West Coast Main Line

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Burns

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I welcome the speed and transparency of the interim Laidlaw report and endorse the calls of other hon. Members for lengthier franchises. Today the all-party group on rail in the north looks forward to meeting the Minister of State.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)]

I have already been there.

[Guy Opperman]

Yes, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be coming back.

Will the Secretary of State confirm that this Government’s increased investment in things such as the northern hub and the expanded service for the north will continue in the long term?

Community Hospitals (North-East)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Burns

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) on securing this debate, and I pay tribute to NHS staff in his constituency, who do so much for the health and well-being of his and other hon. Members’ constituents.

Robust community services are a vital element of emerging models of care, providing treatment to patients closer to home and improving health outcomes. The Government remain committed to extending and improving access to care and treatment in the community and at home. This includes sharing best practice to enable the smooth discharge and transition of patients from acute settings to robust community services, allowing them to be cared for closer to home.

Community hospitals play an important role in that process. The care that Guisborough hospital provides includes rehabilitation and follow-up care in a community setting. Community hospitals have the potential to make considerable efficiency savings in the local health economy by shifting care, diagnostics, minor injuries and outpatient services, among others, from acute hospitals to the community. They provide both planned and unplanned acute care and diagnostics services for patients closer to home, support best practice in reducing the need for admission to acute hospitals and contribute to the local community by providing employment opportunities and support for community-based groups.

Those are a few reasons the community estate is a core part of the NHS. It can help to transform care pathways, moving care from acute settings to community settings. Local investment in this type of facility is part of a dynamic service model that supports health and well-being for the whole community. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that under the transforming community services programme, responsibility for community services was transferred from primary care trusts to NHS and other providers. To this effect, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust took over the operation of Guisborough hospital in April 2011.

The transfer of community services enabled the NHS to develop new innovative models of care using local multi-disciplinary, clinically led teams to improve services and health outcomes for local patients, families and communities. This has enabled the NHS to be creative in its approach to delivering community services. However, I fully appreciate the context within which all NHS organisations operate. They have to provide high quality services while remaining sustainable and efficient in making the best use of limited resources. The Government recognise this challenge, which is why we have protected NHS funding and are increasing funding in real terms during this Parliament.

In the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, Middlesbrough PCT will receive an allocation in 2012-13 of more than £299 million, which is an increase of more than £8 million, and Redcar and Cleveland PCT will receive more than £269 million, which is an increase of more than £7 million. Despite this generous settlement, however, the NHS needs to do more. It needs to find up to £20 billion of efficiency savings over the same period to meet the rising demand for NHS services and to continue to invest in new technologies and drugs to help meet these demands.

We will not dictate from the centre how efficiency savings should be achieved. Decisions about local health services should be made as close to local people as possible. Local NHS commissioners are best placed to identify the scale of the financial challenge and the opportunities for making savings, while driving up and maintaining quality. Every penny of those savings can be reinvested in front-line services and health care.

[Guy Opperman]

An example of that, I would suggest, is Haltwhistle hospital in west Northumberland, which has been rebuilt by the local NHS trust to provide a hospital facility and an integrated care facility. Does the Minister agree that that is a good example of the Department and the trust supporting a community hospital?

[Mr Burns]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, because I understand that the campaign for that decision was kept up for more than 25 years. I congratulate NHS North of Tyne, Haltwhistle council and the friends of the hospital, as well as my hon. Friend, for all their work in ensuring that it is finally happening.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Burns

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

The right hon. Gentleman says it is garbage. I think that is confusing from him, because I remind him that of course it was in the Labour party manifesto at the last general election to remove the private patient cap.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

12. What steps he has taken to implement a flexiscope bowel cancer screening test.

Manufacturing

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Burns

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

I thank colleagues who have contributed to the debate, in which there has been a cross-party optimism about the fundamentals of manufacturing. It is a noble profession and a wonderful sector to work in. There is optimism for the future of manufacturing, and that is what this debate is about, rather than the past.

There has been an understanding of the past difficulties from which successive Governments and businesses down the years have suffered and of the present problems of globalisation, the Chinese influence, energy prices and the extent to which the state is struggling with the debt and difficulties faced by each country in the eurozone, particularly this one. There has been recognition that we must subsidise and support individual businesses and manufacturing organisations, whether with a form of capital allowances, R and D, tax credits or the like.

Although there is a tradition for men to be involved in manufacturing, I was particularly heartened to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) contribute so robustly to the debate. As a female Member of Parliament, she spoke very eloquently of the role of women entrepreneurs. I strongly support the view that this is a profession not only for men but for women. I apologise to all women for saying, when I described the need for a Minister for manufacturing, that we needed a go-to guy; of course, it could just as well be a go-to woman.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

Or gal.

[Guy Opperman]

Or gal, as my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench so eloquently puts it. The learned Minister has intervened on many previous occasions, and we have another bon mot at last.

I listened to the 19 speakers who contributed to the debate. We finished, last but by no means least, in Watford, having journeyed north to Morecambe and the bay, taken in Bradford East and Hove, and travelled back up to Yorkshire and Calder Valley and then on to Carlisle and Hartlepool. At this stage, the Minister appeared. I must apologise to him, because I think I said that he was from Bognor. Of course, I have nothing against Bognor—everyone loves Bognor—but he is the representative of Havant, as we all know, except the hon. Member for Hexham. We then journeyed to Erewash, Derby North, Pendle, Blaenau Gwent, Warwick, West Bromwich West, Burnley, Wolverhampton South East, Weaver Vale, and then to Huddersfield and up to the finest constituency of them all—which is, of course, Hexham.

The future of manufacturing is worth our taking up the debating time of the Backbench Business Committee. The three co-sponsors of the debate—my hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) and the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman)—have done so much to try to put manufacturing back in the frame in the House of Commons, and that is the right thing to do. It is noticeable that we are already receiving press coverage on the need for a Minister for manufacturing.

There seems to be widespread agreement that the banking system needs reform and improvement so that these businesses, which we all so cherish and want to receive support, receive that support, whether it is from a local bank or an industry bank such as that championed so well by the Germans with the KfW model. Such possibilities give businesses an endless ability to thrive in future. We all agree that that is the model for the way ahead. I look forward to the forthcoming meeting with the Financial Services Authority to discuss the local bank project. The Government should clearly be picking winners; manufacturing is a winner, and it has a very good future.

Question put and agreed to

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the future of manufacturing.

Minor Injuries Services (Devizes)

Debate between Guy Opperman and Simon Burns

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) on securing this important debate. I know that local health services are a top priority for her and that she campaigned vigorously before coming to the House, and has done so since, as we have heard today, on behalf of her constituents to ensure that she obtains the best health care provision for the people she so ably represents. I admire her dedication and determination in fighting that battle for her constituents. I pay tribute to the NHS staff in Devizes and throughout Wiltshire for the excellent care and dedication that they provide day in, day out when looking after my hon. Friend’s constituents and those of other hon. Members in the county.

My hon. Friend is aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has launched our White Paper on liberating the national health service. It is our vision for freeing the NHS from the shackles of politicians and bureaucrats in Whitehall, giving power to people locally, and working with clinicians and general practitioners to provide those services that local communities in Devizes, Wiltshire and the country need. It is a vision for making the NHS more accountable to patients, whether my hon. Friend’s constituents in Devizes or people elsewhere. We want to free staff from excessive bureaucracy and top-down control. We want patients to be at the heart of everything that the NHS does and we want local people to have more choice and control than they have ever had and a greater say in their treatment, their needs and their health requirements. People in Devizes and the other small towns and villages that my hon. Friend mentioned will be in charge of making decisions about their care and provision of health requirements.

My hon. Friend has outlined the strength of feeling in her constituency for local minor injury services, and the support for the NHS generally. The minor injury units for Devizes and Marlborough at Savernake community hospital closed in September 2007, and my hon. Friend and her constituents were, understandably, disappointed at the decision, and have been frustrated by the difficulties and delays that have resulted from it. I am aware that people living in different parts of her constituency access different minor injury units, including those at the community hospitals at Trowbridge, Chippenham, Andover and Newbury, and that minor injury treatment continues to be available at the A and E departments in the acute hospitals in Salisbury, Bath and Swindon. As my hon. Friend rightly said, transport access causes problems for some of her constituents. I have considerable sympathy with the points she made about that.

I am also aware that my hon. Friend’s constituency covers a large rural area. She gave some interesting figures and comparisons with other rural constituencies when making her point so powerfully. I understand her desire for local minor injury units that are accessible as quickly as possible to her constituents. But I must be frank with her. Given where we are at the moment and the processes that have taken place in her county and constituency on reconfiguration of services, I am unable to ask the NHS to open previously conceded processes, or to halt those that have passed the point of no return. I know that that will disappoint my hon. Friend, but I am afraid that at the moment we are where we are because of previous decisions and the degree to which they are in process.

My hon. Friend asked what could be done, and whether pilot schemes could be introduced as a forerunner to the abolition of PCTs in 2013, and she suggested other ways of working with outside interests. I want to give her as clear a steer as possible, and unfortunately, until the PCTs are closed and cease to exist in 2013, due processes and proper procedures must be adopted to move forward. Until they are phased out from 2013, the PCTs will continue to have the same responsibilities that they have now for the provision and commissioning of health care in the areas for which they are responsible, including Wiltshire.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) for carrying on the work that we have all been doing for a considerable period on hospitals in Wiltshire. I spent three years of my life trying to keep them open. The Minister is saying that in reality, whatever the situation, despite the Health Secretary saying in 2007 that clinical need should justify closure, despite this being fundamentally an accounting measure, and despite decisions apparently not being reviewed before 2013, people are desperate for a hospital to reopen that is pre-existing, prepaid and sitting there—

[Guy Opperman]

It is a long question. I apologise, Mr Streeter, but the hospital is still there, and capable of being used. With the greatest respect, I fail to see why it is not being used.

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and I fully appreciate his frustration at the situation. I also appreciate the greater frustration of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes, because her constituency is directly affected by the issue that we are discussing. I repeat: we are where we are. We have a vision of a health service that works from the bottom up rather than the top down. However, until the changes occur, we are in a straitjacket because of procedures currently in place that have to be adopted.

Before the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), I was responding to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes about the way forward. I hope to give her a glimmer of hope and I will give her some advice about how I see the situation, both as a constituency MP and as a Minister. As long as we are in what is effectively an interim period since the publication of yesterday’s White Paper, with the PCTs still commissioning services and having the lead role, I advise her to continue her spirited and dedicated campaign to get what she seeks for her constituents. She should continue seeking to persuade the PCT, local clinicians, GPs and the local community to stay onside in the desire to establish a minor injuries unit, and ensure that the other care services she mentioned are instigated for her constituents. At the moment, that route is the only way forward because the PCTs are the commissioning agents.

I urge my hon. Friend to continue her campaign in the hope that during the interim period over the next three years, she will see a change of heart if that is possible. If it is not possible, when the changes come in, she should use the new system to seek to persuade those in charge of reconfigurations and the provision of services to reinstate the services that she so passionately and rightly believes are needed and deserved by her constituents. That is my advice. It may not be as palatable as she would hope, but I know that she will appreciate and understand that under current circumstances, we have not yet changed the system. That vision was announced yesterday and it is a vision for the future.