Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)]

13. What recent progress has been made in negotiations between NHS England and Vertex Pharmaceuticals on making Orkambi available on the NHS for people diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

[The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Nigel Adams)]

It was disappointing that in July and August, Vertex, the manufacturer of Orkambi, rejected the final offer made by NHS England, as well as rejecting the opportunity for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence—NICE—to appraise its new medicines, as is required for all companies seeking routine NHS funding for their products. Vertex must re-engage with NICE and NHS England, and I am encouraged that it attended a meeting with NICE on 4 October to discuss next steps.

[Mr Hepburn]

As the Minister knows, Orkambi is available for cystic fibrosis sufferers in Ireland, Greece, Denmark and a host of other countries around the world, so when will it be available for cystic fibrosis sufferers in this country?

[Nigel Adams]

I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a keen interest in this subject and that he campaigns assiduously on behalf of his constituents in this regard. He is right to suggest that Ministers are keeping a very close eye on these negotiations, and we urge Vertex to consider NHS England’s fair and final offer. However, it is absolutely right that we have a system—introduced by the Labour party—in which experts, not politicians, determine the fair price for a drug, based on robust evidence.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I almost thought you had forgotten about me, Mr Speaker.

Last month, speaking on this very subject, the Secretary of State said that he would not let pharmaceutical companies hold the NHS to ransom, but the 5,200 patients who could benefit from Orkambi are left suffering while this war of words continues. What does the Secretary of State have to say, through his Minister, to those patients who are awaiting a resolution to this stalemate?

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Lady makes a correct point, and we are very keen that patients receive this drug. I understand her ire, but perhaps it should be directed at Vertex, the manufacturer. The offer of £500 million over five years for the size of the eligible population is the largest-ever commitment of its kind in the 70-year history of the NHS, and it would guarantee immediate and expanded access to Orkambi and to other drugs.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to improve preventive care in the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to look charitably on the wishes of the hon. Gentleman, without, of course, making any guarantees.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Nicole, the daughter of a constituent of mine, is currently suffering from mental health issues. She has been held in a transparent police cell overnight after self-harming, with drunks on either side, as there are no other facilities available near York. Clearly, police stations are not appropriate places for secure care. What is the Minister doing to ensure that adequate places are available locally, and that police, should they need to become involved, know how to provide a less traumatic experience for mental health patients?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been a 54% reduction in the use of police cells for mental health cases in the past three years. This is being improved by work of the local crisis care concordat. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will later this year introduce legislation to prevent children and young people from being held in police cells at all, but the use of police cells has gone down dramatically because of the use of the crisis care concordat. We will continue that process.

Junior Doctors Contract

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We are keeping in regular contact with our counterparts in the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments. As this is a devolved matter, it is obviously up to them to decide what they do, but I hope they will be encouraged by the progress that I think we are beginning to make in the argument for seven-day services.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

There are no winners on either side whenever there is a strike, so I wish the Secretary of State well with the negotiations. What answer does he have for the doctors I have met who believe that this contract change forces junior doctors to work even longer for less?

[Mr Hunt]

I would like to reassure categorically those doctors that that is not the intention of the changes we are making. We have made it clear that we will protect the pay of anyone working within the legal contracted hours, and in fact three quarters of junior doctors will see their pay rise as a result of these changes. We want to deliver safer care. If we are able to go ahead with the negotiations with the BMA that I hope we can in the coming weeks, I hope we will be able to put in place very strong safeguards that all sides agree will reassure my hon. Friend’s constituents.

NHS Services (Access)

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The Secretary of State says that it is true, but that is not how people see it in the real world. Doctor after doctor tells me that their legal advice under section 75 of the Act mandates them to run open tenders for services. Today we see the evidence of how the NHS is changing under that regime. The BBC reports that more than half of contracts awarded by clinical commissioning groups are going outside the NHS. Why is this a problem? Because it is wasting NHS resources on tenders and leading to fragmentation of care when the future demands integration. We need Government Members to tell us today whether they will vote with us on 21 November to repeal mandatory tendering and thus be true to what they originally said they wanted to do, which was to let doctors decide how services are provided.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I want to take the shadow Health Secretary back to his words earlier when he seemed to be concerned that private operators are in danger of putting profits before patients. Why, when he was Health Secretary, did he personally sign off on a private-only shortlist for the Hinchingbrooke hospital franchise?

[Andy Burnham]

That is inaccurate, because it was not a private-only shortlist—there was an NHS bidder in the frame at the time. The hon. Gentleman needs to keep his facts straight. As I said earlier, I introduced the NHS preferred provider principle, and that is my policy. [Interruption.] If he wants to dispute that, then the facts will speak for themselves. The shortlist had public and private on it.

NHS Funding (York and North Yorkshire)

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend’s point about age. In north Yorkshire, we have one of the largest numbers of over-85s in the country, and the formula simply does not give enough weight to the ageing population. I would have though that it was as clear as the nose on your face that consideration must be given to the rural nature of a county and the degree of ageing of its population.

[Julian Sturdy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is why in my short contribution this afternoon I will focus solely on age.

We must note that under the previous Government the funding formula was changed and more money put into the national health service. In addition, deprivation was given more weight in the formula. On paper, ensuring that deprivation is the most important factor, seems, morally, the right thing to do. However, I believe that when that reasoning is put into practice it starts to fall down. The distortion within the funding formula has resulted in some areas being awash with money, leading to well-publicised vanity health care projects, such as the one in Hull, with its 72-foot ocean-going yacht at the cool price of £500,000. At the same time, York and north Yorkshire have consistently struggled, as ably put across by the hon. Member for York Central, to balance the books, which has resulted in their continuing to take difficult decisions about health care provision.

An example of such decisions is that the primary care trust had to stop offering routine relief injections for sufferers of chronic back pain. That decision has had a massive impact on the quality of life of many of my constituents—it has hampered their ability to work and has affected carers. I have raised that issue previously in this Chamber, yet people are again coming through my surgeries, as I am sure they are through the surgeries of other hon. Members here today, suffering from a lack of access to those important injections. The decision is consequently putting more financial pressure on areas such as welfare, and that far outweighs the cost savings made by local authorities under the funding formula. That demonstrates the lack of joined-up thinking under the current system.

It costs approximately eight times more on average for the NHS to care for a patient who is over the age of 85 than one who is in their 40s. York and north Yorkshire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) has set out, has one of the highest population of over-85s in the north, and my constituents are really suffering under the current formula. York and north Yorkshire also has a high number of care homes, and a typical GP practice states that 50% of home visits can be taken up just by care home residents, even though that group makes up only 2% of the patients on its roll.

I therefore urge the Minister, through NHS England, to review the current funding formula, to ensure that age is given more weighting.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, I believe for the first time, Mr Streeter.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) for introducing the debate and raising the important issue of health care funding. He, like all Yorkshire Members in the Chamber, is a great advocate for his constituents. It is important to debate such issues and, in particular, to look at perhaps the greatest determinant of need in the NHS, which is that many older people have very expensive multiple care needs—dementia, diabetes, heart disease—and to look at the very big human need, which is how better to provide dignity in elderly care. That is exactly why my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) adjusted the formula, slightly changing the weighting for deprivation, to reflect such demographic challenges.

My hon. Friends and the hon. Member for York Central will be aware that the responsibility for health care funding now falls to NHS England. I have committed NHS England to reviewing the funding formula, and I am sure that it will listen carefully to today’s debate on north Yorkshire and elsewhere.

It is important to highlight how funding flows work in the NHS, and it may be helpful to say a few words about how the new arrangements have changed the way in which funding is allocated. As Members have pointed out, the NHS is paid for by taxpayers, and the money is allocated to the Department of Health by the Treasury. For 2013-14, the Department has set key priorities for NHS England through the mandate. I will outline the priorities that will help NHS England to prioritise funding within the NHS, and aid in the interpretation and use of the independent data given to it by the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation.

The first priority in the mandate is the focus on preventing people from dying prematurely by improving mortality rates for the big killer diseases to be the best in Europe, through improving prevention, diagnosis and treatment. There is a clear priority to improve the standard of care throughout the system, so that the quality of care is considered as important as the quality of treatment or the clinical outcome. That will be done through greater accountability, better training, tougher inspections and paying more attention to what patients say, so that we have a truly patient-centred NHS, which is as important as providing care and dignity of care for older people.

There is a clear priority to improve treatment and care of people with dementia, and to focus on the important role played by technology—particularly in rural areas, through telehealth and telemedicine—in delivering better care in the community for older people. A key focus is on improving productivity and ensuring value for money to make sure that our health care system stimulates and supports the local economy in relation to not only the obvious importance of keeping local populations well and at work, but the benefits that can be gained from synergies with the life sciences and the supportive and stimulating research from such important places as Cambridge.

The Department of Health has set the mandate and a clear sense of direction for the NHS, with the priorities that are clearly there. The Department then makes allocations to several health bodies, including Public Health England, Health Education England, the NHS Trust Development Authority and NHS England. For 2013-14, NHS England received £95.6 billion, and some of that money will then, in turn, be allocated to clinical commissioning groups, but allocations to individual CCGs and the formula used to decide them are now the responsibility of NHS England, which has the key role.

In making those allocations, NHS England relies on advice from the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation, as Members have said. ACRA provides detailed advice on the share of available resources available to each CCG to support equal access for equal need, as specified in the priorities set out in the mandate.

NHS England does not, therefore set income on an equal cost per head basis across the whole country; allocations instead follow an assessment of the expected need for health services in an area, and funds are distributed in line with that, which means that areas with a high health need receive more money per head. Under the formula, the 10% most deprived areas received more than 30% more per capita compared with the 10% least deprived, as the hon. Member for York Central outlined in his comments about Barnsley.

The calculation is based on several factors. In particular, it is increasingly based on the age of the population, the relative morbidity and unavoidable variations in cost. The objective is to ensure a consistent supply of health services across the country: the greater the health need, the more money that will be received. I am sure that we all support that.

The shift from a PCT funding formula to a CCG funding formula resulted in changes to the allocation for each particular area in 2013-14, as the hon. Gentleman commented. Funding now often takes place at a more local level—at the CCG rather than the PCT level—which we hope will ensure better prioritisation for local health care funding, with the funding formula being more sensitive to local health care needs.

The CCG model covers only non-specialised hospital and community care, as well as primary care prescribing, but the older PCT model also covered the whole of primary care, specialised services and public health, the costs of which were transferred to NHS England. There is, therefore, no direct comparability between the old PCT funding formula and the new CCG formula, for the reasons that I have outlined.

[Nigel Adams]

Whenever there are historical funding problems, such as those we experienced in north Yorkshire, there are inevitably leaks or stories about potential rationing and cuts to services. In my constituency in north Yorkshire, there has been lots of media speculation that a hospital opened by the Duke of Gloucester less than two years ago might close or lose its minor injuries unit. I have an awful lot of respect for the Minister, because he has done the job professionally, but I urge him to press NHS England to consider the funding case for north Yorkshire and other rural areas, and to consider the special circumstances that we have to deal with.

[Dr Poulter]

I will of course continue to press NHS England and raise concerns, as we have with representatives from the area, about the funding challenges being faced in north Yorkshire. It is also important to be aware that, because of how the new system works, with a mandate that sets clear priorities, NHS England recognises the need for a review of the funding formula for not only north Yorkshire, but nationally.

I agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) and the hon. Member for York Central about ensuring that funding goes to areas of greatest health care need. NHS England will obviously want to take account of rurality, age, the needs of older people and the complexity of care when it reviews the funding formula.

Heart Surgery (Leeds)

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am certain that the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent would not want surgery to proceed anywhere in the NHS if there are question marks over its safety. Of course, when such decisions are made in a very short period of time, it is greatly discomfiting and worrying for the many families involved, who have enough to worry about anyway—I completely understand that. He should remember, however, how we in the NHS let down the families in Bristol and Mid Staffs by not acting when data suggested that there might be a problem. It is better to act quickly and decisively and then, if possible, to resume surgery, as happened on this occasion, than not to act at all and to find out later that we have been responsible for much, much worse outcomes.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

On behalf of right hon. and hon. Members across Yorkshire, may I use this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for how he has worked in a consensual, cross-party and non-political way on this issue?

Did the Secretary of State not find it at least odd that the concerns about the Leeds unit came to light within hours of the High Court’s ruling against the decision to close the Leeds unit?

[Mr Hunt]

The truth is that whenever the NHS medical director—

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

With respect, perhaps the hon. Gentleman should listen to my answers before he pre-prepares a statement. I just outlined clearly that in the past two years there have already been 800 more midwives working in the NHS, and there are record numbers in training thanks to the investment being made by the Government. We are delivering on making sure that we are investing in maternity and investing in high-quality care for women. We are proud to be doing that—something the previous Government failed to do.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

5. What assessment he has made of the effect of the current NHS funding formula on rural areas with a large elderly population.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

Age is the main driver of an individual’s need for health care, as reflected in recent funding formulae. This is for the NHS Commissioning Board, but the independent advisory committee recommends continuing to review the case for additional resources in rural areas, particularly as more information on community provision becomes available.

[Nigel Adams]

It is disappointing to hear that the NHS Commissioning Board has decided not to implement a fairer funding formula. What does the Minister suggest I say to my constituents who potentially face having services withdrawn, when, in the same region, areas such as Barnsley receive almost 30% per head more in funding?

[Norman Lamb]

As a Member of Parliament for a rural area with an elderly community I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, but allocations have to be based on solid evidence. The area where we do not have the evidence is on community services. The data will start to be collected on that and we will therefore be able to demonstrate whether community services cost more in rural areas, as I suspect they do. If that is the case, the allocation formula will be able to reflect that.

NHS Funding

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland]

I entirely agree. My hon. Friend has made an important point about the courage of staff whom many would describe as whistleblowers, and who are getting into a great deal of trouble not only with their management for casting light on what is going on in a particular hospital, but with their colleagues for telling tales.

I am proud of the NHS, I am very proud of the staff who work in it, and I am proud to have the Lister hospital in my constituency. We have heard much impassioned talk about the NHS throughout the Chamber today. I think it is fantastic that Members on both sides of the House, and all Members individually, do all that they can to improve the NHS and the service with which their constituents are provided on a day-to-day basis. I know how proud I am of the doctors, nurses and clinical staff who save lives every day in my constituency, and I know that the headlines only appear when things go wrong.

In my constituency there is an organisation called POhWER that provides an advocacy service to some of the most vulnerable individuals who are having difficulties with the NHS. It now has contracts for London, the south-east, the midlands and the east of England. It was created many years ago by a group of service users who were severely disabled and had difficulties daily in interacting with their NHS and other services. They created this charity and are its trustees. It has helped hundreds of thousands of people. It launched a telephone service in the middle of last year, and it has already received 30,000 telephone calls. I had the great pleasure yesterday of taking those involved to see the Minister with responsibility for charities, The Party Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), to demonstrate some of the work they are doing.

Every Member, irrespective of party, wants their NHS to be the best it can be and to provide the best possible care to their constituents. We can all make political points, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) referred to the fact that the Whips on both sides put out lots of statements for us to use to attack each other. We could argue that spending in the health service in Wales is going down by 8% under the Labour Administration there, but I do not want to put that case.

Instead, I want to say how much I respect the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). It was refreshing to hear him say he felt he did all he could in terms of NHS spending given the constraints of the budget he had. I do not want to cast political aspersions, because I have a great deal of respect for the right hon. Gentleman. I believe he wanted to improve the NHS every bit as much as our Secretary of State and Ministers want to do so. I dearly wish the NHS was not a political football and we did not bandy about figures and information.

A great deal has been said about the first and second part of a sentence in a letter from Mr Dilnot. I have read the letter. I imagine most people would not really care about whether 0.1% less or more money was going into the NHS. They are interested in the fact that £12.5 billion extra is going in over this Parliament. The Health Committee Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), made a powerful and eloquent speech—it was far more eloquent than mine. He explained that revenue expenditure has been growing modestly over the past couple of years, and that is the expenditure that the day-to-day care delivered to patients in the NHS comes from.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there is discrimination against certain parts of the country, such as rural constituencies, including mine in North Yorkshire? As my constituency is rural and has a lot of elderly residents, we do not seem to get our fair share from the funding formula.

[Stephen McPartland]

I do not represent a rural constituency, but I think everybody in every part of the country should have access to the best possible heath service and there should not be any postcode rationing issues. My hon. Friend’s constituents should have access to the best NHS care; indeed, I hope it is almost as good as the care my constituents get.

NHS spending should be focused on improving the quality of care and the experience of patients and their families. We all know that things go wrong, and one of the problems is that when things go wrong, doors get closed and people feel very vulnerable and lonely. People put their mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter in the hands of someone whom they consider a professional, and they place their trust in them. I hope all of us feel able to put our trust in those professionals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Lamb]

I have very little time.

Seventy-three billion pounds outstanding on PFI projects, mortgaging the NHS’s future and causing a massive strain on local health economies—that was something alluded to by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and the hon. Members for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and for Corby (Andy Sawford). The problems of PFI are massive. Labour also had 25,000 people working in health quangos. That is Labour’s legacy, but now, under the coalition, over the four years to 2014-15 the NHS budget will rise by more than £12.5 billion.

[Nigel Adams]

May I appeal to the Minister to ensure that rural areas such as North Yorkshire are given a fairer funding formula when the Secretary of State reassesses the formula shortly?

Mental Health Care

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point and is a fantastic attendee of the all-party group on mental health. He has a great interest in this area and I will come on to answer his point directly in a few moments.

Over the past 30 years, we have made fabulous progress in moving away from the use of asylums, although we have had problems in doing that. We have talked about care in the community but, too often, the community has not been there to provide that care. We must continue to address that. In closing the asylums, we must remember that there is still a need for accommodation when people are in severe crisis. I do not like to talk about beds or hospital wards, but we do need accommodation. Sometimes, people are so ill that they need to be hospitalised and looked after, but in a caring environment.

I am concerned that, with the closure of small acute wards, we are moving towards having much larger hospital environments. Some of those are, without doubt, excellent. However, as the report identifies, some of them have too many of the characteristics of past asylums. As I said, being ill should not be a punishment. It concerns me greatly to read of people going to institutions where they fear for themselves and are frightened daily. How can someone start to recover from a mental health crisis when they are terrified every day in their environment? Many of the report’s respondents said that institutions were so terrifying that staff seemed to spend most of their time trying to stop nasty things from happening. We must get away from that. We have made progress, but we are not doing so at a fast enough pace.

Let me move away from discussing hospitals. Sometimes people need to leave their home. Therefore, we need settings that can take people out of their home, but that are not traditional mental health hospitals. In the report, I came across two fantastic initiatives. I knew about one because it is being pioneered in Hertfordshire, but another one I did not know about: crisis housing. That means that, when someone is at home and having a crisis, they do not have to go to hospital. They recognise that they are having a crisis, as do the people who work with them, and they can be sent to a home where they can go for just a few hours—four, five or six—to talk through their concerns with people who can understand what they are going through because, often, they have experienced mental illness problems themselves, so they are talking to their peers. Alternatively, they can spend up to three or four days there to get through the period of acute crisis, so that their equilibrium is coming back and they may be able to go back home and face the world again. Crisis housing sounds like a fantastic innovation, because we have to get away from the idea that when someone is terribly ill the only place for them to be is in a traditional mental health hospital. They may need a bed, but it does not have to be in a hospital.

The other thing that has caught my attention, and is being pioneered in Hertfordshire, is the idea of host families. This is a fantastic initiative that people have been developing in France and that Hertfordshire is leading the way on in this country. If someone is not really up to being at home with their family or looking after themselves, they need some extra support. There are families out there who will take them into their home and allow them to become part of their everyday life. Those people may well, and probably do, have experience of dealing with mental health illness themselves. They may be in recovery, they may have recovered, or they may have a child, a brother or sister who has been in these very dark places, so they understand and know what their house guest is going through. This is a fabulous way of providing support. It can last from three weeks to 12 weeks, and it is there to make these people feel part of a working, functioning family community. They have responsibilities and chores, but they are given the support and love that they need to make progress.

However, those solutions may not be right for everyone, and many people will, on occasion, need to be hospitalised. The report identifies that many tens of thousands of people each year go into a hospital setting. I hope that we can reduce that overall number. Nevertheless, we need accommodation to look after them. As I said, too much of the small traditional accommodation has been shut down. That has been positioned as an unalloyed good thing: “Hooray, we’ve got rid of mental health beds; hooray, we don’t need them any more; hooray, the community can pick up all these people.” In fact, the community is not always in a position to pick them up. Crisis helplines that are meant to be running for 24 hours a day often run for only part of the day, and that is simply not good enough. A mental health crisis does not happen between 9 am and 5 pm; it is just as likely to happen between 9 pm and 5 am. We have to accept that the community is not always there for those people. Now that we have closed these beds, which were often in very small wards very close to people’s families, too often people who are committed into an acute environment can be sent up to 200 miles away from their home and from the people who care for them and can nurture them and provide them with support. To me, that is not progress.

We are now moving towards having larger mental health units. As I have said, some of those are very good but, as the report identifies, many are not. The threshold for being admitted to acute care is now so very high, because there are so few beds to accommodate people, that only the most ill people get into hospital. I have to say that, too often, their experience is pretty frightening and pretty unpleasant. I am not calling for less accommodation, but I am calling for us to do things differently, so that when we, as a society and as communities, are put in charge of people with a severe mental health problem, we go out and embrace them. We do not put them in a frightening environment where the doors are locked, where they are restrained, often face down, where they are terrified, and where they feel under pressure and in danger of being assaulted; we create environments where they can go and get well. With the mentally ill, we are not mending bones. I do not want to stick people in bed for 20 hours a day and put their leg in a brace. We are not doing that; we are not in that business. What we are in the business of doing is putting people in an environment where they can get well; where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) said, they can talk through their problems; where they can come to terms with their problems; where they can speak to people who have been where they have been, then recovered and gone on. That is the kind of environment that we need to create in the acute setting.

That calls for a radical approach. Perhaps we have to stop talking about hospitals and beds, and instead start talking about accommodation and wellness centres, where people can go to get well and where they feel relaxed, comfortable and safe so that they can focus on themselves and their own mental health. When people have a mental health crisis, all too often they are simply terrified and feel that the world is against them. If somebody who is feeling like that is put in one of these institutions, I am sure that it does their mental health no good at all.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

What is my hon. Friend’s experience of youngsters who have to go to such hospitals and who find themselves in mixed-age wards?

[Mr Walker]

That is a very important area. Great strides are being made to end mixed-sex and mixed-age wards. How terrifying it must be for a young person to be in such an environment for the first time with people of all ages, with all types of experiences, illnesses and conditions. That is not acceptable, particularly if that young person is 200 miles or more from their family. That is not a way to treat people.

As I have said, being mentally ill is not a crime. We need to reach out and embrace these people, and we need to hold them close. We need to create environments where they can get better and focus on themselves. Talking therapies have a huge part to play in that. This is a fabulous report because it focuses on the areas of weakness in the current system. That provides the Government and Back Benchers with an opportunity to work together to get it right. I will now sit down and allow the hon. Member for Ashfield to join in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

2. What assessment he has made of the financial performance of the NHS in 2010-11; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

Financial performance in the NHS in the last year has been strong. As at quarter three of financial year 2010-11, the strategic health authorities and primary care trusts were forecasting an overall surplus of £1,269 million, and the NHS trust sector was forecasting an overall surplus of £132 million. I expect the 2010-11 final year-end surplus to be no less than this forecast, representing about 1% of the budget, broadly in line with plans.

[Nigel Adams]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his response. My constituents will be pleased that the NHS performed on a sound financial basis nationally. What increases will the NHS receive in my local area of north Yorkshire in 2011-12, and can my right hon. Friend confirm that those increases are the result of the Government’s decision to protect the NHS?

[Mr Lansley]

In 2011-12, NorthYorkshire and York primary care trust will receive £1,207.3 million. That represents a cash increase over last year of £34.7 million, or 3%. That exactly represents our coalition Government’s commitment to protect the NHS and to increase its budget in real terms, and it is in stark contrast to what we were told we should do by the Labour party and what the Labour Government in Wales have done, which is to impose a 5% real cut in NHS spending in Wales.