Urgent and Emergency Care Review

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Wales has not met its A and E target since 2009 because the Welsh Government followed the advice of the shadow Health Secretary and cut the NHS budget by 8%.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

This Government have been in power for three and a half years. They could have chosen to remedy some of the continuing problems in the health service, but what did they do? They decided to reorganise it from top to bottom. Is there any wonder there is a crisis this winter? Instead of closing A and Es and walk-in centres, why does the Secretary of State not walk away? It would give him more time to count his money.

[Mr Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that thanks to the reorganisation that he is so bitterly against, we have 5,500 more doctors on the front line and 8,000 fewer managers. We would not be managing to hit our A and E target today if we had not taken the difficult decisions that the Leader of the House took when he was doing my job.

Immigrants (NHS Treatment)

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

No one will be refused treatment in a life or death situation. It is important that we state that up front. However, we also want to remove any expectation that people who are not entitled to NHS care are able to come to the UK and get it, and to ask whether we should be giving free NHS care to people such as foreign students who come to the UK and get it. If they went to Australia or America—our two main competitor countries—they would have to take out health insurance or pay a levy to access the local health care system. If those countries do that, I think we should do the same.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is the Health Secretary aware that when I was in a London hospital some years ago I counted more than 40 staff from different nations? I am proud of my United Nations heart bypass. The message from this Government and many others, including the UK Independence party, is that those of a similar colour, of different colours and of different nationalities can change the bed sheets and operate, but woe betide them if they want to put their head on a pillow when they are ill. What hypocrisy.

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman should do a lot better than that. He should think of his elderly constituents—people with multiple long-term conditions—who are having to wait much longer than they need to because A and Es not just in London, but in many parts of the country, are clogged up with people who may not be entitled to free NHS care because we have a system that culturally and operationally is not able to track these measures. It is in their interests that we must ensure that the NHS is available to people who are entitled to free care. When people are not entitled to free care, the point is not that the NHS is not available to them, but that they should pay for it.

East Midlands Ambulance Service

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that a lot of people in the east midlands, including many of the Members who have spoken here tonight, are dealing with pretty much the same kinds of characteristics in the old mining areas and rural areas? In my area of Bolsover and mid-Derbyshire, it seemed as though the 17 control centres were going to be reduced to two. I get the impression that the Minister is saying that most of the 27 would be likely to remain. It is hard for me to say this, but do we have a cross-party agreement to save those in mid-Derbyshire that cover Bolsover as well?

[Anna Soubry]

I have to say that, for the first time, I am almost speechless. It is not for me to say what is my preferred option. That decision has to be made at a local level. As the hon. Gentleman might imagine, however, I may have a point of view on the preferred option, and I am entitled to make my view known to EMAS, as indeed I will. I take the hon. Gentleman’s important point about the former coal-mining communities —they are similar to my own, although mine is not on the same scale as Bolsover. I make the point again, however, to be fair to EMAS, that the reason it has gone through this process—which has been painful for many people—is precisely because it wants to improve its service. It recognises that rural areas do not receive the kind of service that urban areas do.

NHS Commissioning Board (Mandate)

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

There are parts of the country where acupuncture is available on the NHS. This will be clinically led. It needs to be driven by the science, but where there is evidence, and where local doctors think that it would be the best clinical outcome for their patients, that is what they are able to do.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

As a customer of the national health service, I was lucky enough to have cancer treatment and a heart bypass in those days—halcyon days, almost, by comparison—when 80,000 nurses and 20,000 doctors were recruited, and the money increased from £33 billion to well over £100 billion. Does the Secretary of State know that the optimistic outlook that existed in those days has now been replaced by a climate of fear? That is what I find at the sharp end in hospitals when I go to see the same people I met at the end of the last century. What I say to you is that the figures might sound grand and all the rest of it, but when you start sacking 60,000 people in the national health service, set against a background of elderly people living longer—people like me who need the treatment—the net result will be a catastrophe and not those halcyon days of yesteryear.

[Mr Hunt]

Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that we have 17,000 fewer managers than when his party was in power. We also have 3,500 more doctors and there are more clinical staff in the NHS today than when his party left office, so I think the record speaks for itself. There is not a climate of fear—I reject that. There is an understanding that the NHS is under a lot of pressure, with an ageing population and more people using and needing its services every year. That is why today’s package is so important to support the NHS in delivering what the public need.

Health and Social Care Bill

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend knows perfectly well that we are a coalition Government and, therefore, this is a coalition Bill that reflects the views of the whole coalition. To that extent, I reiterate to her and to the House that, as the Deputy Prime Minister has quite rightly said, the legislation will not allow discrimination in favour of the private sector in the way that the Labour party did.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

All those royal colleges, all those nurses and all those doctors know that this Bill is about privatisation. Along come these tin-pot Liberals, who put forward an idea to make a few marginal shifts. It is the biggest con trick of all time. This is about trying to save the face of those people, who should have opposed the Bill from the very beginning. Drop this lousy Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the invitation that he extended to me to visit Winchester, which is now forming part of the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and looking to do so very successfully. I share with him the optimism derived from a meeting with the members of the West Hampshire clinical commissioning group. They, like others across the country, are demonstrating how they will use the responsibilities that they will be given to improve care for patients.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

As the House will know, I have been a regular customer of the NHS over the last 12 years, and it hurts me to think of what is happening, after all the wonderful treatment that I had for cancer, as well as a bypass and a hip replacement. I am still here to tell the story because of the treatment by those nurses and doctors. Please stop this savage attack on the NHS, and drop this dreadful Bill.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman clearly has no idea of what is actually in the Bill or the modernisation process. It is only about simple things. It is about giving patients information and choice. It is about empowering doctors and nurses and health professionals, and it is about strengthening the ability of the NHS to improve care in the future. That is all that it is about, and it cuts the cost of bureaucracy in so doing. It will enable us and the NHS to do the things that his Government supported in the past—he might not have supported them, but his friends did—including commissioning by clinicians, patient choice and using the best qualified provider. Those are the things that his Government used to believe in, and they are the things that we are doing. There is no privatisation, no charging and no break-up of the NHS. There is only supporting the NHS.

Life Sciences

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The figures from the evaluation of the 6,000 or so patients who have participated in the three pilots in Cornwall, Kent and Newham suggest that if telehealth is appropriately and properly provided, there are benefits. There was a total reduction of 45% in mortality, about 21% in accident and emergency visits, about 15% in planned admissions and bed stays in hospital and about 8% in costs. Those are dramatic benefits, but the most important aspect is the empowerment that telehealth gives patients so that they can be at home and be confident about their care, rather than be prey to rapid crises leading to admission to hospital.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is this whole idea not being driven by the pharmaceutical industry in order to make money? In the real world, when I have been in hospital in these past 10 or 15 years for all sorts of different problems, all of us have relied on the care and attention of the doctors and nurses. There was an increase of about 30,000 doctors and 80,000 nurses, because we put a lot more money in. I did not meet anybody at all who ever said to me, “I’ve just been given some drugs to look after my heart, but I don’t like them and I want something else”. The whole thing is a money-making exercise by the pharmaceutical industry, which has friends in the Tory party. We are supposed to be short of money in this country and in the health service. What we really need is to stop sacking nurses, which will make it a lot better.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will have to talk to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who claimed to be the friend of the pharmaceutical industry. The truth is that we should all be friends of it and support it. Why? Because it has the capacity to bring in new medicines and new treatments that are to the benefit of patients. From my point of view, it is not about the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, it is about working with those who have the greatest potential to bring investment to this country for economic benefit and, more importantly, to improve benefits for patients. The hon. Gentleman, who has no doubt been the beneficiary of many therapeutic improvements generated by investment in the pharmaceutical industry, should not decry it.

[Mr Skinner]

Yes, but in a free health service, not a privatised health service, which it will be—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has made his point.

May I say gently to the Secretary of State that we are enjoying the full product of his lucubrations, but I think just a snapshot will do. We can get by with that. [Interruption.] The Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), can look it up in his dictionary later. That is fine.

Southern Cross Care Homes

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I hope that we can learn the necessary lessons about what regulation should exist at the national level and what powers are in place for regulators to intervene in these circumstances. The reality is that the regulatory powers that this Government inherited from the previous Government are next to non-existent. That is one reason why hon. Members have been able to drag Ministers to account, as has been said, before the House. What we have said as a result is that as we work to produce the White Paper, we will address these issues to make sure that we have a system in place.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Another day, another Tory disaster. We have frail, elderly men and women who do not even know what day it is, yet this Minister, because he is so obsessed with the private sector, fails to tell us that he is going to restore the cuts to local authorities that would enable them to handle the crisis.

[Paul Burstow]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He should just reflect on the fact that this company and this business model were established during the 13 years when his party was in office, and on the fact that his party did not put in place the necessary regulatory measures that would have allowed anything other than the very measured approach that this Government are taking— working with the lenders and the landlords to ensure a consensual restructuring of this business. That is what the residents of these homes want, and this is what we are doing to make it happen.

Reform of Social Care

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the statement I have made is the product of collective discussion, which of course fully involved the Treasury.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that it would be a big mistake to miss this opportunity for root-and-branch change of the present system? Would it not be handy if local authorities played a bigger role than the billionaires who run Southern Cross, Winterbourne and the rest? Would it not also be nice for him to acknowledge that when he blurted out about the death tax he got it all wrong?

[Mr Lansley]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about local government, he should remember that the overwhelming majority of the residents in Southern Cross care homes are funded by local authorities, and that is precisely why we are working with local authorities to ensure that those residents’ interests will be protected. I recognise the problems that we have seen with Southern Cross, although I do not know of any other companies in a similar position. None the less, it is one of the reasons why we seek the powers in the Health and Social Care Bill to regulate social care provision in the same way as health care provision.

Southern Cross Healthcare

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that important question, which points to the need for greater personalisation in the delivery of social care in the longer run. At the moment, in concert with our local authority colleagues, we must be clear about what happens in the event of failure, but also focus on ensuring that this business successfully ensures its future, and that of its employees and the residents who live in its homes.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

A lot of people know that running care homes has been a licence to print money. This is the second such case in a fortnight, the first being Winterbourne View. There are billionaires in the background making a ton of money. There is evidence that it is not just Southern Cross that is in this position. The goose might have stopped laying the golden eggs, so it is time to go back to what we had in the old days: local authorities being in charge and owning care homes. What is more, would it not be wonderful if everybody was able to go to care homes, like hospitals, free of charge?

[Paul Burstow]

It is important to put on record that something that the hon. Gentleman said is not, and never has been, the case. Social care in this country is not free. That is one of the big inequities of our current system and one of the big challenges that the Government are determined to address through the review that Andrew Dilnot is undertaking.

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about the good old days, I have to say that many people did not see those days as good, because the care was not personalised and individualised, and it was not always of good quality, either.