National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between John Healey and Jonathan Edwards

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I would expect these trade negotiations to stretch into at least the end of next year, so I hope and expect that the responsibility for making sure that this deal is good for Britain will become that of a Labour, not a Tory, Government and of Labour Ministers, not Tory Ministers.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

rose—

[John Healey]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman before finishing on the issue of the Prime Minister, which my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) has just raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making a very important point about TTIP. I know that the Scottish Government want the Scottish health service excluded and I would hope that the Welsh Government would have the same position. Is there not an onus on the UK Government to make those representations on behalf of the devolved Governments?

[John Healey]

Indeed. There is an onus, a responsibility and, I would argue, a duty on British Ministers to make those representations and to secure those protections in any deal for the whole of the UK.

Finally, the Prime Minister made his most personal pledges before the last election to protect the NHS and to stop top-down reorganisations. He has broken those pledges to the British people, and the damage that he and his Tory Ministers have inflicted through this NHS reorganisation and legislation has been unwanted, wasteful and wrong. It will fall to a Labour Government, after May, to put right this damage and to rescue the NHS, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said in his opening speech, just as we did in 1997. This Bill—it is why I am pleased and proud to support it—is an essential step towards doing that, but the election of a Labour Government must follow if we are to do the job properly.

National Insurance Contributions Bill

Debate between John Healey and Jonathan Edwards

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

It is an extraordinary state of affairs that a series of serious and significant pledges, set out formally in the coalition agreement in May, should have been broken in the White Paper produced by the Health Secretary in July. My hon. Friend is right: the one thing that the Government promised not to do in the coalition agreement was to go ahead with a top-down internal reorganisation, but that is exactly what is now planned. It could cost up to £3 billion. It is high risk and high cost; it is exactly the wrong thing to do at this stage, when the NHS is facing such tight financial pressures. I also have to say to the Minister that his colleagues are already showing signs of strain.

I am anxious to return to the amendment that the House is discussing. The House will notice that it refers to the National Audit Office, which is an independent, authoritative body. The Minister will appreciate the assessments, analyses and authoritative views of independent bodies. He and his colleagues set up the Office for Budget Responsibility. Its independence has—shall we say?—been put on perhaps a slightly more questionable footing than that of the NAO, but it is nevertheless an important organisation. Indeed, the problems of the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues were compounded when their Office for Budget Responsibility updated the economic forecast and the fiscal numbers in November. One of the significant changes in its independent, authoritative assessment of this country’s economic prospects was to its forecast for inflation, thereby changing the deflator—in other words, the amount by which the Government and everyone else anticipate that costs in general, and Government spending in particular, will rise. Instead of a GDP deflator for 2011-12 of 1.9%, as set out in the OBR’s June report, its updated economic forecasts in November gave a deflator of 2.5%.

In other words, even before we take into account the double-counting of funding for both the NHS and social care, we have, instead of the wafer-thin rise of 0.1% for England that the Chancellor promised, a much heavier cut, of 0.5%. That has been confirmed by the Library, and by independent, authoritative bodies in the health field and the Select Committee on Health, which said in its report into public expenditure on 14 December that

“the Government’s commitment to a real terms increase in health funding throughout the Spending Review period will not be met.”

So the Government are breaking their promises to protect NHS funding in England, Scotland and Wales. Next year, Scotland is now being short-changed in NHS funding by £70 million, while Wales is being short-changed by £40 million. In total next year, there will be a shortfall from the promise made by the Government to the British people in their coalition agreement of more than £1.3 billion—not a rise in NHS funding next year, but a cut. On 20 October, the Chancellor promised to increase health spending over and above inflation. That promise is being broken by £1.3 billion.

Our amendments today, including amendment 8, are intended to be helpful, as I said to the Minister. They are intended to demonstrate how the Government can deal with the problem, if they have the will to keep their promises on funding for the NHS. We endeavour to act as a responsible Opposition, as our leader promised we would. The amendment is therefore designed to show helpful ways in which the Government can use this legislation to keep good both the Chancellor’s word and the Government’s promise to protect NHS funding, and thereby to see a real increase each year in this Parliament, and not, as at present, to deliver a real-terms cut.

The amendment suggests having an independent assessment and a report carried out by the National Audit Office. The independence is important: it is designed to try to give the public more confidence in what the Government are doing; to give this House more confidence in what they are doing; and to give everyone more confidence that what was a central promise from the Government and a personal promise from the Prime Minister is in fact being met.

This subject came up at the last Prime Minister’s Questions before Christmas, and it was interesting to note that the Prime Minister told the House:

“I am confident that we will fulfil our goal of real-terms increases every year in the NHS.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 502, c. 902.]

That will not happen next year. The Exchequer Secretary is a talented Minister and he has an opportunity to give his big boss, the Prime Minister, the confidence that he clearly wishes to see by accepting the amendment and allowing the NAO to do an independent report, demonstrating the extent of the shortfall and the extent to which the Government are breaking their promise fully to fund the NHS. By doing so, he would do the House and perhaps even himself a favour.

[Jonathan Edwards]

In the light of the situation that he has explained applies in England, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is reckless for the Conservatives in Wales to promise in the forthcoming National Assembly elections to increase spending on health above the retail prices index?

[John Healey]

One of the two consequences of devolution is that in this area of health such decisions are taken in Wales for Wales. The second, however, is, I have to concede to the House, that I, as an English shadow Health Secretary do not follow those decisions in detail, so I think the hon. Gentleman is going to have to prosecute that argument in his home area.

Finally, the House will note that the date in the amendment is anticipated to be after the expected Royal Assent to the Bill, so it is tied to the Finance Act. The Exchequer Secretary might want to discuss with the Chancellor the idea of doing this assessment, publishing the report and highlighting the shortfall, showing the extent to which the promises they made to protect NHS funding and give it a real-terms increase in each year of this Parliament are being broken. The Budget, of course, provides the Chancellor’s opportunity to make good his word and make good the promises that his Government have given to the British people on the NHS.