Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I recognise that it is not a sustainable position to have to do that. Pressures on the frontline meant that it had to happen, but we do need to invest for the future and I agree with the hon. Lady that capital budgets are very important.

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

Young people with severe anxiety can spend years out of school and become very isolated. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to think more imaginatively about community and voluntary solutions to reach out to those young people, whose futures we must not give up on?

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely agree. About 3% of schoolchildren have severe anxiety, but if we get treatment to them quickly, often we cure the condition and it does not come back. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to be as imaginative as possible.

Mental Health and NHS Performance

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman with the figures.

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

More than a third of A&E attendances at peak times are caused by drunkenness. Behaviour on such a scale is as unacceptable as it is irresponsible. What more can be done to reduce that proportion hugely by this time next year?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend has raised an issue of public accountability. These are our national health services, and we need to treat them in a responsible way. It is selfish to behave irresponsibly and impose pressure on an A&E department, because someone else who needs help may not be able to get it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will tell the hon. Lady what I take responsibility for: more doctors, more nurses and more funding than ever before in the history of the NHS. We know that the highest standards are often achieved when there is strong clinical leadership. Only 54% of managers in this country are clinicians, compared with 74% in Canada and 94% in Sweden. That is why it is right that we do everything we can to encourage more clinicians into leadership roles.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that the clinical leadership involved in the Getting It Right First Time initiative is important, not only because it will save £1.5 billion, which could be put back into patient care, but because patients will be in less pain and will end up having fewer revision operations, and some will even survive treatment that they would not otherwise have survived?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I thank him for bringing Professor Tim Briggs to see me to explain just how superb this programme is. Infection rates for orthopaedic surgery vary between one in 20 patients in some trusts to one in 500 in others. Getting this right can transform care for patients and save money at the same time.

CQC: NHS Deaths Review

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I want to put on the record that the right hon. Gentleman was a big champion for people with learning disabilities when he was in my ministerial team, in particular over issues such as Winterbourne View, which he brought to my attention and did a huge amount of positive work on.

I have met Sara Ryan. I spoke to her again yesterday. I repeat what I said in my statement: that without her campaigning we would not now be making the huge changes on a national level that we are. I wholeheartedly agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s other comments.

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

The review found that acute and community trusts do not always record whether a patient has a mental health illness or learning disability. What steps will we take—such as, for example, the expansion of liaison psychiatry services—to make sure there is proper join-up and real parity of esteem?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We are making sure that all A&Es have liaison psychiatry services by the end of this Parliament. The critical issue is that someone with a severe mental health problem or learning disability who turns up in an A&E has special needs, and has bigger needs than the other patients there, but unless that is recognised early in the process, they are unlikely to get the care they need. If a tragedy then happens and they go on to die—as sadly happens sometimes—but the illness or disability is not known about, people do not realise that there are other potential issues. That is why the report is very clear that all acute trusts are required to know when patients have learning disabilities or mental health problems and to pay particular attention in any mortality investigations that happen regarding those patients.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[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.

NHS Funding

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Selous

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will tell the hon. Lady when that rhetoric became reality. We now have the highest dementia diagnosis rates in the world, according to some estimates. We are treating three quarters of a million more people with talking therapies every year than we were in 2010. Every single day, we are treating 1,400 more mental health patients. By the end of this Parliament, because of our spending plans, we will be spending £1 billion more on mental health every single year, treating 1 million more people. I think that that is pretty good.

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

Is not one way to help the NHS to deal with its financial pressures by focusing on improving quality and using proper data? Professor Tim Briggs’s report, “Getting it Right First Time” is already improving patient outcomes and saving the NHS money.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing Professor Briggs to meet me. He is an extremely inspiring man. He has established that every time someone has an infection during an orthopaedic operation, it costs the NHS £100,000 to put it right, but that is happening 0.5% of the time in the case of some surgeons and 4% of the time in the case of others. Dealing with variation of that kind is a way not just to reduce costs, but to avoid enormous human heartache.