Hospital Mortality Rates

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We want these things to happen as quickly as possible, but all the hospitals Sir Bruce reviewed will be looked at again within the next year by the chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, who starts work today, so we will be able to measure whether progress has been as swift as my hon. Friend and I would like.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

May I ask the Secretary of State to actually discharge one of the responsibilities of his office by answering a simple question? If he believes that managers should not be able to get another post if they fail, why was there a plan to transfer the chief nurse from the failed Morecambe Bay NHS Trust on secondment to Warrington and Halton on the Secretary of State’s watch, stopped only when my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and I found out about it? Did he or his Ministers know about this plan, and if not, why not?

[Mr Hunt]

That is exactly the reason why we are introducing measures to make sure—[Interruption.] Well, the Francis report was introduced to this House on 6 February, and we have said we will change legislation this year. We have already appointed a chief inspector of hospitals. I do not think we could go much faster. The trouble for the Labour party is not that we are going too slowly but that we are going too fast and exposing all sorts of problems which it wishes did not happen.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Accountability is extremely important. Local authorities can require members or employees of local health service commissioners to appear and answer questions, and NHS organisations and individuals should co-operate with that. I am extremely concerned by what my hon. Friend says. He knows that I have received a report on this from the joint overview and scrutiny committees for six south-west London boroughs, and I will be responding shortly.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that accountability would be improved if the private providers who are increasingly providing NHS services were subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000? Will he ensure that as more and more services become privatised under this Government, those people are subject to the same freedom of information provisions as those in the NHS, because otherwise no committee can hold them to account?

[Mr Hunt]

Perhaps I could gently remind the hon. Lady that the previous Labour Government did not do this, despite making huge efforts to get more private sector involvement in the NHS. Providers must operate on a level playing field, and so the inspection regime that we are setting up, with a new chief inspector of hospitals, will apply equally to the private sector and the public sector.

Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Helen Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned about the growing pressure on Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments across the country over recent months; notes this week’s report from the King’s Fund which concludes that waiting times in A&E recently hit a nine-year high; further notes that in the Labour Government’s last year in office 98 per cent of patients were seen within four hours; believes that a combination of factors lies behind the extra pressure on hospitals but that severe cuts to social care budgets are one of the most significant causes; is further concerned that one in three hospitals in England say they do not have sufficient staffing levels to deal safely with demand on services; further notes that over 4,000 nursing posts have been lost from the NHS since May 2010 and that a recent survey by the Health Service Journal revealed that a further round of front-line clinical job losses are planned for the coming year; further believes that the Government has failed to show sufficient urgency in dealing with these problems; and calls on the Government to bring forward an urgent plan to ease pressure on hospitals by, amongst other things, re-allocating £1.2 billion of the 2012-13 Department of Health underspend to support social care in 2013-14 and 2014-15, and ensuring adequate staffing levels at every hospital in England.

Since the turn of the year, the Opposition have been warning the Government about building pressure in A and E departments, and yesterday there was confirmation of just how bad things have got. This year, waiting times in A and E hit a nine-year high, according to the King’s Fund. The pressure is not confined to A and E, however, and wherever we look we can see warning signs: hospitals operating with close to 100% bed occupancy, way beyond safe recommended levels; a treatment tent in a car park; long queues of ambulances outside A and E, double the number waiting longer than 30 minutes; a huge spike in the number of A and E diverts, where ambulances are turned away from units that cannot accept any more patients; reports of some hospitals issuing more black alerts in the past year than in the previous 10 years combined; more cancelled operations than for a decade; and a 30% increase in bed days lost to delayed discharges because care plans cannot be put in place, leaving older patients stranded on the ward and A and E unable to admit them.

The evidence is clear: this health and care system is showing serious signs of distress. In truth, A and E is the barometer of the system, and problems or blockages anywhere will soon show up in A and E as the pressure backs up. The situation requires decisive action and a comprehensive plan, both of which have been distinctly lacking in the Government’s response so far.

Today the Prime Minister complacently implied that the problems had been fixed, but for 34 of the 38 weeks this Secretary of State has been in post, major A and Es have missed the Government’s lowered A and E target. Today, six in 10 trusts are warning that next winter will be even worse. The Government’s response to date has been totally inadequate for the scale and urgency of the problems. First, they came to the House and denied there was a problem. On 15 January, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) stated that

“patients are being treated in a much more timely manner than under the previous Government.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 720.]

An inaccurate statement without any basis in fact.

As the pressure built, it was clear that that line would not hold, so the Secretary of State’s spin operation began. He said that the root cause of the pressure was the 2004 GP contract and changes to out-of-hours care. One must ask how the Secretary of State pushed that line with such confidence, given that a freedom of information request from his Department revealed that the first time he went to an A and E as Secretary of State was on 3 April—a full six months after he was appointed. Even then, it was the A and E within walking distance of this building. Did he just repeat back on camera what the first person he met said to him?

Throughout the early months of 2013 the NHS was going through the worst winter for a decade, yet the Secretary of State did not bother to visit any A and E department to see for himself the ambulance queues, the patients held on trolleys, or the staff stretched to breaking point. Just weeks before his first visit to A and E, he told us that hospitals were “coasting”. What an unbelievable statement. Would he have dared to say that if he had actually visited an A and E beforehand?

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the pressures on A and E comes from this Government’s cuts to adult social care? We all know that if old people are not given care in their own homes they are more likely to end up in hospital, yet the Government have cut more than £2.6 billion from adult social care, and more than 230,000 people are now not getting help, compared with four years ago.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Two-thirds of NHS finance directors have identified social care and its collapse as the single biggest driver of the pressure on A and E. The Government do not like to talk about that because of the record my hon. Friend just outlined, and I will come to that later in my remarks.

The Secretary of State visited his first A and E in April, and NHS England requested action plans only on 9 May, when hospitals had already been battling with the problem for months. It is simply not good enough. The NHS needs leadership and he has not provided it; instead, he has stuck to the spin. He continued to blame the GP contract, even when experts queued up to tell him it was not the cause of the problem. The NHS Confederation, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the King’s Fund and the Foundation Trust Network all told him that the causes lay elsewhere, but he was not listening because it did not suit his argument. When the NHS needed a Secretary of State, it was left with a spin doctor-in-chief.

That brings us to the crux of this debate and the charge that I lay directly at the Secretary of State’s door. By persisting with spin and by diverting attention elsewhere, the real causes of this crisis have been left neglected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

Even the women?

[Anna Soubry]

That sort of cheap comment does the hon. Lady no justice whatsoever or credit. Let me explain to her—I was here for the debate, and she was not—that I did not in any way blame women doctors. As someone who has worked as a woman professional all my life, I really do not want to hear any lessons from Opposition Members. What I did was echo the comments of the president of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and I paid tribute to all our GPs for their hard work and dedication to our NHS, and to their patients.

There are immense pressures on the NHS as a whole, and on A and E in particular. Our A and E departments are dealing with 1 million more people than they did when the previous Government were in power. The causes of that increase in demand are complex: a long, cold winter; an ageing population; and more people with long-term conditions. The system itself, let us be honest, has not helped, from poor integration between health and social care to the lack of public confidence in out-of-hours primary care services. We can have an argument about the 2004 GP contract, but as the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) rightly said, it has not helped. Today, we have a situation in which, if people do not know where to go, or they are not sure that they will get a good service, they go to A and E. In a recent hearing by the Select Committee on Health, Dr Patrick Cadigan, a registrar from the Royal College of Physicians, set out the position perfectly:

“Patients will go where the lights are on. In many of these alternatives, the lights are not on after five o’clock in the evening or at weekends.”

That presents a set of challenges that the Government are determined to address. First, it is important that we deal with the current situation, and we are.

NHS Commissioning Board

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I think my hon. Friend makes a valuable point. [Interruption.]

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Last week, the Leader of the House insisted that the regulations did not—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady, but there is too much noisy chuntering from both sides of the House, including from Members whom I have previously told to keep it to themselves. They cannot think that they are different or separate because they feel strongly about something—that way, we get to cacophony. Members should keep the chuntering to themselves, ask a question and listen to others with a degree of courtesy.

[Helen Jones]

Last week, during business questions, the Leader of the House said that the regulations would not introduce compulsory competitive tendering in the NHS; today the Minister has said that he will have to revise them in case they do. Is it not a fact that the Government actually do not have a clue about what they are doing? If the Minister wishes to disprove that, will he tell us exactly what changes he will make to the regulations—or will this just be like the pause in the Health and Social Care Bill, after which it carried on regardless?

[Norman Lamb]

The Leader of the House was absolutely correct in stating—[Interruption.] If the hon. Lady will listen to my answer, she may benefit from it. The Leader of the House made it absolutely clear in the House last week that the regulations would not introduce compulsory competitive tendering. We are amending them because there was legitimate and understandable concern about the impact of some of the provisions. We will make the position clear so that the policy intent of the Health and Social Care Act is implemented faithfully in these regulations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend makes a good point: in England, the NHS is benefiting from not suffering a cut in funding such as that imposed by the Labour Administration in Wales.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister promised a fight to save district general hospitals, yet the Secretary of State’s recent decision on Lewisham suggests something completely different. Will the Secretary of State therefore give the House an assurance that the north Cheshire hospitals trust will not be forced into a merger or to downgrade its services because of financial problems elsewhere?

[Dr Poulter]

I know that the hon. Lady had tabled a question on this matter. The point is that a foundation trust has autonomy and cannot be coerced or forced into a merger. It is for the board of that trust to make decisions for the benefit of patients.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent work with the all-party group and for the group’s constructive response to our consultation on the outcomes strategy. I am more than happy to meet him and other representatives of the all-party group. With an ageing population and rising levels of obesity, we cannot be complacent about cardiovascular disease and have much to do.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister promised before the election that there would be no reconfigurations or closures unless there was clinical and local support. Why then has the Secretary of State decided to break up the existing vascular network centred on Warrington hospital, meaning that emergency patients face a trip to Chester by ambulance, when this has neither clinical support nor support in the local community? When did that policy change, or was it just an election promise that the Conservatives never intended to keep?

[Mr Hunt]

We believe in the clinical networks, including the network for cardiovascular disease. We have increased the funding for those networks by 27%. However, we want them to include mental health and maternity services. We think that it would be wrong to do what the Labour party wants, which is to concentrate that funding on cardiovascular disease and cancer, and deprive of the clear benefits of such networks the 700,000 women who give birth on the NHS every year and the nearly 1 million people who will be diagnosed with dementia.

Winterbourne View

Helen Jones Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right. The new structure provides far greater local accountability than we have ever had. One of my great criticisms of the old primary care trusts is that they are, in effect, completely unaccountable to their local communities. Health and wellbeing boards scrutinising what clinical commissioning groups and the local authority are doing can be very powerful. He also mentioned HealthWatch. Like its predecessor organisations, the local involvement networks or LINks, it will have the power to go into all care and health settings and inspect what is going on, often behind closed doors. We encourage HealthWatch to use those powers to shine a light on what is happening in some of those places.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The Minister has rightly referred to the amount of money paid for patients in Winterbourne View, but does he also recognise that good-quality care in a community is also expensive and requires a lot of highly trained staff? Given the cuts to local authority budgets, is he convinced that sufficient resources are available, even if budgets are pooled? When he knows how many patients need to be transferred back into the community, will he commit to come to the House to make a statement on whether the right resources are available?

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. What was striking when I visited Tower Hamlets this morning and talked to the leaders on the health and local authority sides was that, despite being the third most deprived borough in the country, Tower Hamlets is one of the lower spenders on institutional care because it is doing things the right way. Tower Hamlets has not referred a single person from the borough to an assessment and treatment centre for three whole years. Tower Hamlets has demonstrated not only that that is possible, but that it often ends up costing much less to provide the right care in the community—[Interruption.] Well, that is what the borough leaders find. That is what I have been told by them and by many other people in the sector. An individual should have the care that they need, and if the cost of that package in the community is substantial, it should be met. We should never compromise on that. All I am saying is that the overall cost of providing the right kind of care in the community often looks lower, when compared with those institutions in which the cost is extraordinarily high—as much as £3,500 per week per patient.

NHS Commissioning Board (Mandate)

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman will understand that the purpose of such a mandate is not to set specific financial objectives but to set outcomes for patients, and then to let local professionals on the ground—doctors and nurses—decide how best to deliver them. The mandate is clear, however, that we want parity of esteem for mental health and to improve equality of access, which at the moment is much better for physical health than for mental health.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The stroke networks have been hugely successful at reducing mortality and inequalities of treatment in this country, yet their future is now in doubt, staff are being lost and their funding is not guaranteed. What can the Secretary of State do to assure those involved in stroke care that his mandate will ensure that they are properly funded and resourced?

[Mr Hunt]

I can only repeat what I said earlier: those clinical networks are extremely important and will continue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

We are funding TB Alert to raise public and professional awareness of TB. We also expect the NHS organisations and their partners to ensure early detection, treatment completion and co-ordinated action to prevent and control TB. The Health Protection Agency maintains diligent monitoring of all types of TB and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence also includes specific guidance on treatment and rapid contact tracing of people in contact with any type of drug-resistant TB.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

T5. Before the last election, the Prime Minister promised a “bare knuckle fight” to save district general hospitals and promised that they would be enhanced. Now that we know that the board of St Helens and Knowsley hospitals is looking at a merger with Warrington and Halton to solve its problems, can the Minister give the House an unconditional assurance that no services at Warrington will be downgraded or removed, whether that merger goes ahead or not?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

There was an option to discuss this issue at the board meeting on 29 August—not of the hon. Lady’s hospital trust but of the Halton hospital trust—because the Halton trust is looking to achieve foundation status. So I can reassure her that the services at Warrington hospital are safe.

Business of the House

Helen Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I hope my hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn that we in the Government have been working actively over the last two and a half years to ensure that common sense is at the heart of the way in which we apply health and safety regulations. It must be evidence-based, common-sense and proportionate. Measures have been taken, but I will certainly draw my hon. Friend’s comments to the attention of my colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills so that they can continue the process.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

This week, in Westminster Hall, Members held a debate on the shambles that is Atos. When will the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions come to the House to make a statement on what is going on in that organisation? In my constituency I have seen a woman undergoing chemotherapy passed as fit for work, and a veteran who was classed as being more than 40% disabled for the purpose of industrial injuries benefit lose his disability living allowance following an Atos report which referred to him as a woman throughout. When are we going to get some answers in relation to what this organisation is inflicting on disabled people?

[Mr Lansley]

In terms of business, the hon. Lady is right. The House had an opportunity to debate Atos Healthcare, and I think that she may have received replies from the then Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). I personally know that the work done as a consequence of the Harrington reviews, and what we announced in July about the recording of tribunal judges’ reasons for overturning decisions on appeal, will enable us continuously to improve the process.