NHS England Funding: Announcement to Media

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, indeed my friend, and I understand and entirely appreciate where he is coming from. He is an assiduous parliamentarian and quite rightly, as Mr Speaker alluded to, he takes the role of this House extremely seriously, as do I. I suspect that what he says, just as what Mr Speaker said, has been heard loud and clear both in the Department of Health and Social Care and across the Government, including in the Treasury.

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

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. I remember a time when Chancellors went into purdah before a Budget. Perhaps that tradition needs to return.

Fortunately, I received the press release on Sunday. I should not have, but I was sent it, and obviously Members should have received it, too. Of course the NHS is in a desperate state and is under crushing, unsustainable pressure, partly because of a decade of under-investment in infrastructure, the cutting of thousands of beds and raids on the capital budget. It means that today, hospitals are facing a repair bill of £9 billion, and we have sewerage pipes bursting, ceilings collapsing and equipment breaking down. The number of safety incidents in hospitals as a result of these problems has increased by 15% in the last year alone. Not only is the equipment old and outdated but, on a head-for-head basis, we have some of the lowest numbers of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scanners in Europe and the highest numbers of fax machines. Capital budgets have been raided throughout the last 10 years. Will the Minister confirm that, in what he is announcing, the total capital budget will be ring-fenced and not raided in the coming years?

The Minister has not mentioned mental health, but we have thousands of unsafe and undignified dormitory wards. Will there be extra capital investment to get rid of them? If so, by when? Will the diagnostics centres that he mentioned be provided and run by the NHS or run and supplied by private sector contractors? He said that we will clear the 1.3 million backlog in diagnostic tests by the end of the Parliament, but nobody wants to see ghost surgical hubs or new equipment standing idle. Who will staff the diagnostics centres? Who will staff the surgical theatres? Who will operate the new equipment?

The Minister mentioned diagnostics staff, but we are short of one in 10 of them. We are also short of 55% of consultant oncologists, short of radiologists and short of 2,500 specialist cancer nurses. Will he guarantee that the Health Education England budget will be not frozen or cut but properly funded to recruit the thousands of extra doctors, nurses and NHS staff needed to provide safe care and bring waiting times down?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman—my constituency neighbour—for his sensible and reasonable questions. I will endeavour to answer each of them in turn. On capital, he will know, not least because his local hospital—mine as well—is in that list to receive capital investment as part of the overall 40 new hospitals programme, that an initial £3.7 billion has been already allocated to the 40 hospitals that we are committed to delivering by 2030. That is investment not just in maintenance but in replacing old or outdated stock with new hospitals to minimise those longer-term maintenance bills. He is right that we must continue to support ongoing maintenance, as we have done. To take one example, we did exactly that by making an extra £110 million available to help support the maintenance of RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—plank hospitals around the country.

On mental health, the right hon. Gentleman is right to talk about capital investment. In the context of those new hospitals, mental health facilities and hospitals are included. They have not been left out; they have got their share.

The right hon. Gentleman also rightly talked about staff, which, as I said to the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), is a key point. We have seen significant increases in the number of doctors and nurses. He is right to highlight the need for continued increases in specialisms such as radiographers and radiologists. I highlighted the increases that we have seen, but we know just how valuable they are. I alluded to the £12 billion that the Secretary of State announced back in September, a significant part of which will go to support the workforce in the delivery of elective recovery.

On how community diagnostic centres and community diagnostic hubs will both be selected and operate, we are working closely with the NHS on exactly how to do that to ensure that the workforce are sufficient and that we do not impose burdens over and above those already imposed on them. I think that I have answered the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, but I am sure that his hon. Friends will come back if I have missed anything.