Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

We set out clearly in the White Paper how we will increase accountability to the public, including by establishing Health Watch. Before the election, the hon. Gentleman’s party’s Government demolished the patient representative voice in community health councils and patients’ forums and created nothing effective in its place. Health Watch will be an effective voice for patients, and democratic accountability through local authorities will be far stronger because Health Watch will enable NHS services, public health services and social care to be joined together through co-ordination in a local authority’s health and well-being partnership.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

On the question of redundancies, the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and I represent adjacent constituencies covered by the same NHS trust, in which there is currently a review of urgent care provision at the hospital of St Cross in my constituency. Candidates for the Labour leadership recently visited the area, and one spoke to the Rugby Advertiser about his concern that the review was an example of the

“economic masochism being unveiled across the country by the Tories who continue to show no compassion for the vulnerable.”

Does the Secretary of State share my outrage at the choice of language by the likely Leader of the Opposition, and will he confirm that since this Government have committed themselves to real-terms increases in NHS funding, any reforms considered for Rugby will have nothing to do with the amount of funding for the local NHS?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We visited St Cross hospital together, so he knows the importance that we both attach to the service that is provided there for his constituents locally, but that happens in the context of the resources that we provide to enable the NHS to do its job. The Government have made an historic commitment to increase resources for the NHS in real terms each year, notwithstanding the appalling financial circumstances that we inherited from the Labour party.

The policy of the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) is to cut the NHS budget. Under those circumstances and under the policies of the Labour party, the number of redundancies in the NHS would proliferate.