Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)]

We recognise that the Princess Alexandra Hospital estate is in a poor condition. NHS Improvement is working with the trust to develop an estate and capital strategy by summer 2018 to be assessed, with other schemes put forward, for the next capital announcement for sustainability and transformation partnerships. I am very happy to meet my right hon. Friend to have further discussions about it.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his update on breast cancer screening. I welcome his letter this morning with respect to patient safety in the private sector, but is not the truth that the best quality of care is provided by a public national health service? Is it not time to legislate to ensure that private hospitals improve their patient safety standards, and if he accepts that levels of safety are not acceptable in the private sector, why is the NHS still referring patients to the unsafe private sector? Should there not be a moratorium on those referrals until these issues are sorted out?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman should be very careful in making generalisations about the independent sector, just as he is about the NHS sector, because the truth is that there is too much poor care in both sectors, but both sectors also have outstanding care. I have always said that there will be no special favours for the independent sector, which we will hold to the same high standard of care, through the Care Quality Commission regime, as we do with NHS hospitals. Let me just say to him that if we stopped referring people to the independent sector, 140,000 people would wait longer for their operations, and that is not good care.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

We have seen the private sector fail—the NHS is sued by Virgin Care, patient transport contracts have to come back in-house, and Carillion collapses and cleaning contracts have to come back in-house—and now we learn that the hotline for women affected by the breast cancer screening failures is provided by Serco and staffed by call handlers who, far from having medical or counselling training, have had one hour’s training. Do not the women affected deserve better than that? Will the Secretary of State provide the resources for that phone line to be brought back in-house and staffed by medical professionals?

[Mr Hunt]

I normally have so much respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I think those women deserve a lot better than that posturing. The helpline was set up at very short notice because, obviously, the call handlers could not do all their training until I had made a statement to Parliament, which I judged was the most important thing to do first. It is not the only help that the women affected will be getting—on the basis of the advice received, they will be referred back for help at their local hospital, with Macmillan Cancer Support or through specialist clinicians at Public Health England—but we thought it was right that that number was made available as quickly as possible.