NHS Shared Business Services

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to write to hon. Members in the areas affected with any extra information that we are able to provide. However, I reassure the hon. Gentleman that to date we have not been able to identify any patient in any part of the country who has come to harm as a result of what happened.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a shame that the synthetic outrage from Labour Members was not apparent when they were calling for a public inquiry into deaths in Mid Staffordshire, or, officially, the worst ever IT white elephant disaster, with £12 billion of costs uncovered by the Public Accounts Committee in 2013. Has not my right hon. Friend observed the appropriate parliamentary accountability protocols? He not only employed clinical expertise but came to the House in July, his officials updated the PAC in September, and he came here again today? There is no cover-up.

[Mr Hunt]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he rightly points out, this was a judgment call, because going public at a very early stage about what happened risked overwhelming GP surgeries, with GPs being unable to investigate the most serious cases as quickly as possible. That is why I received very sensible advice to hold back, but I did decide that the House needed to know before the summer break, which is why I made the effort.

National Health Service Funding

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The shadow Health Secretary also did not talk about cancer. In 2010, we had the lowest cancer survival rates in western Europe. Since then, we have referred for cancer tests 2,200 more people every day, and 100 more people are starting cancer treatment every day. The cancer charities say that this is saving 12,000 lives a year. On mental health, he did not mention the fact that we are treating 1,400 more people every day, with record dementia diagnosis rates.

[Mr Jackson]

Would not Opposition Members be a little more straightforward and honest about the wider context if they admitted the demographic challenge that this Government face, as they would have faced? The number of over-60s will increase by 50% in the next 15 years. Should they not also admit that the private finance initiative was an appalling millstone—£64 billion —to bequeath to this Government? That has had an impact on frontline care.

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. People will be astonished to hear Labour Members wasting their time talking about a privatisation of the NHS that is not happening when they were responsible for PFI, the worst possible privatisation that has done such enormous damage.

Another point that the shadow Health Secretary did not mention was the quality and safety of care in our NHS that Labour left behind. The Francis report revealed massive problems—short staffing, a culture of denial and cover-ups—and they were not just at Mid Staffs but, as we now know, at Basildon, Morecambe Bay and many other trusts. Since we have been in office we have changed that. We have put 31 hospitals into special measures, which is more than 10% of hospitals across the entire NHS, and we have recruited record numbers of doctors and nurses.

I want to tell the House about one hospital that was put into special measures. Care was unsafe at Wexham Park in Slough—so much so that fewer than half the hospital staff were prepared to recommend the care provided there to their own friends and family—but it has gone from having six of its eight clinical areas rated as requiring improvement or inadequate, to having all eight of them rated as good or outstanding. It has come out of special measures, as have 15 hospitals in total, and we should all commend the staff who have worked incredibly hard to turn around those hospitals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for taking time last week to visit the Peterborough City hospital and to praise the magnificent staff there, who are labouring under a £35 million annual private finance initiative millstone. Is the wider context not that we would have a lot more money to spend on front-line care if we did not have to deal with a poisonous legacy from Labour of £64 billion of appalling PFI contracts in the NHS?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We have 1.2 million more people going to A and Es every year. The ambulance service has, on the whole, been doing a good job, but there have been areas where there are problems. We need to change our attitude towards the capabilities of ambulance services, particularly the ability of paramedics to treat people on the spot, and we are driving through that change.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

In the absence of a definitive policy decision on the fortification of basic foodstuffs with folic acid, what steps are Ministers taking to encourage women of child-bearing age to take folic acid to reduce the incidence of neural tube defects such as spina bifida and hydrocephalus?

NHS

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

With the greatest respect, what we heard earlier from the right hon. Member for Leigh was a big argument about a massive growth of pressure on A and E departments that had been caused by, among other things, scurvy, and we found that the total number of admissions was 18. I think that that says a great deal.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

On the subject of disastrous mistakes made by the Labour Government, may I point out that one of the omissions in their motion is the lack of any apology for the £63 billion ticking time bomb generated by off-balance-sheet dodgy deals under the private finance initiative? The worst in the whole country, which was signed off by the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals Trust, has produced an indicative structural debt of £40 million a year. [Interruption.]

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Perhaps the situation is put into perspective when we know that those PFI deals are costing the NHS more than £1 billion a year: £1 billion that could have been spent on providing compassionate care and looking after patients with dignity and respect, but instead is having to finance Labour’s appalling mismanaged PFI contracts.

Let me return to the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Leigh. I think that a much more substantive argument relates to the things that he chose not to say. This is the day before the anniversary of the Mid Staffs report, and this is the day on which hospitals are finally putting behind them Labour’s appalling legacy of poor care. We have 14 hospitals in special measures—all of them, incidentally, with A and E departments—making encouraging progress after a very difficult year, with 650 additional nursing staff and 50 board-level replacements between them. Every single one of those hospitals had warning signs under Labour, but rather than sorting out the problems, Labour chose to sweep them under the carpet, sometimes because they had arisen during the run-up to an election. There are 5,900 more clinical staff in the NHS than there were a year ago, and there are 3,300 more hospital nurses than there were at the time of the last election. All those people are vital to the functioning of our A and E departments.

Bullying, harassment and intimidation were perhaps the ugliest features of Labour’s management of the NHS. Now we have seen courageous A and E whistleblower Helene Donnelly being given a new year honour, alongside brave campaigner Julie Bailey, who was literally left out in the cold when she came to lobby the right hon. Member for Leigh about poor care at Mid Staffs.

There is much to do—poor care persists in too many places—but with a new Ofsted-style inspection regime, in England but not in Labour-run Wales, we can at least be confident that poor care in A and E departments and throughout hospitals will be highlighted quickly, and not hidden away. We will keep people out of A and E departments in the first place—that is something to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—with the return of named GPs for the over-75s and integrated health and social care through the better care fund: precisely the joined-up, personal and compassionate care that was envisaged when the NHS was founded 65 years ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

That is exactly what we are doing. We are looking at the root causes of the fact that admissions to A and E are going up so fast—namely, that there is such poor primary care provision; that, as we discussed earlier, changes to the GP contract led to a big decline in the availability of out-of-hour services; and, that health and social care services are so badly joined up. That is how we are going to tackle this issue with A and E, and that is what we are doing.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I am delighted to learn that there will shortly be a new national clinical director for neurological conditions, focusing in particular on conditions such as Tourette’s syndrome. Will the Secretary of State reassure us that that appointment, which is so long overdue, will be expedited at the earliest opportunity?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Last week it was a great pleasure to visit Age UK Peterborough, whose No. 1 priority is dementia care, which coincides with the NHS priorities that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outlined earlier this week. Will he put in place procedures to make available capital moneys for the construction of dementia care facilities locally?

[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.