Jeremy Hunt
Main Page: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - Godalming and Ash)Department Debates - View all Jeremy Hunt's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(8 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Perhaps I will cut down my speech a bit. I give a particularly warm welcome to all my Back-Bench colleagues here; it is wonderful to see them coming out in support in such numbers. I thank the shadow Health Secretary for calling this debate. She is right to talk about the issues of NHS funding—though not particularly through this motion, which I will come on to speak about. I welcome her to her first Opposition day debate, as I welcomed her earlier to her first statement. This is a brief that she knows well, having been shadow Public Health Minister, and having campaigned on a lot of very important topics, including plain paper packaging for cigarettes. She has done a lot of work with the all-party sickle cell and thalassaemia group as well. I wish her luck in two areas. The first is with her parliamentary questions, after last week’s question to the Department for International Development about a drought in Indonesia, when it was in fact in the Philippines. Secondly, I wish her luck finding some Front-Bench colleagues, just as I need luck finding some Back-Bench colleagues in these debates.
We are in agreement on Brexit; we were both on the remain side, and I campaigned strongly with the hon. Lady. I agree with her that however much we may have disagreed with the vote, it is very important that we respect it. She and I both worried about the damage that it might do to our economy and society if we left, but we also agree that it would do incredible damage to something even more important than them—to our democracy—if the British people were to think that the Westminster establishment was trying somehow to ignore their decision.
From the reasonable tone of her comments, I know that the hon. Lady understands that Vote Leave was not speaking for the Government when it said that there would potentially be an extra £350 million for the NHS. In fairness to the Vote Leave campaigners, at various points they clarified downwards that slogan on the side of the bus and said that they were really talking about a net figure of more like £100 million that could potentially go to the NHS, rather than £350 million.
Mr Hunt
The point that many of us made in the referendum campaign is that even the net figure—the more like £100 million net contribution that we make to the EU—is not a figure that we can bank on with any certainty because, even if it did materialise after an exit from the EU, it would be negated by the very smallest of contractions in the economy, which would itself reduce the tax base and the amount of public spending available. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that that £100 million a week would be negated by a contraction in the economy as small as 0.6%. I do not think any of the economic forecasts said that the contraction would be as small as that; all of them said that it would be much bigger than that.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns about—with your permission, Mr Speaker—the lie on the side of the bus. As Secretary of State for Health, will he now, on behalf of the whole country, and particularly on behalf of people who were deceived and let down by that claim, take up with the Electoral Commission why that lie was allowed to stand for so long?
Mr Hunt
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. Let me give him a challenging reply. The trouble that we have—those of us who disagree with the outcome—is that that issue was exhaustively debated and, for whatever reason, people chose to disbelieve our concerns or decided that they were not worried about it.
I understand why the shadow Health Secretary has brought the motion before the House, but the reason it is a difficult one to debate is that essentially the argument about the £350 million, or the £120 million, or the £100 million is dependent on the state of the economy. That is something that we cannot know now, only 12 days after the Brexit vote result. However worried we are about the impact of that vote, in discussions about the economy we have to be careful not to talk it down, because in the end we have a responsibility to recognise that there may be opportunities and we need to make the most of the ones that exist.
Mr Bailey
I understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making. On the other hand, I believe the Treasury has downgraded our prospective growth rate from 2% to 0.5%. Presumably, future spending plans will be based on that revised future growth rate. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to start making the assumptions that he has been wary of making so far?
Mr Hunt
It is perfectly reasonable to make the assumptions that the hon. Gentleman mentions, and there are plenty of reasons why we could look at some of the early impact on the economy even in the past 12 days and be concerned about the potential impact on the tax base and public spending more broadly. My nervousness as a Minister about talking those things up is that I do not want to talk down the British economy. Even though, as I say, I campaigned against the Brexit vote, I recognise that we are now going to leave the EU, I want the economy to be successful and I want us to make the most of the opportunities that face us.
On the broader issue of NHS funding, this debate indicates that there is some consensus—the Prime Minister mentioned this earlier today at Prime Minister’s questions—on the umbilical link between the health of the economy and the amount we are able to spend on the NHS. We are proud of the fact that we were able to protect spending in the last Parliament and to increase it by £10 billion in this Parliament on the back of a growing economy. Given that Health is the second biggest spending Department, we must recognise that it is vital to the NHS that we maintain that growth, despite the choppy period we are possibly about to go through.
Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I understand what the Secretary of State is saying about the health of the economy, but this debate also links to the previous debate because of the number of EU nationals who work in the health service. Has he made any estimate of the cost to the health service if all these EU nationals were forced to leave the UK in the course of this Brexit?
Mr Hunt
We are currently doing the analysis the hon. Gentleman is concerned about, but I should just say to him that I accept the Home Secretary’s assurance and confidence that we will not end up in a situation where EU nationals, upon whom we absolutely depend in the health and social care system, and who do an absolutely outstanding job, would not be allowed to remain in the UK. She has said she is very confident that we will be able to negotiate a deal whereby they are able to stay here as long as they wish and to continue to make the important contribution they do, and I accept that assurance.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir), will the Secretary of State give the House an assurance that he will release that analysis and that it will be sufficiently comprehensive to allow us to see a regional breakdown of the significance of EU nationals working in our health service?
Mr Jamie Reed
On the point my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) has just made about having an assessment if we do end up, essentially, forcibly repatriating EU citizens in the United Kingdom, there will of course be a flip side: something like 3 million British expats in the EU would have to return to the UK as well. Many of them are, to put it politely, of pensionable age, with challenging health demands in many regards. Will the Secretary of State also provide an assessment of what effect that would have on the national health service?
Mr Hunt
I am sure that that is analysis we can do, but I cannot do it at the Dispatch Box as a direct response to the hon. Gentleman. However, as I am sure he is well aware—we made this point during the whole Brexit referendum debate—we have reciprocal health arrangements with other EU countries at the moment. Those are immensely convenient to people travelling to and visiting other European countries, because they mean those people can access healthcare completely free of charge. The bill is actually sent to the Government, and that arrangement includes pensioners who have retired to Spain and France and Italy as well. It would be very sad if, as a result of the new relationship with the EU, we lost that convenience. That is one of the reasons why I am confident that other EU countries will be happy for British pensioners to remain in them. As long as those countries are able to charge us for the healthcare costs, the burden to them should be minimal.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Secretary of State spoke about NHS spending. Does he agree that cuts to local government spending on social care are putting increased financial pressures on the NHS? At St George’s hospital, a cost of £1.3 million has been attributed to inefficient discharges.
Mr Hunt
First, may I welcome the hon. Lady to her place as a doctor and as someone who knows a great deal about NHS matters? Although I am sure we will not agree on every health matter, it is always valuable and a great asset to have someone with medical experience in the House, and I am sure she will make a huge contribution in that respect. She is absolutely right to say that what happens in the social care system has a direct impact on what happens in the NHS, and that we cannot—as, in fairness, happened under Governments of both colours over many years—look at the NHS and the social care system as completely independent systems when we know that inadequate provision in the social care system has a direct impact on emergency admissions in A&E departments. She is right to make that point.
Let me make a broader point in concluding my comments. I think that there would be agreement across this House on the huge pressure on the NHS frontline at the moment, and that there is recognition of some fantastic work being done by front-line doctors and nurses to cope with that pressure. I shall give a couple of examples of the extra work that is happening, compared with six years ago. The A&E target is to see, treat and discharge people within four hours. Every day, we are managing to achieve that, within the four-hour target, for 2,500 more people than six years ago. On cancer, we are not hitting all our targets, but every single day we are doing 16,000 more cancer tests, including 3,500 more MRI scans, and treating 130 additional people for cancer. There are some incredible things happening.
However, we all recognise, and this perhaps lies behind the Opposition’s concerns in bringing this motion to the House, that in healthcare we now deal with the twin challenges of an ageing population, in that we will have 1 million more over-70s within the next five years—a trend that is continuing to grow—and of the pressure of scientific discovery, which means we have new drugs and treatments coming down the track. They are exciting new possibilities but also things that cost money. I for one, as Health Secretary, believe that as soon as economic conditions allow, we will need to start looking at a significant increase in health funding. That is why it is incredibly important, as we go through the next few years negotiating our new relationship with Europe, that we work very hard to protect the economic base that we have in this country, the economic success that we have started to see, and the jobs that do not just employ a lot of people but create tax revenues for this country. It is incredibly important that we pilot the next few years with a great deal of care, because what happens on the economy will have a huge impact on the NHS.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and, if he will forgive me for saying so, temporarily fond of him as a result, because he is allowing me to raise a particular constituency concern. Northwick Park hospital, which serves my constituents, currently has a deficit of almost £100 million and is having to axe 140 staff posts as a result of the lack of funding for my local clinical commissioning group, by comparison with other parts of London. Will he undertake to look specifically at the issues facing Northwick Park hospital and Harrow clinical commissioning group as his further analysis of the need for additional spending in the NHS is taken forward?
Mr Hunt
I am very happy to do so. I have visited that hospital, where the challenges very much reflect what the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) said about links to the social care system. It was clear to me that the staff in the A&E department are working incredibly hard getting people through it, but struggling to discharge people from the hospital, which is why they were not hitting their target.
I have just been handed a note by a ministerial colleague, Mr Speaker, which I hope you will indulge me and let me read out, because I have never been handed such a note before. It says: “Apparently everyone wants to go and watch Wales play, so Whips happy if you felt you wanted to shorten your remarks.” On that basis, I will conclude by thanking the shadow Health Secretary for bringing this motion to the House and for her comments in support of it.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman is not only an experienced member of the Cabinet but a very seasoned parliamentarian, and I think he is well attuned to the feeling in the House, as I am sure that other colleagues will now also be—not that I am hinting or anything.