Health, Social Care and Security

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock). It is also a pleasure to be back in this place, and I thank the good people of the Yeovil constituency for sending me back here.

It appeared to me during the election campaign that people in the south-west really did understand what was at stake, and in my patch they voted overwhelmingly for the return of a Conservative Government and against any change to the Government. In part, that was because we will have high-quality public services only if we have a strong economy and a sensible plan for delivering those services.

I am very proud today to wear the tie of Yeovil district hospital, which is one of our nation’s vanguards when it comes to trying properly to integrate social care with healthcare. That has to be one of the main planks of a policy that will allow us to provide a high-quality service to our older generations in the future. Things are going very well: the hospital is performing according to its targets, its waiting times are down, and although things are challenging there, morale is actually very good.

I welcome the idea that there might be a bit more flexibility in how we pay our people, because recruitment and retention is a big issue in primary care, acute care and social care, and that is a major challenge for us. We have to look at the overall packages, and we have to incentivise good behaviour in our hospitals and in the whole sector.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

While the hon. Gentleman is talking about recruitment, will he comment on the fact that although the Government scrapped the nurse bursary, saying that they would fund an extra 10,000 nursing places, they have so far not funded a single nursing place?

[Mr Fysh]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. When it comes to the student loans system, I am keen to make sure that loans are made at a reasonable interest rate. Broadening the availability of loans and training places is also massively important, and I want to come on to that.

In Yeovil, we have a potential project to train more nurses and healthcare professionals locally. I would like to put in a plug for Yeovil College, which wants to set up a new facility to do that in conjunction with the district hospital. It is only by doing that that we can attract good people to the south-west to take part in this massively important work.

Another part of attracting people is having affordable housing. We have heard how some on public sector salaries—and on private sector salaries—find it hard to afford private market housing. That needs to be a major focus of the Government going forward. It is absolutely one of our values in the Conservative party to try to create more housing in the right places at the right price, so that young people can get on the housing ladder and take part in society.

With our ageing population, we will need to spend more money on our public services in general. We have serious challenges on that front, but the difference between the Government and the Opposition is typically that we want to plan properly for how to pay for those things, whereas the Opposition just think we can spend the money and borrow more and more. That is just not the case, and I for one will always try to come up with things that we can do.

We should be looking at the pension system. I see no reason why those who are very wealthy in retirement should have the same entitlement to a state pension as those with less money. I think we could save about £4 billion or £5 billion if the very wealthy did not have the same entitlement, and I am very happy to share that idea with Ministers.

All this depends on our having a very constructive and smooth approach to the Brexit process. That will clearly be a focus of this Parliament, and we need to make sure that it happens correctly. We need to work together on both sides of the House to make sure that we get a good Brexit that we can be proud of in the future. Compromise will be needed on both sides.