Mental Health and NHS Performance

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady raises a very important issue. Like her, I have had constituents who found it difficult to access educational psychologists and they have not been able to get approval for the plan that they need. We will consider these issues in the build-up to the Green Paper, and I encourage the hon. Lady to participate in that process.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Will the Health Secretary please get the message out there loud and clear to health bosses up and down the country that we need more capacity in our A&Es, so that when my CCG goes to NHS England with a request for £285 million for its appalling plan to downgrade my local A&E, bulldoze Huddersfield royal infirmary and replace it with a small planned care unit with fewer beds, it will realise that that money would be better spent on frontline A&E care in one of the country’s biggest towns.

[Mr Hunt]

I take seriously, of course, everything my hon. Friend says. I will say that the NHS does not always get these things right. I led a campaign against an A&E closure in my constituency when I was a Back Bencher—[Interruption]—and the Labour party was in power and about to take a wholly mistaken decision, which I was luckily able to persuade the Government not to take in the interests of my constituents. We will look carefully into these issues. On the broader point that my hon. Friend makes, we have to understand across the NHS that capacity matters, but in the long run, we will not solve the problem solely by increasing capacity in A&Es for ever. We need alternative forms of provision. Demand is growing, so we need to find different ways to offer treatment to people who do not need to be in an A&E. That is what we are exploring.