Southern Cross Care Homes

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

What we have is a process that is working towards that solvent restructuring of the business to ensure that each home is able to be taken over by an operator or a group of operators so that good-quality care can continue to be provided for the people who live there. That is what this process involving the landlords, the lenders and Southern Cross is all about. What we know from the statement made by the company yesterday is that it has given an undertaking for the TUPE transfer of the staff. We also know that the company will be working over the next four months to ensure that smooth transition. As my statement said, the public authorities—the Care Quality Commission and the local authorities—are working with the company to ensure that that happens.

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

The Minister knows as well as I do that local authorities may have a legal obligation to intervene in this situation but they cannot do that without Government assistance with the resources. It is no good the Minister blaming a previous Labour Government or local authorities; he is passing the buck to local authorities. I thought that Pontius Pilate died 2,000 years ago, but we have just seen his resurrection.

[Paul Burstow]

What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that there is not a question of funding these homes, because they are not insolvent. The business is not going into administration—it is going through a restructuring—so there is no request for funds and there is no need for those funds in order for local authorities to be able to carry out their current legal duties.

Reform of Social Care

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is right. I very much welcomed and encouraged the dialogue that took place between Andrew Dilnot’s team and Tom Hughes- Hallett’s team, and they have made complementary recommendations. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that, as far as end-of-life care is concerned, there is widespread unmet need. The disparity in the quality of care and the services provided in different parts of the country is staggering. Just as the Dilnot commission deals with care and support, we certainly aim to deliver greater consistency in eligibility and in the quality of care provided.

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

I am sure that the Secretary of State is aware that there are concerns nationally—and locally in Coventry—about Southern Cross. Can he be more positive, because so far the answers we have received from the Government have been very vague? Equally, there is concern about the regulator being undermanned, so how does he intend to improve that and improve the quality of care?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman feels that the Government have been anything other than absolutely clear about what we are setting out to do. This is a problem that derived from the commercial decisions that the company made and it should be resolved by further commercial discussions between the company, its landlords and its lenders. We are constantly in touch with all of those, but it is not the Government’s responsibility to step in and take those decisions. What is the Government’s responsibility, which we are clear about and ready to take action as necessary, is to ensure that individuals in those care homes and their families are not abandoned and do not fall through the gaps or find themselves without access to the care and support they need. I hope that, in the midst of the perfectly legitimate concerns being expressed, people do not stray into causing people to be more fearful than they need be.

Southern Cross Healthcare

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

The hon. Gentleman asks an important question about the impact on the quality of care if there are staff losses. When it became clear that the company was posting a figure of 3,000 redundancies, I instructed the CQC to undertake additional assessments to ascertain any likely effect and ensure that there is no impact on the quality of care.

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

What is the Minister doing to beef up the CQC? As I understand it, there have been a number of redundancies there, and if he wants to maintain the quality of care he has to beef it up. Does he know that the Coventry Evening Telegraph recently conducted an investigation into 10 homes in Coventry, which were found greatly wanting in their standards, hygiene and medicine distribution?

[Paul Burstow]

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about the staffing of the CQC, I can confirm that last October I authorised an additional 75 inspectors’ posts to be filled by that organisation to strengthen it in the very way that he asks for.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already indicated in today’s exchanges in this House, we are committed to listening and reflecting during this pause, and to ensuring that we come back with substantive improvements to the Bill to deliver its central purpose of improving health care for the people of this country.

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

5. How much his Department allocated to the provision of out-of-hours surgeries in the last 12 months for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

The Government do not allocate centrally how much money is spent by local NHS providers on out-of-hours services. However, in 2009-10, the last year for which figures are available, £403.8 million was spent on out-of-hours GP services in England and £1.6 million was spent on out-of-hours services in Coventry. We plan to give GPs and other health professionals greater powers to commission out-of-hours care to achieve high quality, integrated services that are focused on the needs of patients.

[Mr Cunningham]

Given that waiting times in emergency units are increasing, what will the Minister do to protect out-of-hours clinics?

[Mr Burns]

It was, of course, the hon. Gentleman’s Government who did so much to undermine the provision of out-of-hours services. We propose not only to review the existing framework, but to ensure that there are the real improvements that benefit patient care, which are so badly needed.

NHS Reform

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am not sure which Labour party we would be expected to engage with—the one whose manifesto agreed with us, the one for which the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne spoke at a King’s Fund meeting in January when he agreed with us, or the one that we saw in Committee, which opposed everything, tried to wreck the Bill and clearly has gone back to the Holborn and St Pancras view of the NHS.

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

It is obvious that the public are extremely concerned about the Bill. Why does the Secretary of State not suspend the Bill and bring forward new proposals that we can all support?

[Mr Lansley]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand that the public support the principles of the Bill. The public want patient choice. When they are exercising their choice over treatment, they want to be able to go to whoever is the best provider. Patients believe that general practitioners are the best people to design services and care on their behalf. Patients, the public and professionals support the principles of “no decision about me without me”, focusing on outcomes and delivering an outcomes framework, and the devolution of responsibility. What we are talking about now is ensuring that other important principles, such as governance, accountability, transparency and multi-professional working, are genuinely supported by the structure of the Bill.

Health and Social Care Bill

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

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

Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many jobs will go in front-line services and how many hospital closures there will be as a result of his policies?

[Mr Lansley]

I just wish that the hon. Gentleman would look at the latest published data. Since the election, we have reduced the number of managers in the health service by almost 4,000 and increased the number of doctors. For the first time, there are more than 100,000 doctors in the NHS, and we are increasing the number of health visitors, after years of their numbers being reduced under the previous Government. He should get his facts right before he starts flinging accusations about.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recalls that the catastrophic problems of infected blood supplied by the NHS date back to the 1970s and 1980s, infecting 4,670 patients and causing what Lord Winston described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS; notes that successive administrations only very partially responded to this catastrophe by setting up and funding the MacFarlane Trust, the Skipton Fund and the Eileen Trust; regrets the past refusal to accept the principal recommendation of the Independent Public Inquiry into the supply of contaminated NHS blood to haemophilia patients, chaired by Lord Archer and established and financed by private initiative and funds, relating to compensation for the victims and set out in paragraph 6(h) of chapter 12 of the Archer Report; further notes that earlier this year the reasons for rejecting this recommendation were challenged successfully in the High Court, which quashed the decision; believes that this ruling constitutes an appropriate moment for the present Government, which bears no responsibility for the inadequate and misjudged policies of successive previous administrations, to extend an apology to the surviving 2,700 sufferers, their families and the bereaved; and calls on the Government to alleviate their intense hardship and suffering by accepting and implementing the recommendations of the Archer Report despite the intense financial pressure on the public purse at this time.

I would like to say a few things by way of preliminary background to this debate, some of which may reflect on the interchanges we have just had on the amendment. Opposition Back-Bench Members, and many Government Members, are pleased that the whole idea behind the initiative on Back-Bench business and the excellent Committee established to promote it is that Back-Bench Members should have the ability to move substantive motions on the Floor of the House on which they can vote. That is what, in effect, we have secured today. Not only would the amendment, had it been chosen, have wrecked the whole substance and heart of the motion, but it would have wrecked the intention behind the Backbench Business Committee.

I thank the Chairman of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) and the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), both of whom were good enough, in their wisdom, to select the bid made initially by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), who, of course, is now a member of the shadow Government, and is therefore unable to move the motion today. He has kindly asked me to pick up the baton, which I am honoured to do, and we therefore have the opportunity today to debate a substantive motion on the Floor of the House.

The Government have missed a huge opportunity. In drafting the motion, I placed great emphasis on making it an all-party motion reflecting the views of every Member of the House in a balanced way, and it has commanded the support of the victims of what was the “worst treatment disaster”—as it was described by Lord Winston, whose mother was, I think, terribly hurt in this way—in the history of the NHS. As the motion makes clear, the coalition Government bear no responsibility for the maladministration, the misjudgment and the inadequate judgments of previous Administrations.

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

Does that not make it more significant that the Government, who had no responsibility for this situation, tried to move a wrecking amendment that would have totally sabotaged what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve on behalf of the people concerned?

[Mr Robinson]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. I am very pleased to welcome the Secretary of State to the debate, because it gives it prominence and substance. The Backbench Business Committee has a real role to play—we have had a good debate on Afghanistan too. However, I saw the Secretary of State shake his head to say that the amendment is not a wrecking amendment. None the less, those of us who attended a meeting yesterday with the victims of blood contamination were hoping for an amendment that we could support, and he could have done something about that.

The Secretary of State bears no responsibility for what has happened. The NHS supplied contaminated blood. I will not go into individual cases, except for one in my own constituency, which I have been following ever since the victim first approached me many years ago. This goes back to the mid-1970s, to the Callaghan and Wilson Labour Governments and to the Thatcher Government, and, of course, to the subsequent response to those ill-advised, inadequate judgments, made mostly by officials or under their strong advice—clearly that is the case in these cases—from the last Government principally, although it even pre-dates them to some extent. We are not trying to blame the present coalition Government, but there are things that they could have done, the cost of which would have fallen well short of the £3 billion that will allegedly be the cost of implementing the Archer report.

As hon. Members will recall, the Archer report was set up under the Blair Government—in 1997-98, I think—at which time I was at the Treasury. People put it to me, “You were at the Treasury at the time. Why didn’t you do something?” We did not have the report then. We had made papers available. It was a privately funded and excellent report, which I commend to all Members, but we did not know what it was going to recommend. Unfortunately, I left the Treasury before I was confronted with the implications of the report. However, under the last two Labour Administrations, there were ample opportunities for us to respond more fully, generously and comprehensively, in human terms, to the suffering of the victims.

This was an unparalleled disaster in NHS treatment history involving thoroughly blameless individuals. I met one yesterday—a gentleman from Doncaster—who had been knifed, rushed to the accident and emergency department at Rotherham and given two pints of blood, from which he subsequently contracted HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. He is now totally incapacitated, and has been asked to live, after capital payments of £25,000—of great value, of course, but not enormous—on £107 a week.

The Government could have said, “Well, we know there is a problem with, for example, the Skipton Fund, so we will take some steps to move that up towards the level of what the previous Administration made available—inadequate though it was—in respect of HIV/AIDS.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burstow]

In July, I and the Secretary of State had a successful and long engagement with all the mental health charities, and we are continuing to have a dialogue with them.

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

3. What estimate he has made of the number of redundancies which would result from the abolition of strategic health authorities and primary care trusts?

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Our White Paper set out proposals for greater devolution to clinical leadership in the NHS and an enhanced role for local authorities in setting health strategies and improving public health. That means that we will abolish primary care trusts and strategic health authorities. General practice-led consortiums will make decisions about their requirements for management support, as will the new NHS commissioning board and local authorities. However, the requirement to cut management costs and protect the front line will mean reduced numbers of administrative posts. The extent of that will depend on local plans, and we will publish an impact assessment in due course.

[Mr Cunningham]

The coalition agreement stated that PCTs would be a strong voice for the public. How will the Government achieve that if they are going to abolish them?

[Mr Lansley]

We set out clearly in the White Paper how we will increase accountability to the public, including by establishing Health Watch. Before the election, the hon. Gentleman’s party’s Government demolished the patient representative voice in community health councils and patients’ forums and created nothing effective in its place. Health Watch will be an effective voice for patients, and democratic accountability through local authorities will be far stronger because Health Watch will enable NHS services, public health services and social care to be joined together through co-ordination in a local authority’s health and well-being partnership.