National Health Service

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I give way to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood).

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State. Can he explain why Labour only ever now has any interest in England’s health service? We would like to hear about Labour’s conduct of the Welsh health service and its message for Scotland. Does Labour not know that this is an English devolved matter?

[Andy Burnham]

It is my responsibility to hold the Government to account on behalf of patients in England for what is happening in England now. That is my job, and I will make no apologies to the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else for doing it.

The response times in the ambulance service are not good enough, nor is the plan to introduce an experiment in the middle of winter, but the problems are not confined to the ambulance service. We need, too, to relieve the pressure on hospitals. Last week just seven out of 140 hospital A and E departments in England met the Secretary of State’s lowered A and E target. Hospital staff are trying their best, but it is as if the Government have simply given up on it. If that is so, it means that they are giving up on the thousands of people waiting hours to be seen. What is his plan to stop the decline and bring A and E back up to acceptable standards? It is time he told us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

I am going to make progress, but I will give way later.

I want to look at the pressures that the NHS is facing, because the right hon. Member for Leigh asked about the direct causes. There are more than 1 million more over-65s than there were four years ago. Many older people become particularly vulnerable when it is cold, which is why winters are always difficult for the NHS. The truth is that over successive decades, we have made older people more dependent on emergency care by under-investing in primary and community care, reducing the responsibility of GPs for out-of-hours care, removing the personal responsibility for patients from GPs, and failing to integrate health and social care.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke as if that was nothing to do with Labour. However, he knows what damage was caused by the GP contract changes in 2004, he knows that his Government failed to integrate health and social care for 13 years, and he knows that where Labour runs the NHS today—in Wales—the performance is even worse. Instead of debating constructively, he chose to start this year by putting up a scaremongering poster that implied that the NHS would cease to exist if this Government were re-elected. That is not good enough. The whole country can see that, for him, it is not about the ward, but the weapon; it is not about the patients, but the politics. For this Government, it is about the patients.

[Mr Redwood]

Does my right hon. Friend understand Labour’s attack on privatisation? Under Labour, the NHS always had private-sector contractors as GPs— and nothing has changed; and it always bought all its pharmaceuticals from competitive, profit-making pharmaceutical companies—and nothing has changed. What is the shadow Secretary of State’s grievance?

[Mr Hunt]

Privatisation is one of the most pernicious fears that Labour is seeking to stoke up—not least because, as Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh allowed the decision to go through that Hinchingbrooke hospital should be run by the private sector. He has been running away from that decision faster than anything that anyone has seen before, because he is still trying to curry favour with the unions.

The companies on the shortlist for Hinchingbrooke hospital were Circle, Serco and Ramsay Health Care. He could have stopped that as Secretary of State, but he did not. He knows—[Interruption.] Those were the three bidders—the private sector-led bids. He could have stopped that process when he was Secretary of State, but he chose not to. That makes my point very well.