Mental Health and NHS Performance

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In wishing the hon. Members for Morley and Outwood and for Filton and Bradley Stoke all the best in the weeks and months ahead, I call Andrea Jenkyns.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. First, I echo some of the points made by the Secretary of State regarding mental health support for expectant mothers. As one myself, I have to say that the midwives have been fantastic. Right from the very first appointments at grassroots level, they mention mental health, so we are feeling the support on the ground.

I welcome today’s statement, which shows the Government’s commitment to mental health by making it a centrepiece of the agenda. One in 50 young people in Yorkshire receive care for mental health. How will the new approach address the concerns of the young people and their parents, and what measures are in place to reduce the waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services?

[Mr Hunt]

I add to Mr Speaker’s comments my very good wishes and confidence that my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) will get superb care from the NHS. I thank her for campaigning on patient safety. I am sure she will be pleased to hear that our principal safety campaign this year is on maternity safety.

In bald numbers, the plan will mean that we will treat 1 million more people with mental health conditions a year by the end of this Parliament. Of course, many of those will be in Yorkshire. An additional 70,000 young people will get treatment every single year and I hope that will bring down the CAMHS waiting times. We also want to do work in schools to prevent people from getting on the CAMHS waiting list in the first place.

CQC: NHS Deaths Review

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the shadow Health Secretary for the constructive nature of his comments. He is absolutely right in that, because this issue can unite people in all parts of the House. In fairness, these tragedies happen when those on either side of the House are responsible for the NHS, and we all have a responsibility to work to do better than we are doing at the moment.

I particularly agree with the hon. Gentleman that front-line doctors and nurses work incredibly hard, and we need to get away from a blame culture when these tragedies happen. That blame culture is the root cause of why we are not learning as we should from the problems that arise, because people are worried about what will happen to them personally if they speak out. We have seen this with a number of tragedies. Through the national framework, we are trying to move away from a blame culture. Of course people have to be held accountable. If there is gross negligence and people do totally irresponsible things, then there must be no hiding place and proper accountability: that is what families rightly insist on. For the vast majority of the time, however, people are just trying to do their jobs as best they can. As he rightly says, it is often a systemic problem that can be solved with systemic changes. We are now trying to implement the culture of investigation that has worked so successfully in the airline industry and other industries.

I absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that families and carers will be equal partners as we develop the new national guidance. This area was one of the most shocking things about the CQC report. I am sure that it was a great surprise to many people in the NHS how excluded many families felt. We clearly have to do better in that respect.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the National Patient Safety Agency, and I pay credit to Sir Liam Donaldson, who was chief medical officer under the previous Labour Government and a great champion of patient safety, but we now have different structures in place. The new CQC inspection regime and the healthcare safety investigation branch are giving equal, if not greater, priority to patient safety.

We discuss on many occasions the funding issues that the hon. Gentleman raised, as I think he is acknowledging with his facial expressions. The point I would make, because we have had a good exchange and I do not want to get into the specific politics of NHS funding, is that this is a win-win, because avoidable harm and death is incredibly expensive for the NHS. The time it takes to carry out investigations when things go wrong is utterly exhausting for the doctors, nurses and managers involved, who would much rather be doing front-line care. Preventing these things from happening in future is the best possible way of freeing up time for people on the frontline.

I will take away what the hon. Gentleman said about the Elizabeth Dixon case and find out what is happening with that review.

The real lesson of today is that every family, every doctor and every nurse has a simple aim when a tragedy happens. It is not about money; it is about making sure that lessons are learned openly and transparently so that history does not repeat itself. That is really what this is about, and that is why we will continue our mission to make NHS care the safest and highest quality in the world.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has answered my point, but I would like to say, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety, that the publication of avoidable death figures is really welcome news. I support what he said about creating a just culture where clinicians and other staff feel safe. That is important so that they can speak up about failure, and vital in delivering the high-quality but, most importantly, safer and better-value services the NHS aspires to.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend, who does a huge amount of work on patient safety, not least because of sadness in her own family’s experiences that gives her particular passion in this respect. This is absolutely about creating a just culture. Inspiring people like James Titcombe, who lost his own son at Morecambe Bay, talk far more eloquently than I can about the need to get this right. Part of that just culture is about justice for people who use the NHS in future, to whom we have a responsibility to learn the lessons and make sure that mistakes are not repeated. One of the really important things we need to get right is to make sure that when something goes wrong in one place, there is a national way in which the lessons can be conveyed right across the NHS as quickly as possible.

Junior Doctors Contract

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to give that assurance. One of the most exciting things in the NHS, despite a lot of the doom and gloom in the headlines, is that we are seeing a transformation in safety culture. Even though we are now doing about 4,500 more operations every day, the proportion of patients being harmed is down by about a third in just three years. I think there is a transformation, but of course there is a lot more to do, as I am no doubt going to hear.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

I am shocked that we are here yet again. If we look at the history, 90% of the contract has been renegotiated. There have been years of negotiations. This contract is far safer for patients. Regardless of what the Opposition say, it cannot be laid at the Secretary of State’s door if the junior doctors decide to take strike action. We should stop using patients as pawns and put patients first. I would like to thank the Secretary of State for his perseverance. Does he agree that, through its relentless pursuit of partisan politics, the BMA has backed itself into a corner and put patients at risk?

[Mr Hunt]

The way patients have suffered—there have been over 20,000 cancelled operations during this process—has been very disappointing. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to campaign on issues of hygiene and cleanliness, which lead to so many tragedies when they are not properly attended to. I hope we can move on now. I do believe that, despite the disappointing rejection of this deal in the ballot, some trust has been established between the leaders of the BMA and the Government, and we have had a productive dialogue. We have made a number of changes to the May contract since announcing it—things that they suggested and that we agreed to. I would like to continue that process and build that trust.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I have to say that the right hon. Gentleman never whispered sweet nothings in my ear, and he certainly has not done so since being in opposition. With regard to doing what it takes, let me tell the hon. Gentleman directly that we have been trying to solve this problem for three years, with 75 meetings, 74 concessions and three independent processes. We have been doing everything we possibly can to solve this problem. What we have is a very intransigent and difficult junior doctors committee of the BMA, which has refused to negotiate sensibly. In that situation, the Health Secretary has a simple choice: to move forward or to give up. When it comes to patient safety, we are moving forward.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

Patient safety is a matter close to my heart. Tomorrow, doctors will shout that this strike is not about pay or Saturday working, but about patient safety. They will march under banners declaring the contract to be unsafe and unfair. Will the Secretary of State reassure the House that there is absolutely no prospect of the Government giving into this naked attempt by the doctors’ union to hold vulnerable patients as hostage in a row over pay? Patients must always come first.

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The truth is that being Health Secretary is never easy, whichever Government they are in, but where they have made mistakes in the past is where they have been too willing to compromise on vital issues of patient safety, and a seven-day NHS is one of those issues. When it comes to safety, Channel 4’s “FactCheck”, which is not a known supporter of the Government, has compared the new contract with the old one and said that, on the face of it, the new one is safer. That should reassure many doctors that this is the right thing for the NHS to do, and they should work with us, not against us.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to do so. We are introducing a new contract from this August, and it will be for all junior doctors. It will go progressively through the different ranks of junior doctors and, over the course of the next year, the vast majority of new doctors will move on to the new contracts. The reason that we did not use the word “impose” in the original statement was not a matter of semantics. We are proceeding with this new contract and everyone will move on to it, which is the gist of what most people mean by this. What we are not doing is changing existing contracts, so when people move trust or move to a new position, they will move on to a new contract. That is why we have used the term “introduction” of new contracts. However, it would have been much better if the introduction of the new contracts had been done through a negotiated process. That is why we took such trouble: we went to 75 meetings and made 73 different concessions in order to try to do this on a negotiated basis. Very regrettably, that proved not to be possible, which is why we took the difficult decision to proceed with these new contracts anyway.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that it is totally unjustified for doctors to demand higher premium rates at weekends when almost all other NHS workers, and indeed most other working people across the economy, do not get them? It is completely disrespectful for the BMA to suggest that doctors’ lives are somehow uniquely disproportionately inconvenienced by Saturday shifts and that those of other people are not.

[Mr Hunt]

It is true that the BMA rejected Saturday premium pay that was more generous than the Saturday premium pay offered to nurses, healthcare assistants or paramedics working in the same hospitals and operating theatres as those doctors. Many people will ask whether that was a reasonable position to take, given that the doctors’ overall pay was protected. I think they will also ask whether, even if the doctors disagreed with the Government on that point, it was appropriate or proportionate for them to withdraw life-saving emergency care from patients in the pursuance of their disagreement. I wonder whether that is something that will shape many people’s confidence in what the NHS stands for.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Well done.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

By refusing to condemn the junior doctors strike, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) has shown that she has little regard for patient safety. [Interruption.] Will my right hon. Friend repeat his condemnation of this strike, which will seriously endanger patient safety, and assure me that he will continue to press for the new contracts, which will guarantee safer patient care and a better contract for doctors?

[Mr Hunt]

I think my hon. Friend got a bit of a reaction with those comments. The Labour party is saying that if a negotiated settlement cannot be reached, we should not impose a new contract—in other words, we should give up on seven-day care for the most vulnerable patients. There was a time when the Labour party spoke up for vulnerable patients. Now it is clear that unions matter more than patients.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am not quite sure I understand what the hon. Lady is referring to. We are not reducing A and E hours; we are investing. We have nearly 2,000 more consultants in our A and E departments than five years ago and we need to support strong A and E departments as much as possible.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

Over the weekend we learned of the close links between the leadership of the British Medical Association and the Labour party. It seems that the BMA is more interested in pushing its own political agenda than in securing the best deal for its members. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that he will hold his nerve and deliver the seven-day NHS that will make the NHS safer for our patients?

[Mr Hunt]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. This is essential for the constituents of all hon. Members, whichever side of the House they sit on, and this Government will always stand on the side of patients. The weekend mortality rates are not acceptable. That is why we are doing something about them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

To continue on the same theme—hopefully I am coming in at the right time, Mr Speaker—I chair the all-party group on patient safety, in collaboration with the Patients Association. We are about to look into hospital infections, and in Parliament in November I will launch a hand washing campaign. What is the Department of Health doing to promote infection control outside hospital settings?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her great interest in this issue and for the campaigning she did before entering Parliament, which I know stemmed from personal tragedy. This is an incredibly important issue. We face a crisis in global healthcare as a result of anti-microbial resistance, which means the current generation of antibiotics is no longer as effective as it needs to be. Proper hygiene in hospitals is therefore vital, and we have a lot of plans that I will be happy to share with her.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Jenkyns

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I have here the figures on nurse training placements, which started to go down in 2009-10, by nearly 1,000. Who was Secretary of State at the time? I think it was the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] I have the figures here, and they show that planned nurse training places went down from 21,337 to 20,327. He talks about apologies, but where is the apology for what happened at Mid Staffs, which led to hospitals having to recruit so many staff so quickly? That is the real tragedy, and that is what this Government are sorting out.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

14. What the NHS’s criteria are for dispensing eculizumab.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

Of course we will look at the funding formula, but it needs to be fair to the whole country. The hon. Lady’s area is not the only one facing pressures in the GP system. Our ambition is to solve the problem everywhere.

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

T7. The rate of hospital-acquired infections improved dramatically and halved in the last Parliament. Having lost my own father to a hospital-acquired infection, I am fully aware of the challenges we face. Will the Secretary of State look into ensuring that surgical site infections are included in all future statistics? In doing so, we can work on eradicating them, as they are a common way to catch an infection.