Economy, Welfare and Public Services

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash) (Con)]

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but humbly regret that there is no mention in the Gracious Speech of the improved economic conditions the Government is inheriting, with the fastest recorded growth in the G7, inflation at the Bank of England’s target for the second month in a row, and unemployment at half the rate that it was in 2010; further regret that there is no mention of how to make necessary savings on welfare; urge the Government to meet the commitment set out in the Labour Party’s manifesto not to raise taxes on working people; regret that the Gracious Speech fails to make a commitment not to use changes to reliefs to raise taxes; and call on the Government to increase income tax thresholds to prevent income tax from being charged on the State Pension.”

It is an important and rather painful part of our democracy that today I am a shadow Chancellor, responding to the King’s Speech in exactly the same way that the new Chancellor responded to me just a few months ago, so I start by congratulating her, as well as Mr and Mrs Reeves. As the father of two girls, one of whom has her 10th birthday today, I warmly welcome the smashing of a glass ceiling by Britain’s first female Chancellor. As I said on election night, she has led the Labour party on a difficult journey, which has changed it for the better. Her stated commitment to fiscal responsibility, stability and economic growth has been consistent and, I am sure, not always easy. Unfortunately for us, her success in holding the line means that we face rather a lot of Labour MPs on the Government Benches, but I wish her well in her new role.

I also commend to the right hon. Lady the superb Treasury officials she now inherits, and put on record my gratitude to them the excellent work they did for me, staying up in the middle of the night ahead of fiscal events, engaging in tense negotiations with spending Departments—and occasionally, it has to be said, with No. 10—bringing me endless flat whites and Pret lunches to keep me going and, most of all, making my family feel welcome in the goldfish bowl that is Downing Street. It is part of the magic of democracy that those same officials have seamlessly transferred their allegiance from me to her, and I know that they will serve her extremely well.

In opposition, we will not oppose for its own sake, and there are a number of Bills in the King’s Speech that we welcome. The right hon. Lady is right to focus on growth, and the improvements on planning will build on many reforms introduced by the last Government, including the 110 growth measures I introduced in last year’s autumn statement. Any boost to house building is also welcome. We delivered 1 million homes in the last Parliament, and she will soon find out that if she is to deliver 1.5 million, she will not be able to duck reforming environmental regulations—a change that Labour blocked in the last Parliament but will deliver an extra 100,000 homes. I caution her not to over-rely on bringing back top-down targets. In the end, we will build more houses only if we change attitudes to new housing, and that is unlikely to happen if unpopular targets are steamrollered through local communities.

We will also look carefully at the right hon. Lady’s Budget Responsibility Bill. We are proud that a Conservative Government set up the Office for Budget Responsibility, and I commend the work of Richard Hughes and his team. We did not always agree, but in the end, that is the point of an independent watchdog. We all understand the politics of a Bill that allows the Government to make endless references to the mini Budget, but if the right hon. Lady is really committed to fiscal responsibility alongside growth, I hope that she will today confirm that she will not fiddle with the five-year debt rule to allow increased debt through the back door. We—and, it has to be said, markets—will be monitoring the overall level of debt very carefully to make sure that that does not happen. I also hope that she will commission the OBR to do 10-year forecasts of our long-term growth rate rather than five-year forecasts, as at present, in order to bake long-term decision making into Treasury thinking.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The shadow Chancellor was talking just now about fiscal responsibility. During the election campaign, he committed to a series of tax cuts, but I noticed that yesterday on Laura Kuenssberg’s show he said that it would not have been possible for him to proceed with those tax cuts. What has changed, and why did he make that commitment during the election campaign, knowing full well that he could not afford to carry it out?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because it allows me to explain why he is completely mistaken in what he is saying. We offered a set of carefully and fully funded tax cuts—unlike the £38.5 billion of unfunded spending commitments that came from the Labour party—but we always said that they would be brought in over time over the next Parliament. We did not make a commitment that they would come in immediately, and indeed they would not have. We would have done it in a responsible way.

When it comes to dubious claims, the new Chancellor herself has been making some that do not withstand scrutiny. She said, for example, that the economy would have been £140 billion bigger if we had matched the average OECD growth rate, but she knows that the OECD is a diverse group of 38 countries, including many with economies very different from our own, such as Turkey, Mexico or Luxembourg. A much more meaningful comparison is with other similar G7 economies, which shows that since 2010 we have grown faster than France, Italy, Germany and Japan. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund says that thanks to difficult measures taken by the last Conservative Government, we will grow faster than any of those four countries, not just in the short term but over the next six years. One reason for that is our record on attracting investment.

Since 2010, greenfield foreign direct investment has been higher in the UK than anywhere in the world except the United States and China. In the last year alone, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Tata, BMW Mini, Google and Microsoft have all voted for the UK with their dollars, not least because of cuts in business taxation, such as full expensing, introduced by the last Government. If the Chancellor now looks for back-door ways to increase business taxation, as many fear, she will risk the UK’s attractiveness to foreign investors, of which she is now the beneficiary.

Mortgage Charter

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

The truth is that Members can pick countries in Europe where things have not been as severe as they have here, but they can also pick countries in Europe where things have been more severe, such as the 14 EU countries that have higher core inflation.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Chancellor is not going to get off with not answering that question. We are going to keep asking him again and again until he answers. Why is it that people are paying £800 less in Germany, £1,000 less in Ireland and Belgium, and £2,000 less in France than they are paying here? What is it that their Governments and their economies are doing differently—or is it just that they do not have the problem of 13 years of this Tory Government? What is behind it?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Let me give the same answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). Core inflation is higher in more than half the EU countries, so it is not just about us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady should be very careful before talking down nurse associates. They do a fantastic job, they are trained, they are helping our NHS and they are welcomed by their nursing colleagues.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Under this Government, there has been an unprecedented fall in the number of nurses: the NHS is short of 40,000 nurses and more than 6,000 have gone since 2010, under this Conservative Government. When will the Secretary of State acknowledge that he is failing the NHS and failing patients, and when will he do something about it?

[Mr Hunt]

With respect, I really think the hon. Gentleman needs to get his facts right. The number of nurses has gone up, not down, since this Government have been in office. The number of nurses in our hospitals has gone up by more than 11,000, because this Government are supporting safer care in all our hospitals.

Mental Health and NHS Performance

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

That is an absolutely excellent suggestion, and I will be very happy to take it up.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The problems in A&E that we have been hearing about this afternoon are symptomatic of problems elsewhere in the system. At Aintree hospital, whose staff are doing a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances, there are 130 patients who are medically fit for discharge today but social services are unable to support them to go home or to go into care elsewhere. The Secretary of State needs to accept that the cut of £4.6 billion to social services was a mistake. He also needs to accept that the better care fund is simply not delivering. It involves money being recycled from elsewhere in the system. Let us look at the figures for Sefton, which was promised £9 million but has received less than £1 million. If he is serious about sorting out the problems in social care in the long term, he needs to get the funding right. He needs to reinstate all the cuts that have been made.

[Mr Hunt]

I accept that more funding needs to go into social care, and that is why we are putting an extra £3.5 billion per annum into social care by the end of the Parliament. Despite the very real pressures in social care, however, there are many local authority areas and hospitals that have no delayed discharges at all. Half of all delayed discharges are in just 20 local authorities. As we wait for that funding to come on stream—it is not all coming on stream at the start of the Parliament—there is lots that can be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We will of course publish how we are going to make these efficiency savings. We have already started with a crackdown on agency spend and a crackdown on consultancy spend, and with the work that Lord Carter, a Labour peer, has done to improve hospital procurement and rostering.

Let me gently say to the hon. Gentleman, however, that he went into the election promising £2.5 billion more for the NHS—£5.5 billion less than we did—and most of that was from the mansion tax that Labour now says was a bad idea. So there would have been nearly £8 billion more of efficiency savings under Labour’s plans than under this Government’s plans, and he should recognise the progress we are making.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

13. What recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of guidance from the chief medical officer on the consumption of alcohol by pregnant women.

Health and Social Care

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I understand that geographical isolation is a particular issue and may have led to some of the problems at the trust that the hon. Gentleman and I have discussed on many occasions. We need to be sensitive to that in helping the standard of services to improve going forward.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hunt]

I will just make some progress.

Prevention also means transforming mental health services. I paid tribute earlier to my former colleague the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who did a terrific job. I welcome in his place my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), the Minister for Community and Social Care, who I know will build on his legacy. It also means a big focus on public health, especially tackling obesity and diabetes. It remains a scandal that so many children are obese. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), is working hard on a plan to tackle those issues.

We must continue to make progress on cancer. We have discussed some of the measures that we need to take, but independent cancer charities say that we are saving about 1,000 more lives every month as a result of the measures that have already been taken. We want to build on that.

We have also talked about technology a number of times today. It will remain a vital priority to achieving the ends that I have described. In the last Parliament, I said that I wanted the NHS to be paperless by 2018. In this Parliament, I would like us to go further and be the first major health economy to have a single electronic health record shared across primary, secondary and social care for every patient. Alongside that, our plans to be the first country to decode 100,000 genomes will keep us at the forefront of scientific endeavour, ably championed by the Minister for Life Sciences, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman).

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[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that issue. The previous Minister with responsibility for mental health set up the crisis care concordat, which he got all parts of the country to sign up to, to provide better care. There is a big issue with the quality of child and adolescent mental heath services provision. We want to cut waiting times for people in urgent need of an appointment, so I recognise the problem and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give us some time to bring solutions to the House.

[Bill Esterson]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I said that I would not give way again, but I will take one final intervention.

[Bill Esterson]

The Secretary of State has spoken of the importance of people’s ability to secure hospital appointments. The same applies to GP services, but when I wrote to him about my constituents’ difficulties in securing appointments with their GPs, he told me that that was the responsibility of NHS England, not his Department. Will he now recognise that he must take responsibility for dealing with the problems of GP surgeries, so that my constituents, and those of every other Member, can make appointments with their family doctors when they need them?

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely do recognise that. One of my key priorities is to deal with the issues of GP recruitment and the GP contract, and to make general practice an attractive profession again. If we are to deal with prevention rather than cure, vulnerable older people in particular will need more continuity of care from their GPs, and we must help GPs to provide it.

None of those big ambitions will be achieved, however, if we do not get the culture right for the people who work in the NHS. One of the reasons that Mid Staffs—and, indeed, so many other hospitals—was in special measures was the legacy which, for too long, put targets ahead of patients. We should never forget that Mid Staffs was hitting its A&E targets for most of the time during which patients in the hospital were experiencing appalling care. In that context, Sir David Nicholson used the phrase “hitting the target and missing the point”.

Through the toughest inspection regime in the world, we are slowly changing the culture to one in which staff are listened to and patients are always put first. However, although we identify hospitals that are in need of improvement much more quickly, we are still too slow in turning them around. I know that the new hospitals Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), will be looking closely at that, and I warmly welcome him to my team. Like me, he believes it is wrong that we have up to 1,000 avoidable deaths every month in the NHS, that twice a week we operate on the wrong part of someone’s body, that twice a week we leave foreign objects in people’s bodies, that almost once a week we put on the wrong prosthesis, and that people die because they are admitted on a Friday rather than a Wednesday.

We will leave no stone unturned in our quest to make a seven-day NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. Nye Bevan’s vision was not simply universal access or healthcare for all. The words that he used at this Dispatch Box nearly 70 years ago, in 1946, were “universalising the best”, which meant ensuring that the high standards of care that were available for some people in some hospitals were available to every patient in every hospital. Our NHS can be proud of going further and faster than anywhere in the world to universalise access, but we need to do much more if we are to complete Bevan’s vision and universalise quality as well. The safest, highest-quality care in the world, available seven days a week to each and every one of our citizens: that must be the defining mission of our NHS, and this Conservative Government will do what it takes to deliver it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

But we are taking measures. That is why we have 2,000 more doctors and 5,000 more nurses compared with a year ago. Frankly, the last thing those doctors and nurses on the front line want is scaremongering by the right hon. Gentleman—posters saying that the NHS might cease to exist under this Government; and leaflets like the one I have here from Lancaster saying that the local hospital might close. We are backing the NHS with more doctors, more nurses, more resources and a long-term plan. Will he now back the NHS by disowning this kind of scaremongering and stop trying to weaponise the NHS?

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

3. What the average waiting time was for a GP appointment in the most recent period for which figures are available.

A and E (Major Incidents)

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am sorry to hear the news about the chief executive at Watford. I am aware of the pressures there and I agree with my hon. Friend about the need for stability in management as much as possible over the next few months.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

One of my constituents wrote to me about her elderly mother who faced a wait of many hours for an ambulance to A and E. My constituent told me that at A and E she saw patients on trolleys backed up through the corridor to ambulances waiting in the car park. Meanwhile, patients were waiting at home, unable to get those same ambulances. She described the scene as “a war zone”. Is it not the case that A and E is unable to cope, the ambulance service is unable to cope, and patients who need to go to A and E are suffering?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree that there are real pressures in A and E across the system, but it is important to remind the public that even under that pressure, nine out of 10 people continue to be seen, treated and sent home within four hours. That is an extremely impressive record for the people working very hard in our A and E departments.

Special Measures Regime

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with my hon. Friend on both points. We have seen 31 more doctors there since special measures, 52 more nurses, a new acute medical admissions unit and better flow throughout the hospital, reducing the number of moves that patients make between wards during their stay, so lots has been done. When I did a stint in the A and E department at George Eliot, I was very well looked after by the nurses there, but they told me how bad the IT systems were—I think they said there were 16 different IT systems in the hospital—and how they were constantly filling out new forms. I therefore hope that the partnership with University Hospitals Birmingham, which has one of the best hospital IT systems in the country—a fantastic system, developed by the trust itself—will mean that George Eliot can move to having really good IT, so that nurses have more time with patients, which is what they want.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State spoke earlier about the need to value staff who work in residential homes. I presume he meant by that people who care for vulnerable, elderly and disabled people in their own homes as well. I completely agree with that, and he knows that we have discussed many times in the House issues such as the 15-minute time slots and the lack of reimbursement for the travel costs that people who care for elderly or disabled people have to bear. Does he agree, therefore, that unless we address issues such as the pay and conditions of staff, whether in residential homes or in people’s own homes, we will struggle to recruit and retain the very best staff, whom we desperately need to look after our vulnerable people?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to value staff who work in the social care sector much, much better. I think they do a fantastic and very difficult job for what is not high pay at all, so I recognise that issue. I also agree with his concern about 15-minute slots. I find it hard to believe that anyone can really do everything they need to when visiting someone who is frail or vulnerable in their own home in just a 15-minute slot. The new inspection regime will look at that and if it is unsatisfactory, it will say so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I know that they do that, and I know that people recognise that access is a critical issue. That is why the Prime Minister introduced a £50 million fund last year that has been taken up by 1,100 of the 8,000 surgeries across the country to improve access in evenings, at weekends and by e-mail and Skype. I hope that those will benefit his constituents.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

SSP Health runs a number of GP practices in my constituency and across Merseyside. When it took over, it promised full-time GPs and an improvement in services, yet after well over a year several of the practices are still run by locums. We have seen vulnerable, elderly people unable to get appointments for many days, if not weeks, and those who can have gone to other practices. Will the Secretary of State look at what is going on with SSP Health in and around Merseyside and give me and other hon. Members an answer?

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do so, because the service that he describes—I have not seen the details—sounds totally unacceptable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I think they absolutely should be, and the changes that we introduced in the Care Act 2014 relating to the transparency of the inspection regimes apply to private providers supplying services to the NHS just as they do to NHS providers. Let us be absolutely clear: poor care is poor, whether it happens in the public sector or the private sector, and we must clamp down on it wherever it happens.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Minister said that he was dealing with the chronic shortage of staff who help vulnerable children and young people, who cannot get access to mental health services. Will he tell us when there will be enough staff delivering those services to that important group?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I cannot speak highly enough of the staff at Southport hospital who cared for me when I spent three days there as a patient last month. They told me that GPs now routinely send older patients straight to A and E because their funding has been cut and that community services are no longer in place to support people in their own homes, which is all leading to a crisis at A and E. Is not the sad reality that what is happening at Southport is being repeated up and down the country as a result of the Government’s disastrous reorganisation and cuts to front-line services?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I am very pleased about the excellent treatment that the hon. Gentleman received. The problems that the nurses talked about are exactly why, from today, we are reintroducing named GPs for everyone aged 75 or over to bring back the kind of personal care and personal responsibility for patients that I am afraid was so sadly abolished previously.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

T10. The village of Melling has grown in recent years, yet its surgery hours have been cut drastically. Elderly and disabled residents now face a four-hour round trip by public transport to see their doctor. How can cuts in surgery hours, like those in my constituency, be justified if the Government are serious about having a first-class NHS?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We absolutely want to make primary care more accessible and that is why we are introducing named GPs for everyone aged 75 or more from April. This is a significant and important reversal of, I think, a mistake that everyone now agrees was made in 2004 when named GPs were abolished. Its purpose is to make GPs more accessible to the people who need them the most.

Urgent and Emergency Care Review

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am always happy to meet colleagues if they have concerns about what is happening in their constituency, but I absolutely stand by what I said. There will remain an A and E at Ealing. That was the decision that I made because I wanted to give clarity, but I also said that the shape and size of that A and E may change in accordance with the announcement that is being made tomorrow by Sir Bruce Keogh. I hope that will give the hon. Gentleman further clarity and further certainty to reassure his constituents.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has already acknowledged that keeping people in their own home is one important way to relieve the pressure on A and E. I do not understand why, if he wants to make a real difference, he will not reinvest the NHS underspend to make up for the cuts in local government and put it into social care.

[Mr Hunt]

We have put in an additional £2 billion—that makes a total of £3.8 billion being invested to support the social care budget. That is significant because it is recurring expenditure. We have shown our commitment by continuing to support the social care system through this Parliament. The trouble with underspends is that they depend on how many resources we have in any particular year. It is therefore much harder to invest off the back of them.

Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will make some progress and then give way. I want to ask why the Opposition have chosen to call this debate. I am afraid it is nothing less than a smokescreen, because their objective is to try to dress up the pressures on A and E as a short-term crisis when, as every A and E department in the country will tell us, to deal with the pressures we need to address long-term structural problems that the previous Government either ignored or made worse.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

May we talk about one of the pressures on A and E, which is the pressure of social care? I hope that the Secretary of State will accept that significant cuts have been made in social care under this Government and that the role of social care is crucial in keeping people in their homes in the first place and in returning them to their homes after they have been in hospital. As a result of those cuts, it is very difficult for social care to perform that role. Will he examine the suggestion by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) to use the underspend from the Department of Health to support social care to perform its essential role?

[Mr Hunt]

I will come to that suggestion, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If we are going to deal with bed blocking, which is one of the root causes of the problems that many A and E departments talk about, we have to have better integration between the health and social care systems—that is essential. I say to him that the problem of the underfunding of social care did not start in 2010; as my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) said, it is a problem that goes back many years, and the failure to integrate health and social care was a failure that happened over 13 long Labour years.

A and E Departments

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I completely agree with that. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) for piloting those important reforms through the health service. I just hope that the Labour party, which claimed to support practice-based, clinically led commissioning, will see the error of its ways and understand that proper clinical commissioning holds the key to solving many of these problems.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

One of the concerns raised with me is about the lack of commissioning of community services to help patients to be discharged from hospital, which has a knock-on effect on A and E and queuing ambulances. Is not the reality that, as health professionals tell me, the lack of community services, which is what causes the problem in A and E, is a direct result of this Government’s reorganisation?

[Mr Hunt]

Quite the opposite: the changes introduced by my predecessor make it possible to have truly joint commissioning between clinical commissioning groups and local authorities, which are responsible for social care. I hope that will deal precisely with the problems the hon. Gentleman talks about. That is what we have to encourage and facilitate in every way we can.

Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

That is absolutely right, and that is why we are trying to draw a line under what happened under previous Governments of all colours, and trying to sort this problem out. I think it is time that Labour Members took a responsible attitude, because this is an opportunity to do something about this problem and we are trying to do so honestly and conscientiously.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The more that Government Back Benchers claim that the Secretary of State is a man of integrity, the less the public are likely to believe them. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) asked whose suggestion it was that a special adviser—

[Bill Esterson]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. To answer the question, we need to know whose suggestion it was that Adam Smith should be the point of contact for News Corporation and why the key contact was a special adviser, not a civil servant.

[Mr Hunt]

We will look into all the processes—[Interruption.] We are very happy to learn lessons about the way this was structured. The hon. Gentleman can pick on one element of what happened, but he should not ignore the big picture. The big picture was that we put a huge lock in the process to make sure that my decisions were impartial and seen to be impartial, and that was the involvement of independent regulators—something that we did not have to do, but that we chose to do. That, in the end, is what demonstrates that my decisions were taken on the basis of objective evidence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effects on the arts of reductions in public expenditure.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Cuts are a challenge for all arts organisations and we have tried to mitigate the situation with four-year budget settlements and an increase in lottery funding of 43%, with the result that we have been able to preserve free admission to museums.

[Bill Esterson]

I could thank the Minister for that very complacent answer, but the arts have faced huge cuts of 29% and the Government say that the cuts will be replaced by “philanthropic giving” although the level of donations always falls in a downturn. How much of the 29% cut in the arts has been replaced by philanthropic giving?

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[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

T6. May I again press the Secretary of State on phone hacking in News International? Will he guarantee full co-operation between his Department and Lord Leveson’s inquiry?

[Mr Hunt]

Not only will I guarantee it, but we commissioned the inquiry, so it is very much in our interests to give it every help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bill Esterson and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns about the issue in question. He will agree with me that in a free country, it is important that the Government should not dictate to our national broadcaster what it says or broadcasts. However, he is right to say that we need to look at governance of the BBC. There is cross-party agreement that the BBC Trust set up by the previous Government has not worked in the way that was intended, and as we come up to the renewal of the BBC charter, we will be looking closely at ways to improve the democratic accountability of the BBC.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

T4. Can I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to Chesterfield high school in my constituency, a specialist sports college which has been told that it has lost its £180,000 grant, and that the money will not go into its main grant? It was something that the Secretary of State for Education did not deny last week when I put a similar point to him about the situation throughout the country. Does the Culture Secretary agree that a cut in specialist sports grants will lead to a reduction in the number of young people taking part in sport?

[Mr Hunt]

First, although I do not know exactly what happens in Chesterfield, I have no reason to believe that the work done by school sport partnerships is not excellent there as well. School sport partnerships can continue; however, the philosophy of this Government is to devolve responsibility for budgets to heads, because we think that they are best placed to know how their money should be spent. In Chesterfield, as, I am sure, in large parts of the country, I have every confidence that heads will decide to continue to support their school sports partnerships.