NHS Funding

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I enjoy every moment in which a blow is landed on the Government; they squirm and try to come back. Will my right hon. Friend comment on how much of the budget is being thrown away and wasted on top-down reorganisation, redundancy payments and everything else that is going on?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We need short interventions. There are a lot of Members who wish to speak. I am a little bothered by the comments made; I am sure that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) did not want to suggest that the Prime Minister conned people.

[Andy Burnham]

I am coming to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), because the context is that £1.6 billion, on the Government’s own figures, was spent on the back office, and taken away from the front line. The Chair of the Select Committee says that the cut was a little one, as though that is okay—“It’s really an increase, because it’s only a little cut”—but one has to add £1.6 billion to that to see the full extent of the diversion of funds from the NHS front line.

As the chair of the UK Statistics Authority has established, NHS spending was lower in the first two years of this coalition than when Labour left office. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says that it is the same. Let us have some honesty here. Mr Dilnot says that it was a cut; accept what he says, and get on with the job. If the Secretary of State starts being a bit more honest at the Dispatch Box, he might get a bit more respect from the public.

The Prime Minister has cut the NHS—fact; but just as he airbrushed his poster, he has tried to airbrush the statistics, and he has been found out. To be fair, the Conservatives admitted it and corrected the Tory party website, but the problem is that we have a long list of similarly false claims made in the House that, as of now, stand uncorrected. Today, we invite the Secretary of State to correct the parliamentary record in person.

I am not surprised to see a few sheepish looks on the Conservative Benches, because we have been checking Conservative Members’ websites, and we found that the hon. Members for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), and for Hendon (Dr Offord), the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips), and the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham)—

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[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Has the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) informed the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) that he would be making comments about her in the debate today?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is not a point of order.

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[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I am very disappointed to hear the right hon. Gentleman talk down the NHS. As he has just acknowledged, before the election the NHS knew that it was facing an unprecedented efficiency challenge. He will also know that under Labour productivity in the NHS fell continuously. I wonder whether—[Interruption.] Okay, but for almost every year—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Lady needs to ask a sharp and punchy question as an intervention, and very quickly.

[Dr Wollaston]

Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge the NHS’s achievement in making a productivity gain?

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady just made another untrue statement. She talks about talking down the NHS, but productivity has not fallen. I am sorry, but let us have some honesty. We are not just going to sit here and take one statement after another—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We all know that all Members are very honest in this House.

[Andy Burnham]

Inadvertent claims are being thrown around the House all the time.

Fourthly, and finally, cuts and reorganisation are resulting in a crude drive to privatise services, prioritising cost over clinical quality. Across England, deals have been signed to open up 396 community services to open tender under any qualified provider, but those deals are not subject to proper public scrutiny because they are held back under commercial confidentiality. In Greater Manchester, plans are advanced to hand over patient transport services to Arriva, despite the fact that an in-house bid scored higher on quality and despite the fact that the CQC recently found serious shortcomings with the same provider in Leicestershire. The trouble is that nobody has asked the people of Greater Manchester, or more importantly the patients who rely on that service, whether they want that change.

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[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is disingenuous, should it be allowed by the Deputy Speaker to say that, of the shadow Secretary of State and Labour Members—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are not going to be disingenuous, are we? We are going to be friends together, and I am sure that a good experienced Member like you, Mr Stuart, could word it better.

[Mr Stuart]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for that correction, which I required. Obviously, it is an inadvertent tendency towards disingenuousness on the subject. I would like to apologise for pointing out, on behalf of patients right across the country, that for the Opposition to have a debate on health funding, when they were proposing to cut it—when they are actually cutting it in Wales—and when productivity fell, is the height of hypocrisy.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I do not think we can have “hypocrisy” either, so we will have the Secretary of State instead.

[Mr Hunt]

The simple truth that Labour Front Benchers cannot understand is that spending is related to budgets, and they wanted the budgets to be lower than they currently are.

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[Mr Hunt]

In that case, I will give way.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) is not going to walk out after his intervention and will stay a little longer.

[Mr Walker]

The meeting is in thirteen minutes.

My right hon. Friend knows that it is not just about funding but about good management. He cannot be responsible for management across the NHS, but in the East of England ambulance service there are question marks over the quality of its senior management. Will he find time to cast his eye over those senior managers?

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[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Lady’s party has been saying that spending has been cut, and it had the foolishness to call an Opposition day debate on the basis of a letter from Andrew Dilnot that states that, broadly speaking, spending has remained unchanged. That is why, at its heart, the motion is bogus.

The sad fact is that this is not the debate that the Opposition planned to have, two years into this Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman dreamed of coming to the House to remonstrate about an NHS that was on its knees and that was not delivering for the public. He wanted to argue about waiting times, but they have gone down, with fewer people waiting a long time for an operation than at any time under Labour. He wanted to argue about treatments, but there are more people getting new hips and knees and many other treatments than under Labour. [Interruption.] Opposition Members should listen to this. He wanted to argue about cancer, but 23,000 people are now getting drugs under the cancer drugs fund that Labour refused to set up.

Today, the right hon. Gentleman has tabled a motion criticising the decisions taken by the coalition and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) on NHS spending in our first two years in office. This is also about how we spend the money, as many of my hon. Friends have said. What are the decisions that the right hon. Gentleman is criticising? They are precisely the decisions that mean that the NHS is now performing at record levels, and vastly better than at any time under Labour.

Let us look at those decisions. There was the decision to reduce the number of managers by 7,000 and transfer resources to the front line. There was also the decision to cancel Labour’s disastrous attempt to embrace the technology revolution that cost billions and set the NHS back by years. Then there was the decision to end the wasteful consultancy spend, which has now been cut by 39%. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman needs to listen to this. There was the decision to stop the scandal of unsustainable private finance initiative projects that left the NHS with a £73 billion debt and £1.6 billion-worth of repayments every year. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Christmas is coming. Let us show a little bit more Christmas spirit towards each other. Members on both sides of the House want to hear the Secretary of State.

[Mr Hunt]

I could not agree with you more, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am trying to give the House some good news, but it is difficult for the Opposition to take it in.

There was also the decision, championed by both coalition parties, to transfer that money to the front line, so we now have more clinical staff, including 5,000 more doctors; better access to drugs, including £600 million invested in the cancer drugs fund; 500,000 more elective admissions every year than under Labour; over 3 million more out-patient appointments every year than under Labour; nearly 1 million more going through accident and emergency every year than under Labour; and 1.5 million more diagnostic tests every year than under Labour. On top of all that, we have 60,000 fewer people waiting longer than 18 weeks than under Labour; 90% fewer people waiting more than a year than under Labour; clostridium difficile down more than a third compared with under Labour; MRSA halved compared with under Labour; and the number of people facing the indignity of mixed-sex wards down by 98% compared with under Labour.

Of course the NHS faces huge challenges with an ageing population and increasing demand, but we are now facing up to those challenges with ambitious plans to tackle dementia, to reduce mortality rates for the big killer diseases to the lowest in Europe, to embrace the technology revolution—but getting it right this time—and to improve the quality of care which, in parts of the system, has been allowed to become shockingly poor for far too long. All those priorities were ignored by Labour in office and, even worse, they have been rejected by Labour today as a “meaningless list”. Those were Labour’s words. Well, tell that to the 157,000 people who die from cancer every year, or the 800,000 people who have dementia, or the people whose families suffer from the poor care that we read about every week in the newspapers.

None of the improvements to the NHS, and none of the ambitions for our NHS, would be possible without the extraordinary dedication of our doctors, nurses and front-line professionals, to whom I pay tribute today. But none of them would have been possible either if we had not increased the NHS budget and NHS front-line spend, contrary to what Labour intended and wanted. Labour’s plans would have meant less spending in real terms on the NHS, and vastly less spending on the NHS front line. No clever fiddling with baselines can obscure the harsh reality that Labour’s policy towards the NHS is a mass of contradictions that fools nobody—certainly not the brilliant doctors, nurses and professionals who have given their lives to saving and improving the lives of others. I urge the House to reject this ridiculous motion.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The time limit on Back-Bench speeches is displayed on the annunciator screen.