Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Karin Smyth and Greg Smith(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the particular problems in his constituency. Decisions on the configuration of call centres are a matter for local trusts in consultation with staff and representatives, and I encourage him to continue to engage with the trust in the interests of his constituents.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Will the additional money announced for hospices before Christmas cover the full cost of the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions or not?
Winter Preparedness
Debate between Karin Smyth and Greg Smith(1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Karin Smyth
I do not wish to test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, but good falls practice has not been prioritised over the past decade, and the failure to prioritise it and continue the work that I know was being done many years ago is yet another testament to the failure of the Conservative party. My hon. Friend is right to refer to the way we can use AI to help the system to improve, so that this hugely preventable problem, which is so damaging to the elderly in particular, no longer occurs.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Winter pressures come around every year for all sorts of reasons. The difference this year was the political choice to take the winter fuel payment away from millions of pensioners. Worse still, the 44,000 pensioners living with a terminal illness will lose that payment. I cannot believe that a Minister as diligent as the hon. Lady has not carried out an impact assessment of the cost to the NHS of people being left in cold homes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar)—the shadow Secretary of State—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) asked for such an assessment. May I give the Minister another chance to commit to publishing it?
Karin Smyth
The hon. Gentleman is wholly wrong to say that winter crises happen under every Government in every year. They happened, and became a fact of the NHS, under his party’s Government. The key difference this year, which the Conservatives will still not address, is the fact that doctors are not on strike. Doctors are working in the system, caring for patients and doing their job, because this Government, on day one and week one and week four, delivered the negotiated settlement with the doctors. We cannot run the NHS and we cannot manage a winter crisis without doctors in the frontline, and that is where they are. That is what the difference is.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Karin Smyth and Greg Smith(3 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Karin Smyth
What we see at the front end of the system is a result of the deterioration throughout the system, and the flow of patients from the community, through discharge and, indeed, through social care. Our ambitious 10-year plan will involve examining the entire patient pathway to ensure that care is provided in the community, closer to home. Prevention is a key part of that, as is the look that we are taking at social care.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)