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) did not want to suggest that the Prime Minister conned people.

[Andy Burnham]

I am coming to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), because the context is that £1.6 billion, on the Government’s own figures, was spent on the back office, and taken away from the front line. The Chair of the Select Committee says that the cut was a little one, as though that is okay—“It’s really an increase, because it’s only a little cut”—but one has to add £1.6 billion to that to see the full extent of the diversion of funds from the NHS front line.

As the chair of the UK Statistics Authority has established, NHS spending was lower in the first two years of this coalition than when Labour left office. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says that it is the same. Let us have some honesty here. Mr Dilnot says that it was a cut; accept what he says, and get on with the job. If the Secretary of State starts being a bit more honest at the Dispatch Box, he might get a bit more respect from the public.

The Prime Minister has cut the NHS—fact; but just as he airbrushed his poster, he has tried to airbrush the statistics, and he has been found out. To be fair, the Conservatives admitted it and corrected the Tory party website, but the problem is that we have a long list of similarly false claims made in the House that, as of now, stand uncorrected. Today, we invite the Secretary of State to correct the parliamentary record in person.

I am not surprised to see a few sheepish looks on the Conservative Benches, because we have been checking Conservative Members’ websites, and we found that the hon. Members for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), and for Hendon (Dr Offord), the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), and the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham)—

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[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady just made another untrue statement. She talks about talking down the NHS, but productivity has not fallen. I am sorry, but let us have some honesty. We are not just going to sit here and take one statement after another—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We all know that all Members are very honest in this House.

[Andy Burnham]

Inadvertent claims are being thrown around the House all the time.

Fourthly, and finally, cuts and reorganisation are resulting in a crude drive to privatise services, prioritising cost over clinical quality. Across England, deals have been signed to open up 396 community services to open tender under any qualified provider, but those deals are not subject to proper public scrutiny because they are held back under commercial confidentiality. In Greater Manchester, plans are advanced to hand over patient transport services to Arriva, despite the fact that an in-house bid scored higher on quality and despite the fact that the CQC recently found serious shortcomings with the same provider in Leicestershire. The trouble is that nobody has asked the people of Greater Manchester, or more importantly the patients who rely on that service, whether they want that change.

National Health Service

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I was not reading the book that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned at the weekend, but I was listening to Radio 4 last night while I was doing the washing up, as I do. I heard one of his colleagues, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), say that Labour was committed to repealing the Health and Social Care Act in its entirety. Will the shadow Secretary of State tell me whether, when I am in Winchester over the summer recess, I should tell the clinical commissioning groups that are getting on with their work that all that work would be undone, and that the Hampshire primary care trust and the South Central strategic health authority would be recreated if Labour were to form the next Government?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are short of time, so may I request short interventions, please?

[Andy Burnham]

There is a simple answer: yes, we will repeal the Act. It is a defective, sub-optimal piece of legislation and it is saddling the NHS with a complicated mess. The hon. Gentleman should listen to the chair of the NHS Commissioning Board, whom his Secretary of State appointed. He has called the legislation “unintelligible”. In those circumstances, it would be irresponsible to leave it in place.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is, as ever, making the case for the NHS, not for the privatisation that the Tories and their Lib Dem friends are pursuing. We are talking about the future of the NHS, so let me quote Victoria Roberts, a student nurse from Merseyside, who starts her training in two weeks. She says:

“I am a student nurse due to start my training in 2 weeks. This is not the NHS I want to serve or work in, but rather will help only those who can pay the most.”

Does my right hon. Friend agree with that assessment of where the Tories are taking the NHS?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We must have shorter interventions. A lot of people want to speak and we have got to get on with it.

[Andy Burnham]

I wish the Government would listen to voices such as the student nurse that my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) quoted—people who want to dedicate their lives to the NHS. Frankly, their views are brushed aside by an arrogant Government.

It gets worse as the Bill enters a new crisis, with one of the coalition parties formally withdrawing permission from its peers to support the Bill. It is not at all clear what happens now—whether Lib Dem peers will defy the wishes of their party or their leader. Given the developments of the last few days, it is simply inconceivable that the Government can continue on their current course and present the discredited Bill here in seven days. The only responsible thing to do is listen to what Lib Dem Members are saying and support what the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives seeks to do. I will deal with that shortly.

Education Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call Mr Andy Burnham.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Labour’s main objection to this Bill is with how it takes power off parents and pupils—[Interruption.] Have we moved on to the amendments about admissions, Mr Deputy Speaker?

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[Mr Deputy Speaker]

No, we are dealing with the whole of the first group.

[Andy Burnham]

Then I think that you should have called Kevin Brennan instead.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I did ask the Whip to check. I call Mr Kevin Brennan.

Education Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is not a point of order but it is a good point that should be made to the House. I understand that both Front Benchers have a lot to say, but it does prevent Back Benchers from taking part in the debate. The sooner we can get on the better.

[Andy Burnham]

I have answered the Secretary of State’s question—[Interruption.]—and have I put it to him that an expert whom he commissioned is saying to him, “Keep music as an option in the English baccalaureate,” and answer there was none about what he is going to do with that recommendation. The Secretary of State has not convinced the experts and he is not even convincing his own side. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Mr Gove, I am sure that we can restrain ourselves for a little longer.

[Andy Burnham]

The Secretary of State is not even convincing his own activists. On ConservativeHome today, there was an article by Ed Watkins, a music teacher in south London and the deputy chairman of Dulwich and West Norwood Conservatives. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Conservative Members cheer him, but will they still be cheering in a moment? He wrote:

“The principles lying behind the English Baccalaureate are therefore grounded in a sensible solution to a problem.”—

He is halfway there with that. He continued:

“Those principles have, however, been applied in an arbitrary manner in the selection of subjects. Why History but not R.E.? Why Biblical Hebrew but not Art? Why Geography but not Music?”

It seems that rather than heckling me, the Secretary of State has a little more work to do with his own side.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

It is kind of the right hon. Gentleman to give way, I am sure. I listened carefully to the powerful case studies of people he has met over recent weeks. I am concerned, however, that he might be out of touch with some of his constituents, and that he does not fully understand the needs of those with complex needs. Is he seriously arguing that a capped payment of £30 a week will fully meet the needs of the people he described? In that case, why does he not support a discretionary learner support fund that would allow individual schools to tailor provision to the needs of their students? Why is he so scared of that?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We must have shorter interventions, because many Members want to speak.

[Andy Burnham]

All I can say is that I do not think the hon. Gentleman was listening. I said that EMA makes life possible, and makes the calculations that young people have to do to stay in education that bit more doable. Is he seriously arguing that taking it from those young people will help them to make a success of their lives and circumstances? I find that hard to believe.

The vast majority of EMA is spent on travel, as a survey for the Association of Colleges confirmed this week. It states that

“94% of Colleges believe that the abolition of the EMA will affect students’ ability to travel to and from College.”

The survey also suggests that some students may be at risk of not being able to follow the college course of their choice due to the cost or availability of transport. That goes to the heart of student choice in education. If students do not have the ability to travel, they cannot get on to the courses that they want to study. The Secretary of State needs to come up with a convincing answer to that.

I want the Secretary of State also to think about the effect of the change on the aspirations of young people who are still in secondary school. I want him to reflect on what a young woman from my constituency told me this week—that her 15-year-old brother had already given up at school because, without EMA, he could not see any way that he would be able to go to Wigan and Leigh college to study the motor engineering course that he had planned to do. Is there not a real risk that taking the lifeline of EMA away from young people will lower the aspirations of children in secondary school? Better participation, attendance, retention and results, supporting choice and keeping hope alive for all kids—surely it all adds up to a compelling educational case for keeping EMA.

Points of Order

Debate between Andy Burnham and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

First, may I thank the right hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order? As the House knows, Mr Speaker attaches great importance to key policy announcements being made to the House before they are given to the media. There has been a written ministerial statement today, and the Department for Communities and Local Government will be answering questions on Thursday. This seems to be a classic example that should be drawn to the attention of the Procedure Committee as part of its inquiry into ministerial statements.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. At the last two Education Question Times, hon. Members raised concerns about the award of a contract to an organisation called the New Schools Network by the Department for Education, and about the lack of process that was followed. I wrote to the permanent secretary more than three weeks ago, asking him to investigate those concerns. I was promised a reply a week ago today, in advance of Education questions last week and of the Opposition day debate, but no such reply was forthcoming. Mr Deputy Speaker, through your good offices, may I ask that Members be given prompt answers when they are promised them, so that important questions can be raised and the Department in question can be held to account on these important matters?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order, but the message has been put before us and I am sure that the Chief Whip will have taken note of it. I am sure that this will be taken into account and that we can look forward to earlier replies in future.