Oral Answers to Questions

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

20. What steps he is taking to improve access to GPs.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer Questions 1, 4, 6, 11 and 20 together. [Interruption.] General practice is a popular subject.

We will create an extra 50 million appointments a year in primary care so that everyone can go to the GP when they need to.

[Tom Randall]

There are many families with children in Gedling. What is being done to ensure that patients, particularly families with young children, can access GP appointments when they need them?

[Matt Hancock]

Obviously this is an incredibly important subject, and I know the frustration many families feel at not being able to access a GP appointment when they need it. We have a whole-scale programme of work to improve access. This includes recruiting 6,000 more GPs and 26,000 primary care staff other than GPs— increasingly patients at GP surgeries can be treated by nurses—and increasingly enabling people, especially those who find it difficult to travel, to use technology to get the treatment they need.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

Hastings has a shortage of salaried GPs and GP services—locum GPs are available, at the right price. Will the Secretary of State please outline what steps he is taking to increase the number of salaried, rather than locum, GPs and GP services in Hastings and Rye?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is right to ask. It is incredibly important that we get the right number of GPs, not least to reduce the amount spent on locums, who can be very expensive and often do not know the local population as well as salaried GPs. Her local clinical commissioning group is developing a new-to-practice fellowship in Hastings for GPs starting out in practice in order to encourage more doctors into practice and then to support them. It is also working with primary care networks so that more can become GP trainers and take on students. We are expanding the numbers going into GP training—there were record numbers last year—but I want the numbers to go up again and to make sure that Hastings gets the GPs it needs.

[Richard Fuller]

As part of the council area with the second-largest population increase in the country, the people of Biggleswade, Sandy, Arlesey and Stotfold are at their wits’ end over access to GP appointments. What special attention will the Secretary of State pay to those areas of large population growth to make sure that increases in housing are matched by increased access to GPs?

[Matt Hancock]

That is an incredibly important point. We have a manifesto commitment to ensure that where there is new housing there is also new primary care. Just as a new housing estate will often require a new primary school and new transport links, so we need to put in the GPs as well.

[Stuart Anderson]

I thank the Secretary of State for visiting Tettenhall Wood surgery in my constituency during the general election campaign. Will he work with me to increase the numbers of patient appointments back up to where they were before?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. My hon. Friend has already become an incredibly strong voice for Wolverhampton, and it was a pleasure to visit Tettenhall medical practice, which has joined with other GP practices to form a primary care network, which I hope will strengthen its resilience and enable it to provide extended access to appointments, which is what he is campaigning for. I am pleased, too, with the extra 16,000 appointments in Wolverhampton in the last quarter. As this shows, we are driving up the number of appointments, but we also appreciate, understand and feel the frustration people feel when they cannot get decent access to GP appointments.

[Laura Farris]

Changes to pension contributions mean that some senior GPs, including in Newbury, are being hit with extra tax charges if they work overtime, which is leading to the paradoxical situation of GPs paying to work and so reducing their hours or taking early retirement. What steps is the Secretary of State’s Department taking to address this situation?

[Matt Hancock]

Tax is, of course, a matter for the Treasury, and the Chancellor would not be thrilled if I announced tax policy in the middle of health questions, tempting as that may be. However, we have been working with the Treasury, and also with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the British Medical Association, employers in the NHS and others, to deliver on our manifesto commitment to sort this out.

[Mr Speaker]

Jonathan Ashworth.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

You rather surprised me then, Mr Speaker!

The Secretary of State mentioned primary care networks. As he will know, two weeks ago GPs rejected the new service specifications in those networks. This has been described as a debacle, and as leading to more red tape and taking GPs away from patients. If the Secretary of State is going to fix these contracts, can he tell us how he is going to do it—or is he content to see more GPs walk out of primary care networks before they have even got off the ground?

[Matt Hancock]

Primary care networks have been an incredibly successful innovation, covering the whole country and allowing practices to work together. Of course, the negotiations with the BMA over the GP contract are always tough: they have been in every year in which they have taken place. The hon. Gentleman will understand why I want to get the best possible value for the money that the NHS spends, but I also want to see a successful conclusion to this negotiation, and we are working with the BMA to that end.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The Secretary of State describes primary care networks as a great success, but a local medical committee in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire has just warned that they will cost each practice £100,000 more. Having failed to deliver the 5,000 extra doctors that the Government previously promised, having failed to recruit more GPs in the poorest areas, having now bungled the negotiations over this contract, and having failed to fix the pension tax changes for which he was partly responsible, how on earth can the Secretary of State be trusted to deliver on the Prime Minister’s promise to cut GP waiting times to less than three weeks?

[Matt Hancock]

It is a bit of a disappointment to hear the hon. Gentleman talk down primary care. We are making record investments in primary care, we have record numbers of GPs in training, we are seeing an increase in the number of appointments in Wolverhampton and across the country, we are negotiating with GPs to strengthen general practice, in the last year we have introduced primary care networks that help to make primary care more sustainable, we are improving the technology that is available in primary care, and, for the first time in a generation, the proportion of the total NHS budget going into primary and community care is rising, whereas there were cuts under Labour. I think the hon. Gentleman should be standing up and saying thank you.

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Hanwell health centre, which works hard to serve many of my constituents, has told me that it has been trying to appoint a salaried GP for three years, as well as a large number of nurses. There is generally a four-week wait for an appointment, although the centre has provided 75 more appointments to cope with demand. Under the Secretary of State’s plans, when will those waiting times come down?

[Matt Hancock]

This is precisely why we need to recruit more GPs, in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and across the country, and also recruit more other clinicians to general practice. [Hon. Members: “How?”] I will tell you how, Mr Speaker. In the first instance, the record numbers of GPs in training will help, but that is not the entirety of the plan. I urge the hon. Gentleman to get on board and support general practice.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

In 2015 the Secretary of State’s predecessor promised 5,000 more GPs by 2020. The Secretary of State repeated that promise when he took over the job, but my constituents are finding it increasingly difficult to get a GP appointment within three weeks. Will the Secretary of State now apologise to everyone who is waiting for failing to keep his promises?

[Matt Hancock]

The commitment that we have made is that we will have 6,000 more GPs and 26,000 other clinical staff in general practice. That is the commitment that we have made, and that is the commitment on which we will deliver.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In rural communities such as mine, GP surgeries often serve huge geographical areas with relatively small patient numbers. Coniston, for example, has a roll of about 900 patients, yet the next nearest surgery is two lakes away. Will the Secretary of State commit to establishing a strategic small surgeries fund to ensure that small surgeries in rural communities remain sustainable for the long term?

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly important point. General practice, where 90% of all NHS appointments take place, needs to reach every part of this country, including his beautiful constituency, which is, as he says, very sparse. Of course we need to ensure that the practices there are sustainable, and again this is an area in which technology can be of particular help. There is great enthusiasm for using technology so that the travelling times of patients and sometimes of GPs can be reduced.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of unmet demand for adult social care.

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[Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)]

24. What steps he is taking to ensure the take-up of new technology by the NHS to support effective delivery of its services.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

Using the best technology is good for patients, clinicians and the NHS. Work is under way to drive through the use of new technology, including electronic referrals and electronic prescribing, and to end the painfully slow logins in some trusts.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My right hon. Friend will know that the Future Fit programme, if passed, would have brought not only £312 million but a lot of innovative, pioneering technology into the county of Shropshire. Unfortunately, as he knows, the programme has been blocked thus far by the Labour-controlled, medically illiterate Telford and Wrekin Council. Does he agree that investing in technology would help patients and clinicians and would save money in the long term?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I do. It is striking how much clinicians working on the frontline are desperate for improvements in the technology they use. Our announcement over Christmas that we will have a single login, which is seemingly so simple, brought enormous enthusiasm from clinicians who spend hours of their week doing things that most of us can do with the click of a button on the systems we use.

My hon. Friend has been an assiduous campaigner for health investment in Shrewsbury, both physical capital investment and investment in modern technology.

[Alan Mak]

I welcome the phasing out of outdated technologies, such as fax machines, in the NHS. As the switch-off date approaches, what steps is NHS England taking to ensure that patient records can be transferred electronically between primary and secondary healthcare providers?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is spot on. We are driving interoperability so that the right people can see the right records at the right time. We will mandate that technology used in the NHS must allow for such interoperability, and we will set standards.

My hon. Friend started the “axe the fax” campaign, in which I was happy to play my part. Faxes are terrible for efficiency and for data security—even straightforward email is so much better—and we will drive up data security by axing the fax across the NHS.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

What specific investment is being directed to supporting the 11 new radiotherapy IT networks that are required to provide a world-class radiotherapy service and improve cancer outcomes and survivability?

[Matt Hancock]

Radiotherapy is a good example of part of the NHS that can benefit hugely from improved technology now and from the cutting-edge artificial intelligence-type technologies that are coming down the track. I am happy to look at any specific proposals the hon. Gentleman has. We have a broad programme to support the technology needed in radiotherapy.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I am disappointed that the Secretary of State could not come to the opening last Friday of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre in my constituency, which is looking at linking research into the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases with physical activity, using new technologies including robots. I am pleased that he has contributed £14 million to this project. He has missed that opportunity, but may I invite him to come to the centre and to discuss how he can help to set up a centre for child health technology, again using innovative and technological solutions, towards which we will expect his contribution to be helpful?

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman is a man after my own heart. I am sorry that I missed the ribbon cutting, as I love a good ribbon cutting, especially where the project sounds so brilliant and innovative, bringing different parts of the NHS together and helping clinicians in order to help patients. I am glad that he is as enthusiastic as I am about our £14 million investment.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

8. If his Department will fund the digital transformation of health and social care services in Buckinghamshire; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

We are driving forward the technology agenda across the NHS, as we have just been discussing. Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust is one of the many trusts being considered for digital aspirant funding, which is the next generation of funding to bring hospital trusts into the 21st century.

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful for that, but will the Secretary of State support moving to devolved, multi-year and unified budgets, to enable the delivery of digital technology and, in particular, best value, against specific outcomes?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, my hon. Friend is spot on. We recognise the need for a multi-year capital settlement in the NHS to support exactly that sort of planning and to modernise, and the Treasury has confirmed that we will publish that settlement at the next capital review.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

9. What discussions he has had with the Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees clinical commissioning group on the future of services at the University Hospital of Hartlepool.

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[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)]

As well as working to protect the public from infectious disease outbreaks, we are working to improve technology and recruit the workforce that the NHS needs. Figures just out show that we have record numbers of nurses working in our NHS—up by over 7,800 on the same time last year.

[Penny Mordaunt]

May I acknowledge the good work done by the Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), resulting in a regional breakdown of the transforming care programme? It shows where progress is not being made, and that the target of 35% of in-patient beds being closed down will not be met by this March. How will the Secretary of State shut down these hell-holes, and will he hold to account commissioners who are still sending people with learning disabilities to them?

[Matt Hancock]

I am really pleased that my right hon. Friend has driven forward, and is holding us—and, in turn, the NHS—to account for delivery of this vital agenda; it is incredibly important to get this right. The number of people with learning disabilities and/or autism who are in in-patient settings is falling, but not as fast as I would like. We have a clear commitment in the long-term plan to bring it down by half. As she says, there is a target to bring it down by the end of March. The Minister for Care has done a huge amount of work to drive this forward, and we will do everything we can to ensure that all these people, who are some of the most vulnerable in the country, get the best support they can in the right setting. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s scrutiny.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

T3. The West Suffolk Hospital has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. I guess all Members try to keep their fingers on the pulse of their local hospitals, but does not the fact that West Suffolk constituents are represented by both the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), show that something has gone fundamentally wrong in the scrutiny and oversight of our NHS? What has gone wrong, and what is the Minister going to do about it?

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[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

T8. In my constituency, year-on-year reductions in funding of both adult and young people’s mental healthcare mean that some of our most vulnerable citizens are falling through the net. Can the Government guarantee that adequate funding will be made available to tackle the mental health crisis now?

[Matt Hancock]

There have been year-on-year increases in funding for mental health services, but there is also an increase in demand. The long-term plan has the largest increase reserved for mental health services, because we want to see mental health and physical health treated on a par.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

T4. Labour’s private finance initiative contract means that Royal Stoke University Hospital is paying double the interest on its debt than if it had been funded directly from the Treasury—money that should be going to improve patient care. Will my hon. Friend agree to look at how these costs can be mitigated?

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Throughout the election there were empty promises from the Conservatives, and one of those promises was to tackle the social care system—but there is still no Green Paper. There are dementia patients who are trapped in hospital due to an inadequate social care system, and yet this Government still do nothing. How many more families have to suffer before this Government act?

[Matt Hancock]

The Government will deliver on all of our manifesto commitments.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

In Maghull, Formby and Crosby in my constituency, the health facilities are simply not fit for purpose. Significant house building will only make matters worse and make it that much harder for the Secretary of State to deliver on the promises he set out earlier in today’s Question Time. Will he meet me to discuss how to get the funding so that we have the state-of-the-art, high-quality facilities that my constituents and medical staff need?

[Matt Hancock]

I spent much of the latter part of last year travelling around the hon. Gentleman’s part of the world and meeting then candidates. I am very happy to meet him to see how we can use the record levels of capital investment in our NHS—the record levels of funding that he should support—to support his constituents as well as everybody else’s.

[Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)]

T5. Tameside Hospital A&E has seen a huge increase in patient numbers, often leading to overcrowding, with patients being assessed and treated in unsuitable areas. The Government have rightly responded by committing to building a new urgent care centre for Tameside. Will the Secretary of State update the House on when construction is due to begin?

[Matt Hancock]

We want to begin construction urgently. My hon. Friend has been assiduous in promoting and supporting this project, which he has raised with me a number of times. I look forward to meeting him in the next week or so to go through the details of when we can see it open.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

T6. My right hon. Friend will know that the A&E services at Burnley General Hospital were closed in 2007 by the then Labour Administration. Given our record investment in the NHS, and the pressures on the A&E, will he agree to meet me to talk through the future of the hospital and the services we can provide locally?

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[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

T7. In December, more than 2,200 patients waited in excess of 12 hours in A&E departments in north Wales. What is the Secretary of State’s response to the Welsh Government, who have managed the health board in special measures for nearly five years? [R]

[Matt Hancock]

I worry about the delivery of health services to people in Wales. Although this issue is devolved, I am the UK Health Minister, and my hon. Friend is right to raise that issue for his constituents. The number of people waiting more than one year in Wales is over 4,000. In England, despite the much larger population, it is only just over 1,000. The Welsh NHS, frankly, is an advert for why people should not want the Labour party running the NHS.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

A number of women in my constituency have recently been in touch who are going through the menopause and struggling to access hormone replacement therapy, which they really need. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of current supplies of HRT, and what is he doing to address the shortages?

[Matt Hancock]

That is obviously an incredibly important issue. The shortages come from problems with factories outside the UK. We have been working hard on it through the autumn. I am advised that the shortages are starting to be mitigated and that production is back up and running, but we keep a close eye on it, because I understand how important it is.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

T9. Will my hon. Friend commit to working with me to secure the long-term future of hospice services in any reorganisation of the Mount Vernon Hospital site in my constituency?

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Cuts to local government budgets have led to cuts to public health budgets, which have led to cuts to preventive services, which have led to greater demand in A&E and social care. It is bad for individuals, and it is terrible for the health and social care system, yet this weekend, we saw media reports that there are more cuts coming to local government, especially in the poorest communities. Can the Secretary of State assure us that he will tell colleagues in the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government that those cuts cannot take place?

[Matt Hancock]

I do not need to, because we are clear that there is an increase in the spending power of local authorities and in the public health grant.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

T10. Last week was Cervical Cancer Prevention Week. Will my hon. Friend join me in commending the work of my constituent Maria Dullaghan and the charity Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which campaigns to raise awareness? Will she underline the Government’s support for Sir Mike Richards’s review of the adult screening programme?

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[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know that my local Labour party has been running an outrageous campaign saying that the Parsons Green walk-in centre is set to close. The clinical commissioning group has confirmed that that is not the case, and the facility is both busy and popular. Will he join me in condemning this latest scare tactic from my local Labour party about local NHS facilities that are both popular and well used?

[Matt Hancock]

That is absolutely right. Last year, my right hon. Friend campaigned for and secured the long-term future of the Parsons Green walk-in centre. That announcement was made, and then the scaremongering carried on, supported by the local Labour party and the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), who is a disgrace in the way he campaigns because it worries vulnerable people who think that things are going to close. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend and send a message to people far and wide in Parsons Green that their walk-in centre is staying open.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

May I ask the Secretary of State what screening plans are in place for those arriving in the UK from China, and has a contingency fund been established to tackle the potential effects of the coronavirus?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course, it is incredibly important that we have appropriate measures in place for those who return from China—not only those returning from outside Wuhan, but those returning from Wuhan should they do so. Those are being put in place, and of course we are making budgets available to ensure that all support necessary is given.

[Several hon. Members rose—]