Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend talks about passionate embraces; I do not think that he has ever had the kiss that he once asked for. He is absolutely right: we are determined to deliver a Britain that is fit for the future. That means that we need to get Brexit right and do a lot more. He references house building; yes, we are committed to building the homes that this country needs. That is why we have made £15 billion of new financial support available over the next five years, and why we scrapped stamp duty for 80% of first-time buyers. We are also improving school standards—there are 1.9 million more children in good or outstanding schools today—and we are protecting our natural environment. We are building a Britain that can look to the future with optimism and hope.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, may I wish you, all the House and all our staff a very happy new year? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Everybody is agreed? Yes? Thank you. I know it seems a long time ago, but just before Christmas, I asked the Prime Minister about the 12,000 people left waiting more than half an hour in the back of ambulances at A&E departments. She told the House that the NHS was better prepared for winter “than ever before.” What words of comfort does she have for the 17,000 patients who waited in the back of ambulances in the last week of December? Is it that nothing is perfect, by any chance?

[The Prime Minister]

I fully accept that the NHS is under pressure over winter. It is regularly under pressure at winter time. I have been very clear: I apologised to those people who have had their operations delayed and to those people who have had their admission to hospital delayed, but it is indeed the case that the NHS was better prepared this winter than ever before. [Interruption.] Yes. It might be helpful if I let the House know some of the things that were done to ensure that preparedness. More people than ever before are having flu vaccines, and 2,700 more acute beds have been made available since November. For the first time ever, urgent GP appointments have been available across the Christmas period across this country, and more doctors are specialising in treating the elderly in accident and emergency.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the last exchange we had in this House. In our last exchange, he said mental health budgets have been cut; that is not right. Simon Stevens from the national health service has made it clear that mental health spending has gone up both in real terms and as a proportion of the overall spending. So will the right hon. Gentleman now apologise for what he previously said?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The Prime Minister knows full well that child and adolescent mental health services budgets have been raided and many people who need help are not getting that help. We saw on “ITV News” the other night that nurses are spending their entire shift treating people in car parks because of backed-up ambulances. We know the Prime Minister recognises there is a crisis in our NHS because she wanted to sack the Health Secretary last week but was too weak to do it, and if the NHS is so well resourced and so well prepared, why was the decision taken last week to cancel the operations of 55,000 patients during the month of January?

[The Prime Minister]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] Members on the Labour Front Bench say “Apologise”; if they had listened to the answer I gave to their right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, they would have heard me make it clear that I have already apologised to those whose operations have been delayed, and we will make sure they are reinstated as soon as possible. We are putting record funding into the NHS and record funding into mental health, but the right hon. Gentleman keeps on about the preparations for the NHS and I was very pleased last week to be able to go and say in person a thank you to staff at Frimley health trust from both Frimley Park and Wexham Park hospitals for the work they have been doing to deliver for patients across this period of particular pressure across the winter. Our NHS staff—not just doctors and nurses, but support staff such as radiographers, administrative staff, porters: everybody working in our national health service—do a fantastic job day in and day out, and they particularly do that when we have these winter pressures. In terms of being prepared, this is what NHS Providers said only last week:

“Preparations for winter in the NHS have been more extensive and meticulous than ever before.”

[Jeremy Corbyn]

We all thank all NHS staff for what they do, but the reality is that the 55,000 cancelled operations mean that those 55,000 people join the 4 million already waiting for operations within the NHS.

Perhaps the Prime Minister could listen to the experience of Vicki. Her 82-year-old mother spent 13 hours on a trolley in a corridor, on top of the three hours between her first calling 999 and arriving at hospital. Vicki says:

“A volunteer first responder from Warwickshire heart service whose day job is in the Army kept mum safe until paramedics arrived.”

Her mother had suffered a heart attack just a week before. This is not an isolated case. Does the Prime Minister really believe the NHS is better prepared than ever for the crisis it is now going through?

[The Prime Minister]

Nobody wants to hear of people having to experience what Vicki and her mother experienced. Of course we need to ensure that we learn from these incidents, and that is exactly what we do in the national health service. I am very happy to ensure that that particular case is looked at, if the right hon. Gentleman would like to provide me with the details. But week in and week out in the run-up to Christmas, and now today, he has been giving the impression of a national health service that is failing everybody who uses it. The reality in our NHS is that we are seeing 2.9 million more people going to accident and emergency, and over 2 million more operations taking place each year. Our national health service is something that we should be proud of. It is a first-class national health service that has been identified as the No. 1 health system in the world. That means that it is a better health system than those of Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Germany and the United States of America.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

We on this side of the House are all very proud of the principle of the national health service—healthcare as a human right—but the reality is that, in the past year, 565,000 people have spent time on trolleys when they should have been being treated. The number of elderly people being rushed into A&E from care homes has risen by 62% since the Tories took power, and Care Quality Commission figures suggest that nearly a quarter of care homes need improvement. This is not only robbing older people of their dignity, but putting pressure on A&Es and ambulance services. So why, instead of dealing with the social care crisis, has the Prime Minister rewarded the Health Secretary with a promotion and a new job title?

[The Prime Minister]

There are many voices across the House, including from the right hon. Gentleman’s party, who have been encouraging me to ensure that we have better integration between health and social care. I am pleased that we have recognised this by making the Department of Health now the Department of Health and Social Care. That has been recognised by Age UK, which has said that this is a

“welcome and long overdue recognition of the interdependence of health and social care”.

I saw for myself last week at Frimley Park the good work that is being done by some hospitals up and down the country, working with GPs, care homes and the voluntary sector, to ensure that elderly people can stay at home safely and do not need to go into hospital, with all the consequences of them coming into hospital beds. That is the way forward, and we want to ensure that we see the integration of health and social care at grassroots level. From the way in which the right hon. Gentleman talks, you would think that the Labour party had all the solutions for the national health service—[Interruption.]

[The Prime Minister]

If the Labour party has all the answers, why is funding being cut and why are targets not being met in Wales, where Labour is responsible?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The Prime Minister leads a Government who are responsible for the funding of national Governments, such as the one in Wales, and she knows full well what has been cut from Wales. She is also directly responsible for the NHS in England, and giving the Health Secretary a new job title will not hide the fact that £6 billion has been cut from social care under the Tories. Part of the problem with our NHS is that its funds are increasingly being siphoned off into private companies, including in the Health Secretary’s area of Surrey—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Shelbrooke, calm yourself, man! You are supposed to be auditioning to become an elder statesman, but on present evidence, there will be many more auditions to come. Calm yourself; it will be good for your health.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Even more money is being siphoned out of our NHS budgets into private health companies. In the Health Secretary’s area of Surrey, a clinical commissioning group was even forced to pay money to Virgin Care because that company did not win a contract. Will the Prime Minister assure patients that, in 2018, less NHS money intended for patient care will be feathering the nests of shareholders in private health companies?

[The Prime Minister]

First, this Government have given more money to the Welsh Government. It is a decision of Labour in Wales to deprioritise funding for the national health service in Wales. On the issue of the private sector and its role in the health service, under which Government was it that private access and the use of the private sector in the health service increased? [Interruption.] No, it wasn’t.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, we have put more money into Wales, but the Labour Government in Wales have decided to deprioritise funding for the national health service. Secondly, the increase that was seen in private sector companies working in the health service did not happen under a Conservative Government; that was under a Labour Government of whom the Leader of the Opposition was a member.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend the shadow Health Secretary is auditioning to be Health Secretary, and he shows real passion for our NHS.

Under this Government, Virgin Care got £200 million-worth of contracts in the past year alone—50% up on the year before. The Prime Minister needs to understand that it is her policies that are pushing our NHS into crisis. Tax cuts for the super-rich and big business are paid for—[Interruption.] Yes, Mr Speaker, they are paid for by longer waiting lists, ambulance delays, staff shortages and cuts to social care. Creeping privatisation is dragging our NHS down. During the Health Secretary’s occupation of the Prime Minister’s office to keep his job, he said that he would not abandon the ship. Is that not an admission that, under his captaincy, the ship is indeed sinking?

[The Prime Minister]

This Government are putting more money into the national health service. We see more doctors and nurses in our NHS, more operations taking place in our NHS, and more people being treated in accident and emergency in our NHS, but we can only do that if we have a strong economy. What would we see from the Labour party? We have turned the economy around from the recession that the Labour party left us with. What do we know about the Labour party’s economic policies? Well, we were told all about them in a description from the shadow Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who I see is not in her place on the Front Bench today—