Leaving the EU: NHS Funding

Debate between Chuka Umunna and Lilian Greenwood

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. As he said, it was significant that the Treasury Committee came to its conclusion, since it is a cross-party Committee whose members include leavers and remainers.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said, we know that the NHS needs extra cash. The Minister also knows this. As members of the Health Committee pointed out last month, the deficit in NHS trusts and foundation trusts in 2015-16 was more than £3.5 billion.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful argument for extra NHS funding, but does he share my concern that our NHS could actually be worse off as a result of the decision to leave the EU, given that the reduction in our exchange rate will make it more expensive to purchase products from abroad? Does he also share my concern that, when I asked the Secretary of State for Health how much and what proportion of the total NHS budget was spent on imports, the Department was unaware and therefore unable to give me that information?

[Mr Umunna]

It is outrageous that Ministers were unable to give my hon. Friend those figures. Ministers themselves exacerbated the knock-on impact on the economy of the depreciation of the pound. It depreciated in value by 6% before October, and then by a further 15% because of uncertainty around our trading arrangements that was triggered by comments made by the International Trade Secretary that differed from those of the Chancellor to the Treasury Committee and in other forums. The knock-on effect is not, however, just on household budgets. As the cost of things increases, of course the NHS will take a big hit. Public services in general will be affected if growth reduces and Exchequer receipts fall.

Ministers’ claimed increases in NHS funding, which the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), might mention, are actually being funded by reductions in other areas of health spending that fall outside NHS England’s budget. Reductions in spending on social care are having a serious impact on the NHS, and that is translating into increased accident and emergency attendances, emergency admissions and delays to people leaving hospital. I have talked about what Select Committees, Ministers and Members of Parliament are saying, but we have also heard from third parties. The King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation are clear that current Government spending plans through to 2019-20 will not be enough to maintain standards of care, to meet rising demand from patients and to deliver the transformation in services outlined in the NHS five year forward view.

I and more than 40 Members from different parties, including all my hon. Friends in the Chamber for the debate, have written to the Chancellor asking that when he presents his first autumn statement on 23 November, he sets out how he will put the Government on a path to increasing national NHS spending by that promised £350 million extra a week once we have left the EU. To be clear, that additional funding must be over and above the amount currently planned to be spent on the NHS. The British Medical Association has made the same demand.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Umunna]

I shall come on to him shortly.

A further thing that is said—again, I think this has been touched on—is that not all the people who made these pledges were members of the then Conservative Government. Perhaps that could be said of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). Well, of the five current members of the Cabinet whom I mentioned, three were members of the then Government and one—the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip—attended the political Cabinet at the time. Yes, the Secretary of State for International Trade was sitting on the Back Benches, but countless other Ministers from outside the Cabinet at the time who are now serving more than make up for that—for instance, the hon. Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and for Stockton South (James Wharton). I could go on. Those are just a few of the people who posed by those posters and next to that big red bus, and they must be held to account.

Finally, it is said—this is the crux of the argument advanced by the right hon. Member for Broxtowe—that the commitment was given by one side in a referendum campaign, not by a Government. I am sorry but that simply will not wash. Many of those people were put up to appear in the media and to campaign on Vote Leave’s behalf precisely because they carried the authority that attaches to Government Ministers. That was why they were used. That was why they were asked to stand by that red bus, and to stand by those posters.

All those key Vote Leave campaigners, whether they were Ministers or not, were Members of this House. If our democracy is to mean anything, it must mean that Members are answerable to the electorate for their policies, and held to account in the House for the things that they say. People cannot go around the country casually promising the world and betraying people by failing to deliver, but then expect to get away with it. We will not forget; we will not let up. It was in the name of parliamentary sovereignty that those Ministers campaigned, and it is time that the House, on behalf of the people whom we are elected to represent, took back control, if we want to use that phrase, and made those Ministers answer.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. He is being very generous with his time.

Is this not dangerous and damaging not only to parliamentary democracy, but to the morale of workers in our national health service? I was told by the chair and chief executive of my local NHS trust, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, that they are frequently stopped by members of staff who ask, “When are we going to get the extra money?” Those people will surely be not just incredibly disappointed but doubly disappointed, given the difficulties that they are facing because the trust has a huge deficit and is struggling to provide the services that they know that patients require.

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am very grateful for all the interventions that Members have made today.

Either those Ministers made this pledge to the people in the expectation of delivering on it, in which case they must now show us the money, or they made it in the sure knowledge that their promise would never be fulfilled, in which case they will never be forgiven for their betrayal of those who, in good faith, relied on them. Perhaps the Minister can tell us which it will be.

Cost of Public Transport

Debate between Chuka Umunna and Lilian Greenwood

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that the rising cost of public transport is adding to the financial pressures facing many households; notes that over 2,400 local authority-supported bus routes have been cut or downgraded since 2010; regrets that bus fares have risen by 26 per cent on average and regulated rail fares have risen by up to 38 per cent since 2010; further regrets delays to rail infrastructure projects including the electrification of the Great Western Main Line, the North TransPennine route and the Midland Main Line; notes with regret the decision by the Scottish Government to award the ScotRail franchise to a private operator, rather than exploring alternative options; calls on the Government to bring forward a buses bill as announced in the Queen’s Speech to enable the regulation of local bus networks; and further calls on the Government to rule out the privatisation of Network Rail and instead extend to franchised services the model of rail public ownership that delivered record passenger satisfaction scores on the East Coast Main Line.

I start by wishing the Secretary of State a happy new year, although that will not have been the sentiment that came to most commuters’ minds when they returned to work a fortnight ago. I am afraid it will have been cold comfort to be told by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), on the day that fares rose again, that the Government’s plan for passengers was to improve journeys for everyone. The chief executive of Transport Focus gave a more accurate assessment:

“In some parts of the country, given rail performance has been so dire, passengers will be amazed there are any fare rises at all.”

Hon. Members who attended the Southern Railway summit in this place yesterday, and most travellers, would not be able to reconcile the Minister’s statement with their own experience of increasingly overcrowded and unreliable carriages.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Members on both sides of the House are fed up with excuse after excuse and broken promise after broken promise from Southern rail, and that what we now want to see is action taken against this operator?

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I know that he and my other hon. Friends are holding Southern rail to account for its poor punctuality and poor passenger satisfaction. That underlines the need for reform of the railways.

Let us look at the facts. In 2010, the Conservative party said that it would

“relieve the pressure off both the fare-payer and the taxpayer”.

But what happened? Regulated fares rose by 25%. As a consequence, commuters from Birmingham to London are paying more than £10,000 for a season ticket for the first time. Worse still, Ministers bowed to lobbying from the train operating companies and restored “flex”—their right to vary prices by up to 5%, meaning that some season tickets have gone up by 38% since 2010, and a new Northern evening peak restriction hiked prices by up to an eye-watering 162%.