Health and Social Care

Debate between Heidi Allen and Andy Burnham

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I shall come to the £8 billion, which was the centrepiece of what the Conservatives were proposing during the election campaign. The simple question was: where is it coming from? They never answered that question. The other question they need to answer is: what are they going to do for the NHS now? The £8 billion was promised for five years’ time, but, as I have been saying, the NHS is facing a crisis this year and next year. An IOU for five years’ time is not much use to the NHS when it faces laying off staff and closing services.

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Forgive me; I am new here and very confused. This seems very simple to me. At the election, I promised every person who voted for me in South Cambridgeshire that I would not join in with this negative campaigning, and as Andrew Lansley’s successor I feel that now is the time I should stand up. Is it not time to put the past behind us? The NHS has a fabulous leader in Simon Stevens. That man is standing up for the NHS and saying, “Let’s do this together.” Okay, let us have a debate about where the £8 billion is coming from—that is a financial debate and I am happy to have it—but let us believe in the man who is standing up and saying we can do this together. Let us work as a team and let us listen to the man with the plan. It is him we should be talking about.

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and I hope she does a lot more for the NHS than her predecessor did. He caused a huge amount of damage. She is right to say that the NHS is looking for the consensus she describes. NHS staff would hugely value more consensus on the five-year forward view.

The problem, as I have said to the Secretary of State before, lies in the privatisation. The Health and Social Care Act 2012, which the hon. Lady’s predecessor took through Parliament, is forcing NHS services out on to the market. As I have said, 40% of those services are now going to private sector organisations, with 40% going to the NHS. The Secretary of State claims that privatisation is not happening, but I am afraid that that is just not correct in any way. If there is to be consensus, the Government should repeal that Act. They never had a democratic mandate from the people of this country. They never gave their permission for the NHS to be put up for sale in this way. If the hon. Lady’s party were to repeal section 75 of the Act, she could help to create the basis for consensus on the NHS.