Privatisation of NHS Services

Debate between Graham P Jones and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 23rd April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for introducing the petition and the petitioners for instigating a very worthwhile debate.

I will speak briefly, because I know that many Members want to speak, about fragmentation, accountability, privatisation, and how the NHS in Lancashire is going backwards. We will hear from across the United Kingdom —or certainly England—about the fragmentation of the NHS. It is not providing the services that patients expect.

The Health and Social Care Act was introduced in 2012. It was a top-down reorganisation, although it was promised that it would not be, that cost £3 billion and has caused chaos in Lancashire. That was a promise made by David Cameron that he broke. It has fragmented the NHS: we have lost accountability, we have opened the door to privatisation and we have reintroduced the purchaser-provider competition, which has been mentioned. In the 1990s, that was implemented in social care—it failed, and there was a U-turn.

In Lancashire, we have the high-profile case of Virgin Care’s £104 million contract signed by the Conservative Lancashire County Council, which has been blocked by a High Court judge for reasons of “considerable cost and disruption.” We are seeing the fragmentation of our NHS through the desire to privatise and move towards the purchaser-provider model. There has also been the removal of the Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust from Calderstones. The trust has been involved in taking up contracts and being relieved of contracts. The Walton jail mental health service unit is in crisis. It is an important service because we are trying to tackle the issue of mental ill health, yet there is a significant problem at Walton jail. Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust picked up the contract from somebody else, but it is struggling; it is underfunded, and the provider keeps changing. That fragmentation is having an impact on those who require these services.

At Calderstones, there was a very large mental health unit on the fringes of my constituency—in fact, it was just inside the constituency of the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans). The unit was rebuilt in 2007, costing £11 million, to provide a cutting-edge mental health service. It was rated “good” by the Care Quality Commission, but it was closed in 2016. How can the £11 million Calderstones unit, which was rated good and moving towards outstanding, be closed in this age and only nine years after that refurbishment? Calderstones Partnership NHS Foundation Trust itself will cease to exist, to be replaced by the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, which will provide services. One service provider is being swapped for another. We are not getting continuity, and there are problems in NHS services, particularly mental health services, in my area.

The public want to say no to the Health and Social Care Act—they do not like these changes. GPs were told that they would hold budgets; I will come to that, but first I want to talk briefly about STPs. Again, there is little democratic involvement; the changes are being ushered in across the north-west and across Lancashire.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions what the public want; is he aware that a slight majority of the public are in favour of third-party private providers providing care in the health service, as long as they demonstrate better value for money?

[Graham P. Jones]

I think the public are primarily concerned not with better value for money but with better healthcare, and they are not getting it.

Draft Onshore Hydraulic Fracturing (Protected Areas) Regulations 2015

Debate between Graham P Jones and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 27th October 2015 General Committees

[Graham Jones]

You don’t have them? There are test wells and test pads very nearby on the Fylde coast. Licences have just been issued for that area, and Lancashire MPs are deeply concerned.

Finally, on my constituents’ concern and on the policy being the wrong way round, the beginning of the impact assessment mentions a new tax regime. I am delighted to oppose the Government’s plans for fracking in Lancashire so long as they are accompanied by an insulting 1% retention rate for local authorities while the Treasury collects 60% should gas flow from the wells. The Treasury is taking a huge amount of money that my constituents, and constituents across Lancashire, think is just going to be spent on Crossrail 2 or some other London or south-east project. It is outrageous that the Bowland basin should be so used. The Minister talks about a new tax regime, but that new tax regime is an insult to the people of Lancashire.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may be confusing two different figures. The 1% figure is based on revenue, but the 60% figure is taxation on profits.

[Graham Jones]

The hon. Gentleman has a point, but he will find that, when the gas finally flows, it will be nearly all profit because the capital investment will be at the beginning and there will be minimal capital investment as we go along. Year on year, the balance sheet will essentially show profits. He is not wrong, but if he looks at how it will play out, there is huge disparity and there will not be much closing of the gap between the 1% that Lancashire gets and the 60% that will be given to the Chancellor.

Tax Credits

Debate between Graham P Jones and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

“We should measure welfare’s success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added”—so said Ronald Reagan. In 2010 nine out of 10 families in the UK were on welfare. We do not need more welfare; we need more jobs, and better jobs which will pay a national living wage of £9 by 2020, ahead of the estimated living wage at that time.

We have record employment in the UK. Britons have more opportunity and more jobs. During the last Parliament, we created more jobs than were created in the rest of the European Union combined. What we have not discussed in this debate is the effect of the whole package of these reforms—universal credit, tax thresholds, child care and the national living wage. They create an incentive, enabling people to do more work. All those estimates from the IFS and the Adam Smith Institute have not taken into account people’s potential to go out and work more.

[Graham Jones]

I find the hon. Gentleman’s comments bizarre. This matter is close to home for me. My son and his wife are on tax credits. He does over 40 hours a week, and she is retraining and doing 12-hour bank shifts. I have a granddaughter who is going to suffer a cut of more than £100. Can the hon. Gentleman explain to me how they can retrain any more than they are, where they are going to get extra hours when they are both doing nearly 50 hours, and the impact that that has on my granddaughter? The hon. Gentleman is out of touch.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Wages have been subsidised for employers for too long. It is a crazy, convoluted system in which people pay tax and then it is returned to them in welfare. How can that be right? Employers should value their workforce and pay them more. Of course we need to look carefully at the consequences of these changes, but without the reforms in the previous Parliament the tax credits bill would have been £40 billion. We cannot afford that. We have to balance the books, and employers have to take up the slack.

We are still losing £73 billion a year in this country, so we must balance the books, and we can do that by building a new culture. What do I say to an employer in my constituency who employs hundreds of workers? He says that on a Friday night, when the shout for overtime goes up, it is the overseas workers who step forward. We need to build the right culture. The culture in my house was built by my parents, who worked all the hours God sent, not to line their pockets, but to benefit the next generation and set the right example for them.

Freud, distilling the learning from his life’s work, said that happiness depends on two things: love and work. Over the previous Parliament, 700,000 workless families went back to work. We need better jobs, we need to balance the books, and we need to build a new aspirational culture in which work pays.