Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Norman Lamb and David Anderson

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

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

Last week, Mike Richards told me how waiting-time standards had transformed cancer care, and I think the same can happen for mental health. It is outrageous that somebody with a suspected cancer gets seen by a specialist within two weeks, but that if someone has a first episode of psychosis, who knows what will happen to them. That discrimination has to end, and we are delivering that.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The good people who work in the NHS have faced six years of pay restraint. How much longer must they carry the can for the failures of the people who got us into this mess—the moneylenders, the LIBOR fixers, the people who mis-sold mortgages? How much longer must front-line staff pay for the mistakes of capitalism?