NHS (Five Year Forward View)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I assure my hon. Friend, who has campaigned very hard to improve standards at Medway hospital, that, first, we want to support its doctors and nurses, who are more passionate than anyone about putting this difficult period behind them; and that secondly, I have no greater focus than on making sure that we do turn around these hospitals in difficulty. It is a challenging process, but the extra funds that I have announced today will benefit all hospitals, including Medway.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has boasted about the numbers of doctors and nurses coming through on his watch, but that actually started on Labour’s watch because, as he has said, the process takes seven years. What proportion of this new investment in the national health service is to be invested in Coventry, particularly given the disparity regarding doctors’ surgeries and the loss of doctors?

[Mr Hunt]

The training may have started under Labour, but if we do not have enough money in the NHS budget, we cannot pay for these doctors and nurses. We can do that because we took a decision, bitterly opposed by Labour, to disband the primary care trusts and the strategic health authorities and to lose 21,000 administrators so that we could pay for 10,000 extra doctors and nurses, including in Coventry.