NHS Commissioning Board (Mandate)

David Burrowes Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

As the hon. Lady knows, we manage our finances extremely carefully but we do have underspends. We try to minimise them and there has been a real-terms growth in spending—actual money spent in the NHS, compared with Labour’s plans. In the first year of the review there was a real-terms increase and we will continue to manage NHS finances with a commitment to protecting the budget, which did not ever happen when the right hon. Member for Leigh was in post.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s priority to reduce the disparity in health outcomes, not just across the country but across local areas. Will he reassure me that the mandate, delivered in partnership with local health and wellbeing boards and local GPs, will end the scandal—Labour’s legacy—that from the west of the borough of Enfield to the east, the age mortality rates decrease by more than 10 years?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is right. That is why, at the heart of the mandate, is an information revolution so that the public can understand exactly how well different parts of the system work, and so that we create the right pressures on the system to improve where performance is poor. I agree that the central, top-down structures that we had before did not allow that to happen. If we had cut the budget, as the Opposition wanted, it would have been even more difficult now.