A&E Services
Debate between Ben Gummer and Helen Hayes(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ben Gummer
That is precisely the sort of policy on which we will seek consensus in the months and years ahead. There is a choice for Opposition Members. I know there are many new Members who wish to make their maiden speech in this debate, and I would just say to them that the choice is this: to come together to try to model better care within the NHS and better outcomes for patients, or to seek division.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I want to raise a point of substance that affects my constituents. There are young people in my constituency who would love to train as nurses and work in the NHS, but by cutting the number of training places in London by 25%, the Government have made that much harder. At the same time, when I last spoke to the recently retired chief executive of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, he told me that he was recruiting nurses in the Philippines, because there are not enough nurses—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. When the Chair is on her feet, Members sit. I have said before that interventions need to be very short and kept to a minimum. That was too long.
NHS Success Regime
Debate between Ben Gummer and Helen Hayes(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Ben Gummer
My hon. Friend makes the point better than I did. How do we sort these problems out using the local knowledge that he has just demonstrated rather than having a Minister in Whitehall with a map thinking that he or she can make the decision themselves? The success regime seeks to harness that local knowledge and the local solutions.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is simply not acceptable that an announcement of this magnitude should have been made without first being debated in this House. As I understand it, the success regime applies to a number of areas of the country but not to London. My local hospital, King’s College hospital, has a deficit well in excess of £40 million. It is nigh on impossible in parts of the constituency to see a GP when people need to. We have a crisis in the NHS across the country. What is the comprehensive plan to address that? We need that rather than a piecemeal intervention in only parts of the country.
Ben Gummer
I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. She will not know that there was an Adjournment debate at the end of the last Parliament on precisely this issue. I invite her to seek such a debate if she wishes to discuss local issues with me or other Ministers. The success regime has been devised by Simon Stevens and NHS England. It will be clinically led, fulfilling our desire to see the NHS led by doctors, not Whitehall bureaucrats.