Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Yasmin Qureshi

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Makerfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I feel tempted to start this speech by saying, “As I was saying 10 years ago in this place,” but it feels fitting to be here tonight, and particularly to be with my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister. I remember very clearly that at the conclusion of the second Hillsborough inquest, he worked with me, as part of the shadow Health team back then, to draft the original Bill that was presented to Parliament. Tonight, it is before this House.

Tonight, it feels like life is coming full circle. In passing this momentous piece of legislation, which will change the way this country thinks about and works towards justice, we are truly rewiring the state and passing power from the authorities to the hands of ordinary people. It is happening because of the Prime Minister’s commitment to a country based on justice and fairness, and we thank him for that. He has honoured his commitment to the Hillsborough families, and what this House will do in passing this Bill tonight is rebalance the scales of justice so that we have justice for ordinary people going forward. That is some legacy indeed.

We have all recognised that we simply would not be here tonight were it not for the dignity and determination of the Hillsborough families, who are with us in this Chamber this evening. They have been supported by the wider group of campaigns as part of Hillsborough Law Now. I want to recognise their lawyers, Pete Weatherby KC and Elkan Abrahamson KC, who are with us this evening; INQUEST’s Deborah Coles, who is with us as well; and all the people who supported the campaign. That is the reason we are here, but we are also here because of the city of Liverpool, which is represented so well by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), who has been the parliamentary lead on this Bill and has been entirely true to the people of his city, as has my friend Steve Rotheram, a former Member of this House and now the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, who also carried the campaign to this point.

I cannot describe my pride in being in the House tonight to see this Bill plant the values of the city of my birth at the heart of this country. That is something of huge and profound significance that has been brought about by the Hillsborough families. We recognise the significance of that tonight.

As Steve Rotheram has said, the Hillsborough law cannot do any more for the Hillsborough families. It will do much more for those who come after them, but that is what makes their campaign so special. They have done this for others, not for themselves. It is important to remind the House of the other campaigns, which we hope will now be lifted by this legislation as we pass it this evening.

We do think this evening, as the Prime Minister said, of the Grenfell survivors and families—I am sure all London Members will want to echo that—who are still waiting for justice and accountability over nine years after the Grenfell fire. We think tonight of the Primodos families, who have fought so hard for fairness, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East—

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

Bolton South and Walkden.

[Andy Burnham]

I have been away for a while, but I will get there in the end.

I know that other Members in this House have supported those who have suffered other treatment disasters—sodium valproate, mesh, PIP implants. These are still ongoing campaigns, and we need to recognise these campaigns in the House tonight, as we do that of the Chinook families, who were in court today—only just now, I was speaking about that to the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) in the Lobby—and we pay tribute to them this evening.

Let us not forget in this list, and I know they have support from across the House, the servicemen who served this country in the post-war period in the south Pacific—our nuclear test veterans. How often in this House do we praise our veterans, and how in this case have we left those veterans without truth and justice about what happened to them all those years ago? I think this House needs to hear their call for a special tribunal, which is entirely consistent with the aims of the Bill we are passing tonight.

This Bill advances all of these just causes, and the campaign for truth and justice does not stop here; indeed, it accelerates from here. I hope it ends the cover-up culture that has failed so many ordinary people in this country. We can never forget that for 20 years an entire English city was crying “Injustice!” correctly, yet this place ignored those people for all that time. We cannot forget that, and we cannot take away the hurt that that caused. We cannot forget that postmasters and mistresses serving communities up and down this country were branded as petty thieves, and carried that stigma with them for years. Likewise, those infected by infected blood were blamed for having brought it on themselves through their lifestyle. We cannot forget that.

Let me finish where I started, with the Liverpool supporters who were blamed for harming their own fellow supporters at a football match. That is what was done, and that was left to stand for all those years. The families here tonight had to live with that for all those years. Imagine what that must have felt like. We have had a situation in this country where people suffered the trauma of the initial bereavement—the incident that took their loved ones away—and then were retraumatised by the behaviour of the state. We cannot take that hurt away tonight, but we can put decency back at the heart of the British state, and that is what this Bill does. I finish by again praising the Prime Minister for making it happen. This truly is his legacy.

NHS

Debate between Andy Burnham and Yasmin Qureshi

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

rose—

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will make a little progress and then I will give way.

There have been record levels of hypothermia this year and thousands of over-75s have been treated in hospital for respiratory or circulatory diseases. That brings me to the second underlying cause of the increase in attendances at A and E. The ageing society is not a distant prospect on the horizon. Demographic change is happening now and it is applying increasing pressure on the front line of the NHS.

We all need to face up to the uncomfortable fact that our hospitals are increasingly full of extremely frail elderly people. Too many older people are in hospital who ought not to have ended up there or who are trapped there because they cannot get the right support to go home. That situation is unacceptable and it has to be addressed.

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady wants me to answer that question, but I direct her to her right hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Health Committee, who has dismissed the self-serving spin from the Government that says that these problem are all to do with a contract that was signed 10 years ago. I began my speech by citing figures that show an exponential rise in the number of people attending A and E since 2010. Many of those people are very frail older people. That is the issue before the House, so it does not help the debate for the hon. Lady to stand up and make a spurious political point.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Is not one of the reasons why more elderly and frail people are going to hospital that there has been a £1.8 billion cut in adult social services and support? Those people are ending up in hospital because they are not receiving the care that they need at home.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to say that the single most important underlying cause of the A and E crisis is the severe cuts that we have seen to adult social care. That has created a situation in which older people are trapped on the ward and cannot go home because there is not adequate support at home. That means that A and E cannot admit to the ward because the beds are full. Hospitals are operating way beyond safe occupancy levels. Because of that, the whole hospital begins to jam up and the pressure backs up through A and E. When A and E cannot admit to the ward it becomes full, so ambulances queue up outside because they cannot hand people over to A and E.

That is exactly what is happening in our NHS at the moment. A and E is the barometer of the whole health and care system. If there is a problem anywhere in the system, it will be seen eventually as pressure in A and E. That is what is happening. The simplistic spin from the Conservative party, which says that it is all to do with a GP contract from 10 years ago, is discounted by expert after expert.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are examples of good practice out there, but I suggest that he speaks to chief executives of clinical commissioning groups and trusts. They are telling me that the competition regime introduced by his Government is a barrier to that kind of sensible collaboration. The chief executive of a large NHS trust near here says that he tried to create a partnership with GP practices and social care, but was told by his lawyers that he could not because it was anti-competitive. Does the hon. Gentleman support that? Is that what he thought he was legislating for when he voted for the Health and Social Care Act? People are being held back from doing the right thing for fear of breaking this Government’s competition rules.

Recently, we heard of two CCGs in Blackpool that have been referred to Monitor for failing to send enough patients to a private hospital. The CCG says that there is a good reason for that: patients can be treated better in the community, avoiding costly unnecessary hospital visits. That is not good enough for the new NHS, however, so the CCG has had to hire an administrator to collect thousands of documents, tracking every referral from GPs and spending valuable resources that could have been spent on the front line.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

My right hon. Friend might be aware that recently the trust in Bournemouth wanted to merge with neighbouring Poole trust, but the competition rules stopped the merger taking place.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right. For the very first time in the history of the NHS, competition intervenes to block sensible collaboration between two hospitals seeking to improve care and make savings. Since when have we allowed competition lawyers to call the shots instead of clinicians? The Government said that they were going to put GPs in charge. Instead, they have put the market in charge of these decisions and that is completely unjustifiable. The chief executive of Poole hospital said that it cost it more than £6 million in lawyers and paperwork and that without the merger the trust will now have an £8 million deficit. That is what has happened. That is not just what I say; listen to what the chief executive of NHS England told the Health Committee about the market madness that we now have in the NHS:

“I think we’ve got a problem, we may need legislative change…What is happening at the moment…we are getting bogged down in a morass of competition law…causing significant cost and frustration for people in the service in making change happen. If that is the case, to make integration happen we will need to change it”—

that is, the law. That is from the chief executive of NHS England.

Careers Service (Young People)

Debate between Andy Burnham and Yasmin Qureshi

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is the point, is it not? This well-connected Cabinet think that everyone’s lives are like their own and that everyone can just call on a friend, uncle or whoever in a law firm or in the City. Sure, they will open a door—ring them up and they will give the advice. They live in a world, and constituencies sometimes, where that advice is readily available through informal family networks. They probably do not see the need for careers advisers. They have used them themselves, but do not see the need for them. However, there are many young people in the constituencies that we represent who cannot draw on those family networks and connections, who do not have role models to whom they can go and who perhaps have never had family members in the professions. They are the ones who need help to enter these closed worlds run often by a self-perpetuating elite.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend getting a bit sick and tired of Government Members talking about money issues, given that they will be wasting £3 billion on an unnecessary reorganisation of the NHS and £100 million on unnecessary unelected police commissioners? If they can find money for that, why can they not find a few hundred million pounds for these services?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend puts her question very well. The Government have got their priorities completely and utterly wrong. If I were a young person watching these proceedings tonight, I would be asking why since the coalition Government came to power they had singled out young people for this barrage of cuts. Do they think that young people are an easy touch? I do not know, but that is what I would be asking if I were them. I would also be asking what an elected police commissioner was going to do to improve life in the community. Very little, I would suggest. I return to the point that I was making earlier. If Government Members do not think that an impersonal, remote service is good enough for their children, they should not accept such a service for anyone else’s children in their constituency.