National Insurance Contributions Bill

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

That was the shadow Chancellor’s position then, but I believe that a few days earlier he had said that there was

“no logic, sense or rationality”

to the policy. If he has changed his position, Government Members would welcome that. The Prime Minister—my “big boss”, as the shadow Health Secretary has described him—has said that we are

“confident that we will fulfil our goal of real-terms increases every year in the NHS.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 902.]

That will occur, regardless of whether any amendment such as that proposed by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne is included in the Bill; this is a matter of spending and this mechanism is not terribly helpful. Given those comments, I hope that he will withdraw the amendment, although I am not optimistic.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should like to say how pleased I am that my right hon. Friend the shadow Health Secretary has been able to extend the offer of support to the Government with this amendment. He seeks to be as helpful as an Opposition can be and to encourage the Government to live up to their coalition agreement promise to ensure real-terms growth for our national health service.

As many of my hon. Friends have said, the NHS is absolutely at the top of our constituents’ concerns and it is important that we ensure that we deliver a real-terms increase, particularly given the relatively high level of NHS inflation compared with mainstream inflation. I am sorry that, despite the hand of friendship being offered, the Minister felt that amendment 8 was “a pointless exercise” and “unnecessary”. I thought that rather cruel. We think that the National Audit Office probably would be more than happy to undertake a study to find out how much money the Chancellor would need to add to the sum already committed in order to fulfil the Prime Minister’s promise. Interestingly, the Minister said that he was confident that the Government “will” meet their commitment; he did not say that they “have” met it. Perhaps I am reading between the lines in a way that I should not, but it was almost as though the Minister was conceding, to a degree, that the sums allocated in the spending review do not fulfil that real-terms growth.

I am sorry that the Minister did not address the two key points, and I would be more than happy to give way to him if he would care to address them. The first relates to the social care switch, whereby accounting and statistical opportunities have suddenly been taken to move a sum that had been and still is to be delivered by local authorities under the budget heading of the NHS—of course, social care will continue to be delivered by local authorities. Perhaps the Minister would like to confirm that that is the case. Therefore, to classify this money as part of the NHS growth is disingenuous in almost anybody’s book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend mentioned inflation costs, over which the health service currently has no control, because they relate to things such as energy, fuel and food. All those costs are externally generated, because we import a lot of those things, and so we have no real control over the costs. Therefore, the health service has to be compensated properly for the extra costs.

[Chris Leslie]

Absolutely. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), for Walthamstow (Dr Creasy) and for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) have all mentioned that these costs are increasing. As we know, the drugs budgets and so forth are increasing, so this issue will be right at the centre of the national political debate. We know that this Government have a habit of casually casting aside the commitments that they made in the coalition agreement. We really do not want them to rack up yet another broken promise, but it is starting to look as though the Treasury is in that particular space. This situation is not good for our constituents, we want the national health service to grow successfully and we thought that this amendment would offer the olive branch of friendship across the Chamber so that the NAO could, once and for all, clarify whether the Government are living up to their promise. The Minister’s description of our attempt as “a pointless exercise” is hurtful and, for that reason, we probably have to divide the House to ensure that we can at least test this issue and try to keep the Government to their commitments.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The House divided: Ayes 90, Noes 262.