Police Officer Safety

Debate between Sarah Newton and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I will make sure that members of the Sentencing Council read the record of this debate and fully understand the strong feelings in this House about having really tough sentences for these absolutely appalling and totally unacceptable offences.

I will touch briefly on the issue of equipment to support police officers because that was raised by a number of Members. I want to underline the fact that the Home Office supports chief constables in their operational decisions. This includes the funding of research on and guidance about equipment that might be helpful, including body cameras and spit hoods. I am sure we all agree, however, that the police must maintain their operational independence. It is not for the Home Office to run the police from Marsham Street. Chief constables and police and crime commissioners are accountable to the local communities they serve.

[Andy Burnham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Newton]

I am afraid that I cannot because of the time.

I want to assure the whole House of the absolute seriousness with which the Government regard assaults on police officers, as demonstrated by the better data that are going to be made available, including the new reporting announced today, through the leadership of the College of Policing. I know that chief constables will continue to do whatever they can to keep their people safe. We will enable them to work confidently to tackle the challenges of modern crime, and we will absolutely continue to support them in doing so.

It is really important to go back to what my right hon. Friend the Minister said right at the beginning of the debate: assaulting a police officer is completely unacceptable. It is indeed an assault on us all and all our society. Police officers should be able to carry out their duties without fear of assault, and anyone found guilty of such an offence can expect to face the full force of the law.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

National Health Service

Debate between Sarah Newton and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I said that I am going to make progress.

Today’s Age UK survey finds that the number of over-65s receiving care has fallen by 380,000 under this Government. Half of the 1 million people who struggle to wash or bathe now get no help at all. Two thirds of the 250,000 people who struggle to feed themselves every day are now left to fend for themselves. There are over 100,000 fewer day care places and over 50,000 fewer people getting meals on wheels. Age UK says:

“Our state-funded social care system is in calamitous, quite rapid decline.”

But worse, it is dragging down the NHS.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Andy Burnham]

In a moment. I said that I had given way for the last time, but I will do so once more for the hon. Lady.

Record numbers of very frail, elderly people are arriving at A and E due to a lack of support in their own homes. Between 2009-10 and 2012-13, there was a 48.1% increase in the number of people aged over 90 being admitted to A and E via blue-light ambulance—in other words, 100,000 very frail, very frightened people in the backs of ambulances going round our towns and cities to be dropped off at a busy A and E. That is what is happening on this Government’s watch.

[Sarah Newton]

Today’s Age UK report contains aggregated England data. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that all over our country there are councils integrating social care with the NHS, and, indeed, increasing their social care budgets? Does he not recognise the good work that is going on in the integration pilots in Cornwall, for example?

[Andy Burnham]

I have repeatedly praised Torbay council in the hon. Lady’s part of the world, which was the well regarded pioneer of integrated care. Yes, there are examples of councils around the country trying to do the right thing, but let me make two points: first, the Torbay model has been broken apart by the Health and Social Care Act; and, secondly, councils are trying, but they have been battered by the massive cuts to their budgets about which Age UK is warning today, and which are setting back the cause of integration.

The reality is that elderly people are going into A and E and getting trapped there. As I have already mentioned, there is the sad case of an elderly women in Lincoln who spent an entire calendar year in hospital because a care home place could not be found. That is simply wrong on every level, and it is unsustainable in human and financial terms. The collapse of social care is a root cause of the current A and E crisis because it has led to increased pressure at the entrance door of the hospital, and to the exit door becoming blocked.

For those who still get some support, 15-minute visits are becoming the norm. Richard Hawkes, chairman of the Care and Support Alliance, has said that A and E

“is forced to pick up the pieces when people become isolated, can’t live on their own and slip into crisis.”

My last question to the Secretary of State is: does he agree with Richard Hawkes that cuts to social care have contributed to the extra 600,000 people who now attend A and E every year?

The evidence is clear: on NHS 111, on walk-in centres, on GP services, on social care—this is a mess of the Government’s making. I am sure that the text of the Secretary of State’s speech is full of the usual spin and self-serving excuses, but he must not sit down until he answers directly the four questions I have put to him, not for my benefit, but so that he does not insult the intelligence of the people watching. He is in charge, not me. People are looking to him for answers and solutions, so let me give him some in the time I have left.

As I have said, let us get nurses back on the end of the phones at NHS 111, and let us have a review of the 111 service. I hear that contracts are about to be signed—for instance, to take a contract off an ambulance service—and they will extend this flawed model of care. Will the Secretary of State intervene to stop those contracts being signed until there has been a proper review?

Will the Secretary of State review the plan to relax ambulance response times in the pilot? That is surely the wrong response during this very difficult winter. Is he absolutely convinced that now is the right time to experiment with relaxing established standards? Does it not make sense to delay it until a quieter time of the year, and not to do it in the most troubled ambulance service in the country?

On walk-in centres, would not one of the simplest things the Secretary of State could do to stop the A and E situation getting worse be to commit to halt any further closures? We know that walk-in centres in Jarrow, Nuneaton and Chelmsford are under threat. Would it not help everybody if he just removed that threat today? On GP services, has he considered putting a GP in every A and E?

Adult Social Care

Debate between Sarah Newton and Andy Burnham

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is absolutely the point. This is not responsible capitalism; it is the worst kind of capitalism—making money by leaving vulnerable people unsupported and, as my hon. Friend says, taking advantage of the commitment and vocation of those on the front line, who will not walk away from the people they care for. It is unacceptable to not pay them and let them buy their own equipment, and to make profits off the back of that kind of behaviour.

[Sarah Newton]

I hesitate to intervene because it is important that the many Back Benchers who are here today are able to share their views. However, although none of us could support the appalling situation that the right hon. Gentleman described, he will be aware that the commissioner—the local authority—has a responsibility for the quality of the service. If he is concerned about it—I would be absolutely furious if I were the local Member of Parliament—he can take it up with the council so that the contract can be cancelled, and ultimately refer it to the Care Quality Commission.

National Health Service

Debate between Sarah Newton and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. When we were in government, we said that there had to be a clinical case for change, if changes to hospital services were to be made. I mentioned Greater Manchester a moment ago. There was a clinical case to support those reforms. The experts, to which she rightly pointed, said that about 50 babies’ lives would be saved every year by specialising care in fewer locations. In such circumstances, politicians have a moral obligation to listen to those experts and to make changes, no matter how politically difficult they are. That is why I say that it was sheer opportunism of the worst kind for the Government, when in opposition, to say that they would have a moratorium on any changes and to tour those marginal constituencies promising to overturn decisions, when in fact they had no intention of doing so. I put it to the House that the people of Bury, Burnley and Enfield have now clearly discovered what opportunism there is from those on the Conservative Front Bench.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman therefore welcome one of the Government’s first actions, which was to change the NHS operating guidelines for reconfigurations to ensure categorically that clinicians and the communities they serve were in the driving seat for future reconfiguration of the NHS?

[Andy Burnham]

If that is the case and the people of Enfield are in control of the decision, would Chase Farm A and E be closing? What the hon. Lady describes is a complete and utter reinvention of the moratorium policy. She stood on an election manifesto that promised a moratorium. Where is it? It has not materialised. It is a mythical policy that was designed to win votes; it had nothing to do with the good stewardship of the national health service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

The image that the right hon. Gentleman has just painted is totally inaccurate. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust is struggling with an enormous debt, which it incurred as a result of enormous reorganisations under Labour and a ridiculous accountancy measure that doubles the debt every year. I will not take comments like that from the right hon. Gentleman, because Cornwall has been left in a very difficult situation that this Government have been left to sort out.

[Andy Burnham]

I did not say that everything was perfect, but I said a moment ago that we took a grip on those problems and dealt with them from the centre. In the hon. Lady’s Government’s NHS, there will be—what are the words?—no bail-outs. Everyone will be left to fend for themselves. Does that mean that her hospital will be allowed to go bust? I do not know, but that is the implication of the Secretary of State’s White Paper and Bill, and she needs to direct her questions to him.

The fact is that we are now looking at a national postcode lottery, in which GPs are free to send letters to patients telling them that minor operations must now be paid for, and in which hospitals no longer have maximum waiting times for NHS patients and can devote the freed-up theatre time to private patients as there is no longer any cap on private work. The Government have placed the NHS in the danger zone. It has been placed there by a Prime Minister who said “Trust me” and has gone back on his word. He wrote cheques for the NHS in opposition that he knew he would not be able to cash when in government. He made promises that he knew he would be unable to keep, in order to win votes. This is the Prime Minister’s very own great NHS betrayal, and, far from detoxifying his party, he has proved once and for all that we really cannot trust the Tories with our NHS.