Five Year Forward View Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Rehman Chishti
Main Page: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)Department Debates - View all Rehman Chishti's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady has made an important point. We would like more NHS land to be sold off for precisely those purposes.
There is a broader point to be made about housing, which is also important, and which I thought the hon. Lady was going to make. If we are to think about care in a more integrated way, we shall need to reform the NHS so that we look at people’s problems holistically, and that will include looking at their housing, which has a direct impact on their health. I think the structures that feature in the five-year plan begin to make such an approach possible for the first time, and I find that very exciting.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree that the key aim of our reforms is to support hospitals which have not been fully supported before? Medway Maritime hospital, which is in my constituency, had one of the highest mortality rates in 2005-06, but nothing was being done. I thank the Secretary of State for putting the hospital into special measures, so that it can secure the support that it needs to turn things around and my constituents can have an excellent hospital that delivers for them. I also thank him for visiting the hospital recently and meeting its excellent front-line staff, who do a great job.
Mr Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for what he has done for Medway Maritime. That was a very good visit: I met both management and staff, and gained a better idea of the challenges faced by the hospital.
The report makes it clear that we must become much better at tackling variations in care. Never again must we have a system in which hospitals are struggling and delivering poor care, and that poor care is swept under the carpet and nothing is done about it. The Government have put 18 hospitals into special measures—more than 10% of all the hospitals in the NHS—and that has been very challenging. We have been accused by Opposition Front Benchers of running down the NHS when we have done it, but do you know what has happened? Six of those hospitals have now come out of special measures, and nearly all the others have improved dramatically. It is time that the Labour party got behind what is a really good inspection programme, based on openness, honesty and transparency about problems.