NHS and Social Care Funding

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about Wales. As a Member for Cardiff, he understands what is happening in the Welsh health service. I wish Conservative Members understood that better.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I will then make some progress.

[Mr Clarke]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that every winter, for as long as I can recall, we have had a winter crisis in the NHS? It usually happens after Christmas. In winter the demands on the service become unpredictable, infections spread and the NHS starts losing staff. There are bound to be parts of the system that come under very real strain, and no one is trying to minimise the fact that they do. Apart from just producing this year’s crop of stories of very unfortunate incidents in various places, does he have any policy proposal at all, apart from simply spending more money wherever the reports are coming from?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am very grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who is a very experienced parliamentarian, for his intervention, but he will know that this is one of the worst winters for probably 20 years. He casually suggests that this happens every year, but I remember the years of a Labour Government when it did not happen. I remember the years of a Labour Government when we went further than the financial settlements he delivered as Chancellor of the Exchequer and were more than doubling the money going into the NHS—and tripling it in cash terms.