Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

What the CQC actually said this morning is that the majority of health and care systems across the NHS are providing good or outstanding quality; that the safety of care is going up; and that performance is improving. None the less, the hon. Gentleman is right that we are always concerned about winter. Let me tell him the new things that are happening this year to help prepare the NHS: £1 billion more going into the social care system in the most recent Budget; a £100 million capital programme for A&E departments; 2,400 beds being freed up; and an increasing number of clinicians at 111 call centres. A lot is happening, but, overall, let me remind him that our NHS is seeing 1,800 more people every single day within four hours—that is something to celebrate.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

T7. The Minister will be aware that clinical commissioning groups and the London region are currently consulting on changes to governance and commissioning arrangements. Given the positive words already said about arrangements in Bromley, will my right hon. Friend confirm that no changes of any kind will undermine the accountability at a local level, or the ability to commission locally in Bromley?

[Mr Hunt]

I can confirm that because the legal accountability, whatever co-operation arrangements are made, will stay exactly the same.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robert Neill and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

T6. Proper integration of adult social care and health services requires co-operation on both sides. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is really not acceptable that in a borough such as Bromley, the CCG top-sliced only 3.5% of its funding to go into the better care fund—nowhere near enough to make a difference to hard-pressed local services?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing up that issue. Everyone recognises, on both sides of the House, that the health and social care sectors need to work together. That happens very well in some parts of the country, but not in others. I think all hon. Members have a job to make sure that people behave responsibly in their constituencies.

South London Healthcare NHS Trust

Debate between Robert Neill and Jeremy Hunt

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that the shadow Health Secretary clearly wrote his response before he read my statement. Listening to him this morning, he has never sounded further away from being part of the Government-in-waiting that he aspires to be.

Let me say this to the right hon. Gentleman: the apology over what is happening in South London Healthcare NHS Trust needs to come from Labour Members, because they were the people who failed to resolve this problem over very many years. It was their party that set up two PFI deals, signed in 1998, which have been incredibly dangerous. It was their party that created a financial situation that means that £1 million every week is being bled from front-line patient care in order to fund a deficit, and that 100 lives every year are not being saved that could be saved in Lewisham and the whole of south-east London.

What I did not hear from the right hon. Gentleman was any contrition about the fact that this incredibly difficult problem was something that his Government and, indeed, he as Health Secretary totally failed to resolve. Let me remind him that the legislation that I followed actually came from the Labour party, which passed it when it was in government. He asked me to confirm that the people of Lewisham have no right of appeal to the IRP against this decision, but who was it who stripped them of that right to appeal? It was him when his Government passed the legislation. Nothing that he has said has contained a single alternative proposal to deal with this problem. If he was being responsible as shadow Health Secretary, he would have come up with just one proposal, but he did not come up with a single one or tell the House about any of his ideas.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the pressure on A and E, but we will take no lessons from him. We met our A and E targets last year, whereas in Wales, where the Labour party is cutting the NHS budget by 8%, the A and E targets have not been met since 2009.

I am afraid that what we have heard—I hope that other contributors will strike a different tone—is a very disappointing response from the Labour party. The shadow Health Minister, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who is not on the Opposition Front Bench today—perhaps this will explain why—has said that Labour would not do what she called the “easy politics” of opposing every single reconfiguration, but what we have heard this morning is easy politics from a party that closed at least 12 A and Es and at least nine maternity units while it was in office. The right hon. Gentleman needs to recognise that the responsible thing for a Health Secretary to do is that which will save the most lives, and that is what I have announced this morning.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

My hon. Friends the Members for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) and for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) are on duty on a Public Bill Committee, but they wish to associate their views with my question. We thank the Health Secretary and congratulate him on taking a tough but necessary decision to deal with a mess that was not of his making and that was inherited from the Labour party. Does he accept that, thanks to the intervention of Sir Bruce Keogh’s review, more care has been taken, with both an evidence base and a consultation, than under the previous Government with regard to the reduction of A and E services at Queen Mary’s, Sidcup? Will he also help me by explaining the likely time frame for the conclusion of discussions with King’s Partners on transitional funding, which is particularly important for those of us whose constituents are predominantly served by the Princess Royal university hospital in Farnborough?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his constructive involvement in all the discussions we have been having to resolve this difficult issue, particularly with respect to his own constituents. He is absolutely right, because in the end the things that matter most are the clinical considerations. I thought it was extremely important to take advice from the NHS medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, and I have taken that advice. He is absolutely clear that this will save lives, which is my biggest responsibility.

My hon. Friend is also right to say that the success of these proposals depends on negotiations with King’s Partners about the potential merger that it is involved in, and we want to conclude those as quickly as possible. They are a very important part of this issue. It is our ambition to proceed as quickly as possible for the sake of the people of south London, who need certainty about the future provision of their health services, but we have some difficult negotiations to conclude in order to make that happen.