NHS

Debate between John Glen and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will put forward a solution that the hon. Gentleman might support. I think he supported the campaign to oppose the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill, and I pay credit to him for that as we worked across party lines on that issue. It is my job to hold the Government to account where there are problems in the national health service, and if the Minister is saying to me that there are no problems in the health service right now, I am afraid I do not agree with him. Emergency services are under intense pressure. If he looks back to our time in government, as he invited me to do, he will see that the winter crisis was a regular feature at the turn of the millennium and the early years of the last decade, although it got progressively better and better and we did not see the annual winter crisis. Now it is back with a vengeance, although it is different. The winter/spring crisis has become a summer/autumn crisis too. The pressure is relentless and it needs a proper, lasting solution.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Would the right hon. Gentleman care to reflect on the fact that we now have 350 more A and E consultants in the NHS? Given his commitment to cut the NHS at the last election, if he is going to offer a sensible improvement, where will the money come from? How will he pay for it? That is what the people out there want to understand.

[Andy Burnham]

First, I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman did not continue to misrepresent what I said on the NHS. I have never said, “Cut the NHS”. I stood at the last election on a commitment to protect the NHS budget in real terms. He stood on a manifesto promising real-terms increases for the NHS. I said that if there were to be increases for the NHS, they should be given to social care instead, and that would have relieved some of the pressures on A and E. Let us have the facts straight.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman boasts about having enough A and E doctors. Perhaps he should speak to people from the College of Emergency Medicine and hear what they have to say on that subject. They talk of warning the Government of a recruitment crisis in A and E about two or three years ago. They said that they could not get through to Ministers who were obsessed with structural reorganisation. They were left feeling like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness—their words. Perhaps before the hon. Gentleman shouts the odds in the House, he should speak to the people who know about these things and who warned his Government —who failed to act.

One of the major problems with the pressure on A and E is the number of older people trapped in hospital. This is a product of demographic pressure and the ageing society. Nursing staff talk of how, when they first qualified, it was rare to see someone in their 90s on the ward. Now they are there in great numbers and that makes the task of meeting their needs much more complex. When people reach an advanced age it is simply not possible to separate out their physical, social and mental needs. Need becomes a blur of all three. Our hospitals are not geared up to provide the additional mental and social support that very frail elderly people often need.

Health and Social Care

Debate between John Glen and Andy Burnham

Monday 13th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

As ever, my hon. Friend says it more eloquently than I can. The Government are playing politics rather than addressing the national interest. People will see that, but at least the Government have revealed their hand. We will work hard over the next two years to show who is really to blame and expose this Government’s failures on social care, the NHS and public health. Let me take each in turn.

At face value, the social care measures that the coalition is proposing sound like progress towards a fairer and simpler system. Indeed, the Care Bill builds on many of the recommendations of the Law Commission’s review of adult social care legislation, which was initiated by the last Government and included in the White Paper I published before the last election. National standards for eligibility could help to bring consistency to the care system, and stronger legal rights for carers are long overdue, as is improved access to information and advice. However, the question in the minds of many today, particularly councillors watching this debate, will be: how on earth will we be expected to pay for all that? That is when we realise again that there is a huge gap between the rhetoric we hear from the Dispatch Box and the reality on the ground across England. More than £1.3 billion has been cut from local council budgets for older people’s social care since this Government came to power.

Just last week, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said that Government cuts to care and councils would mean a further raid of £800 million from care budgets in the next year. The Care and Support Alliance has said that the system is in deep crisis and that without

“appropriate funding for the social care system…the aspirations set out in the Care Bill will not be reached.”

The Care Bill does nothing for people who face a desperate daily struggle to get the support they need right now, with many paying spiralling charges for their care. That is the effect of this Government’s drive to cut councils to the bone. They are foisting huge care charges on the most vulnerable people in our society. These are the coalition’s dementia taxes.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that the people of this country would have more confidence in what he says at the Dispatch Box had he not said in the last general election campaign that it would be irresponsible to safeguard the NHS budget, which is what this Government undertook to do?

[Andy Burnham]

I will come directly to that quotation in a moment, because the hon. Gentleman will remember that at the last election he stood on a manifesto promising real-terms increases for the NHS. I hope that when he speaks later—or if he wants to get up right now—he will tell me whether they have been delivered.

[John Glen]

I am grateful for the opportunity to acknowledge the great difference between England and Wales, where Labour is in power and where we are seeing real cuts in NHS spending.

[Andy Burnham]

Government Members are just embarrassing themselves. When they cannot answer a question, they try to raise another one or go on about Europe. It is just not good enough. The answer is—though the hon. Gentleman cannot admit it—that Andrew Dilnot said this Government had cut the NHS. It is there in black and white. That is what they have done, and they stood on a manifesto promising the opposite. I secured a budget to protect the NHS at the last election. I said that I could not give real-terms increases because that would be irresponsible; and as it turns out, nor can the hon. Gentleman. His party was writing cheques that it simply could not cash, and that is a fact.

The Care Bill does nothing for those hit by the coalition’s dementia taxes right now. Since this Government came to power, the average care user has paid £655 a year more for home care than when they came into office. Overall, that is around £6,800 a year. Dial-a-ride transport services have doubled in price over the same period, from an average of £1.92 to £4.12. Meals on wheels now cost an extra £235 a year, while people in Conservative areas pay more for each service on average than friends and family in Labour-controlled areas—on average, £15 a week or £780 a year more for home care. That is the record of this Government.

NHS Funding

Debate between John Glen and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes with concern the letter of 4 December 2012 from the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Andrew Dilnot CBE, to the Secretary of State for Health concerning public expenditure on health, further notes Mr Dilnot’s statement that expenditure on the NHS in real terms was lower in 2011-12 than it was in 2009-10; and calls on Ministers to reflect this position in their public statements.

Some people question whether Opposition days ever achieve anything, but not us. Last month, we brought to the House our concern about plans for regional pay in the national health service, which found an echo among Government Members. Within days, the plans of the previous Health Secretary for market-facing pay in the NHS were scuppered in the autumn statement. To some, that was just another day, another U-turn, in the life of this shambolic coalition—no big deal—but to thousands of NHS staff in the south-west facing pay cuts it was a real relief, although we are still waiting for the consortium formally to back down. We will be vigilant until it does so.

Fresh from that success, we set ourselves a more challenging task in today’s Opposition day debate to bring some much-needed honesty to the public debate on the NHS, particularly on NHS spending. Across the country, people can see the signs of an NHS in increasing distress: cataract operations are restricted; A and E departments and walk-in centres have been closed; hospitals are full to bursting, some struggling for survival; over 7,000 nursing jobs have been lost—[Interruption.] Government Members should listen to the facts before they shout out, because this is the reality and the chaos that the previous Secretary of State created on the ground. People can see that with their own eyes, but when they go home and switch on the television they see Ministers standing at the Dispatch Box making complacent boasts about “real-terms increases” that they have given the NHS and saying that everything is fine.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to have integrity and demonstrate honesty in this debate, will he at the outset condemn the Labour party in Wales for the real cuts that everyone knows are being made in the Welsh health service? Will he level with the British people about that, rather than offer this empty political rhetoric that does not deal honestly with what is happening in Wales?

[Andy Burnham]

We are discussing the hon. Gentleman’s Government today, but let me deal with Wales. His Government have given the Welsh Assembly Government a real-terms £2.1 billion cut. The Welsh Assembly Government have done their best to protect health spending in that context: they have protected the NHS budget in cash terms. May I also point out to the hon. Gentleman that since 2010 there has been no real reduction in front-line staff, particularly nurses, in Wales, which is quite unlike the position under his Government? Before he appears a bit too cocky on these matters he should read up on the facts. The Welsh Assembly is doing the best that it can with the awful hand of cards that he and his Government dealt it.

There is a mismatch between ministerial rhetoric and the reality on the ground in the NHS, and it is in danger of causing confusion. If left unchallenged, it may lead to unfair claims that the problems in the NHS are all down to its staff and have nothing to do with the Government. Today we need a bit of accountability and a bit of honesty. Once and for all, we will nail the myths, spin and sheer misrepresentation of the facts that roll off the Government Benches week after week.