Oral Answers to Questions

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

2. When he expects NHS England to reach a decision on access to Translarna for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy; and if he will make a statement.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

11. When he expects NHS England to reach a decision on access to Translarna for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)]

NHS England is considering the interim commissioning position for Translarna as part of its wider prioritisation process for funding in 2015-16 and expects to come to a decision by the end of this month. Translarna has also been referred for evaluation by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s highly specialised technologies programme. Draft NICE guidance will be available later this year, with final guidance expected in February 2016.

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[Ben Gummer]

Muscular dystrophy is a terrible, debilitating illness and my sympathies go out to Jagger and his family. My hon. Friend will be aware that families and their representatives will be going to Downing Street on 10 June to make their representations on this matter. The Minister for Life Sciences has introduced an accelerated access review precisely because of the concerns that my hon. Friend has raised, and I know that he will welcome representations once it has been completed.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

Is the Minister aware of the case of my constituent, little George Pegg? At one time he could not walk, but this drug has made his life 100% better and he can now walk. Why are we dithering? This has been going on for at least a year, so why don’t you get off that backside of yours and get it approved?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just exhort Members to have some regard to considerations of taste? This is a new Minister. I call Minister Gummer.

Francis Report: Update and Response

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

That is a very good point. I had a great visit to my hon. Friend’s local hospital and saw a knee operation which was quite gory but looked to me to be a very good example of safe care. He makes a good point and I will certainly feed into the consultation the idea that it should be easy to contact somebody who works in the same hospital or building, rather than someone who is a long way away.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

When I entered this House in 1987 I was put on a Select Committee for the parliamentary ombudsman, which dealt with the health service and complaints within it. In bad cases, we would bring chief executives, chief nurses and chairmen of the trust concerned before us. That was a good deterrent. Why not bring it back?

[Mr Hunt]

All these things should be looked at, but through the Select Committee on Health we do now get chief executives of trusts to be accountable to Parliament. The Public Administration Committee is looking at the role of the ombudsman to make sure that works as well as it can, and we should wait for its recommendations.

National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (UKIP)]

It is a pleasure to speak on this Bill.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

On this side of the House.

[Mark Reckless]

And indeed on this side of the House.

It is a particular pleasure to speak on a Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), because I have spent time in the past few weeks defending myself following allegations from the Conservative party that I grew up in his constituency, in SE9.

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[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right. The Labour Government inherited a situation where almost three quarters of the NHS estate was built before 1948. We transformed that, as well as bringing those waiting lists down. He is right to remind us.

I cannot believe that Government Members have not had the guts to be here today to argue for their own policy on the NHS. Or is it that under the shambolic regime of their new Chief Whip, who is now inflicting the same chaos on the parliamentary Conservative party as he did on England’s schools, the Government did not think they could win the vote today, so they did not dare to bring their troops here to hold it? I do not know what the reason is, but they clearly do not believe in their own legislation and the catastrophic reorganisation that followed. An unnamed senior Cabinet Minister has been quoted in The Times as admitting that it was their single biggest mistake.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

Will my right hon. Friend touch on the fact that 71 coalition Members of Parliament are being paid by private companies involved with the national health service?

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[Dr Poulter]

I will come on to TTIP later, and I hope I will be able to reassure the hon. Gentleman.

The previous Labour Government attempted to make commissioners compliant with the law by publishing the “Principles and rules for cooperation and competition” in 2007 and establishing the competition and co-operation panel in 2009, to oversee Labour’s NHS marketplace. Let us be clear: it was the previous Labour Government who chose to introduce private providers into our NHS and it was the previous Labour Government who set up the legal framework to support private providers in the health service.

It has been said that

“the private sector puts its capacity into the NHS for the benefit of NHS patients, which I think most people in this country would celebrate.”—[Official Report, 15 May 2007; Vol. 460, c. 251WH.]

Once again, those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Leigh when he was a Minister in the previous Government. That is a fitting memory of the previous Labour Government’s expansion of private providers in the NHS. Let us remind ourselves of the right hon. Gentleman’s words again: he said that most people in this country would celebrate the private sector in the NHS.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

The Minister talks about Labour privatisation, but why is it that so many Conservative Members are being paid by private companies? What are you getting money off them for? What are you doing?

[Dr Poulter]

I am just a doctor who still works in the health service and I practise medicine for free. Of course, we could go into the fact that I am the only Front Bencher present who has front-line experience of looking after patients. Professional politicians on the Opposition Benches are outlining a case that is incoherent with their record in government. We could also talk about the huge union funding that goes towards many Labour policies, but time would forbid us from doing so and I am sure that the Deputy Speaker would not want me to digress from the subject of this debate.

Let us come on to what the Health and Social Care Act actually did. First, it stripped out an entire layer of management from what was at the time an overly bureaucratic NHS. This is an important point that hon. Members would do well to listen to. The reforms will save our NHS £5.5 billion in this Parliament alone, and £1.5 billion every following year. That money is being put back into front-line patient care. In addition, as I notified the House in an answer to a recent written question, spending on administration as a proportion of the total NHS budget has fallen under this Government from 4.3% in 2010-11 to 2.9% in 2013. More money is going into front-line patient care because we have stripped out bureaucracy and administration and freed up that money to look after patients.

Between 2010 and July 2014, the number of infrastructure and administration support staff in the NHS has reduced by 10.3%, which is about 21,000. That includes a 17.7% decrease in managers and senior managers combined. Savings from reducing bureaucracy in this manner are being ploughed back into front-line patient care. For instance, we now employ 8,000 more doctors and 5,600 more nurses on our wards than in May 2010, and our NHS can do nearly 1 million more operations every year.

Health

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Interestingly, health is not even covered in the Queen’s Speech, but we are debating it so I will say a few words about it. The good news is that my granddaughter has just been accepted by Liverpool university to study midwifery, so that is some compassion coming back into the health service. The bad news is that on Friday I had a meeting with GP commissioners who came to see me because they are teetering on the edge. I am talking about the Northumberland commissioners who are running the doctors consortium. They had a budget, worked to it and were doing all right until the Government came along and clawed money back. I would not mind if the Minister tried to say why the Government clawed money back from them; I would be interested to know that.

We know what is happening in the health service and we know why there is no Bill. Since this Government came to power we have seen creeping privatisation; no corner of the health service is untouchable as far as privatisation is concerned. Sometimes I just wonder what is going to happen in the next few years—God forbid if the Tories get elected again, with this lot here in charge. Are we going to be paying for our health service? Are charges going to be put on the health service? That is a good question to ask to see whether we can get a denial from the Government—

[David T. C. Davies]

rose—

[Mr Campbell]

Sit down, you will have your Welsh question in a minute. It would be good if the Minister could deny that he has any intention of charging for any services in the health service in the future, because they are creeping in little by little. As for the nurses—the people who run the health service and do all the work—their miserable wage rises are absolutely disgraceful and this Government should be ashamed of taking even that 1% away from them; they should get more but the Government are not even going to give them the 1%.

Let us get back to the reality. This Queen’s Speech was the dullest one I have seen in my 27 years in this place, and I think everyone would agree on that. I sat down and I said to myself, “How can I liven it up? What if it was my Queen’s Speech? What if I jumped on the bike of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner)—although it has been pinched—and got into Buckingham palace to ask them to take my speech to the House of the Commons instead of the one they were going to read out?” My first Bill would be on the national minimum wage—I would put a Bill through to increase it to £10 an hour. My second Bill would be on a shorter working week—32 hours without loss of pay. My third Bill would call for full employment with no redundancies. There would be a repeal of all anti-union laws, and the reintroduction of collective bargaining. My next Bill would restore health and safety for workers. The health and safety budget has been cut by 35%, so we need a Bill to put that right for working people.

My fifth Bill would bring an end to privatisation. There would be no more privatisation of the trains or the buses—[Interruption.] Never mind about the increases and the costs; this is my Queen’s Speech, not Labour’s. There would be no more asset stripping of public facilities. Bill No. 6 would be to get rid of Trident, which would make me popular, especially with the Scottish nationalists.

My seventh Bill would put the buses and trains back into public ownership. It would try to stop the privatisation of the east coast main line, but I very much doubt that we can stop it now, as this Government are hell bent on getting rid of it before they go out of power. But we will restore it to public ownership—at least I hope we will; I hope that our Ministers are listening, and that we will restore it.

My eighth Bill would bring education back under local democratic control. We have heard in the statement today how out of control things are. Local authorities are wavering. Their spending has been cut, and they have very little say over the academies or the free schools. Anything could happen in the education service now, because we no longer have that local watch, so we need to bring it back.

My ninth Bill would be about the national health service. I want free public health care for all. That would be a big Bill and it would cost a lot of money, but we need to stop this creeping privatisation. I would get that money from one place: I would go to the City and tell all those spivs and bankers, “Your bonuses are stopped, because of all the money you have spivved off the working people of this country.” It is the working people who have had to pay for the austerity measures. I would tax those people and get the money for the Bills in my Queen’s Speech.

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

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate. It has been a wide-ranging debate stretching well beyond the NHS, as the shadow Minister said. I think that we all enjoyed the alternative Queen’s Speech from the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell). His Front-Bench colleagues looked horrified, but it was the authentic voice of Labour.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

There were some good policies in there.

[Norman Lamb]

Well, let us just make sure that Opposition Front Benchers listen to the hon. Gentleman.

We can be justifiably proud, it seems to me, of the action we have taken in health and care over the course of this Parliament. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) made a speech that faded away from agreement, but at the very start he made the point that we should all pay tribute to a really remarkable work force in the NHS—1.3 million people doing incredible work. We want to free those people up as much as possible to do the very best they can.

NHS Risk Register

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I wish to listen to this point of order.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

It is not a point of order.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I will decide whether it is a point of order, Mr Campbell.

Reform of Social Care

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. During the engagement that we are undertaking, one of the areas that we should certainly pursue is the work force development strategy in relation to care and support—and we will do that.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Can the Secretary of State tell us why one part of the UK gets care free and the other has to pay? Is it because the other part—Scotland—pays more taxes?

[Mr Lansley]

The difference in approach is the result of devolution.

NHS Future Forum

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. General practice—not just general practitioners but general practice—has a central role for patients because there is a long-term relationship with patients and an understanding of the whole population and the health of a whole area. However, GPs recognise that in order to get the right services for patients, they have to design services alongside the range of professionals whose job it is to deliver them.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Let us be clear: this is just a dog’s dinner and these amendments have proved it. What we have here is a slow-privatisation-of-the-NHS Bill that is backed by the Rag, Tag and Bobtail party—the Liberal Democrats. This is the beginning of the privatisation of the health service and it is time it stopped.

[Mr Lansley]

This Bill and our proposals were never to support privatisation; they are not to support privatisation and they will not be to support privatisation. The hon. Gentleman should have attacked the Labour Government who gave the private sector £250 million for operations it never carried out; they paid it 11% more than they would have paid the NHS for that. They tried to push the NHS out of the provision of services when it could have provided them and competed. The Labour Government did that, and we shall legislate to make it illegal for a Secretary of State or any regulator to engage in that kind of preferential treatment for the private sector in future.

Health and Social Care Bill

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I just wish that the hon. Gentleman would look at the latest published data. Since the election, we have reduced the number of managers in the health service by almost 4,000 and increased the number of doctors. For the first time, there are more than 100,000 doctors in the NHS, and we are increasing the number of health visitors, after years of their numbers being reduced under the previous Government. He should get his facts right before he starts flinging accusations about.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No. I am going to make some progress.

The Labour party, when in government, pioneered patient choice; Labour said, “We must have patient choice.” I remember John Reid, when he was a Member, saying that the articulate and the well-off negotiated their way through the health service, and that he wanted to give choice to everybody in the health service. He was right. The social attitudes survey in 2009 found that more than 95% of people felt that they should have more choice, but that fewer than half of patients actually experienced it. The Labour party started down the road of extending choice; we will complete that journey.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. I have not previously been asked to comment on the matter, nor have I received information about it, but from my visits to Cornwall I entirely endorse his view about the importance of community hospitals in accessing services. He will see that, in the Bill, a specific duty is placed on the commissioning board and each commissioning consortium to reduce inequalities in access to health care. He will see also that, through the Bill, we will strengthen accountability where major service change takes place, because it will require not only the agreement of the commissioning consortium, representing as it were the professional view, but the endorsement of the health and wellbeing board, which includes direct, local, democratic accountability. Points have been made about what was in manifestos, but the Liberal Democrat manifesto was very clear about the need for democratic accountability in health service commissioning—and so there will be.

Let me return to the point, because the previous Government also went down the route of practice-based commissioning. It was their policy, but, as the shadow Health Minister, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said, many GPs felt that

“they didn’t always get the power, responsibility and resources they might have wanted.”

Well, now they will, and we will give it to them.

On our definition of quality, Opposition Members say “quality matters”. It does, and it was under the Labour Government that Ara Darzi pioneered the thought that quality must be at the heart and an organising principle of the health service. It is we now who are going to make that happen. We are publishing quality standards. We are putting into this legislation a duty to improve quality that extends to all the organisations that commission and provide NHS services.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

Will there be public accountability for the private companies that will come in and do the commissioning for the doctors? I can see their people getting top salaries—the executive getting £200,000 and the financial officer getting £250,000. That is the sort of thing that we are trying to stop. What will happen when these companies run things for doctors?

[Mr Lansley]

The accountability in the NHS will be for the quality of the service being provided. The hon. Gentleman may not have agreed with the last Labour Government on this, and perhaps many in the Labour party are now changing their view on what was pursued by that Government, but it was that Government who introduced and encouraged a policy of “any willing provider”. In 2003, Alan Milburn said:

“If I can get a private-sector hospital to treat an NHS patient, then for me the person remains an NHS patient.”

Everybody in the NHS who provides NHS services will be accountable through the—[Interruption.] The money will follow. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee is here. Where public money goes, accountability for its use will follow.