Mental Health and NHS Performance

Caroline Flint Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

They have a very important role. Some of the most successful and best-performing trusts, such as Luton and Dunstable, have a very good streaming process at the A&E front door, with good alternatives when it is not appropriate for people to go to an A&E department. We need to learn from that. Nurse-led units can be very important. GP-led units can make a big difference, too. It will not be the same everywhere, for reasons of space if nothing else, but there is a solution that everywhere can adopt.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

In the past few weeks, we have seen pressures in the NHS that, to a certain extent, the Secretary of State has acknowledged. Given that we are not yet in the midst of a very desperate cold spell, and given that we are not in the throes of a flu epidemic, how can he come here today and complacently suggest he has a grip on our NHS services? Why was he not on top of those trusts he knew were weak? He knew they would be under threat if there was any pressure. What is he going to do when we hit a cold snap and people are suffering from flu in large numbers?

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that I reject that suggestion. The right hon. Lady wants to know what we have been doing over the course of the year. As I said in the statement, we have 1,600 more doctors than we had just a year ago, over 3,000 more nurses, the biggest flu vaccination programme in our history and 12,000 additional GP sessions booked over the festive period. A huge amount of work has been done, with a particular focus on distressed areas. Many of those distressed areas coped extremely well—not all of them, which is why there is more work to do.