NHS Major Incidents

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Indeed, across the country we have put in £700 million, which has paid for 6,400 additional beds in the system. All that is possible because we have a strong economy and we can put extra funding into the NHS. What those people in my hon. Friend’s hospital want most of all is support from Members in all parts of the House, and not to see their efforts turned into a political football.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that Calderdale and Huddersfield trust was, until 2010, one of the most successful trusts in the country? I have a letter embargoed, ironically until 1 pm today, telling me of serious financial problems—not a major incident—caused by the reforms that his Government have introduced in the NHS. I remind him that it is my job as a member of the Opposition to weaponise—to use as a weapon—the disgraceful policies that his Government have introduced that are destabilising and destroying the national health service in my town and constituency, and up and down the country. I am a member of the Opposition, I will use this as a political weapon, and I will do so until the election, which we will win.

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that the trouble is that there are just too many people on the Labour side who think exactly like that. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman go and talk to people working in Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust and ask them whether they want him to use the NHS as a political weapon in that way. They have improved their performance over the past few years and are seeing more people within four hours—every year, 4,000 more people within four hours than when Labour was in office—and MRSA cases are down. There are 79 fewer clostridium difficile cases; 525 more people are treated for cancer every year; and there are 6,200 more operations every year. Those are real improvements making a real difference to his constituents. He should celebrate them, not try to run them down.

A and E (Major Incidents)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with the hon. Lady. It is critical that we look at the data carefully. I will see whether the data on mortality rates are available on a monthly basis. I will be as interested as she is to see it.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have just been visiting a much-loved elderly relative in hospital and I have seen what a wonderful job our nurses are doing and the pressure that they are under, but may I tell the Secretary of State that Huddersfield and Calderdale used to have an amazingly good partnership of people in the health service working together. The antagonism now between trusts and commissioning services has destroyed that partnership. All we have now is tension and stress. We no longer have a partnership delivering health care in our country.

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the hard work of the doctors and nurses at his local trust, but the feedback I get from the front line is of closer partnership working than has ever happened before, with the local authorities and the local NHS sitting down together planning what they will do for the most vulnerable older people through the better care fund. I want to encourage that everywhere I can.

NHS (Five Year Forward View)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, but it is also important to have a clear plan of action to take us in the right direction over the next six years, which is what the plan from NHS England and Simon Stevens provides and what the Government have said we support. She is right that the demographic trends will get worse. By 2030 the number of over-80s will have doubled to 5 million. That is the sobering reality that we all have to face up to.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State aware the some of us on the Opposition side feel a bit sorry for him? This is the third “pie in the sky” statement we have had recently—we have heard statements on rail, on roads and now on health—which basically say that things might get better in future, and of course the election is in five months. The fact of the matter is that when I go back to Huddersfield, I see a health service in which all the players, who used to work together in partnership for something they believed in, are now at each other’s throats, as a result of his reforms: not collaborating, but fighting, disagreeing and making bids against each other.

[Mr Hunt]

Let us take one example. The better care fund has meant that for the first time—this did not happen in 13 years under Labour—local authorities are sitting around a table with the local NHS, working out how to jointly commission care for the most vulnerable patients in the community. That is a huge step forward. The hon. Gentleman should talk with the people in his local authority, because he will hear about the incredible progress that is being made. This is not pie in the sky; it is £2 billion of new money for the NHS. That will make a big difference to doctors and nurses in Huddersfield, just as it will everywhere else.

Five Year Forward View

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes an important point. I do not think that we have been as good as we should have been in the NHS about explaining changes to urgent and emergency care, and people are understandably worried if they think that there is any risk that they will not be able to see a doctor in an emergency, which is what the NHS is there to do. I think that we now have a better blueprint for urgent and emergency care, but the report also recognises that it is not sustainable to say that all urgent and emergency care will always be dealt with in A and E departments. We have to find a way to improve the capacity of primary care and make it easier for people to see their GP so that we can reduce the pressure on hard-pressed A and Es.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State take on board the fact —I invite him to visit Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust to have a look—that the reforms that his Government introduced have fragmented the health service? It is very difficult to find in the health service one common purpose or one common voice. The fact of the matter is that whether it is A and E closures or NICE—National Institute for Health and Care Excellence—prescriptions being handed down by GPs, everywhere I try to find an answer, instead of one voice, one team and one leadership, I find fragmentation and no real positive movement.

[Mr Hunt]

Let me try to reassure the hon. Gentleman. The reality is that those reforms, by getting rid of the huge bureaucracies of the primary care trusts and strategic health authorities—19,000 administrators—have allowed us to hire an extra 10,000 doctors and nurses. We are doing nearly 1 million more operations every year. I will write to him with the details, and I think that he will find that there are more nurses and doctors employed in his constituency now than there were before the reforms.

Ebola

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Monday 13th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I discussed this with United States Secretary Burwell today. The US is piloting a programme in Liberia, and we are doing the same thing in Sierra Leone. We are both providing the same response, which is to tackle the disease at source. We know that, if we can get 70% of the people who develop Ebola symptoms into treatment and care, we will contain the disease. At the moment, the disease is replicating at a rate of 1.7, which means that every 10 people infected are going on to infect another 17 people. That is why the virus is spreading so fast, and we can halt it only if we get people into treatment very rapidly. Community treatment centres are therefore an important part of the Department for International Development’s strategy to help to contain the virus, and that is why we are supporting the development of 700 beds in Sierra Leone.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I beg the Secretary of State to work across Europe and all the countries that can help? I have a daughter who has just returned from west Africa and she has reported to me and the family that the situation is critical—it is desperate. There is a lack of any kind of facility to control this disease. Parents are dying, leaving children with nobody to care for them. The situation is very grave, so will he redouble his efforts to persuade Europe, the World Health Organisation, the UN—all of us—to do something more significant and to do it now?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman speaks movingly and well about the incredible gravity of the situation, and he rightly says that we need full international support on it. In such a situation there are a number of things we are much better tackling as part of an international effort; we are very proud of our 659 NHS volunteers, but volunteers from the whole of Europe could go out and play a part. They need reassurance that they will be safe if they end up contracting the virus, because the truth is that there is no 100% guarantee of safety, even for people who follow the correct procedures—that is why these people are so brave. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in what he says, and I reassure him that that is exactly the conversation I have been having with international colleagues: we do need a co-ordinated effort.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for her work to promote good health care in her area. I very much enjoyed meeting her local GPs. I was disappointed that it was only for about five minutes. I very much hope to go back and have a proper discussion. They were very enthusiastic about the Prime Minister’s challenge fund, and are making some very innovative changes.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I push the Secretary of State on this matter? What my constituents want is to be able to get to see a GP when they really need one; they do not want to turn up in A and E just because they cannot get an appointment for a week. Is not poor management of GP surgeries—poor management from top to bottom—at the heart of this problem?

[Mr Hunt]

Actually, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I think that we do have a problem. We have some fantastically good GP surgeries and some brilliant GPs, but we have not in the past had structures in place to make sure that we deal quickly with underperforming GP surgeries and, indeed, underperforming GPs. We need to have much more transparency of data so that we can see where the problems are. We have introduced a rigorous new inspection regime, with a new chief inspector of general practice, and I hope that that will go some way to addressing the issues he raises.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We are in close touch with all the devolved Administrations about the changes that we are making in the NHS in England, and, interestingly, we are experiencing different levels of engagement. We have had very good discussions with the Northern Ireland Health Minister about some of the changes, but those in Wales are still refusing to commission a Keogh report on excess deaths, which I think shows that Labour in Wales has not learnt the lessons of transparency.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

3. What steps he is taking to train and retain more accident and emergency health specialists in the UK.

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

I have asked Health Education England to consider how we can improve the structure and skill mix of the emergency medicine work force to deal with long-standing shortages in staff at both consultant and trainee levels. Along with the Emergency Medicine Taskforce, we are considering a number of options, such as increasing the non-doctor work force and the number of emergency nurse practitioners.

[Mr Sheerman]

Just what is going on in medical education in this country? We train doctors, but some never work as doctors, and others move abroad. Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust has advertised and advertised again, but it cannot recruit accident and emergency staff. It certainly cannot recruit any who have been trained in this country, or who have been trained in paediatrics. What is going wrong with medical education here?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. What plans he has to increase the management capability of doctors elected to clinical commissioning groups.

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

Clinical commissioning groups have the freedom and autonomy to determine the skills and expertise needed to enable them to deliver improved outcomes for their local communities, and NHS England is developing an assurance framework to ensure that they all have the capacity and capability to do that.

[Mr Sheerman]

Is the Secretary of State aware that a number of doctors, certainly the ones I have talked to, are deeply concerned about the inadequacy of their management capabilities to run these complex organisations? Is he worried that many of them are saying that they have to turn to private health care people to back them up and give them advice? Is that healthy in the NHS?

Heart Surgery (Leeds)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

That is exactly the purpose of a review. Let me reassure my hon. Friend that before I make any decision, I will be getting on my desk independent advice from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. One thing that that advice does is weigh up the balance of advantage between the greater distances that people have to travel and the advantages of specialisation for complex surgery. My heart goes out, as I know his does, to people who were made extremely worried by what happened over Easter at Leeds. However, he will also understand that if there are concerns, the last thing his constituents would want is an NHS that did nothing because of an argument about data. The right thing to do was to get to the bottom of the data, and I am sure that his constituents are as delighted as he and I are that surgery has now resumed.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

What does the Secretary of State think of the opinion of one of my constituents, who said to me over the weekend, “What a right old mess all this has been”? The fact is that it has been a mess. I have supported the all-party campaign on the basis that we go for the best clinically safe outcomes for all my constituents. My constituents have gone to Leeds general infirmary, as have my children. It is a hospital of great renown, in which the people of Yorkshire have tremendous faith, but in today’s statement the Secretary of State has two or three times put us in the same frame as Mid Staffordshire and Bristol. There is no question but that Leeds general infirmary is a fine institution. Will he put it on the record today that this is not the same sort of case? This is a fine hospital struggling to deliver under a cloud that has been over it for three or four years.

[Mr Hunt]

What I say to the hon. Gentleman is that it is a fine hospital and a safe hospital, but data were presented to the NHS medical director that said that mortality rates there for children’s heart surgery were two and three quarter times higher than should be expected. In that situation, there is of course a great deal of inconvenience and worry caused by a decision to suspend surgery, but I would rather have that inconvenience and worry than continue with surgery when we have not got to the bottom of whether there is any truth in those data. That must be the right thing to do for the people who are due to have operations at that hospital.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I am concerned that 114 non-urgent operations were cancelled in the South Tees area between November and January, which is significantly higher than this time last year. He is right that we need to think about the model for an A and E service. Nearly 1 million more people go through A and E every year than they did two years ago. We have to recognise that for A and E services to be sustainable, we need to think about people who would better off seeing their GP or going to an urgent care centre.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Minister aware that health care appointments are still bedevilled by the number of people who do not show up, even for appointments with consultants and senior hospital staff? Is it not about time that we looked at a simple system, in which people could pay up front a small amount of money that they get back when they turn up? I am sure that my constituents, as good Yorkshire people, would take their appointments much more seriously if they got their money back when they turned up?

[Mr Hunt]

I am interested to hear that suggestion from the Labour Benches, which is not necessarily where I would have expected it to come from. The hon. Gentleman might be surprised at my response, which is that I would be very concerned about such a system. I understand the issue and I think we need to modernise the process of GP and hospital appointments. Technology can play a good role in that, for example by giving people text reminders of appointments that they have booked. My concern is that the system suggested by the hon. Gentleman would put people off going to see their doctor if they needed to. I would not want to do anything that deterred people from using the NHS who most need to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I can announce that we have already put in place such funds, because dementia is one of the biggest challenges we face across the entire health and social care system. We need more capital funds, but we also need massively to increase the shockingly low diagnosis rates. At the moment, only 42% of the 800,000 people with dementia are being diagnosed properly and therefore getting the treatment they need.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State worried about the high level of qualified managers leaving the NHS—fleeing the NHS—to go to other places or retire early when there are few people in clinical commissioning groups with any management experience at all?

[Mr Hunt]

There is always a role for excellent managers in the NHS, but this Government’s priority is front-line clinicians, which is why the number of doctors has increased by 5,000 since we have been in power and why administration costs have been cut, which will save the NHS £1.5 billion every year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s interest in and commitment to this subject. We recognise that there has to be a competitive market in broadband and that it would be very damaging for the broadband market if we did not have a competitive market in mobile provision. I know that Ofcom is working very hard to structure the spectrum auctions to make sure that we do.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T3. Does the Secretary of State still believe in localism? If so, why is he undermining local radio up and down the country, reducing morale? Why is he attacking all those third sector arts organisations that are collapsing up and down the country because of a lack of funding?

[Mr Hunt]

We are not, and I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets his information from. We have published the most ambitious local media strategy for many years, providing a way forward for local radio stations. We are continuing to support many community radio stations. On local arts groups, we have put in place a big package to try to encourage and help arts organisations to be resilient in difficult financial times.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barry Sheerman

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for a thoughtful question, as ever, on the topic. He is absolutely right that media companies of the future will have to operate on different platforms. That is why one of my first decisions was to accept a recommendation by Ofcom to remove the regulations on cross-media ownership locally to allow local media operators to develop new business models that let them take product from newspapers to radio to TV to iPods to iPads and so on.

We do not currently have any plans to relax the rules on cross-promotion. Indeed, the regulations on taste, decency and political impartiality on Five remain extremely tight, but we are aware of the need to lighten regulations in general because, if we are to have a competitive broadcasting sector, we must have one in which independent players can also make a profit.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State knows that Richard Desmond and Rupert Murdoch have huge pornography empires. Does he share my concern that children have increasing access to pornography on television? What can he do about it? It is a curse, and I hope that he shares my desire to do something about it.