NHS Services (Access)

John Glen Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will make some progress.

The right hon. Gentleman said that the reforms have made it harder to access NHS services. The opposite is true. Scrapping the primary care trusts and strategic health authorities meant the introduction of clinical leadership, which he wants to abolish, and allowed the NHS to hire 6,100 more doctors and 3,300 more nurses. Those members of staff are helping the NHS to do 850,000 more operations every single year compared with when he was in office. How can he possibly stand before the House and say that access to NHS services is getting worse, when nearly 1 million more people are getting operations every year compared with when he was Health Secretary?

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

What is more, the evidence from Labour’s last years in office shows that the number of managers was increasing at three times the recruitment rate for nurses. What does that say about Labour’s priorities in office?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why the management pay bill doubled under Labour and why we took the difficult decision, which the Opposition bitterly opposed, to get rid of 19,000 administrators and managers so that we could recruit the extra doctors and nurses. I notice that Opposition Front Benchers are very quiet on that point because they cannot answer the simple question of how they would pay for those extra doctors and nurses if the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was reversed. [Interruption.] Ah! They would pay for the extra doctors and nurses by bringing in new taxes that the country is not paying at the moment.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about structural reforms. We ought to discuss the structural reforms that he chose not to talk about, such as making the Care Quality Commission independent, with new chief inspectors for hospitals, adult social care and general practice. He tried to vote down that legislation in this House. So far—[Interruption.] I know that this is uncomfortable for Labour Members, but they should listen, because the new inspection regime has put 18 hospitals into special measures. Five of them have been turned around completely and have exited special measures, and important improvements are being made at the others.

The motion talks about Government mistakes, so will the right hon. Gentleman finally accept the catastrophic mistakes that he made as Health Secretary, such as failing to sort out the problems at those hospitals, even though there were warning signs at every single one of them? Does he accept that because Labour ignored those warning signs, patients were harmed and lives lost? Will he finally apologise to the relatives of patients at Mid Staffs whom he made wait outside in the cold because he refused to meet them and hear their concerns? Will he make that apology now? He has not apologised and it is clear that he does not want to do so today.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about A and E. Just as when he was Health Secretary, there have been weeks when the target has not been met. What he did not tell the House is that, thanks to our reforms, we have 800 more A and E doctors than four years ago and nearly 2,000 more people are being treated within four hours every single day than when he was Health Secretary.

As the motion refers to Government mistakes, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman might like to acknowledge some of his own mistakes on A and E, such as the 2004 GP contract that removed personal responsibility for patients from GPs, making it more likely that people would end up in A and E, or the failure over 13 years to integrate the health and social care systems, meaning that many vulnerable older people continue to end up in A and E unnecessarily—something that we are putting right through the Better Care programme.

When the right hon. Gentleman spoke about NHS performance, he talked repeatedly about missed targets. That is a really important issue and is perhaps the biggest dividing line between his approach to the NHS and mine. Of course targets matter in any large organisation, but not targets at any cost. That is why the Government have been careful to ensure that in the new inspection regime, waiting time targets are assessed not on their own, but alongside the quality and safety of care.