Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. [Interruption.] Mr Karl Turner, thank you for your advice, but we can manage without it today. I make this appeal to both sides: I want to hear what the Secretary of State has to say, just as I wanted to hear what the Opposition had to say.

[Mr Hunt]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I repeat: it was one of the poorest speeches ever given by an Opposition on the NHS, and I predict that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) will bitterly regret choosing to make an issue of A and E pressures, because the root causes of the problem have Labour’s fingerprints all over them.

The right hon. Gentleman was right on one thing, however: there is complacency on this issue—not from the Government, who have been gripping it right from the start, but rather from Labour, which still does not understand why things went so badly wrong in the NHS on its watch.

Labour’s narrative has, I am afraid, a single political purpose at its heart: to undermine public confidence in one of our greatest institutions—an institution which, in challenging circumstances, is performing extremely well for the millions of vulnerable people who depend on it day in, day out.

Labour’s story today is a totally irresponsible misrepresentation of reality. One million more people are now going through A and Es every year than in 2010, which creates a lot of pressure, so how are A and E departments actually performing? The latest figures show performance, against the 95% target, of 96.7%. The week before it was 96.5%, then before that 96.3%, 96.6% and 95.6%. Yes, we had a difficult winter and a cold Easter, and I will come to the causes of the problems we had then, but, thanks to the hard work of NHS doctors and nurses, our A and E departments are performing extremely well.

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[Wayne David]

Will the Secretary of State give way to a Welsh MP?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We want a little more calm. Mr David, you are getting far too excited. It is not good for you and it is not good for the Chamber—[Interruption.] Order. I do not want you to repeat your point. I have just explained to you that I need you to be a little calmer. It is up to the Secretary of State whether he wishes to give way and at the moment he is not doing so. It is his choice and shouting will not make any difference whatsoever.

[Mr Hunt]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—

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[Andy Burnham]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State has just said at the Dispatch Box that the budget for the NHS has increased in real terms. In December, I referred the Secretary of State’s comments to the UK Statistics Authority and I received a letter back saying that they were incorrect. Will you ask the Secretary of State to correct the parliamentary record and ensure that when the statistics commissioner makes a ruling it is adhered to by the Secretary of State?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order, but the right hon. Gentleman has certainly made his clarification for the record.

[Mr Hunt]

I thought that the shadow Health Secretary might try to do that, so let me give him the figures. I have the figures provided by the Department of Health finance department, based on the latest GDP deflators, as published at the Budget. Spending in the NHS—not the budget—in 2009-10 was £99.7 billion and for 2012-13 it is forecast to be £106.6 billion. That is a cash increase of £6.9 billion and a real-terms increase of £0.6 billion, so there is a real-terms increase in the NHS budget. The shadow Secretary of State does not agree with the real-terms increase of £600 million in the NHS today; there would be a Labour cut in NHS spending and I suggest that he might want to correct the record, as I am afraid he has got this wrong.

NHS Funding

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I do not think we can have “hypocrisy” either, so we will have the Secretary of State instead.

[Mr Hunt]

The simple truth that Labour Front Benchers cannot understand is that spending is related to budgets, and they wanted the budgets to be lower than they currently are.

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[Mr Hunt]

In that case, I will give way.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) is not going to walk out after his intervention and will stay a little longer.

[Mr Walker]

The meeting is in thirteen minutes.

My right hon. Friend knows that it is not just about funding but about good management. He cannot be responsible for management across the NHS, but in the East of England ambulance service there are question marks over the quality of its senior management. Will he find time to cast his eye over those senior managers?

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[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Lady’s party has been saying that spending has been cut, and it had the foolishness to call an Opposition day debate on the basis of a letter from Andrew Dilnot that states that, broadly speaking, spending has remained unchanged. That is why, at its heart, the motion is bogus.

The sad fact is that this is not the debate that the Opposition planned to have, two years into this Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman dreamed of coming to the House to remonstrate about an NHS that was on its knees and that was not delivering for the public. He wanted to argue about waiting times, but they have gone down, with fewer people waiting a long time for an operation than at any time under Labour. He wanted to argue about treatments, but there are more people getting new hips and knees and many other treatments than under Labour. [Interruption.] Opposition Members should listen to this. He wanted to argue about cancer, but 23,000 people are now getting drugs under the cancer drugs fund that Labour refused to set up.

Today, the right hon. Gentleman has tabled a motion criticising the decisions taken by the coalition and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) on NHS spending in our first two years in office. This is also about how we spend the money, as many of my hon. Friends have said. What are the decisions that the right hon. Gentleman is criticising? They are precisely the decisions that mean that the NHS is now performing at record levels, and vastly better than at any time under Labour.

Let us look at those decisions. There was the decision to reduce the number of managers by 7,000 and transfer resources to the front line. There was also the decision to cancel Labour’s disastrous attempt to embrace the technology revolution that cost billions and set the NHS back by years. Then there was the decision to end the wasteful consultancy spend, which has now been cut by 39%. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman needs to listen to this. There was the decision to stop the scandal of unsustainable private finance initiative projects that left the NHS with a £73 billion debt and £1.6 billion-worth of repayments every year. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Christmas is coming. Let us show a little bit more Christmas spirit towards each other. Members on both sides of the House want to hear the Secretary of State.

[Mr Hunt]

I could not agree with you more, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am trying to give the House some good news, but it is difficult for the Opposition to take it in.

There was also the decision, championed by both coalition parties, to transfer that money to the front line, so we now have more clinical staff, including 5,000 more doctors; better access to drugs, including £600 million invested in the cancer drugs fund; 500,000 more elective admissions every year than under Labour; over 3 million more out-patient appointments every year than under Labour; nearly 1 million more going through accident and emergency every year than under Labour; and 1.5 million more diagnostic tests every year than under Labour. On top of all that, we have 60,000 fewer people waiting longer than 18 weeks than under Labour; 90% fewer people waiting more than a year than under Labour; clostridium difficile down more than a third compared with under Labour; MRSA halved compared with under Labour; and the number of people facing the indignity of mixed-sex wards down by 98% compared with under Labour.

Of course the NHS faces huge challenges with an ageing population and increasing demand, but we are now facing up to those challenges with ambitious plans to tackle dementia, to reduce mortality rates for the big killer diseases to the lowest in Europe, to embrace the technology revolution—but getting it right this time—and to improve the quality of care which, in parts of the system, has been allowed to become shockingly poor for far too long. All those priorities were ignored by Labour in office and, even worse, they have been rejected by Labour today as a “meaningless list”. Those were Labour’s words. Well, tell that to the 157,000 people who die from cancer every year, or the 800,000 people who have dementia, or the people whose families suffer from the poor care that we read about every week in the newspapers.

None of the improvements to the NHS, and none of the ambitions for our NHS, would be possible without the extraordinary dedication of our doctors, nurses and front-line professionals, to whom I pay tribute today. But none of them would have been possible either if we had not increased the NHS budget and NHS front-line spend, contrary to what Labour intended and wanted. Labour’s plans would have meant less spending in real terms on the NHS, and vastly less spending on the NHS front line. No clever fiddling with baselines can obscure the harsh reality that Labour’s policy towards the NHS is a mass of contradictions that fools nobody—certainly not the brilliant doctors, nurses and professionals who have given their lives to saving and improving the lives of others. I urge the House to reject this ridiculous motion.