Five Year Forward View

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he has done for Medway Maritime. That was a very good visit: I met both management and staff, and gained a better idea of the challenges faced by the hospital.

The report makes it clear that we must become much better at tackling variations in care. Never again must we have a system in which hospitals are struggling and delivering poor care, and that poor care is swept under the carpet and nothing is done about it. The Government have put 18 hospitals into special measures—more than 10% of all the hospitals in the NHS—and that has been very challenging. We have been accused by Opposition Front Benchers of running down the NHS when we have done it, but do you know what has happened? Six of those hospitals have now come out of special measures, and nearly all the others have improved dramatically. It is time that the Labour party got behind what is a really good inspection programme, based on openness, honesty and transparency about problems.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Bolton clinical commissioning group is putting mental health services out to tender, which seems to involve a cut of between a half and a third on the basis of current spending. Are such cuts in mental health services what the Secretary of State means by his vision?

[Mr Hunt]

No, and that is why the Government legislated for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. As I said earlier, we have introduced maximum waiting times for some mental health conditions, and we have focused on improving access to psychological therapies—IAPT—and on dementia. Anxiety and depression and dementia are two of the most common mental health conditions in respect of which we can make a real difference, and we are doing more all the time.