Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend is a formidable advocate for that sector and I do want to give him that reassurance. That is why we protected our R&D budget in the autumn statement at its highest ever level. We are continuing to look at how we can support the R&D small companies sector without allowing that fraud to happen. Thanks to his campaigning and the work of this Conservative Government, last year, we became only the third trillion-dollar tech economy in the whole world.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

May I thank the Chancellor for awarding Morecambe £50 million for the Eden project? It will transform my whole community. My question is about VAT tapering. When I was David Cameron’s small business tsar—a very long time ago—I came up with a formula for VAT tapering. Would my right hon. Friend like to meet me to talk about that further?

[Jeremy Hunt]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend on his extraordinary campaigning for Eden Project North, which is a model for MPs standing up for their constituencies; he deserves huge congratulations on that. I will happily look at his proposals on VAT tapering. We already have the highest VAT threshold in the G7, but anything we can do to help small businesses, this Conservative Government always do.

Economic Update

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am delighted that someone from the SNP is worried about the value of the pound, which I think shows that it matters to all of us. I would say to the hon. Gentleman, in all seriousness, that Governments cannot control the value of currency and should not seek to do so, but in so far as our actions affect the stability of our markets, including the currency markets, the one thing we can do is to show that we are balancing the books.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I would like to welcome my right hon. Friend—my friend—to his new position as Chancellor. Madam Deputy Speaker, you would not know this, but my right hon. Friend should have been coming to Morecambe on Thursday, but of course last weekend has changed these things. However, I extend the invitation to come to Morecambe so that he can see how much money has been spent there and how well it has been doing since 2010, and also see the Eden Project North site and the stakeholders.

[Jeremy Hunt]

I would be delighted to accept my hon. Friend’s invitation. He might not want to tell me what he would like as a christening present for his daughter, because I now have a trillion pounds at my disposal.

Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am extremely disappointed and I hope that she reconsiders.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

The fact that these strikes are occurring and being called off is very serious, especially against the backdrop of this contract. One of my constituents, who is a doctor, the chairman of Doctors in Unite and the deputy chairman of the BMA, stated in the Sunday Times that this issue could be used to beat the Tories and make the country great again. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is appalling that patients across the country are being used as pawns in the political game of “Corbynista-ism”?

[Mr Hunt]

I completely agree. I am afraid that this is where I am very, very disappointed with the Labour party. Thrilled though it might be to have so many supporters of the leader in the more extreme ranks of the BMA, it helps no one to try to use the NHS as a political pawn and to weaponise the NHS as it tried so destructively to do before the last election.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Medicine is a profession. It has very important values attached to it, the most famous of which are the Hippocratic oath and “do no harm”. It is a step too far to say that in pursuance of a pay dispute and more pay on a Saturday, you are prepared to withdraw emergency care from vulnerable patients. That is the wrong call for the medical profession, when the alternative on the table is to sit down and talk with a Government who want to work with the medical profession to provide safer NHS care.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

A doctor who is a constituent and on the board of the BMA said in 2014 that he became politicised in the 1990s because he once crashed a car as a result of the gruelling hours he worked as a junior doctor. Does my right hon. Friend agree that with all the revisions to the proposals for doctors’ hours, this should be a thing of the past?

[Mr Hunt]

I totally agree with that. That is why, since then, junior doctors’ hours have been reduced, and under the new contract we are reducing yet again the maximum hours that junior doctors can be asked to work. Every doctor should welcome the new agreement, but because, unfortunately, the BMA has not chosen to negotiate sensibly despite exhaustive efforts, we are left with the very difficult decision as to whether we proceed with our plans for a seven-day NHS or whether we give up. I think that elected Governments should never give up on manifesto promises.

Maternity Services (Morecambe Bay)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am not aware that they were. If that turns out to be the case, that would be extremely worrying. Since Dr Kirkup started his investigation, he has been in touch with the regulatory bodies throughout the process. He has not waited until today to refer back to them any names of people where he thinks there may be a concern.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his deep and meaningful statement. In my constituency, the effects of what has happened in our trust have been deeply felt. I would also like to reach out to my hon. Friend outside the Chamber, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock). We have to put everything behind us. In my constituency, there is a campaign which says that the hospital is closing. The staff and the new management are beside themselves on this particular issue. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this has now got to stop? Hospitals and A and Es were never going to close down. At the end of the day, the staff are the only people who are going to suffer in all this.

[Mr Hunt]

I think this is a time when the whole House needs to unite behind the staff in that trust, who are working very hard to turn the situation around; indeed, they have made great progress. I had to call Nicola Adam of The Visitor to reaffirm the point that there are absolutely no plans to close the hospital. I hope the whole House will recognise that statement for what it is and that hon. Members will reiterate it in all their communications with their constituents.

A and E (Major Incidents)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The plans were to continue to have an A and E at Lewisham but to take some of the higher-risk patients to another hospital. Those are the plans that we originally had that have now been changed. What I will say to the hon. Gentleman, though, is that there were problems with South London Healthcare Trust for years and years. This Government dealt with them and sorted them out, and that means that his constituents are getting better care than they otherwise would have done.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the staff at Royal Lancaster Infirmary on meeting their A and E targets in November? Will he also share my revulsion at the Opposition putting out a leaflet saying that there are all kinds of things wrong with the A and E and that it is going to close?

[Mr Hunt]

That is exactly the kind of scaremongering, frankly, that is incredibly demoralising for those who are on the NHS front line right now. I urge Labour Members to think before they start doing things that make a difficult situation even worse.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Colleagues in Hansard may not even rely on the Secretary of State’s notes; they may have their own source material. They are very special people those reporters.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that concise answer. I reiterate the message to the unions, which are sticking up billboards in my constituency, that Cameron and Hunt are not selling off the NHS.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I was quite amused to see that I have a future career as an estate agent, along with the Prime Minister, when our hopefully long careers in politics are over, but the point is that this is scaremongering and it is wrong to scaremonger about something as important as the NHS. To suggest that the NHS is being privatised is fiction. What is not fiction is Labour’s legacy of poor care.

Five Year Forward View

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

In my earlier comments I spoke a bit about childhood obesity, which is a very important issue. I was the Secretary of State responsible for the Olympics, and as part of the Olympic legacy we set up the school games movement, which now has about two thirds of schools in the country doing Olympic-style games every year, and we have put an extra investment into school sport. We need to work closely with the Department for Education on this, and I agree that it is very important that we do so.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

May I invite my right hon. Friend to come to my local hospital and to my constituency to see what good works have been done in my area? A £25 million health centre has opened, we have a new walk-in centre that was opened by the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). May I ask my right hon. Friend’s views on the talk about top-down reorganisation? [Interruption.] We walked into a shambles of an NHS after 13 years of Labour government and a debacle of a CQC policy that we had to reconfigure. What are his thoughts—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has had a very full tilt. On the whole, it is a good idea to face the House, rather than the Government Front Bench. We are grateful.

NHS Investigations (Jimmy Savile)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I reassure the hon. Lady that that responsibility lies with the Home Secretary, and the Home Office has a cross-governmental committee that will bring together all the lessons from all the reports. My first priority is to ensure that we are doing everything we can to make NHS patients safe, but there are much broader lessons to be learned. That is being led by the Home Office.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that what has happened is absolutely abhorrent and that it sends out a strong message to everyone in society that even a celebrity is not above the law of the land? May I also praise the work of Kate Lampard and her team in bringing this forward?

Patient Safety

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

There are real pressures in our mental health services, but the right hon. Gentleman should recognise the progress that the Government have made. That includes doubling the money going into talking therapies, having global summits on dementia and putting a massive amount of money towards raising the profile of dementia in this country and across the globe, and legislating for parity of esteem as between mental and physical health—something that never happened under the previous Government. There is a lot of work to do, but I think he should give credit where it is due.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

On transparency of staffing levels, does my right hon. Friend know that the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Health Trust vacancy level for nurses is now 4%, against a regional average of 10%? That is obviously an increase in nurses in my area, and I thank him for that.

[Mr Hunt]

I welcome the increase in nursing across the country, and I am surprised that Labour Members do not welcome it. When I started in this job they spoke constantly about nursing numbers, but I notice they have now stopped doing that. Although those numbers are an important first step, it is not possible to compare trust with trust at this stage because they are all self-reported numbers. Over the next months—certainly by next spring—we will go through all the figures ensuring that NICE-approved tools are used to fulfil them. We will then see how trusts are doing compared with each other, which will be useful to them.

Hospital Mortality Rates

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Absolutely, and the big point about the changes that we are bringing in—I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is a huge supporter of Kettering hospital, which he and I have visited together—is that the NHS in many ways is no different from other parts of our public services: there are excellent bits and there are bits where there is poor leadership. What we have to do if we are to sort out the poor leadership is to expose it and to make sure that the public know about it and the politicians cannot duck sorting it out. My hon. Friend’s constituents will be thinking, as a result of tomorrow’s headlines, “What about Kettering hospital?” That is why we will have an independent chief inspector who will go round and tell them how good Kettering hospital is. However much they love it, he may well find things that need to be improved, and my hon. Friend and his constituents will welcome that.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Last week it was the CQC. Now it turns out that between 2005 and 2010 there were 386 separate warnings that the last Labour Secretary of State claims never to have received, yet the trust in my area was given foundation status. Does my right hon. Friend agree that given the new revelation by Sir Brian Jarman on suppression of warnings, along with existing allegations of spin and cover-up levelled against a former Secretary of State for Health, it is now time for the right hon. Gentleman to resign?

[Mr Hunt]

That is a matter for the leader of the Labour party. What concerns me most is that the Opposition do not understand the fundamental policy mistakes they made which led to the entrenched culture of failure in too much of our hospital sector.

Care Quality Commission (Morecambe Bay Hospitals)

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that neither the chairman of the CQC nor I have any interest whatsoever in keeping these names secret. He did receive legal advice telling him that he could not publish them, but I will go back to him with what the right hon. Gentleman says. I know that the CQC chairman would like to be as transparent as possible. The choice he had, on the basis of the legal advice, was either not to publish the report or to publish it without the names. I think he took the right decision, given the advice he had, but I will ask him to consider what the right hon. Gentleman says.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

It is appalling what has come out in the press today and it is appalling what has been suppressed in the past. It is alleged by Lady Barbara Young, a former CQC chair, that under the previous Labour Government she was leant on by Labour Ministers not to criticise the NHS under their tenure. In her Mid Staffs inquiry evidence she stated:

“There was huge government pressure, because the government hated the idea that…a regulator would criticise it”.

She also alleges that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the then Health Secretary in the last Labour Government, needs to answer these very serious allegations, especially given what has happened in my local NHS trust.

[Mr Hunt]

That is the big culture change we need to see; we need to see Governments who are prepared, in all circumstances, however difficult and however politically inconvenient it is, to recognise that when there are safety issues, when there are terrible failures in care and compassion, we need to support the people who want to speak up, because if we do not do that, we will never root out these problems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Morris

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is my job, and that is why the Government have protected the NHS budget. The hon. Gentleman’s Front-Bench team, on the other hand, want to cut it in real terms. He has to think carefully before he starts talking about all these so-called cuts, given that his shadow Health spokesman wants to cut the NHS budget in real terms. [Interruption.] That is what he said last December. I agree with the Care Quality Commission that it is totally unacceptable for hospitals to have unsafe staffing levels. The commission also said, however, that budgets and financial issues were not an excuse, because those budget pressures existed throughout the NHS and many hospitals were able to deliver excellent care despite them.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to improve the survival rates of cancer, stroke and heart disease patients.

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

Our cancer strategy set out the ambition to save 5,000 lives by 2014-15 through earlier diagnosis, cancer screening and improved access to treatment. We are working on an outcomes strategy for cardiovascular disease.

[David Morris]

Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how many patients have benefited from the cancer drugs fund to date?