National Health Service

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will make some progress.

I mentioned record numbers of delayed discharges. There are also record numbers of people visiting A and E, record numbers of frail people being admitted through A and E, record numbers of people waiting on trolleys and record numbers of people trapped in acute hospital beds. This is the simple question that has not yet been answered by this Government: why is there this unprecedented pressure in accident and emergency? Until there are proper answers to that simple question—and agreement about the true causes of the A and E crisis—we will not be able to move forward with a proper solution, and that is the point of today’s debate.

When the Secretary of State came here to answer the urgent question two weeks ago, he was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) what he saw as the causes of the increased attendances at A and E. Let me remind the House of what he said:

“We have looked into that matter in huge detail. There are probably three broad factors that are behind the increase in demand. One is the ageing population...The second factor is changing consumer expectation among younger people who want faster health care…The third factor is a refusal by NHS trusts to do what they were pressurised to do in the past, which is to cut corners to hit targets.—[Official Report, 7 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 280.]

In other words, “Nothing to do with us, Guv.” It is the same old story with this Secretary of State. It is always someone else’s fault: older people’s fault, younger people’s fault, the previous Government’s fault—anyone but him.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend knows Warrington well. As well as increasing ambulance response time and having fewer GPs than we had in 2010, we are now seeing one of the last specialisms—spinal services—moved from Warrington to Walton with no public consultation whatever. Does he agree that this is exactly the result of the Government’s reorganisation in which no one is accountable for any decisions and the future of hospitals such as Warrington is at risk?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right; I do know Warrington well. Speaking up for my own family who live in Warrington, I will not accept a situation in which their services are taken away without them having the democratic right to challenge those decisions. But that is what has been growing under this Secretary of State. We had the decision on Lewisham—the most outrageous example—in which he tried to close a successful A and E that was serving a very deprived part of London, without any proper process, and he lost in the High Court. Then we had a clause brought before the House that tried to close hospitals anyway. That is what the Government want to do; they want to ride roughshod over local people and close services where they want to, and we will not let it happen.