Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Argar and Clive Efford

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I apologise to my hon. Friend for not being able to attend that meeting as I was caught in another meeting. My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has related that meeting to me, however, and I know that he and we reflect carefully on the points made in it.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

6. For what reason he triggered Operation Safeguard in November 2022.

Elective Care Recovery in England

Debate between Edward Argar and Clive Efford

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is a champion in this House for Scunthorpe General Hospital, and since her election she has never ceased to lobby, politely but firmly, on its behalf. I am delighted to agree to meet her.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

If we are going to deal with this backlog, we need to deal with vacancies in the NHS. That means we do not have time to wait for doctors and nurses to be trained; we need qualified staff now. Can the Minister say where he is going to get those staff? Is he looking abroad? Where is he going to find them?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible and serious point. As I said earlier, it is about the workforce. Buildings and technology are fantastic, but it is the people who operate them who really make the difference. I can offer him the reassurance that we are already well on target to meeting our 50,000 nurses pledge from the 2019 manifesto. In October 2021 there were thousands more doctors and thousands more nurses in our NHS compared with October 2020. We continue to grow that workforce from a whole range of sources, including the additional medical school places that this Government delivered a few years ago.

Covid-19: Purchasing Effort

Debate between Edward Argar and Clive Efford

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and join him in paying tribute to the work of his local healthcare system during the pandemic. He makes a couple of points. First, he is absolutely right to highlight that this was ramped up at pace. Initially, the NHS supplied PPE directly to about 250 hospital trusts and other trusts. In the early months of the pandemic, that was ramped up to supplying it to well over 50,000 different settings. That is a phenomenal ramping up of logistics and distribution capabilities. To his second point, he is absolutely right that, from about 1% of PPE being manufactured in the UK before the pandemic, we now have the capacity to manufacture about 70% of the PPE it is currently assessed we need in this country. That is a great British success story.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

What is absolutely clear from Exercise Cygnus is that the specific recommendations on PPE were not implemented by the Government. That led to the massive rush to purchase PPE during the pandemic. That added to the problem; it was not the only reason for it. The Government’s defence on the scandals of the contracts seems to be that we had to act very quickly. If that is the case, it does not explain why a disproportionate number of the contracts ended up in the hands of people who were members of the Conservative party, close associates of members of the Conservative party, or had given money to the Conservative party. If you were casting your net far and wide, you would not expect that to come to light, would you? You would expect there to be quite a wide number of contracts being issued. So the Government’s excuse does not hold water, does it?

[Edward Argar]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about speed and the context in which we were operating. I have to say all contracts were assessed through an eight-stage process undertaken by neutral civil servants. As the National Audit Office found, Ministers were not involved in the award of contracts.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Edward Argar and Clive Efford

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who knows of what he speaks in terms of the operation of healthcare services. We would not wish to exclude GPs or groups of GPs from being able to participate in decision making. That expertise, as we have seen with clinical commissioning groups, can be hugely valuable. What we have sought to do, in an amendment that is technically worded, for want of a better way of putting it, is to strike the right balance while also ensuring that the additional measures on the constitutions of the ICBs and ICPs have to be approved by NHS England to avoid any obvious conflict of interest. But we are not seeking to avoid GPs being able to operate in that space and sitting on ICBs.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I would like to make a little progress and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has been bobbing for some time.

We believe—this may not answer the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I will make a little progress and then if there is time—[Interruption.] Well, we will see. Hope springs eternal. A blanket ban on employees of private companies would also, we fear, be arbitrary. It would not cover the full range of people involved in non-NHS providers, some of whom may not be suitable candidates to sit on ICBs because of their involvement, but not employment, within the private healthcare sector. With the complex corporate structures that providers may have established, a narrow definition in the Bill could be unhelpful and risk not capturing the people we wish to capture.

[Edward Argar]

My right hon. Friend makes a point that came out in some of the oral evidence sessions on the Bill. Our aim was to create a minimum membership for the ICBs and ICPs, but it is not prescriptive—it can go beyond that—so there is scope for mental health trusts or other health trusts to have seats on those boards. Indeed, Dame Gill Morgan, who runs the integrated care system in Gloucestershire, said that that is exactly what she has done and that she would be surprised if any ICB did not wish to do it. But we wanted to set a de minimis membership to allow for local flexibility.

[Clive Efford]

We have GP practices that are being privatised now—they are being bought up by private companies, with some foreign interests as well. If the Minister is saying that those companies can have representation on ICBs, we have already seen circumstances where people have tried to redact minutes of meetings, so does this not open up the possibility of private interests being served at these meetings but not being accountable through public scrutiny?

Social Distancing: 2 Metre Rule

Debate between Edward Argar and Clive Efford

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am happy to give my hon. Friend the assurance she seeks. We are very much aware that time matters, and this review is being conducted as swiftly and as rigorously as it can be.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Before it is safe to reduce the 2 metre rule, do we not require a world-beating track and trace system to be in place? And does a world-beating track and trace system not require a fully functioning app?

[Edward Argar]

As I have set out, I believe we have made an extremely strong and successful start with our track and trace system. Baroness Harding, who is heading up that piece of work, has made it clear that the app is important but that it is, as she characterised it, the cherry on the cake. It is not essential to the effective system that we have already got up and running.