Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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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
(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
We are funding 1,500 additional medical school places each year to ensure that the NHS can continue to deliver safe, compassionate and effective care well into the future. Around 500 places will be made available in September 2018, and the remaining 1,000 places by September 2019.
Rebecca Pow
In Taunton Deane, we are desperately short of trained health professionals, from dermatologists to nurses, but one of the worst shortages is of GPs, with some practices not even able to get locums. I know Ministers are working on this, but could my right hon. Friend update me on what the Department is doing to encourage more medical students to become GPs? It is hard to believe they do not want to come to Somerset, but what are we doing to encourage them?
Mr Hunt
There is no greater champion for Somerset than my hon. Friend. What I would say to her is what I would say to all medical students, which is that general practice is going to be the biggest area of expansion in the NHS over the coming years; in fact, we are planning to have the biggest increase in GPs in the history of the NHS.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
It will take many years for the doctors the Secretary of State has just talked about to come on stream, and we have a workforce crisis in the NHS now, partly because of the cuts the Government made in the last Parliament, but also because of their irrational pursuit of the hardest of Brexits. He could do something very simple today to address this crisis in the short term, and that is to announce that all EU nationals who do vital work in our NHS will be able to stay when we leave the European Union.
Mr Hunt
The one simple thing the Government are not going to do is refuse to listen to what the British people said when they voted on 23 June. We will do what they said—it is the right thing to do. However, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the vital role that the around 10,000 EU doctors in the NHS play in this country. I can reassure him that the number of doctors joining the NHS from the EU was higher in the four months following the referendum result than in the same four months the previous year.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
Mr Hunt
I can absolutely confirm that the garden of England would be an ideal place for a new medical school—alongside many other parts of the country that are actively competing to start medical schools as a result of the expansion in doctor numbers. It is an independent process run by the General Medical Council, and we will await what it says with great interest.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
On this wonderful first day of spring, will the Secretary of State think anew about the training of GPs? We want more GPs, we want them highly trained and we want them to know that someone who suffers from atrial fibrillation should not be neglected and should not be put on aspirin or warfarin, but should be given the new anti-coagulants.
Mr Hunt
The hon. Gentleman speaks very wisely about this, and he is one of a number of people who say we need to look at the training we give GPs on patient safety, on growing, new areas like mental health, and on things like the identification of cancers. This is something we are having an ongoing discussion with the Royal College of General Practitioners about.
Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)
Given the importance of training new doctors and nurses to the future of the health service, will my right hon. Friend welcome the building, which will commence later this summer at the Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, of a new medical school that is solely there to train doctors to meet the needs of people in Essex and beyond its borders?
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Plans to train more UK doctors are absolutely welcome, but the Secretary of State knows that it takes at least 10 years to train a doctor, so what is his response to the surveys by the British Medical Association and the GMC showing that, having been left hanging for nine months, 40% to 60% of EU doctors are thinking of leaving?
Mr Hunt
My response is the one I give many times in this House, which is to stress to all those doctors how valued they are as critical parts of the NHS. We do not see any evidence of the number of doctors joining from the EU going down. The NHS is one of the best health services in the world, and it is a great place for people from other countries to work and train.
Dr Whitford
The workforce is one of the biggest challenges right across the nations of the UK, and particularly in rural areas, as we heard earlier. With a 92% drop in the number of EU nurses coming to the UK and a 60% increase in the number who left last year, how does the Secretary of State plan to avoid an NHS staffing crisis immediately post-Brexit, before there is time to train anybody extra?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady needs to be very careful in her use of statistics, because she will know that one reason for the drop in the number of nurses coming from the EU is that prior to the Brexit vote we introduced much stricter language tests, as that is better for the safety of patients and a very important thing that we need to get right. We are very confident that nurses will continue to want to work in the NHS, because it is a great place to work.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Between February 2016 and January 2017, there were just under 3,500 waits of longer than 12 hours from decision to admit to admission. That is completely unacceptable, which is why the Government took urgent steps to free up NHS bed capacity in this month’s Budget.
Dr Allin-Khan
Earlier this month, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners said that the “best place for GPs” is working within their communities to provide the highest possible general practice quality. What forecast has the Secretary of State made of the reduction in A&E waiting times next winter as a result of the new GP triage units in A&E departments? Does he agree that this is simply a small sticking plaster on the gaping wound that is our drastically underfunded NHS?
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady had a question, it was rather overlong and the least courtesy she can do the House is to listen quietly and with good manners to the reply.
Mr Hunt
Thank you, Mr Speaker. To continue, let me say that in this so-called “drastically underfunded NHS”, the hon. Lady’s local hospital—St George’s in Tooting—now has 36 more doctors working in A&E than there were in 2010. However, we also think that as a lot of people go to A&E departments with minor injuries and things that can be dealt with by GPs, we need to have GPs on site, and this Parliament we are planning to have 5,000 more doctors working in general practice.
Christian Matheson
In January, more than 1,000 patients at the Countess of Chester’s A&E unit had to wait more than four hours and only 81% of patients had to wait less than four hours. Now that the 95% target has been abandoned, until at least midway through next year, what guarantee can the Secretary of State give my constituents that we will not get a repeat of this next winter?
Mr Hunt
On the contrary, we have not abandoned the 95% target—we have reiterated its importance. There is, however, one part of the United Kingdom that has said it wants to move away from the 95% target—Wales. The Welsh Health Minister said last week:
“You can go to A&E and be there five hours but have…a good experience.”
That is not looking after patients; it is giving up on them.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
On this important issue of A&Es, does the Secretary of State agree that it makes no sense at all for my local clinical commissioning group to be bringing forward a business case to spend an extra £300 million on bulldozing Huddersfield royal infirmary and downgrading our A&E?
Mr Hunt
I recognise the very strong arguments my hon. Friend makes and the strong campaigning he does on behalf of his constituents. We are waiting for the final recommendations to come from his local CCG, but I agree that too often we have closed beds in the NHS when we do not have alternative capacity in the community, and we need to be very careful not to repeat that mistake.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The cost of presenting with a minor ailment at a pharmacy is only 10% of the cost of presenting at A&E. What more can be done to help persuade those who present themselves to A&E that the pharmacy sector could be a better use of their time?
Mr Hunt
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend on that. Despite the current debates, the pharmacy sector has a very bright future, and we have set up a £40 million integration fund precisely to help pharmacists to play more of a role in the NHS and, in particular, to reduce pressure on A&Es.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
This year, the winter crisis in A&E has been the worst ever. Things have got so bad that, rather than waiting in A&E, record numbers of people are just giving up—I am sure there are many who wish the Secretary of State would do likewise. In January, nearly 1,000 people were stuck on trolleys waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted to A&E. Will the Secretary of State accept that that is far more than just a small number of isolated incidents? After five years in the job, he has to accept responsibility for the crisis he has created.
Mr Hunt
I accept responsibility for everything that happens in the NHS, including the fact that, compared with 2010, we are seeing 2,500 more patients within four hours every single day. We are also seeing a big increase in demand, which is why there were particular measures in the Budget to make sure that we return to the 95% target, including £2 billion for social care, which is £2 billion more than the Labour party promised for social care at the election.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
The urgent care centre at Corby has done much to relieve the pressures on Kettering A&E, and it is a class leader. Given the announcement of £100 million for new triaging projects, would the Secretary of State like to visit the Corby urgent care centre to see this beacon of best practice at first hand?
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
This Government were the first to set a national ambition to eliminate inappropriate out-of-area placements by 2020-21. By then, no adult, child or young person will be sent away from their local area to be treated for a general mental health condition.
Paula Sherriff
I thank the Secretary of State for his response. My 17-year-old constituent Jess needed an acute mental health bed. The nearest available was in Colchester. She was allowed to go home some weekends, but it meant an 800-mile trip for her mum. We can only imagine the emotional and financial hardship that that caused. The Secretary of State tells us that he is working on this matter, and I believe that he does want to improve things, but what progress has actually been made, as this is really, really not good enough for Jess and others?
Mr Hunt
I agree with the hon. Lady and she makes her case very powerfully. We need to make progress and we need to make it fast, particularly for young people, as their recovery can be very closely linked with the potential of their parents to come to visit them. Nearby places such as the Sheffield Health and Social Care Foundation Trust, which do not serve her constituents, have eliminated out-of-area placements and saved £2 million in the process. It is about spreading that best practice.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks very wisely on this matter. In the end, schools are a vital place in which to spot mental health conditions early. We know that around half of mental health conditions become established before the age of 14, and this will be a big part of the Green Paper that we publish later this year.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Does the Secretary of State recognise the ways in which poverty, the associated financial strain and deprivation intersect with mental health; understand the need for him to work with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to ensure that mental health is properly recognised in personal independence payment assessments; and recognise that the problem is more acutely affected if people have to travel out of their area of residence?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Some innovative and award-winning work is being done by Bradford District NHS Care Trust. It is working alongside excellent voluntary organisations and charitable organisations such as the Cellar Trust in Shipley, which is delivering much improved support for mental health patients. Will the Secretary of State congratulate the work that is being done in Bradford, and would he like to pay a visit so that he can share this best practice with other parts of the UK?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to congratulate the Cellar Trust, and to pay a visit if I can find the time to do so. My hon. Friend is right to say that voluntary organisations play a vital role. Very often, they can see the whole picture and they treat the whole person, not just the specific NHS or specific housing issue, so he is right to commend its work.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Recent figures show that 18 mental health patients were placed more than 185 miles away from their home for treatment, including five from the northern region—Jess is one such example. Their families will have to travel the equivalent of Manchester to London, or further, to visit them. We have also learned that £800 million was taken out of CCG budgets, which could be funding services such as mental health in-patient beds, just to help NHS England balance the books. Will the Secretary of State tell those patients and families why they should be treated so far from home when their local CCG should be able to fund the in-patient beds they need?
Mr Hunt
With great respect to the hon. Lady, we are the first Government to count out-of-area placements, and to commit to eradicating them. What she does not tell the House is the context, which is the biggest expansion in mental health provision anywhere in Europe, with 1,400 more people being treated every single day, and an extra £342 million being spent this year on mental health compared with last year.
David Mackintosh (Northampton South) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
As part of our plan to improve access to general practice, we are taking steps to ensure that there will be an extra 5,000 doctors by 2020. We are increasing the number of GP training places, recruiting up to 500 doctors from overseas and encouraging doctors who have retired to return to general practice.
David Mackintosh
I am aware of a number of issues with the recruitment of GPs in my constituency, such as at St Luke’s surgery in Duston. Will my right hon. Friend meet me to discuss the issues with that surgery in particular?
Mr Hunt
I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. He will know that the surgery got an £80,000 grant this year through NHS England’s general practice resilience scheme, but I am aware that there are lots of pressures on surgeries such as St Luke’s and I am happy to talk about it further.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I am delighted to hear the Secretary of State issue some information about the additional GPs who will be coming on stream in the coming years. How many will be coming to north-east Lincolnshire and when will they be there? We have a critical shortage of GPs and people are struggling to get appointments.
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that areas such as Lincolnshire find it particularly difficult to attract GP recruits, which is why we have set up a fund that gives new GP trainees a financial incentive to move to some of the more remote parts of the country. This is beginning to have some effect, and I am happy to write to her with more details.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s efforts to recruit more GPs, and I know that he wants all GPs and, indeed, doctors to have high levels of job satisfaction. Is he aware of the fact that reasonable numbers of doctors are leaving the UK to work overseas? Given the cost of medical training and the money that taxpayers put into that education, will he look at that issue, perhaps by requiring a certain commitment to the NHS?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is currently no evidence of an increase in the number of doctors going to work abroad, but there is an issue of fairness because it costs around £230,000 to train a doctor over five years. In return for that, there should be some commitment to spend some time working in the NHS, and we are consulting on that at the moment.
Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)
GPs around the country are facing unprecedented pressures as they work to deliver the highest possible standards of care, despite underinvestment and increasing patient demand. A record number of GP practices closed in 2016. Are the Government really serious about addressing the problem for the sake of GPs and their patients? If so, why has the promised £16 million resilience fund not been delivered in full, when it was promised by October 2016? There is very little evidence to date of the Government delivering on any of their promises in “General Practice Forward View”, no sign of the extra £2.4 billion, no sign of—
Mr Speaker
Order. We have got the general drift. May I gently say to the hon. Lady that the longer the Opposition Front Benchers take, the less time there is for Back Benchers on both sides? This is becoming a worsening phenomenon. It is not only the fault of the hon. Lady, but it really must stop. It is not fair to Back-Bench Members.
Mr Hunt
During my time as Health Secretary, the real-terms investment in general practice has gone up by £700 million or 8%, and we are planning to increase it by 14%—£2.4 billion—over this Parliament. A lot of extra money is going in, but I recognise that there are still a lot of pressures.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
The Secretary of State’s plans to recruit doctors will be widely welcomed in Leicestershire, but should he not be making greater use of already properly regulated practitioners—those who are regulated by the Professional Standards Authority—of whom there are 20,000, including hypnotherapists?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend’s ingenuity in bringing these issues up in question after question never ceases to amaze me. As he knows, we recognise that the pressure in primary care cannot just be borne by general practice, but we must always follow the science as to where we get our help from.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Only recently, a surgery has been closed down in the borough of Halton. There is a clear shortage of GPs. Despite the efforts of the clinical commissioning group to try to find replacements, that has not happened. How will merging CCGs help, and can the Secretary of State rule out any merger between Warrington and Halton?
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
As part of our ambition to make the NHS the safest healthcare system in the world, I will today be speaking at the largest ever conference on learning from avoidable deaths and what we can do to improve care in the future. As part of that, I can inform the House that the NHS Litigation Authority will radically change its focus from simply defending NHS litigation claims to the early settlement of cases, learning from what goes wrong and the prevention of errors. As part of those changes, it will change its name to NHS Resolution.
Margaret Ferrier
My constituent Pauline Cafferkey was cleared of misconduct last September, following a very public case surrounding her return from Sierra Leone and her contraction of Ebola. Will she receive an apology from Public Health England and will it reimburse her legal costs?
Mr Hunt
With respect to Pauline Cafferkey, who is a very brave lady and who gave very good service to this country and the people of Sierra Leone with her work during the Ebola crisis, the hon. Lady will understand that disciplinary procedures are an independent matter. They are not dealt with by the Government. They have to be done at arm’s length and we have to respect whatever is said or done.
Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
The Government have not met the four-hour target for A&E since July 2015. In the NHS mandate, finally published yesterday, the Secretary of State is effectively telling hospitals that they do not need to meet it in 2017 and that it only needs to be met in aggregate across hospitals
“within the course of 2018”.
Is that not the clearest admission that the targets will not be met next year, because in the next 12 months the NHS will be denied the funding it needs and, as a consequence, patients will suffer?
Mr Hunt
Apart from observing that if the hon. Gentleman cares so much about the 95% target he might want to ask his colleagues in Wales why they are looking at scrapping it, on the money let me be very clear: in the next year, the NHS will be getting about £1.5 billion more than his party were promising at the last election and the social care system will be getting £1.5 billion more than his party were promising at the last election. We are doing our job.
Jonathan Ashworth
The Secretary of State says he is doing his job, so why does he not take that up with NHS Providers, which is warning that because of the underfunding, it will be “mission impossible” in the next 12 months to deliver standards of care. Returning to the NHS mandate, did you notice, Mr Speaker, that in that mandate there is no mention whatsoever of Brexit, even though the NHS relies on 140,000 NHS and care workers? I know that the Secretary of State is not a member of the Cabinet Brexit committee, but will he use his considerable influence with the Prime Minister to ensure that when she triggers article 50 next week, she will finally give an absolute guarantee of the rights of all those EU workers in our NHS?
Mr Hunt
First, let me first reassure you, Mr Speaker, that I will be attending the Brexit committee when it is relevant to the NHS; in fact, I shall attend it this week, because issues relating to the NHS are coming up in it. What we are not going to do in that committee, however, is to take steps that would risk the welfare of British citizens living in countries such as Spain, Ireland and France. That is why, although it is a top priority for us to negotiate the rights of EU citizens living in Britain, including those working in the NHS, it has to be part of an agreement that protects the rights of British citizens abroad.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that this is a serious issue. I commend the brilliant work done by NHS trauma centres throughout the country, which are world-beating, but, as well as setting up those centres, we have established much closer co-operation with local police forces so that we can work out where the crime hotspots are and help the police to prevent such things from happening.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
The British Medical Association said recently that the funds for sustainability and transformation plans that were announced in the Budget would be completely inadequate for the task. Health trusts throughout the country are being forced to consider rationing treatment and ending or downgrading local services such as A&E, which will result in even longer waits and journey times to access care. Why do the Government not call STPs what they really are—secret Tory plans to decimate the national health service further?
Mr Hunt
This is a year in which funding for the NHS has risen by £3.8 billion in real terms. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman can say what he has said, given that in 2015 he stood on a platform to give the NHS £1.3 billion less this year than it is receiving under the Conservatives.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
The NHS mandate was published yesterday, just days before coming into force. Can the Secretary of State set out the reason for the delay, because it allows very little time for scrutiny of this important document by this House? Will he also set out how he is going to prevent money being leached from mental health services and primary care to prop up provider deficits, so that we can meet objective 6 on improving community services?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend makes very important points. The reason for the delay was because about a month ago we had wind that we might be successful in securing extra money for social care in the Budget, and we needed to wait until the Budget was completed before we concluded discussions on the mandate. Our confidence as a result of what is in the Budget has enabled us to make the commitments we have made in the mandate, including making sure that we continue to invest in the transformation of out-of-hospital care.
Several hon. Members rose—
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will be aware that many migrants in the UK are not registered with GPs, yet now when they come to Britain they have to pay an NHS fine. What is he doing, with the Home Office, to ensure that migrants are registered with a GP and are aware of community health facilities?
Mr Hunt
I am not quite sure whether I understand the right hon. Lady’s question, but there is not a fining system for migrants; what we say is that people who come to the UK as visitors should pay for their healthcare, or pay the visa surcharge if they are coming for a longer period. There is an exemption for public health, because it is important for everyone that we make sure that we treat people for things like tuberculosis.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
The Secretary of State is aware of the concern that I and the people of Witney have about the future of Deer Park medical centre, which is a vital local resource. I am grateful to him for meeting me and for our correspondence. Please will he confirm that he will press the Independent Review Panel for a response at the earliest opportunity, given that the clinical commissioning group is determined to close this vital practice in three days’ time, and that he will consider the views of the patients of Witney very carefully indeed?
Several hon. Members rose—