Oral Answers to Questions

David T C Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I welcome the study that has been undertaken in my hon. Friend’s area. The brilliant “time to change” campaign has done an awful lot to tackle stigma in mental health. We confirmed recently that the funding for that will continue in 2015-16. I accept that we need to do much more to improve access to children’s mental health services.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

14. How many patients resident in England have written to him to request that they be treated in Wales.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Given the perilous state of the NHS in Labour-run Wales, my hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that not a single English patient has written to me asking for funding to be treated in Wales.

[David T. C. Davies]

My hon. Friend is correct. That will come as no surprise to anyone who has had dealings with the NHS in Wales. In the light of that, will he assure us that he will do everything possible to push ahead with the OECD comparison report into the health systems in Wales and England, on which the Welsh Assembly Government are disgracefully trying to obfuscate and cause delay because they are afraid of what might be discovered?

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that that says it all. Opposition Front Benchers tell us continually that they are not prepared to condemn what is happening in Wales and that the health service in Wales is performing well, yet here is an opportunity to prove it—an independent study by the OECD of the four NHS systems in the UK—and Labour is trying to block it. This issue matters, because the policies in Wales are what Labour wants to do in England.