NHS Shared Business Services

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The costs are in excess of £6 million, and we are seeking to recover as much of that as we can from the company involved. I know that the regime in the Labour party has changed, but to try to turn this into an issue of privatisation when under the right hon. Gentleman’s own party’s Government—and indeed, during his own time as Health Secretary—we had problems at Mid Staffs that were squarely in the public sector is wholly inappropriate. This is about proper assurance of what is going on in the NHS, and both sides of the House need to learn the lessons.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

In order to reassure my constituents, will my right hon. Friend confirm that NHS SBS no longer provides this mail redirection service, that all backlogged correspondence has now been delivered to the relevant GP surgeries for filing and that no patient harm has been found in this case?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Of course we welcome the fact that no patient harm has been identified to date. We have to wait until the process of the third clinical review is completed on at-risk patients’ records, which will happen by the end of December. She is absolutely right to say that SBS is no longer performing this contract; it has been taken in-house. Other parts of the SBS contract not related to what we are discussing today were given to another supplier.

NHS Shared Business Services

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Victoria Atkins

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

There have been cries of privatisation from the Opposition. Is not the truth that in 2007, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs lost the entire collection of child benefit records, affecting 25 million people? Is not the point that all data holders, whether in the private or public sector, must hold our private information securely?

[Mr Hunt]

That is absolutely the point. What people will be wondering is, when we were faced with this issue, which was indeed serious, did we react as quickly as we could to keep patients safe? I believe the answer is yes. Did that happen under the last Labour Government? I will leave the House to draw its own conclusions.

NHS and Social Care Funding

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Victoria Atkins

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is right. What we did not hear from the Labour party is that, in 2010, we inherited a £70 billion PFI overhang, which is making it incredibly difficult for hospitals to recruit enough staff, because they are having to pay so much money to financiers.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

An example of how we are spending money practically on the ground to make sure patients get a better deal is in Lincolnshire, where, because there is a shortage of GPs, the local health authority is offering £20,000 as a golden hello to new GPs. Is that not the way to manage resources, to attract the best medical talent into our areas and to help ensure that patients get the best care?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I talked about these issues when I visited her in her constituency. The truth is that, to solve this problem, we are going to have to have a dramatic increase in the number of people working in general practice, which is why we are funding the second biggest increase in the number of GPs in the NHS’s history.

It is a great shame that the Leader of the Opposition is not here, because this is the bit that I wanted to address to him—his proposal to put extra funding into the NHS by scrapping the corporation tax cuts. That reveals, I am afraid, a fundamental misunderstanding of how we fund the NHS. Corporation taxes are being cut so that we can boost jobs, strengthen the economy and fund the NHS. The reason we have been able to protect and increase funding in the NHS in the last six years, when the Labour party was not willing to do so, is precisely that we have created 2 million jobs and given this country the fastest growing economy in the G7, and that is even more important post-Brexit. To risk that growth, which is what the Labour party’s proposal would do, would not just risk funding for the NHS, but be dangerous for the economy and mortally dangerous for the NHS.

William Mead: 111 Helpline

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

No one could have done more than this Government to tackle the issue of avoidable deaths across the NHS. It is much harder to identify when a death was avoidable when it happens outside hospital. As part of our work on reducing the number of avoidable deaths in the wake of what happened at Mid Staffs, we are looking at how we could improve primary care generally. Our first priority is to reduce the number of avoidable deaths in hospital and to learn from reports such as this one when they point to improvements that need to be made in the 111 service.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

I join in the condolences that have been expressed in the House. By way of tribute to Mr and Mrs Mead’s campaign to raise awareness of sepsis and its symptoms, I wonder whether each and every parent can take a small but practical step today and google the symptoms of sepsis so that we know when things are not right with our children and are better armed to tackle doctors when we are not getting the answer that we need. I did exactly that this morning after hearing Mrs Mead’s very moving interview on the radio.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. If we are going to deal with the 1,000 tragic sepsis deaths among children every year, it needs a sustained effort from all of us, not just the NHS. I will take away the action of looking at what Public Health England is doing to raise public awareness. The Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), will look at what health visitors can do to boost awareness of sepsis, but in the end we all have a responsibility to understand the symptoms better.