Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

During my time as Health Secretary, the real-terms investment in general practice has gone up by £700 million or 8%, and we are planning to increase it by 14%—£2.4 billion—over this Parliament. A lot of extra money is going in, but I recognise that there are still a lot of pressures.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

The Secretary of State’s plans to recruit doctors will be widely welcomed in Leicestershire, but should he not be making greater use of already properly regulated practitioners—those who are regulated by the Professional Standards Authority—of whom there are 20,000, including hypnotherapists?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend’s ingenuity in bringing these issues up in question after question never ceases to amaze me. As he knows, we recognise that the pressure in primary care cannot just be borne by general practice, but we must always follow the science as to where we get our help from.

Mental Health and NHS Performance

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that I reject that suggestion. The right hon. Lady wants to know what we have been doing over the course of the year. As I said in the statement, we have 1,600 more doctors than we had just a year ago, over 3,000 more nurses, the biggest flu vaccination programme in our history and 12,000 additional GP sessions booked over the festive period. A huge amount of work has been done, with a particular focus on distressed areas. Many of those distressed areas coped extremely well—not all of them, which is why there is more work to do.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

When the Health Committee in the previous Parliament looked at children and adolescent mental health services, one of the main concerns was the distance travelled by patients—sometimes halfway across the country—to get treatment. Will the Secretary of State expand on his plans to reduce attendance at A&E? Does he envisage a new form of gatekeeper and does he intend to try to keep drunks out of A&E?

[Mr Hunt]

I would probably use the word “streaming”, rather than gatekeeper, to ensure that we have good, alternative offers for people who do not need to be in A&E. Frankly, it is not safe for an A&E department to have people there for six, seven or eight hours with a minor injury and no urgent health need. It is distracting for staff and can make it more difficult for them to deal with people who have more immediate needs.

On distances travelled, as the Prime Minister said this morning it is completely unacceptable for people to have to go 400 miles for a mental health bed. What is the solution? We are commissioning more beds, but the actual solution is to intervene earlier so that people do not get to that stage in treatment where they need in-patient care. We know that if we intervene earlier we can in many cases head off that need and help people to get better more quickly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was incredibly impressed with the staff I met at Peterborough hospital—there was incredible commitment to patients and some fantastic work going on in the oncology and renal departments, which I visited. He is right: PFI was a disastrous mistake, saddling hospitals up and down the country with huge amounts of debt, which cannot now be put into front-line patient care. We are doing everything we can to sort that out and not repeat those mistakes.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that the NHS spends only about £400 million a year on homeopathic medicine and treatments through the 400 doctors who have trained in homeopathy and are members of the faculty. If he wants to reduce antibiotic prescribing, may I suggest that he increases that budget, because there are very good scientific trials now showing that upper respiratory tract infections can be treated using homeopathic medicine? May I write to him about that?

[Mr Hunt]

May I commend my hon. Friend for his great persistence in flying the flag for homeopathic medicine? While we must always follow the science in the way we spend our money on medicines, as I know he agrees, he is right to highlight the threat of antibiotic resistance and the need to be open to every possible way of reducing it.

NHS: Learning from Mistakes

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a range of initiatives, including the independent healthcare safety investigation branch, but I remind him that some of the problems that we face are staring him in the face, not least the difficulties in Leicestershire with the ambulance service. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), for seeing the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and me to discuss the problems that occur when 15 out of 25 ambulances in the county are queuing to discharge patients. The Under-Secretary talked about bringing in troubleshooters to resolve problems. Will the Secretary of State enlighten the House on what he proposes to do about these very evident problems? They require little investigation; they require action.

[Mr Hunt]

We do have a system-wide problem in Leicestershire and we are looking into it urgently. I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue. He is absolutely right that when we talk about safety and being open about mistakes, that has to apply to the ambulance service as much as to every other part of the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

As a result of the changes the Government have made on welfare reform, we have 2 million more people in work and nearly 500,000 fewer children growing up in households where nobody works. Part of that is making important reforms, including having independent medical assessments of people who are in the benefit system. I think everyone should welcome that.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

T8. Comparative research has shown that proton therapy is as effective as radiotherapy for certain cancers, but has fewer side effects. Do Her Majesty’s Government accept the use of comparative evidence in deciding the availability on the NHS of emerging treatments such as proton therapy?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her excellent question. I know that the whole House is thinking of Pauline Cafferkey and her family and that it is proud that, under Dr Mike Jacobs and his team, she is getting the most outstanding care that it is possible to get anywhere in the world. We all wish her a speedy recovery. With respect to winter pressures, I know that the Royal Free had a difficult winter but I also know that it has a very good management team and made heroic efforts. I know that the whole team of doctors and nurses will do an excellent job, and we will want to support them in any way we can.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

As part of my right hon. Friend’s plans for dealing with winter pressures, will he look at making greater use of the 63,000 practitioners on the Professional Standards Authority’s 17 accredited registers covering 25 occupations? Has he found time yet to read the authority’s report, “Accredited Registers—Ensuring that health and care practitioners are competent and safe”?

[Mr Hunt]

I must confess that I have not yet read that report, but my hon. Friend has reminded me of how important it is that I should do so. I will read it carefully while thinking about whether it could help us to get through the winter pressures this year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend had a chance to read the report by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care, which says that pressure would be taken off doctors and nurses if greater use were made of the 63,000 practitioners that it regulates on 17 separate registers covering 25 occupations? Will he look at the report and write to me?

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to do that. My hon. Friend is right to point out that the solution to the problem is not just about expanding the number of appointments offered by GPs, although we are doing that; it is also about looking at the very important role that pharmacists and other allied health professionals have to play in out-of-hospital care.

Health and Social Care

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Tredinnick

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We do need to make important changes to the training of medical staff, and I shall give the hon. Gentleman one example of where that matters: creating the right culture in the NHS so that doctors and nurses feel able to speak out if they see poor care. In a lot of hospitals they find that very difficult, because they are working for someone directly responsible for their own career progress, and they worry that if they speak out, that will inhibit their own careers. We do not have that culture of openness. The royal colleges have been very supportive in helping us make that change, but yes, medical training is extremely important.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

To build on the point made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), is not a critical aspect—something that the Health Committee has looked at—what doctors are learning now? More needs to be done about prevention. Has my right hon. Friend seen early-day motion 1 about reducing levels of obesity, and is not reducing the amount of sugar in fizzy drinks a key challenge for him?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The big change we need to see in the NHS over this Parliament is a move from a focus on cure to a focus on prevention. In this Parliament, we will probably see the biggest single public health challenge change from smoking to obesity. It is still a national scandal that one in five 11-year-olds are clinically obese, and I think we need to do something significant to tackle that in this Parliament.