NHS Services (Access)

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

All the evidence from around the world tells us that more market-based health systems cost more than systems such as the NHS, and are more complex and fragmented. The clear conclusion I draw is that the market is not the answer to 21st-century health and care. The Government believe it is, which is why they must be defeated if we are to protect our national health service.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. If he is concerned about other providers in the health service, will he explain why the previous Labour Government were happy to pay private sector providers 11% more than NHS providers for providing NHS services?

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

We brought in other providers in a supporting role to add capacity to bring down NHS waiting lists to the lowest ever level. That is what the previous Government did. By contrast, this Government are doing something different. It is mandating tendering on GP commissioners, requiring people to compete, wasting money on running tenders and privatising the national health service, which is why they must be stopped.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

It is a pleasure to conclude this debate and to speak to the contributions of hon. Friends and hon. Members. It is a pity that when we have NHS debates, they sometimes become unnecessarily tribal and partisan. Some Labour Members often seek to talk down the local NHS rather than to stand up for their hard-working NHS staff who deliver high-quality services on the ground.

I want to talk about some of the successes this Government have delivered for our NHS and then I shall address some of the points raised in the debate. We know that even in these difficult economic times, this Government have protected our NHS budget with £12.7 billion more during this Parliament. That was something that the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) called “irresponsible”, but it is not irresponsible to make sure that we continue to support and protect the NHS front line. We have stripped out over £5 billion-worth of bureaucracy and reinvested that money into front-line patient care. That has been audited by the National Audit Office, but the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) did not choose to highlight that point in her remarks. It has been confirmed and we know it is true.

I make no apology for the fact that we as a Government have focused ruthlessly on having a more efficient health service that frees up as much money as possible for front-line patient care. We have reduced the number of administrative staff by around 20,000, increased front-line clinical staff by over 12,500 and set up a cancer drugs fund that has helped 55,000 people who would not have received cancer drugs to receive them. There has been an unrelenting focus on promoting a more joined-up approach to care, to help deliver more care in the community for people with long-term medical conditions, particularly the frail elderly.

Let me deal with some of the comments and contributions to the debate. I would like to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) that the hospital in his constituency is, of course, not going to close and that any local scaremongering by the Labour party is wrong and misplaced. I would also like to reassure the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who raised concerns about the north-east ambulance service, that the service has generally been performing well. In 2013-14, it met all its national targets. I urge the hon. Gentleman to write to me if he has any further concerns on behalf of local patients.

We heard strong contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who made important remarks about the services delivered at the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, and I look forward to accepting her invitation to visit that hospital once again in the near future, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) who made one of his regular pleas for more alternative medicine in the NHS. Importantly, he talked about the benefits of clinically driven commissioning. Under this Government, we have put doctors and nurses in charge of our NHS to make sure that services are delivered at local level. Patient services are run by doctors and nurses, not by bureaucrats, which has been a tremendous step forward. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) made a considered contribution about the previous Government’s record on encouraging private sector providers in the NHS—a point to which I shall return.

[Lilian Greenwood]

What does the Minister think about what happened to the clinical commissioning group in North Staffordshire, which decided not to allow people with mild to moderate hearing loss to have hearing aids, even though that was clearly not the view of the local health scrutiny committees or local patients? Is that not precisely putting in jeopardy preventive services, which would keep people in work and keep them active in the community rather than being isolated? It is stopping those people from participating.

[Dr Poulter]

If the hon. Lady has concerns about local commissioning decisions, she should take them up with local commissioners. Time forbids me from going into the rationing of services by the previous Labour Government. It is important that clinical services are now designed and delivered by front-line health care professionals, and if she is concerned about them, I am sure she will take that up with her local CCG.

The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) referred to a work force crisis in GP training. It is clear that under this Government 1,000 more GPs are now in training and working in the NHS than in 2010 when we came into government. If it is not accepted that that is good start, we have committed to training an extra 5,000 because we want more people working in general practice.

We have ensured that 1.3 million more people are being treated in A and E compared with the number in 2009-10. We have halved the time that people must wait to be assessed, and every day we are treating nearly 2,000 more people within the four-hour target compared with the number in 2010.

Competition was introduced into the NHS not by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 but by the previous Labour Government, of whom the right hon. Member for Leigh was a Minister. The Labour Government opened the door to private sector providers when they opened the first independent sector treatment centres in 2003. The Labour Government gave £250 million to private companies and independent sector treatment centres, regardless of whether they delivered that care. Labour was more concerned about giving money to the private centres than about ensuring that quality care was delivered. Labour paid independent private sector providers 11% more to provide the same care as NHS providers. That is Labour’s record on the private sector in the NHS—a record that shows that it is more committed to the private sector than any previous Conservative Government.

[Kevin Barron]

If that is the case, will the Minister—as a Back Bencher, he sat on the Health Committee—tell us why there were so many clauses in the Bill that introduced the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading into our national health service?

[Dr Poulter]

The right hon. Member will be aware that Labour’s legislation, which gave the private sector the opportunity to tender for contracts, saw 5% of NHS activity—I believe that figure is correct—provided by the private sector at the end of the last Labour Government. In the Health and Social Care Bill, we wanted to stop the unregulated approach. We wanted greater emphasis on integration of health care services. It was not just about the private sector provider fixing someone’s hip and forgetting what sort of care was available when their hip had been repaired and they had gone home. It was about ensuring greater emphasis not just on competition and what was best for patients, but on integrated and joined-up services to ensure that people were properly looked after when they left a treatment centre. We stopped the cherry-picking of services that happened under Labour, and we are proud of that.

We will take no lessons from the Labour party on NHS finances. Labour was the party that crippled the finances of so many NHS trusts with PFI deals, and it was the party that during its final year in government saw the number of managers rise six times as fast as the number of nurses.

I am proud of this Government’s record on the NHS and I am proud of our record on integration. There will be a clear choice at the general election next year: a Conservative-led Government who have delivered for patients, a Conservative-led Government who have delivered on cancer services and a cancer drugs fund, and a Conservative-led Government who will continue to ensure better care for people with long-term medical conditions. We have a proud record on the NHS and I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to oppose the motion.

Question put.