Covid-19 Update

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

There is absolutely no doubt that we have worked together as a United Kingdom to put ourselves in a strong position when it comes to access to the Pfizer vaccine, and we have worked together to ensure that, should it come off, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will be available across all parts of this United Kingdom. I pay tribute to the work that I anticipate the NHS in Wales will be doing to deliver the shots into arms across Wales, but it is a UK-wide programme and is yet another example of why the UK is so strong when it works together.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is aware that priests have been unable to administer the sacrament to those dying in care homes and rabbis have been unable to secure a minyan in order to say the Kaddish. How will his Government now try to ensure they recognise that a person’s spiritual needs are critical for their mental health and that this is just as important for people’s physical health?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course we recognise exactly that, and the hon. Gentleman puts it well. Ministers are working with faith leaders on how we can come to an arrangement, as soon as possible, to allow both communal prayer, which was discussed in the House as we brought in the regulations relating to the lockdown, and all other aspects of nurturing worship.

Covid-19 Update

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I understand why grandparents in Bury and across the country want to see that happen. The challenge is that the support bubbles are there primarily so that when people are living on their own, they can get that emotional and mental-health support from having some people with whom they can closely communicate, whereas a couple living together have each other for that.

The challenge in terms of childcare is that although children rarely experience any negative impacts of covid, they can transmit the disease. Grandparents are typically at risk if they are over about 70, so we are quite cautious about encouraging them to look after their grandchildren, because of the problem of transmission. That is the challenge that we are trying to address, but I understand why people want to see that.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

On 3 July, the Secretary of State said that asymptomatic testing in residential care homes would give staff the confidence to continue their work. Yesterday, the Transport Secretary said that Public Health England now believes that asymptomatic testing might capture only 7% of those infected, leaving 93% of those infected to go about their business. If asymptomatic testing is as confidence-building as the Secretary of State says, and if a care home is a goose and an airport is a gander, why is the sauce of asymptomatic testing not good for both?

[Matt Hancock]

The question is about the timing of the tests. The proposal for care homes is for repeat asymptomatic testing. As I said in my statement, we have sent test kits out to eligible care homes. The challenge for asymptomatic testing at the border is that if we do it just once, that does not give confidence. The proposal on which we are working with the industry is for a way to do that with repeat testing to test that people have not later developed symptoms that they might have been incubating previously.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I would love to come up to Stockton and have a look round. I have enjoyed my many visits, especially the one in December, which went particularly well, just before the House reconvened after the general election.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Yesterday, a dear friend of mine died of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It has the lowest survival rate of all common cancers, yet it receives less than 2% of funding for cancer research. Half of all the diagnoses come about only after emergency admissions to hospital, because patients commonly visit their GPs three or four times with symptoms before being referred to a consultant. What will the Secretary of State do to improve early diagnosis of this disease, because it is killing 10,300 people a year, which is 28 people a day?

[Matt Hancock]

My heart goes out to the hon. Member and to the family and friends of his friend, about whom he spoke so movingly just now. He is absolutely right to raise this. The early diagnosis of cancer is a critical part of improving cancer survival rates in this country. We have talked an awful lot in this House over the last six months about the testing and diagnosis of covid, but frankly this country needs to increase its testing and diagnosis of all diseases, including cancer. For a generation, we have not had enough testing. He is quite right to raise this issue, because it is not just about people coming forward; it is also about the problems being spotted earlier. We are investing £2 million in more rapid diagnostic centres, and we are trying to get diagnostics not just in the major hospitals but out into the community so that they are closer to primary care. There is also a major piece of work under way to recover the backlog that was necessarily built up during covid—that is under way and the backlog is down by about half—and also to go further and never give up on trying to have earlier diagnosis of cancer.

Covid-19 Response

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is an incredibly important point, because the backlog has of course built up as we had to protect the NHS in the heat of the crisis. The independent sector has played a critical role in helping us get through the crisis and will play a critical role in future. That has put to bed any lingering, outdated arguments about a split between public and private in healthcare. What matters is the healthcare that people get. We could not have got through the crisis without the combined teamwork of the public and private sectors.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Professor Newton spoke today of the vital importance of increasing serology to tackle the virus. Capillary blood from fingerprick tests has long been used to test and control viruses, from measles to dengue fever. Will the Secretary of State therefore explain why the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency guidance asks providers of fingerprick tests to stop offering the service? Can he point to any published scientific data that suggests a clinical difference between capillary and venous blood? If not, why is he blocking the serology roll-out that Professor Newton considers so important?

[Matt Hancock]

First, serology tests are very important, and I am glad we are now doing over 40,000 a day. Given that they first got approval only two weeks ago, that has been a fantastic effort by the NHS and social care to get the roll-out going out so quickly. Secondly, fingerprick tests would be a big step forward. We are currently assessing the clinical validity of a number of fingerprick tests, because a bad test is worse than no test at all. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree with that.

Coronavirus and Care Homes

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, we are doing a huge amount of work now to ensure that there is protection in the future should there be a further increase, and in particular in advance of winter in case there is strong seasonality to this disease. As a clinician himself, my hon. Friend understands the importance of these areas and we will absolutely take the idea he put forward and run with it.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

Brent Council was at the epicentre of the initial covid outbreak, with one of the highest hospital death rates in the country, but back in February it spent £1.5 million to purchase PPE, which it made available to its care homes. In March, it established a separate care facility to provide 14 days’ isolation for any patients discharged from hospital back into the care system, whether or not they had tested positive for coronavirus. Now Brent has one of the lowest number of care home deaths in London. I know the right hon. Gentleman will want to congratulate Brent, which actually did put in place a protective ring around its care homes, but what he must answer is: if Brent Council had the good sense and foresight to get this right, why didn’t he?

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point and it comes to the nub of the challenge around care home policy. I do want to congratulate Brent. I think that the work it did was important, but, of course, formally and in the law responsibility for care homes is for local councils and some local councils, like Brent and others, have done a magnificent job. However, I also understand that it is a reality of political life and our constitution that I as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care am also responsible, and I take that responsibility very seriously. However, when it comes to longer-term reform, this does bring a conundrum because the policy levers that I have as Secretary of State are only through councils, which themselves have to then act.

On the funding side we have seen this challenge. We put in £1.6 billion at the start of this crisis through councils without a ring fence, and there are questions being raised about how much of that has got to the frontline, so for the £600 million we put through on Friday we have put in a very firm ring fence, so it must be paid in a timely manner through to care providers. I think this actually raises a question not just for the crisis but for the longer term. When I am held accountable at this Dispatch Box for the actions of local authorities, I can give support, but we do not have the direct levers. We have not even had the direct data flows through to the centre, and we are putting that right too.

The National Health Service

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). I fully agree with many of the points that he made, and I think that everyone in the House would agree with them.

I am not usually confrontational politically, so I will do only a tiny bit of that. This fear thing that is being thrown around about a privatisation of the NHS is very damaging. It is not particularly damaging to my party, but it is damaging across politics. I was at the Opposition Dispatch Box as a shadow health Minister for four and a half years, and during that time all those PFIs went through. Under the private finance initiative, private companies were being paid for surgery that was not even carried out. They were contracted for 1,000 knee operations or 1,000 hip replacements which did not take place, and they were still paid. That is what happened under the previous Labour Administration.

We need to admit that we make mistakes when we are in government. We have made mistakes before. I made mistakes as a Minister when I was in seven different Departments—it will probably not be eight now. Governments sometimes make mistakes for the best of reasons. One of the great mistakes was that era of privatisation, with PFI deals that were off the balance sheets, and Darzi clinics. Lord Darzi was a great surgeon, a great medical man; I just happened to disagree completely with many of his proposals which were implemented by the Government, and which, frankly, have not worked. There are still many clinics out there to which trusts have to pay huge amounts of money, not to get out of their contracts but just so that they can carry on. That is something that we need to admit. So, in this House, let us admit that Governments make mistakes and that the PFI privatisation carried out by the Labour party was wrong, although it was probably done for the best of reasons. A PFI hospital was promised to my constituents; it never came even though the Labour party closed the A&E at Hemel Hempstead hospital, in the largest town in Hertfordshire. We were promised that that would be looked after, because St Albans had had its hospital closed. However, it was closed and the whole thing moved to a Victorian hospital in the middle of Watford, which cannot cope today and has not been able to cope since then.

Adding little bits to hospitals, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, and putting a new A&E on the front can sometimes work, but when there is serious funding around, which is what we are talking about now, a modern, new, environmentally proper hospital that can actually have sufficient footfall to enable the medics to work in their specialties is what we need.

I am one of the few Conservative MPs to have been offered the £400 million for a new hospital. I have said to the Secretary of State and to my trust that it is not a new hospital; it is a refurbishment of a Victorian hospital in the middle of Watford next to a football ground, and my community does not want that. The people of Watford might, but if they thought outside the box—I am not being rude to them—I am sure they would agree that it would be better to have a brand spanking new hospital that looks after the communities of Watford and the surrounding areas of Hemel Hempstead and St Albans in that massive growing area just north of the M25.

So I do not want my old hospital reopened. It is still sitting there boarded up; it is just sitting there like a running sore in my constituency. It was a wonderful new hospital when the new town was built, but there she sits now with two wards, out-patient facilities and a minor injuries unit that does not even open for 24 hours even though we were promised it would.

What we want is a tiny bit more money—the Secretary of State knows this; I am not saying anything to the Minister that he does not know. We should not keep frightening people by saying it will cost £750 million or £1 billion to build a new acute hospital on a greenfield site, because we know it will not. We have the experts working for the new hospital action group and I am going to meet the experts in the Department in the next couple of days. So I am saying to the Department, “Hold back for a second on this new hospital for us, because if you hold back a second, we might get a completely different result.”

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is speaking very candidly and with great integrity. My mother died in the Hemel Hempstead hospital that he speaks of many years ago. He talked about PFI and some of his remarks are absolutely spot on, but does he now recognise that the money owed on the PFI liabilities is actually £9 billion, as opposed to the £11 billion, which is the backlog of what hospitals are paying to the Department itself because of the borrowings they have had to take out as a result of the financial problems they are facing?

[Sir Mike Penning]

As was said in debate with the Scottish National party spokesman earlier, the Government can borrow money much cheaper than any private organisation.

I am thrilled that there is some honesty in the Chamber, because we have argued about PFI for donkey’s years; it was a way of getting things off balance sheet, and let us move on from that. There is no more PFI—we can all agree on that—but actually we are not privatising the NHS, as everybody with an ounce of common sense knows. The NHS is perfectly safe; it has been safe under this party for the majority of its time since inception, and it will stay perfectly safe. There are massive demands on it, however, and I cannot allow all this money—taxpayers’ money—to be put into a Victorian hospital next to a football stadium in the middle of Watford. Anybody who knows our part of the world knows that Watford football club is in the premiership. It might be struggling a little bit at the moment, although it did very well against Spurs the other evening. Let us pause, get the experts around the table and stop scaring people with costs that are completely unrealistic—new hospitals were built in Birmingham for £425 million and a new one can almost certainly be built in Harlow for similar amount. Let us have a 21st-century hospital. Let us be honest with each other and move that forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

At the opening of the London Olympics, Danny Boyle wanted to show the world what it meant to be British, and he chose the NHS because it illustrates all that is best in our country. Watching on TV, millions marvelled at our nurses, our doctors and our carers, and in the stadium, thousands cheered. That is how proud we are of our NHS. All the people who work in it—cleaners, consultants, nurses, night porters, radiographers and receptionists—play a vital role in caring for our society. They are our national symbol of community and our model of selfless service.

This debate has reflected that, with 34 speeches and 49 interventions. There have been some wonderful speeches, including personal testimonies from the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon)—my dear friend—who if she did not quite move herself to tears, certainly moved the rest of us.

However, millions now worry that the NHS could be up for grabs in a future free trade agreement. At the heart of those fears is the Health and Social Care Act 2012, passed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition. It puts costs before quality and commercial competition at the heart of health commissioning. Just after the Act was passed, our local 111 service in Brent North was outsourced to a private company, the majority of the directors of which sat on the local clinical commissioning group—the very group that had awarded them the contract.

The Health and Social Care Act has allowed perverse commissioning decisions like that up and down the country. Today, our local CCG in north-west London faces not the £51 million deficit at year-end set out in its operational plan, but £112 million—an additional £61 million overspend as a result of an increase in acute activity of 18% against a population increase of 5%. When Conservative Members and their Liberal Democrat partners told us that the NHS was not for sale, those assurances were worthless. People may not be able to buy it, but privatisation is tearing it apart. My CCG has announced the closure of the 24-hour service at the urgent care centre in Middlesex Hospital.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I cannot give way because of time.

It is this legislation that now exposes our NHS to foreign competition and undermines our public healthcare system. It is Donald’s door into our NHS. Some 170,000 people already know this, and they have signed a parliamentary e-petition calling on this Government to introduce safeguards that will protect it from new trade deals. Trade agreements lock in privatisation, and open up access to foreign investors and speculators. That is why we need safeguards.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me that one of the great threats to our NHS is a trade deal with the US that, as happened in Australia 10 years ago, will drive up the price of medicines significantly?

[Barry Gardiner]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

In 2007, Slovakia wanted to move from a private health system, modelled on the USA’s, to a system more like ours. Slovakia was sued for millions of euros by a Dutch company that thought the move might affect its future profits. Trade deals often contain clauses that give foreign investors the right to sue Governments for decisions that might affect their profits. These investor-state dispute settlement—ISDS—clauses are common in modern free trade agreements.

Policy decisions such as legislating for the plain packaging of cigarettes have been subject to ISDS claims. Labour believes the UK should be free to make public health policy based on the health needs of the British people. We should not have to bend to some company that is profiting from keeping our people ill, whether from tobacco, polluted air or too much sugar.

More than 750 cases are known to have been brought under ISDS clauses in other countries, and more than half resulted in compensation for foreign investors or in financial settlements out of court. Labour will not sign up to any free trade agreement that uses these ISDS-style rules, which are wrong in principle and, even where they are not used, can lead to regulatory chill.

Incredibly, the right to sue the Government under these ISDS clauses does not extend to our own UK companies, only to foreign companies in separate private courts. Labour has confidence in our courts and thinks foreign companies should have no greater rights of redress than British companies.



Free trade agreements also typically include market access clauses and national treatment provisions. These would set out the extent to which overseas businesses can operate in our markets, and they would insist that we afford at least the same treatment to foreign businesses as we do to our own businesses. In the past that was done by listing all those services that had been agreed. If an NHS service was not on the list, it could not be the subject of foreign competition. Agreements used to set out only those services that we were prepared to open up to competition, but modern trade agreements do not work that way.

Instead, modern trade agreements adopt a negative list system that says every service is opened up to competition unless it is placed on the negative list. Anything missed off the list is automatically open to competition. Once missed, a service can never be put back on the list. Any new service that comes as a result of technological or scientific breakthrough, if it is not on the list, is automatically open to foreign competition.

Imagine if we had agreed a negative list before the age of the internet and before digital technology had changed how patients can be screened and tested. If we lose our capacity and skill to provide these services directly, we will become a captive market and vulnerable to the abuse of private monopoly and spiralling costs.

Governments cannot intervene where there has been a clear failure in the sector or where patient health has been compromised. We need legal guarantees that no such negative list trade agreement will be concluded. That is why Opposition Members sought to introduce measures into the Trade Bill to achieve this protection. Conservative Members voted down every single one.

When their lordships secured essential provisions for proper scrutiny of trade agreements and a defined parliamentary procedure for ratification, what did the Government do? They abandoned the Bill entirely. Now they want to bring back the same legislation, but without those safeguards.

A potential deal with the US is of major concern to those who care about our health service. The American model is renowned for its pursuit of profit and its indifference to the poor. The US ambassador told national TV that the NHS would be on the table and that the US had already looked at all the components of the deal. President Trump confirmed it, and the Office of the US Trade Representative has published its list of negotiating objectives for any such deal. One objective is to stop the NHS using its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. The US Secretary of Health and Human Services actually said that the US would “pressure” other countries in trade negotiations so that Americans pay less and we pay more.

The USA wants to stop the UK regulating the pharmaceutical industry unless the US industry has agreed. So much for taking back control. In one of their first acts after establishing the Department for International Trade, this Government opened three new offices in the US, in Raleigh, in Minneapolis and in San Diego—biopharma hubs where major healthcare providers, biotech, pharmaceutical manufacturers and health insurers are headquartered. What made those cities so attractive if it was not an attempt to attract players from those sectors into our NHS? The Labour party created the NHS. We will not allow this Government’s trade agreements to damage it. Under Labour, the NHS will remain a universal service, free at the point of use, and based on medical need, not ability to pay.

NHS in London

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck, but it is an even greater pleasure for all of us to see our hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) back in his proper place in the House, doing what he does so well: representing his constituents.

I wish to make two points in this debate, and I am grateful for your indulgence, Ms Buck, in letting me come in at the end of the debate; I had other engagements. First, I wish to mention the case of Dr Chris Day v. NHS and Health Education England, which has exposed a particular lacuna in the protection for whistleblowers in the NHS. HEE oversees the training placement of doctors, and I understand that its role will increase under the new contracts. If a junior doctor blows the whistle, HEE will be able to terminate the doctor’s training as a punishment with absolute impunity. I know that the Minister would not wish to see that and that she is keen to ensure that whistleblowers get appropriate protection. I simply ask that she looks at that issue and takes the necessary action to remedy it.

The main focus of my remarks is the recruitment process for GP surgeries in north-west London. Specifically, I refer to Integrated Health CIC, which is known locally as the Sudbury surgery, and the number of problems that have arisen with that and the commissioning thereof. In 2013, the surgery was given to two doctors, Dr Omodu and Dr Akumabor, until March 2016. In fact, the contract on the surgery expires in precisely seven days’ time. I have been in correspondence with NHS England and Dr Anne Rainsberry, and the local council’s health scrutiny committee has been in correspondence with Monitor, to try to ensure that the concerns of local people are respected in relation to the surgery and the procurement process, and that is what I want to bring to the Minister’s attention.

There has been a lack of clarity in the handling of conflicts of interest in relation to the procurement. According to Brent CCG’s website, in February this year, five of the seven local GPs who have declared interests in relation to their Brent CCG activity have interests in Harness, which is the name of another surgery. They include the chair and vice-chair of the CCG.

It is noted that the practices that have been removed from the commissioning timetable are also associated with Harness, and that in October, Harness Harlesden and Harness Acton Lane surgeries were withdrawn from the timetable. It was reported that they were to merge and procure a service from either current Harness Harlesden premises or from primary care hub. In March 2016, it was confirmed that Brent GP Access Centre, run by Harness, was also removed from the timetable to align it with the service start of the walk-in service contract, also run by Harness, that is provided on the same site, but is being procured and commissioned by the CCG. This is to reduce the chance of any confusion about accessing the services and to avoid any unnecessary disruption to either service. It would appear that Harness Locality, representing 21 of the 69 GP practices in Brent, has disproportionate representation on the CCG governing body. It is the belief of members of the scrutiny committee, and a concern of mine and of residents, that there needs to be clarity on commissioner-provider interrelationships to ensure a fair procurement process and the retention of public confidence in that process.

GP practice leaders have expressed misgivings about the ability of local practices to meet the demands of the London key performance indicators. It has been suggested to Members that the London KPI regime is intended to favour larger bidders with the infrastructure to offer economies of scale. If that is the case, it puts NHS England and Brent CCG in direct conflict with residents in my constituency, especially in relation to the Sudbury surgery.

It is the clearly expressed opinion of local residents that the practice has served the community incredibly well, and they are extremely distressed, angry and puzzled by NHS England’s treatment of it. To give an example of just how well regarded the surgery is locally, in the three years that the two doctors have been running it, its list has increased from 3,500 to more than 8,000. That is by word of mouth, and that is success in action. People are rightly concerned about how the surgery has been treated.

On 11 March, I received a letter from Dr Anne Rainsberry of NHS England, in which she confirmed to me that

“in undertaking the decision making processes with the local CCG related to this time limited contract, the NHS England standard operating procedure ‘Managing the end of time limited contracts for primary medical services’…was followed.”

She goes on in her letter to talk about key stages 1 and 2, which she says were

“completed to enable a decision on how the services should be provided after the end of the contract and to implement that decision.”

I refer to stages 1 and 2 and the time standards for that contract. Stage 1 lists four requirements to be carried out a minimum of

“9 to 15 months before contract end (all essential)”.

Those requirements are:

“Needs assessment…Value for money…Impact assessment… Consultation proposal.”

The first contact that NHS England had with the surgery is noted in Dr Rainsberry’s letter, in the fourth paragraph from the bottom of the second page, which states:

“NHS England wrote to the current contractors in September 2015 regarding their contract and the proposal to re-procure the contract when it expired.”

On that page, she has outlined the fact that the procedure was not followed within the set time period. Yet on the first page of her letter, she told me that it was followed. That is not good enough.

Procurement does not have the confidence of local people or patients certainly in north-west London. I have enormous respect for the Minister—she is one of the Ministers I respect most across the House. She deals with things in a straightforward, plain-dealing manner. I urge her to look at the process I have outlined, because I do not think it has been done properly. I trust her to get it done right.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her very constructive comments. She is right. A 13.5% increase in basic pay is very significant, because, unlike overtime and premium pay, it is pensionable. It will help when applying for a mortgage and will mean more money on maternity leave. I think it will be much better for junior doctors.

The review that Dame Sue Bailey is doing, which was much-derided by the Opposition when I mentioned it in my statement, is actually very significant. One of the things that has gone wrong in training is that since the implementation of the European working time directive, we have moved away from the old “firm” system, which would mean that junior doctors were assigned to a consultant, who they would see on a regular basis and who was able to coach them on a continuous basis over weeks and months. That has been lost and many people think that that has led to much lower morale. We want to see what we can do to sort that out.

Finally, I want to echo what my hon. Friend said about going forward in a positive and constructive spirit. When, as a Government, we took the decision to proceed with implementing new contracts, we had the choice of many different routes, because, essentially, we can decide exactly what to choose. We have chosen to implement the contract recommended by NHS chief executives as being fair and reasonable. That is different from our original position. We have moved a considerable distance on most of the major issues, but it is what the NHS thinks is a fair and reasonable contract and we need to move forward.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State, I am sure, has the grace to acknowledge that the application rate for specialty training has fallen since the Government put forward their proposals last year, but does he have the logic to accept that if he gets fewer junior doctors the problem he is trying to solve will only get worse?

[Mr Hunt]

We now have 10,600 more doctors working in the NHS than we did five years ago and we are investing record amounts going forward. There has been a lot of smoke and mirrors about what is actually in our contract proposals. I hope all trainees and medical students will look at the proposals and see that independent people have looked over them and believe they are fair and reasonable—actually better—for junior doctors, and that we will continue to be able to recruit more doctors into the NHS.

Junior Doctors’ Contract Negotiations

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Minister has been keen to establish what he sees as the preferential terms and conditions that junior doctors enjoy, yet Sir David Dalton has said in an interview with the Health Service Journal:

“My assessment is that the staff group that will have to contribute the least above that which they are providing at the moment would be our doctors in training. Our messaging on this has got muddled”.

Does the Minister agree?

[Ben Gummer]

Sir David Dalton has also made it clear that we have to reform all contracts. One can place the balance where one wishes, but it is important that we reform the juniors’ and the consultants’ contracts together, so that they can fit within the service of a piece. It is wrong, for instance, to have a junior on duty taking decisions at the weekend and not be covered by consultants supervising and helping with those decisions. We need to ensure that there is consistency of rostering through the week and at the weekend involving both juniors and seniors.

A&E Services

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question. Had he been in this House longer and paid more attention to these issues, he would know that the datasets comparable between England and Wales are not actually the same. He would know also that the last time we had a Conservative Government people in Wales were waiting two years for operations, and that nobody campaigns more than I do on behalf of hospitals in my area on the waiting times there.

In the past 100 weeks nearly 2.4 million patients have waited more than four hours in hospital accident and emergency units in England; almost half a million people have spent more than four hours on a trolley waiting to be admitted; and more than 1,500 have waited more than 12 hours to be admitted.

Those figures offer a stark analysis of the difficulties facing accident and emergency. Even in this week of the summer solstice, this Government’s A&E winter crisis shows no signs of abating. In a debate in January the Secretary of State for Health said that the NHS had just been through a tough winter, but the evidence from NHS England shows that accident and emergency departments have had two tough winters and are well on their way to a third tough summer. Under this Government accident and emergency is experiencing a permanent winter.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will know that Northwick Park hospital in my constituency has had some of the worst waiting times in the country over the past year. Does he understand, and will he address in his remarks, the fact that the ageing population—those over the age of 80—in Brent has increased by 50%, yet the funding available to cope with that increase has been reduced by 25%? It means that, of the 250 people who attend A&E each day, 100 are dementia patients who become bed blockers because the integrated care package is not in place and is not working.

[Mr Reed]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is right to mention those issues, which I will come to later. I pay tribute to him for doing so.

The reason for those pressures on A&E, in addition to the issues that my hon. Friend raises, is the sharp increase in people attending A&E since 2010. In the past the Secretary of State has tried to claim that the increase is the fault of the previous Labour Government, but that is patently nonsense. Annual attendances at hospital accident and emergency units increased by 60,000 in the four years before 2010, whereas in the four years after they increased by nearly 600,000—10 times faster. The reality is that A&E dramatically improved between 2004 and 2010, when 98% of patients were seen within four hours. This is a crisis that only started on the Tories’ watch—after they made it harder to see a GP, after they started stripping back social care services and after they launched their damaging top-down reorganisation.