NHS Spending

Debate between Ben Gummer and Gareth Thomas

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)]

First, may I apologise to the House for not being here at the beginning of the debate? I did, however, see the contributions of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who set up a powerful case in support of the Opposition’s motion, and of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford).

I would not dispute the motion’s central contention. We have just had an enormous public debate—as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) made clear, a debate of a magnitude that this nation has not seen for decades. A central claim in that debate—a claim on which the referendum hinged—was that there would be an additional £350 million for the NHS to spend every week, were we to withdraw from the European Union. To be very clear about that claim, it is not one that any Member who supported Vote Leave can run away from. It was emblazoned not just on the bus, but in even more explicit language on a poster, which said:

“Let’s give our NHS the £350 million”—

not “some of” or “a part of”, but “the” £350 million—

“the EU takes every week”.

Members will know my position in this debate. It is not my purpose to revisit the arguments for one side or the other, but Members on both sides of the House, of this great debate and of the referendum campaign have a duty to hold to account the people who made those claims, because the referendum was won partly on the basis of them, and people will expect results.

I would like to put on record the nature of our contribution to the European Union every week, so we can be clear not about the claims, but about the facts. The simple fact is that it is wrong to take one year’s contribution as typical, because our contribution varies from year to year. Over the past four years, our gross contribution has in fact been £313 million a week. If we were to deduct the rebate, which is £69 million a week, and public and private sector receipts, which are a further £108 million a week, our net contribution per week is actually £136 million, worked out on a rolling average from 2010 to 2014. I would therefore suggest to those on both sides of the House, and on both sides of the campaign, that the figure needs to be challenged and challenged again.

Any money that might or might not be coming to the NHS needs to be seen within the framework of that claim. It is important for us at this stage not to move away from the claims made in the great referendum campaign. It is important that we bring the country together, but that does not mean that we should not bring some sort of scrutiny to those claims over the next few years, when the effects of Brexit will be played out and when our constituents will feel those effects in their pockets and in the security of their families, although some will say that that will be to the positive and others to the negative.

In the next few years, we will have to take consistent measures to bring scrutiny to the claims that were made. However, it is not just the money that is important in terms of Brexit. I, too, am concerned that we bring scrutiny to bear on the other issues facing healthcare, whether the regulation of medicines, research funding—universities have expressed real concern about that in just the past couple of days—or workforce supply. In that respect, I would like to reiterate the support that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health expressed for the migrant workers who have come to this country to serve our NHS. Many of them provide skills we cannot provide in our own country, and their dedication to our national health service is equal to that shown by those serving it who were born in this country, and I would like to personally thank them for their contribution and service.

On that issue, I think we can have some agreement across the House. Where, I am afraid, I part company from Opposition Members, however, is on their comments about the claim that was made by Vote Leave—as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) made clear, it was also made by Labour Members of Parliament. That claim has not been made by Her Majesty’s Government; nor is it one that can be attached to the Department of Health.

In addition, it has been said that the money released by Brexit, even if it were to materialise, would be backfilling what the Opposition claim to be a deficit in NHS funding. That description could not be further from the truth, and I would advise Opposition Members to look at the OECD’s latest figures, which were released earlier this week. They clearly demonstrate that healthcare funding in this country is now just above the average for the EU15. It has moved up from being below average, and we are now achieving parity with countries such as Spain, which has a fantastic healthcare system that is much admired around the world, and indeed Finland. Given that position, we should surely praise this Government and the previous coalition Government, who protected healthcare funding, even when the Labour party suggested we do the opposite.

In 2010, the Prime Minister said healthcare funding would be protected, even though the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer before the 2010 election suggested it should be cut. Under this Secretary of State and this Prime Minister, NHS spending has undergone its sixth biggest rise in the history of the NHS, despite the fact that we have been contending with the biggest financial crisis this country has faced in its peacetime history since the great depression in the 1930s. The financial environment of the NHS therefore bears positive scrutiny, compared with the situation in other leading countries in the European Union and with the history of Government funding for the NHS. Of that, the Conservative party is justly proud.

That does not mean, however, that there are no pressures within the NHS. I would like to pick up on some of the comments made by hon. Members, which I know they have made earnestly because they care very much for their local health systems. The hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), who is a doughty campaigner for West Cumberland hospital and for healthcare provision in his area, knows that I will meet him again and again—I hope, soon, in Cumbria—to discuss the issues that he has in his locality. We are a receptive ear, but we must always pay attention to clinical advice as it pertains to his local area and not to the political exigencies that might exist. Rightly, we have removed political decision making from the disposition of services. That is precisely why the reconfigurations in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) took place. It is always easy in government to try to make political decisions on matters that should be the preserve of clinicians, but that is the wrong thing to do, because one makes decisions for reasons of political expediency rather than clinical reasons. That is why we rely on the success regime in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and in the whole of Cumbria, as we do in other parts of the country, to provide a clinical consensus and the arguments for change that local clinicians will wish to see.

The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) has an expertise unrivalled in this House in the management of finances at a local area level. She is right to say that Brexit poses particular problems for staffing of NHS and social care services, procurement and medicines. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, she has provided very good criticism of how the NHS has been running its finances, which has not been good enough over the past five, 10 or 15 years—indeed, for many years. This Secretary of State and this team are doing a great deal to correct that. She is right, for instance, to point out that NHS Property Services has not worked as well as it should have done in the past. I hope that in the months and years ahead she will see reforms that give her greater pleasure than dealing with NHS Property Services gave her in her previous role.

The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) described the problems at his local hospital, as did the right hon. Member for Enfield North in relation to North Middlesex hospital, which I have discussed with her. Both hospitals suffer similar problems to other hospitals on the outside rim of London—discernible and discrete problems that we are endeavouring to correct and to provide solutions to. I hope that the right hon. Lady has seen, in the movement over the past few days, our determination to sort out the problems at North Middlesex. As the Minister responsible for hospitals, I do not want to leave this job without having given stability and certainty to the hospitals outside London that they have not had for many years.

[Mr Gareth Thomas]

I intervene merely to underline the request for a meeting with the Minister to discuss the finances of Northwick Park and, crucially, of the clinical commissioning group in my area.

[Ben Gummer]

Of course I will give the hon. Gentleman a meeting. If the issue is about general practitioners, I will refer him, if he does not mind, to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Community and Social Care. However, I will certainly meet him to discuss finances and hospitals. I will arrange both meetings on behalf of his constituents.

I thank hon. Members for this short but constructive debate. It is the first stage in the necessary scrutiny of the claims that were made by both sides in the EU referendum. We are now going to see, in the months and years ahead, who was right. I hope very much that I and the people on my side were wrong, because if so, it will be easier to deliver the spending commitments made by Vote Leave. I fear not, however, in which case we will have some very difficult years ahead. However, people can be sure that in this Government they have a Secretary of State, a ministerial team, a Prime Minister and a party that will continue to commit the funds that are necessary to the NHS, so that we improve on our position in the European averages. We will continue to fund it better than any previous Government to provide for the ambitious designs for this, our national health service, which we all care so much about.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes that the Vote Leave group during the EU referendum campaign claimed that an extra £350 million a week could be spent on the NHS in lieu of the UK’s EU membership contribution; further notes that senior figures who campaigned, including the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and the Rt hon. Member for Surrey Heath have subsequently distanced themselves from that claim; and calls on the Government to set out proposals for additional NHS funding, as suggested by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire on 4 July 2016.