A&E Services

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I will after I have finished this comment.

It is important to put all this in the financial context. I have been through the Lobby with the shadow Minister and with many Labour Members who were in the previous Parliament. We went through the Lobby just before the election when we agreed to cuts in public expenditure in the first two years of this Parliament and the former shadow Chancellor committed the Labour party to cuts in local government spending. Difficult choices are forced on us by the catastrophe and chaos that we were left in 2010. Labour Members need to confront those difficult choices. They cannot have it both ways. They cannot, on the one hand, say that we need massive increases in payments for social care and, on the other, say that they are going to constrain public spending. The answer to that dilemma is surely to try to find a better way of integrating social care that I hope would see cross-party consensus rather than the politicking we have just seen at the Dispatch Box.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

The Minister is talking about the financial context. My worry is that a lot of NHS managers in London talk about a Lewisham-sized hole in the NHS budget in south-east London. We stopped the Secretary of State closing Lewisham’s A&E last time. Can the Minister promise me today that he will not be coming back to Lewisham for another go?