Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Dugher and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

The British Medical Association said recently that the funds for sustainability and transformation plans that were announced in the Budget would be completely inadequate for the task. Health trusts throughout the country are being forced to consider rationing treatment and ending or downgrading local services such as A&E, which will result in even longer waits and journey times to access care. Why do the Government not call STPs what they really are—secret Tory plans to decimate the national health service further?

[Mr Hunt]

This is a year in which funding for the NHS has risen by £3.8 billion in real terms. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman can say what he has said, given that in 2015 he stood on a platform to give the NHS £1.3 billion less this year than it is receiving under the Conservatives.

Mental Health and NHS Performance

Debate between Michael Dugher and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I can assure my hon. Friend that that is happening. Indeed, one of the key metrics by which we will judge STPs is their progress on delivering our mental health targets. She is absolutely right to say that ambitions need to turn into action, but she will find that, because of the comments that she and many other hon. Members have made over the past few years, there is much more understanding in the NHS that mental healthcare is a big priority, and more understanding that we need to stop resources constantly being sucked into the acute sector, as has happened over many years.

[Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State recently announced that the Government were pressing ahead with significant cuts to the community pharmacy budget in the Department of Health in the face of huge opposition from Members on both sides of the House, members of the public and healthcare professionals. Given the evidence that one in five people who would usually see a pharmacist for medical advice say that they will make a GP appointment if their local pharmacist is closed—in areas of higher deprivation such as mine, it is four in five—and with the risk that many of those people in desperation will turn up at the local hospital, are the Government in danger of making an appalling crisis in the NHS even worse?

[Mr Hunt]

As with all parts of the NHS, we have to ask the pharmacy sector to make efficiency savings. Some 40% of pharmacies are clustered in groups of three or more, and it does not make sense for the NHS to continue to subsidise pharmacies that are very close to other pharmacies. Our reforms are designed to ensure, however, that where there is only one local pharmacy that people can access, that pharmacy is protected.