Health, Social Care and Security

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Opposition for choosing to have this debate on security, health and social care. Like the Home Secretary, the shadow Home Secretary and the shadow Health Secretary, I want to start by paying tribute to the amazing work of our emergency services in the recent terrorist atrocities. There are many stories, but two in particular sum up for me just how brilliant they were. The first was of an anaesthetist who picked up his daughter from the Manchester Arena when the bomb went off. He checked his daughter was safe, dropped her off at home and then went straight to work at Stepping Hill hospital. He worked through the night, and it was only in the morning that his colleagues realised he had actually been there when the bomb went off.

I also want to mention the paramedics who arrived on the scene at London Bridge. They arrived minutes after the incident. Gunfire was still happening and they thought they were being fired at, but they walked straight into that gunfire. When I met them, they said they were just doing their job, but I think that shows that there is no such thing as “just a job” in the NHS; it is a vocation. On behalf of the whole country as well as this House, I want to thank them for showing us the NHS at its best. I want to record the fact that it is not just in times of tragedy that our NHS is there for us; it is there seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

We have had a good and wide-ranging debate this afternoon. I congratulate, as the shadow Health Secretary did, the Members who made their maiden speeches; we heard some fantastic ones. I start with my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami). It is great credit to him that his mother is a pharmacist and his father is an NHS doctor. It is marginally less credit to him that he became a lawyer, but only marginally. He spoke with great passion and fluency about the importance of education. It was an excellent and moving first contribution to this House.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark), a notable Conservative gain in the election. He spoke with great eloquence about the attractions of his constituency, including castles, beaches, restaurants and a golf course owned by the President of the United States. As for his campaign to get the Scottish Government to do more to deal with NHS staff shortages in his area, it is unusual for me to be on this side of the argument, but I can wholeheartedly support his campaign.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) for his excellent speech. A teacher of medieval history, he taught us about the 9th century church in his constituency and the need to learn the lessons of the peasants’ revolt against excessive taxation. I can assure him that on the Conservative Benches we do not need to learn those lessons; we have reached enlightenment.

I thank the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) for his beautiful panegyric to his stunning constituency. He spoke very powerfully against witch hunting in the military and very powerfully in favour of the Union; both positions will have strong support on the Government Benches.

I welcome to the Labour Benches the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). It is excellent to have another doctor in the House. He is, I think, the first ever Member to invite all hon. Members to join him at his 6 o’clock boot camp. As the shadow Health Secretary said, I feel as Health Secretary that I should set an example and join him, but unfortunately I have an unavoidable diary clash; that is a phrase he will learn to use as a new MP, I am sure. His passion for dealing with health inequalities came through loud and clear, and did him great credit.

I also want to thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine). She talked about the majesty of the three bridges across the Forth. For a couple of my teenage years, I grew up under one of them. She was absolutely right to want to reassure EU citizens working in the NHS of the vital importance of their role. I hope the Prime Minister’s comments this week will give them reassurance that we are seeking a deal that gives them the same rights to live and work here as UK citizens.

I apologise for not being able to mention all of the many other contributions, but there were some important themes that I want to touch on. A number of Members talked about the possibility of developing a more cross-party consensus on difficult issues around health and social care. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) spoke powerfully on that point, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I would make this point. Governments of all colours always seek to get consensus on difficult policy issues, and this Government are no different. However, it takes two to tango, and we have had two elections in a row that the Labour Opposition have tried to turn into referendums on the NHS. If those on the Opposition Front Bench are willing to engage, then we on this side of the House are most certainly willing to do likewise.

[Yvette Cooper]

On an issue on which I hope there will be consensus across the House, the Secretary of State will, I hope, have heard the words of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who said that whether women from Northern Ireland can get an abortion in the English NHS is a matter for the English NHS. Will the Secretary of State agree to change the rules, so that Northern Ireland women do not have to pay in England for an abortion, if they need one?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree that all women, in all parts of the United Kingdom, should have the same rights to access healthcare. I note that a consultation on this matter is about to happen. The most important thing is that the voices of the women of Northern Ireland are listened to in that consultation.

We had powerful speeches on mental health, in particular from my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and the hon. Members for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) and for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), but also from many others. Mental health is a very big priority for the Government, particularly children and young people’s mental health, because half of all mental health conditions become established before the age of 14. It is particularly important to have better links between the schools sector and the NHS if we are to crack this problem. We have a Green Paper coming up later in the year that will seek to address that.

We also had a number of important speeches on the workforce and morale, including from my hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), a doctor and a nurse respectively, who spoke with great authority. We also heard from Opposition Members, including the hon. Members for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), for Halifax (Holly Lynch), for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Halton (Derek Twigg), who touched on issues around GP recruitment. On pay, all Members will recognise that whichever party is in power, we have to do the right thing for the economy. People will recognise that in the very difficult period that we have just had, it would not have been possible to increase the number of doctors by nearly 12,000 and the number of nurses in our wards by nearly 13,000 if we had not taken difficult decisions on pay. What I can say is that we will not make our decision on public sector pay until the pay review body has reported. We will listen to what it says, and to what people in this House have said, before making a final decision.

I want to mention what my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) said about his battle against sepsis. Everyone in this House, on all sides, is totally delighted that he won that battle, but how typically selfless of him to use his speech to talk about the 44,000 people every year who do not win their battle against sepsis. We will look carefully at what he said about a national sepsis registry. I also thoroughly agree with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) said about leadership in the public sector and the NHS. I look forward to more discussions with him about that.

On security, the shadow Home Secretary basically tried to turn an argument about public safety into an argument about austerity. However, I would gently say that for a shadow Home Secretary to protest about austerity in policing when she herself wanted to cut MI5 and the Met’s special branch, and when her leader wanted to cut the armed forces, is patently absurd. What she never mentioned is why we got into austerity in the first place: a global financial crash, made infinitely worse by profligate spending and a failure to regulate the City of London by the last Labour Government.

The shadow Health Secretary, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), spoke eloquently about the NHS.

[Ian Austin]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hunt]

I am going to make some progress. The shadow Health Secretary talked about underfunding of the NHS. He did not, of course, mention the new £43 million emergency floor at Leicester Royal Infirmary, which opened in April and is benefiting his constituents. There are indeed funding pressures in the NHS as we deal, like all countries, with the pressures of an ageing population, but they would be a whole lot worse if we had followed the advice of the Labour party in 2010 and cut the NHS budget; or followed the advice of the Labour party in Wales, which did cut the NHS budget; or followed the advice of the Labour party in 2015, when it promised £5.5 billion less than the Conservatives. The difference between this side of the House—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will just make my point. The difference between this side of the House and the other side is not the desire to fund the NHS, but the ability to fund it through a strong economy, and that is exactly what we did. By 2014, we had created 2 million more jobs and the fastest growth in the G7, and what was our first priority? The NHS. Its budget has gone up by £6 billion in real terms since 2014. That is a 7% rise, and it is £2.6 billion more than the Labour party promised in 2015.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Our advice was to put an extra £7 billion into the NHS this year, but will the Secretary of State tell me whether he thinks it fair that the people of Northern Ireland will receive an extra £1 billion—which I do not begrudge—while there is not a penny piece of extra investment for the English NHS? Is that fair?

[Mr Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that our manifesto was very clear: it referred to an extra £8 billion for the NHS, funded by the strong economy that Labour can never deliver.

When the hon. Gentleman talked about problems in the NHS, and problems in care in the NHS, it sounded as if all those problems had started with the Conservatives. He did not mention the most challenging and difficult problem that his party left behind: the legacy of atrocious care at Mid Staffs, Morecambe Bay and many other trusts. Unlike the last Labour Government, we did not sweep those problems under the carpet. We did the opposite: we introduced the toughest inspection regime in the world. Thirty-five trusts went into special measures, and 20 exited from those special measures. Wrexham Park, George Eliot, Hinchingbrooke, Cambridge, Morecambe Bay, Tameside and East Lancashire went from special measures to good standards. The proportion of NHS patients who say that their care is safe has never been greater.

[Stella Creasy]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has just announced a consultation on access to abortion in English hospitals, but as far as anyone is aware, no such consultation exists. Can you inform us whether there will be a written statement on the consultation, given that Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the issue and no information has been given, and whether we will be allowed to test the will of the House on the matter?

[Mr Speaker]

I have had no notification on that subject, but knowing the hon. Lady as I do, I feel sure that she will return to it before long.

[Mr Hunt]

This is the difference between the two parties. The Labour party wants to use the NHS as a political football. We want to make it better for patients, and that means difficult decisions to grow the economy so that we can fund the NHS, and difficult decisions to raise standards. The party of the NHS, however, is not the party that uses it to milk votes; it is the party that fights to make it better for patients. That is why it is the Conservative party that is making those difficult decisions. It is the Conservative party that is on the side of patients. It is the Conservative party that is seeing the highest standards of care for cancer, mental health conditions, strokes, heart attacks and nearly every major disease category that we have ever seen in the history of the NHS. It is the Conservative party, not the Labour party, that is the party of the NHS.





Question put, That the amendment be made.