NHS Reorganisation
Debate between Jim Cunningham and Mike Gapes(6 years ago)
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Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He touches on the reorganisation way back in 2012. Clinical commissioning groups were created, but they are not accountable to the public—we have problems trying to find out what their budgets are and so forth. We have the same problem with NHS England, which is another very difficult organisation to deal with. As a result of all this reorganisation, we have organisations that are not really accountable to the public, and the public do not get their voices heard.
My hon. Friend touched on staff salaries. If we worked it out, we would probably find that they have had an 8% real-terms cut in wages over the past seven or eight years, on top of which they have to pay car parking charges for the privilege of serving the public. Does he agree that that cannot be right?
Mike Gapes (in the Chair)
Order. Can I just request that interventions are not long speeches?
Mr Jim Cunningham
My hon. Friend is quite right. One of the things that would help, particularly among women, is reintroducing the education maintenance allowance so we can bring forward student nurses and so forth. I will give a very quick example—I know you have been a bit lenient, Mr Gapes. In Coventry, a certain facility is starting to be moved to Birmingham. That is 16 miles away, so people are going to have to travel quite a distance. We still have difficulties getting through to NHS England, which arbitrarily comes along and says, “This is going to happen.” It looks as though it might happen unless we can find some alternative. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is no way to run a national health service?
Mike Gapes (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that they should not make lengthy speeches in interventions. I would be grateful if all Members bear that in mind in future. I will not be very kind if I get the sense that we are getting three or four speeches from one Member.