NHS Services (Access)

Debate between James Morris and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will not.

The Secretary of State now claims that his reorganisation is saving £1 billion a year, but the truth is that that is a fantasy figure. The reorganisation, which cost £3 billion and counting, turned the 163 NHS organisations into 440 separate administrations with their own running costs. It introduced a new competition regime that is eating up tens of millions of pounds of NHS money. Perhaps that is why Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy at Manchester business school, said:

“I haven’t found anybody who thinks that this reorganisation has made the NHS more efficient and more productive… and I don’t think you find many people who think that the new system costs any less to run.”

The Secretary of State needs to clear this up today. Either he publishes the independent analysis that he claims supports his figure of £1 billion, or he stops making a claim that is simply not credible.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I thought that this debate was about access to services. One thing that the right hon. Gentleman has not mentioned is mental health services. One of this Government’s achievements is that 100,000 more people are getting access to psychological therapies than under the previous Government, and last week the Government announced for the first time access standards and waiting time targets for mental health services, which were never in place in the 13 years of the Labour Government.

[Andy Burnham]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong, because I mentioned the cuts to mental health services earlier in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones). The talking therapies he mentioned were introduced by the previous Government —indeed by me—and in some places they are not being cut, which I am pleased about, but in others they are. The letter I referred to from the royal colleges and other organisations talked about a crisis in mental health. They say that people are being ferried hundreds of miles to find emergency beds. That is the reality on this Government’s watch. I think that a little less complacency and a little more focus on these problems would not go amiss.