Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

2. What progress has been made on turning around hospitals in special measures.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

In the past four years, 31 trusts have been put into special measures, more than one in 10 of all NHS trusts. Of those, 15 have now come out and I particularly congratulate the staff of Sherwood Forest, Wye Valley, and Norfolk and Suffolk trusts which have come out of special measures in the past month.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the sustainability and transformation plan for Norfolk and Waveney is a vital part of the Queen Elizabeth hospital’s future as it successfully moves out of special measures? Although there is overwhelming support for integrating health and social care, will he confirm that there will be full consultation with different patient groups on the STP?

[Mr Hunt]

I can absolutely give that assurance. Through my hon. Friend I congratulate the staff of King’s Lynn hospital who have turned things around there. It was a great privilege for me to visit it and see the work that they have done. My hon. Friend is right—the next step is to integrate the work done in acute hospitals with what happens in the community and the social care system. That is why the open and transparent STP process is so important.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I do listen carefully to the Health Secretary and sometimes I end up wondering what planet he is living on. There are as many trusts in special measures now as there are trusts that have come out of special measures. Just because different people in different places are experiencing poor care does not make the overall picture any better. When will the right hon. Gentleman accept that the overall amount of resource going into the system is simply inadequate if he wishes to provide high quality, timely care for all?

[Mr Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Lady that what is different now is that we have a special measures regime. When Labour was in power, the problems were swept under the carpet and not dealt with. Now they are being dealt with because we want every NHS patient to have confidence that we will not have another Mid Staffs. That is why we are making very good progress. With respect to funding, may I respectfully tell her that had we followed her party’s spending plans, the NHS would have £1.3 billion less this year?

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that with depressing regularity the same hospitals come up on that list that he has just referred to. Sustainability and transformation plans provide the opportunity to address some of the unsustainable elements of local health economies, but only, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) says, if the money is there. With the health service facing its tightest financial settlement in its history, these plans are just not deliverable.

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Gentleman understands health extremely well, both from his ministerial position and from being on the Select Committee. If he looks at the hospitals going into special measures, he will see that we are beginning to succeed in moving hospitals out of special measures, but because we have an independent inspection regime, sometimes other ones go in. That is how it should be. That is what works very well in the education sector and is beginning to work well in driving up standards in health care as well.

To go back to my answer to the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), £1.3 billion more in the NHS this year compared with what would have been put into the NHS if Labour had won the last election means 30,000 nurses, 13,000 doctors or 200,000 hip replacements that we are able to do because of this Government’s funding of the NHS.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

3. How much his Department spent on healthcare as a proportion of GDP in (a) 2009-10 and (b) 2015-16; and what estimate he has made of the amount that will be spent on healthcare as a proportion of GDP in 2020-21.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Because of the 2008 financial crisis, all political parties committed to reducing the proportion of GDP spent on health in 2010, but because this Government chose to protect the NHS, the proportion fell from 6.4% to 6.2%, a drop of just 0.2% of GDP.

[Peter Dowd]

While welcome, that creative response does not answer the question. The fall in GDP spent on health is worrying. To mitigate that fall, when can my constituency expect its share of the Brexit NHS bonus to be injected into its health economy, which would bring in £30 million a year?

[Mr Hunt]

No one would be more delighted than the Health Secretary if we had a Brexit bonus for the NHS, which is why we are getting on with negotiating the best possible Brexit deal for this country, including by invoking article 50 as soon as possible.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for taking time last week to visit the Peterborough City hospital and to praise the magnificent staff there, who are labouring under a £35 million annual private finance initiative millstone. Is the wider context not that we would have a lot more money to spend on front-line care if we did not have to deal with a poisonous legacy from Labour of £64 billion of appalling PFI contracts in the NHS?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was incredibly impressed with the staff I met at Peterborough hospital—there was incredible commitment to patients and some fantastic work going on in the oncology and renal departments, which I visited. He is right: PFI was a disastrous mistake, saddling hospitals up and down the country with huge amounts of debt, which cannot now be put into front-line patient care. We are doing everything we can to sort that out and not repeat those mistakes.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that the NHS spends only about £400 million a year on homeopathic medicine and treatments through the 400 doctors who have trained in homeopathy and are members of the faculty. If he wants to reduce antibiotic prescribing, may I suggest that he increases that budget, because there are very good scientific trials now showing that upper respiratory tract infections can be treated using homeopathic medicine? May I write to him about that?

[Mr Hunt]

May I commend my hon. Friend for his great persistence in flying the flag for homeopathic medicine? While we must always follow the science in the way we spend our money on medicines, as I know he agrees, he is right to highlight the threat of antibiotic resistance and the need to be open to every possible way of reducing it.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today I publish my first annual report as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, in which I conclude that there is a sustainability crisis in the funding of the NHS. Surely the Secretary of State will agree—he has made some comments in the media that suggest he is becoming aware of this—that he will need to lobby the Chancellor for a better settlement in the autumn statement. Will he update the House on his negotiations?

[Mr Hunt]

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Lady but I do not update the House on Government discussions which happen in the run-up to every Budget and autumn statement. What I would say to the hon. Lady is that I am not someone who believes that the financial pressures that undoubtedly exist in the NHS and social care system threaten the fundamental model of the NHS. What they remind us all of is that what we need in this country is a strong economy that will allow us to continue funding the NHS and social care systems as we cope with the pressures of an elderly population. That, for me, is the most important challenge—the economic challenge that will allow us to fund the NHS.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, under his tenure as the Minister, there has been a real-terms increase in spending on the NHS in England, unlike in Wales, where, over the last few years, we have seen real-terms cuts under the Labour party?

[Mr Hunt]

As ever, my hon. Friend speaks wisely. Thanks to this Government, health spending in England is up by 10.1% in cash terms—4.6% in real terms—since 2010. That is double the cash increase in Scotland and three times the cash increase in Wales. Other parties talk about funding the NHS, but Conservatives say that actions speak louder than words.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

But we have seen public health budgets cut and social care budgets cut, and I can now tell the House that the maintenance budgets have been cut. In fact, the backlog of high-risk maintenance facing the NHS has soared by 69% in the past year. In London alone, the high-risk backlog has grown by £338 million; across the country the figure is nearly £5 billion. NHS finances are so stretched that even the most urgent repairs are being left undone. Is this what the Secretary of State meant when he said that he is giving the NHS the money it asked for?

[Mr Hunt]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has only been shadow Health Secretary for a while, but may I ask him to cast his mind back to 2010, when the party that wanted to cut the NHS budget was not the Conservative party but Labour? In 2015, his party turned its back on the five year forward view and said it would increase funding not by £8 billion but by just £2.5 billion. It is not enough to found the NHS—you have got to fund it.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. These exchanges, not untypically, are taking far too long, and part of the reason for that is that the Secretary of State keeps dilating on the policies of the Labour party. If he does so again, I will sit him down straight away. [Interruption.] Order. There are a lot of colleagues who want to ask questions. We want to hear about Government policy, not that of the Opposition. I have said it, it is clear— please heed it.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

If everything is so rosy with the NHS’s finances, why did Simon Stevens say just a couple of weeks ago that

“2018-19 will be the most pressurised year for us, where we will actually have negative per-person NHS funding growth in England”—

in other words, that NHS spending per head will be falling? The number of patients waiting longer than four hours in A&Es has increased. The number of days lost to delayed discharge has increased. The number of people waiting more than 62 days to start cancer treatment following referral has increased. Should not the Secretary of State do his job and make sure that next week’s autumn statement delivers the money that the NHS urgently needs?

[Mr Hunt]

Unlike other parties in this House, we have been increasing funding for the NHS. Thanks to that, we are now funding the NHS in England at a 10% higher proportion of GDP than the OECD average, and we are in line with the western European average because of our commitment. These are difficult financial times and there is financial pressure, but this Government have been saying that despite that financial pressure we must make sure that the NHS continues to offer safe, high-quality care—and that is our focus.

--- Later in debate ---

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

10. What steps his Department is taking to improve the safety of maternity care.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Last month, I launched the safer maternity care action plan, which is part of our ambition to halve the rates of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries by 2030.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. In 2001, the then Labour Government closed the maternity unit at Crawley hospital. Longer journeys to East Surrey hospital have been a safety concern. Will the Department look at reintroducing midwife services to Crawley hospital and GP surgeries in Crawley?

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to talk further with my hon. Friend. He knows that this is a local matter. It was, I think, looked into in 2014, but if the pattern of demand changes it should be kept under review.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

11. What assessment he has made of the effect of changes to local authority social care budgets on the demand for health services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

I am pleased to report to the House something I was not sure I would ever be able to say: last week, the British Medical Association called off its industrial action and committed to working with the Government on the implementation of new contracts for junior doctors. This will make a significant contribution to our commitment to a safer, seven-day NHS, and the Government will work constructively with junior doctors to address their concerns, because they are a vital and valued part of our NHS.

[Paul Blomfield]

The South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw STP sets out some very positive ambitions, but it warns that there will be a financial shortfall for health and social care services in our area of £571 million by 2020-21. Those ambitions are unachievable unless the Government address the shortfall. What is the Secretary of State going to do about it?

[Mr Hunt]

We are working very carefully with all STP areas to make sure that their plans are balanced so that we can live within the extra funding we are putting into the NHS—an extra £10 billion—by 2020-21. We will look at that plan and do everything we can to help to make sure that it works out.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T3. Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking Dr Ollie O’Toole of the Kirby Road surgery in Dunstable for representing all of the very best in a family doctor? Will he also explain what more we can do to encourage people to go into general practice rather than working for locum companies, which so many seem to want to do at the moment?

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do that, and I would like to pass on my congratulations to Dr O’Toole, who obviously does a fantastic job for my hon. Friend’s constituents. We are investing significantly in general practice, with a 14% increase in real terms over this Parliament and our ambition to provide an extra 5,000 doctors working in general practice. This will mean that the need for locums will become much less and we can have much more continuity of care for patients.

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State and the Minister will be aware that Capita has wreaked havoc in GP surgeries across the land, placing extra pressures on already overstretched NHS staff, compromising patient safety and breaching confidentiality. Last week, I met a group of practice managers who told me that some patient records have been missing for months, while others have turned up apparently half-eaten by mice. Given that this contract was introduced to save the NHS money, will the Minister tell us how much it is costing to rectify the mess and what steps she is taking to compensate GPs for the expenses they have incurred as a result of ill-conceived and poorly implemented contracts?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

T6. Proper integration of adult social care and health services requires co-operation on both sides. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is really not acceptable that in a borough such as Bromley, the CCG top-sliced only 3.5% of its funding to go into the better care fund—nowhere near enough to make a difference to hard-pressed local services?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing up that issue. Everyone recognises, on both sides of the House, that the health and social care sectors need to work together. That happens very well in some parts of the country, but not in others. I think all hon. Members have a job to make sure that people behave responsibly in their constituencies.

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

T5. Both Public Health England and Food Standards Scotland support restricted advertising of junk food to children, yet this was entirely omitted from the Government’s completely underwhelming obesity strategy. Given that we clearly cannot rely on the UK Government to take this forward, will the Secretary of State support the devolution of broadcasting powers to allow the Scottish Government to tackle the obesity crisis and its devastating impact on society?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

The number of nurses working in mental health has fallen by 15% since 2010, from 45,384 to 38,774. Why is that, and does the Secretary of State believe that it will achieve real parity of esteem for mental health in our country?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

What I can tell the hon. Lady—who, I know, rightly campaigns hard on mental health—is that we are treating 1,400 more people in our mental health services every day than we did in 2010, and we will be treating a million more people every year when we have implemented the taskforce report. We are investing more, and we are making good progress.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Shared care allows GPs to provide complex prescriptions for drugs such as methotrexate, but in my constituency the Beacon surgery recently withdrew from those arrangements. Can the Secretary of State assure me that the Department will support not only patients who now face potentially longer round trips, but GPs themselves, so that they can continue to provide those vital services?

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Is the Minister satisfied that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence procedures for the approval of anti-cancer drugs are sufficiently speedy, because the waiting times for approvals can be months or even years, and there is a widespread feeling that that is too slow?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We have tried to speed this up with the cancer drugs fund, which helped 84,000 people in the last Parliament, but we always keep the NICE procedures under review and I take on board what the hon. Gentleman says.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

We recently had an excellent debate in Westminster Hall on the Government’s tobacco control strategy. When will they publish the new strategy, which was promised for publication this summer?