Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I pay tribute to him for raising this issue frequently. We will not have properly integrated, joined-up health and care services unless we crack the issue of data sharing. There need to be protections for people so that they can prevent their data from being shared if they do not want that, but by the same merit we have to make sure that there is better availability. For example, delayed discharges from hospitals, which are causing pressure on A and Es, would be directly helped if we cracked this. That is why we have called for a paperless NHS by 2018.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Under the previous Government, my constituents could get an appointment with their GP within 48 hours. I recently heard of a wait for a routine appointment taking three weeks. Is not this one of the reasons there is such pressure on A and Es, and will the Secretary of State reintroduce the 48-hour appointment?

[Mr Hunt]

The reason there is so much pressure on A and Es is the disastrous GP contract negotiated by the hon. Lady’s party in government, since when—I do not know whether she was listening to what I said earlier—an additional 4 million people every year are going to our A and Es. That is what is causing the huge pressure, and that is what we are determined to put right.

Heart Surgery (Leeds)

Meg Munn Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) is a very excitable fellow—he might remind some people of his predecessor in the House in that respect.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

A baby born with a heart condition in Sheffield who needs a complex intervention would normally go to Leeds. One of the concerns about the Safe and Sustainable review was that children from my constituency would have had to travel further. The decision to suspend the Leeds unit created that very situation. The Secretary of State needs to acknowledge that children could, as it turns out, have been put at risk unnecessarily by closing a unit that was in fact safe, because they would have had to travel further, which for very ill babies is a risk in itself. At the heart of this has been a lack of transparency and a failure to put information into the public domain. I have had to table parliamentary questions to try to get information about what is happening. Nobody wants an unsafe situation. Will the Secretary of State now commit to complete transparency in respect of all the information?

[Mr Hunt]

This situation arose because of the much greater data transparency and because the Government have been encouraging people to come forward if they have concerns about things going wrong. As a result, we were presented with data on the basis of which the NHS director decided that the safe and sensible thing to do was to suspend surgery while we got to the bottom of these data, which could have demonstrated some very serious outcomes. We need to take good advice from clinicians about the balance of risk. Yes, there might be some risks with people having to travel further for the surgery, but surely the risks are much greater if potentially unsafe operations are allowed to continue. That was why, on that balance of risk, it was decided to suspend surgery at Leeds until we could get to the bottom of whether the data were right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am aware of those arguments. There is always the difficult issue of access versus the benefits of clinical specialisation, but I need to wait for the IRP to report before I can give a view on how it applies in this instance.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I understand the Secretary of State’s reluctance—quite rightly—to comment on the processes he is going through, but will he confirm that he expects full transparency in the review process? That means all the minutes of the JCPCT being given to the review process and none of them being redacted.

[Mr Hunt]

I do want this to be a transparent process and we will follow all the appropriate guidelines in that respect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least, Meg Munn.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State disappointed by the low number of GPs who have come forward to take on accounting officer roles in clinical commissioning groups, and can he say why he thinks that is?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I am actually very encouraged by the enthusiasm of the GPs who are running clinical commissioning groups up and down the country. They are going to transform services and, most of all, they are going to integrate services at a local level. That is something that has long been talked about but not delivered before in the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Munn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What steps he is taking to ensure that people receiving care at home funded by the NHS are involved in making the arrangements for that care.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)]

Our ambition is to enable shared decision making for all NHS patients. We expect people who are eligible for NHS continuing care funding to be fully involved in discussions about their care. Subject to the results of the current personal health budget pilots, everyone eligible for NHS continuing health care, including many people receiving care at home, will have the right to ask for a personal health budget, including a direct payment, from April 2014.

[Meg Munn]

I have received a letter from one of my constituents who has had direct payments for 15 years under social services. Following a stay in hospital, she was moved on to health funding, and her life has changed dramatically for the worse. She says that she no longer has any choice in who cares for her and finds it hard to find the right people with whom she feels comfortable. She concludes:

“I’m tired of being bullied. I’m just miserable.”

Will the Minister do something to bring forward the measures more quickly, so that people who have been directing their own care under social services can have the same quality of life and the same choices that they have become used to?

[Paul Burstow]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s constituent, and with the hon. Lady. We need to ensure that, as soon as possible, the benefits and the control that direct payments give to individuals in social care are available to people in regard to their long-term health care and particularly to continuing health care. It is realistic to say that we can roll this out nationwide by 2014, but I know that the hon. Lady is having discussions with the authorities in Sheffield, and I encourage her to carry on those conversations about the way in which people can use the current arrangements to access those facilities.

Reform of Social Care

Meg Munn Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. That is indeed what we will set out to do. There have been many false starts, and not just under the previous Government. It is important for us to make progress, and for us to do so on a basis that is sustainable for the longer term.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that all sorts of new and innovative ways of caring for elderly and disabled people are developing. The terms “domiciliary care” and “residential care” will become obsolete as services are provided in different ways. Will he ensure that whatever funding mechanism is being developed does not limit the type of services that can be provided, because providing for elderly people to be cared for in their own homes and in settings where they can live in a more normal way will be enormously important in future?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Lady very well illustrates one reason why Andrew Dilnot’s commission is, among its recommendations, looking to eliminate discrimination between residential and domiciliary care services. We should not have a system that tends to provide perverse incentives to go into residential care, or indeed one that prevents that from happening when it is the right thing. However, part of the reason why the Dilnot commission should be seen in its wider context is that we are looking towards innovative and more effective means of supporting people’s independence at home. The Department is now looking towards the evaluation of the telehealth whole system demonstrator pilots, the world’s largest randomised controlled trial of telehealth, which should come in a matter of weeks.

Southern Cross Healthcare

Meg Munn Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

That is rightly a key preoccupation of all Members who have constituents who are Southern Cross care home residents and their family members. We have been very clear in our discussions with the CQC that it has to maintain a clear focus on the behaviour and conduct of those homes during the transitional period, and particularly during the restructuring. As other hon. Members have rightly said, the CQC has already identified problems and is addressing them through its enforcement powers, and it will continue to do so.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will know that many residents of Southern Cross homes, including in my constituency, have dementia, and that a lot of people with dementia cope very poorly with changes. What may happen is therefore of enormous concern to their relatives. May I therefore press the Minister—he must have had discussions with his officials—on what the Government’s legal position is, what the back-stop is if the worst case scenario develops, and what he will do now to reassure my constituents and many others that the Government really will ensure that their relatives do not face changes that will dramatically affect their quality of life?

[Paul Burstow]

rose—

NHS Reform

Meg Munn Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. We have now—earlier than any of us had imagined—arrived at the point where most of the country has pathfinder consortia in place. It is absolutely the right moment to engage with them to discuss how we can ensure that the concerns that have been properly raised, about transparency and accountability in governance and the avoidance of conflicts of interest, will be dealt with in the legislation. We want the legislation to work for them and the people we serve.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State has spoken a great deal about ill people, but the health service is also, very importantly, about promoting health. With local authorities taking the lead in the public health strategy, what is his mechanism to ensure that GPs are fully involved and contribute fully to the wide range of initiatives on which primary care trusts took a lead, such as those on child protection, teenage pregnancy, diet and exercise, child safety and obesity?

[Mr Lansley]

If the hon. Lady reads the Bill, she will see that one of its changes that has been most widely supported, including by local authorities across England, has been the transfer of public health leadership into the health and well-being boards, with ring-fenced budgets for local authorities. The previous Government could have done that, but they did not. Such an approach will allow continued engagement with general practitioners and their practices, both because they are participants in the health and well-being boards and because Public Health England and the local health and well-being board will be able to influence directly the quality and outcomes framework, which incentivises GPs in the work that they do.

NHS White Paper

Meg Munn Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is right. It appears that the Labour party’s policy is to cut the NHS. Our policy is to do something that Labour never achieved: deliver greater efficiency and greater productivity in the NHS, not least through the reforms that I have announced. Every penny saved will be a penny reinvested to the benefit of patient care.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Sheffield is one of the areas that already has GP consortiums. They have been developing their relationships with the primary care trust and are now starting to make progress. What guarantee can the Secretary of State give to my constituents that today’s unwanted change will not set back that process and not cause significant problems with the progress that has already been made?

[Mr Lansley]

It is not an unwanted change. All over the country, GPs themselves have resisted the concept that they do what the primary care trust tells them to do, when they are better placed to design services on behalf of their patients. They can, and I know that the GP commissioning consortiums in many places will want to take on board the key teams in primary care trusts that they think would help them deliver commissioning. However, GP commissioning consortiums will not be required to do so, although they will be required to deliver better outcomes for their patients.