Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Burstow and John Healey

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I want to say to the Health Secretary directly that it is a disgrace how he and his Ministers have ducked responsibility for reassuring more than 30,000 elderly and vulnerable residents whose homes may be at risk because of the financial crisis at Southern Cross. Today’s urgent question is the second time in a month that this House has had to drag Ministers to Parliament to explain what is going on. Southern Cross is set to close down completely by October. Will the Secretary of State give a commitment this afternoon to the residents of Southern Cross, their families and 40,000 staff that Ministers will in future show leadership and make public statements to this House?

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

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He will of course know that when the first urgent question was asked, the Government had already provided a written ministerial statement setting out these matters in great detail, and we are happy to answer the questions that hon. Members will want to put in the urgent question later on. We have also said throughout that we do not help the welfare or interests of residents by an ongoing running commentary on these matters.

NHS Reorganisation

Debate between Paul Burstow and John Healey

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

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

This has been a revealing debate. Labour has come to the House today to make the case for the status quo—the case for standing still. Labour is here defending a failed status quo. We have heard Labour Members presenting to the House a number of extraordinary claims and grotesque caricatures of the Government’s plans. They want to defend a failed status quo in which the NHS has been spending at European levels but has been so tied up in red tape that it has not delivered European levels of quality health care.

For 13 years, Labour tested to destruction the idea that the NHS was best run from Whitehall. The record speaks for itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) talked about cancer survival rates, and it is nothing short of a scandal that cancer survival rates in this country lag so far behind the best in Europe. If the status quo is right, as Labour Members seem to be arguing, why are a staggering 23% of cancer patients diagnosed only when they turn up as emergencies? Why is that an acceptable outcome?

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is right, of course; there is still more to do to improve health and to improve the NHS, but can I just check something? Did I hear him right? Did he say that the NHS had failed?

[Paul Burstow]

No, I said that the Opposition had failed and that they were defending a failed status quo. Let me give the House an example of a failed status quo. If the NHS were performing at the level of the best in Europe, 10,000 more lives could be saved every year. This is what our focus on outcomes is all about. It is what patient-reported outcomes are all about, too.

We all agree that elderly patients should be treated with dignity and compassion, yet for far too many, that is not what happens in practice. Just last week, a report on patient deaths found that 61% of older people received “inadequate” care in their final days. After 13 years of a Labour Government, the NHS is in the bottom third in Europe in dealing with dementia—way behind Ireland, Spain and Portugal.