Edward Miliband
Main Page: Edward Miliband (Labour - Doncaster North)Department Debates - View all Edward Miliband's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(10 years, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
First, let me say that I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned long and hard on issues of direct democracy and has considerable expertise in such matters. I think that the right approach, and the one we put forward before, is to say yes, of course there should be a constituency mechanism, but before that, there ought to be an act of censure by a Committee of this House for wrongdoing. I think that is the right approach. I know we will not necessarily agree on this, but we will make our proposals.
On the subject of recall, I hope the Leader of the Opposition will recall his attack on child benefit when he gets to his feet.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
Two years ago, during the Prime Minister’s listening exercise on the health service, he said:
“I refuse to go back to the days when people had to wait for hours on end to be seen in A and E…so let me be absolutely clear—we won’t.”
What has gone wrong?
The Prime Minister
Not a word about what the right hon. Gentleman said two years ago, the very first time he stood at that Dispatch Box, totally condemning and attacking in the strongest possible terms what now turns out to be Labour policy. What complete confusion and weakness from the Leader of the Opposition.
The right hon. Gentleman asks about accident and emergency and I will deal with the question very directly. The fact that people need to know is that we are now meeting our targets for accident and emergency. There was a problem in the first quarter of this year, which is why Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS, is to hold an investigation, but the crucial fact is this: 1 million more people are walking into our accident and emergency units every year than were doing so three years ago. We must work hard to get waiting times down and keep them down, but we will not do it by following Labour’s policy of cutting the NHS.
Edward Miliband
What a complacent answer from an out-of-touch Prime Minister. The independent King’s Fund says that the number of people waiting more than four hours in A and E is higher than at any time for nine years. Can he explain to the country why A and E waiting times fell under Labour and have gone up on his watch?
The Prime Minister
The fact is we are now meeting our targets on A and E, but the right hon. Gentleman has to answer this question. In England, where this Government are responsible, we are meeting our waiting times; in Wales, where Labour is responsible, it is not meeting its waiting times. Perhaps he can tell us, when he gets to his feet, the last year in which the Welsh met their waiting times under a Labour Government.
Edward Miliband
The Prime Minister may have had six weeks away, but he has got no better at answering the question. He has got to do better than this on the A and E crisis. The College of Emergency Medicine says there is “gridlock” in emergency departments, the Patients Association says that we are “reaching crisis point”, and we have a Prime Minister who says, “Crisis? What crisis?” It is not good enough. As well as the nine-year high, the number of people held in the back of ambulances has doubled since he took office. The number of people waiting on trolleys for more than four hours has doubled, and there are now more cancelled operations than for a decade. Does not the scale of those problems show that, on his watch, there is a crisis in A and E?
The Prime Minister
The answer to the question is that the last time Labour met its targets in Wales on accident and emergency was 2009. It has not met a target for four years, under Labour. Under this Government, we are meeting targets. The right hon. Gentleman asks what is happening in our national health service; let me tell him what is happening in our national health service. Under this Government, in-patient waiting times are lower than at the election, out-patient waiting times are lower than at the election, and the rate of hospital-acquired infections is at a record low. On the number of mixed-sex wards, they have almost been abolished under this Government. There are 400,000 more operations being carried out every year and, crucially, there are 5,700 more doctors. Let me tell him what would happen if we followed Labour’s spending plans on the NHS—there are new figures out today. There would be 43,000 fewer nurses and 11,000 fewer doctors. We decided, because we value the NHS, to spend more. That man there, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), said it was “irresponsible”; he is wrong.
Edward Miliband
There are people all round this country waiting for hours and hours in A and E, and all they see is a complacent, out-of-touch Prime Minister reading out a list of statistics not about A and E. People want to know about the crisis in A and E happening on his watch. Now let us talk about the causes of this. In the Government’s first two years in office, more than a quarter of NHS walk-in centres were closed. If you close NHS walk-in centres, you pile pressure on A and E departments. That is obvious to everyone else; why is it not obvious to him?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about the causes of the problems in A and E; I accept that in the first quarter of the year, there were problems, and we need to get to grips with them. One of the problems is the GPs’ contract that was signed by the last Labour Government. They signed a contract that basically let GPs get out of out-of-hours. If he wants evidence of that, perhaps he will listen to the Labour Minister for the NHS at the time. Fortunately, he lost his seat in North Warwickshire to a Conservative, but this is what he says:
“In many ways, GPs got the best deal they ever had from that 2004 contract and since then we have, in a sense, been recovering.”
That is what happened. There are a million more people coming through our doors. There has been an excellent performance by doctors and nurses, but they were let down by the last Labour Government.
Edward Miliband
The Prime Minister has been peddling this line about the GP contract for some months now, but let us just understand this. What happened to A and E waits between 2004 and 2010? They fell dramatically. That was after the GP contract. Clare Gerada, the president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, is absolutely clear. She said:
“I think it’s lazy to blame the 2004 GP contract. They’re blaming a contract that’s nearly 10 years old for an issue that’s become a problem recently.”
That is the reality about the GP contract.
Now let us turn to a problem that even the Prime Minister cannot deny. The chief executive of the NHS Confederation recently said that these A and E
“pressures have been compounded by three years of…structural reforms”.
In other words, the top-down reorganisation that nobody wanted and nobody voted for. Why does the Prime Minister not admit what everyone in the health service knows—that that top-down reorganisation diverted resources away from patient care and betrayed the NHS?
The Prime Minister
What the right hon. Gentleman has to realise is that I am not peddling a line about the GP contract—I am quoting the Labour Minister responsible for this, who pointed out that this was part of the problem. If people want to know what went wrong with the NHS under Labour they have only to look at the Mid Staffordshire hospital. If they want to know what is going wrong with the NHS under Labour now they need only look at Wales, where they have not met any of their targets, and where they cut the NHS by 8%. That is the effect of Labour in Wales.
The right hon. Gentleman talks about reorganisation. The fact is, we have been scrapping bureaucracy and putting that money into the front line. That is why there are 18,000 fewer administrative staff, but there are almost 6,000 more doctors. That is what the Government have a record on—he would cut the NHS.
Edward Miliband
Everyone will see a Prime Minister who cannot defend what is happening on his watch—that is the reality. Patients waiting on trolleys; operations cancelled; a crisis in A and E; history repeating itself. Our NHS is not safe in their hands.
The Prime Minister
It is under this Government that the number of doctors has gone up; the number of operations is up; waiting times are down; waiting lists are down—that is what is happening under this Government. Is it not interesting that in the week that was meant to be all about Labour’s economic relaunch they cannot talk about their economic policy? They told us that they wanted to keep winter fuel payments; now they want to scrap winter fuel payments. They told us that they wanted to keep child benefit; now they want to scrap child benefit. They told us that they were going to be men of iron discipline, yet they said:
“Do I think the last Labour government was profligate, spent too much, had too much national debt? No, I don’t think there’s any evidence for that.”
On the economy, they are weak and divided, and they are the same old Labour.