NHS Services (Access)

Simon Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Actually, the question is: when did it become an all-private shortlist, and why did the right hon. Gentleman allow that to happen if he is now saying that the privatised running of hospitals is such a bad thing? I think that we have found him out, and he will want to correct the record and the impression that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that in March 2010, when the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) was Secretary of State, the number of bidders for Hinchingbrooke hospital—a process that took place under legislation passed by the previous Labour Government—went from five to three? Two of those bidders were private companies; the third bidder was a private company in conjunction with an NHS trust, but at a later stage as the process developed—as my right hon. Friend said—it went down to one bidder. The right hon. Gentleman said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) that there was a preferred bidder and that it was not a private company but the NHS. It was not the NHS; it was an NHS trust in conjunction with a private company.

[Mr Hunt]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend because he makes it clear that, when the right hon. Member for Leigh was Health Secretary, he accepted an all-private shortlist. He will want to correct the record on that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

We are here in the Chamber today in a week when we have seen health service workers on the picket lines for the first time in 30 years, and we have seen midwives out on strike for the first time in their history—we have had midwives working in the health care system in this country for 150 years, I think—yet most of the spat we have listened to up until now this afternoon has been about who bid what for Hinchingbrooke hospital and so forth. I wonder what people outside—not just people who work in the health service, but those who rely on it and do not have the option to go elsewhere, into the private sector—think about this situation.

We have a Government—if they had been a different Government, I would probably be saying the same thing—where the case for the defence we heard from the Secretary of State this morning about how well our health service is doing comes from independent experts in Washington. I have never in my 30 years in here heard someone doing that. Philadelphia lawyers are presumably the people saying that; I thought it might be a reference to Washington, County Durham, but, no, I assume it is Washington in the USA where people are saying we have got a good health service, not the British Medical Association or the royal colleges of nurses, GPs and everything else who constantly e-mail Members on both sides of this House about the state of health care in this country and the demoralisation of the staff—hence the first picket lines for 30 years. Here we have a Secretary of State who seems to think he can find somebody to defend him who is an independent expert from Washington DC. I think that it is shameful that the Secretary of State comes to the Dispatch Box and uses arguments like that.

Let me tell the Secretary of State—although he is not listening; he is engaged in other things—that everybody knew what was going to happen when this Government came to office in 2010.

[Mr Simon Burns]

rose—

[Kevin Barron]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a bit, because I may mention him, as he was a Minister at the time. This Government came to office and passed a Bill through Parliament that was going to introduce competition into the national health service and mean a massive reorganisation, and billions of pounds were going to be spent in doing that—billions of pounds that could have been spent elsewhere—and the case for the defence is, “We’ll make a billion pounds a year in this Parliament.” Well, it is not there yet, Ministers.

It was not just the reorganisation of the national health service that was mentioned. The Government also told us at the same time that they had got to make efficiency savings of 4% a year, something that the health service had never done, and something the public sector had never done. Indeed, people said at the time that the private sector had never done it either.

That is the situation we had when that Bill went through Parliament. They were warned about the consequences of that not just by politicians in the House, but by people who gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee. I served on it. The Bill was stalled and came back in again. Evidence after evidence came in saying what has happened was going to happen.

We have had massive reorganisation. I just wonder if the Secretary of State—if he is prepared to listen—will tell us how many of the 4,000 NHS staff who were laid off and paid redundancy were then re-employed by the NHS, some of them on massive six-figure sums. How much did that cost the NHS? How much did that take away from mental health services or other services that our constituents rely on? None of this is in the debate at all, and Ministers all know perfectly well what the situation is.

Week after week, we hear these platitudes from Ministers. The Secretary of State said not too long ago, “When you go into hospital, you’ll get a named consultant,” but what does having a named consultant matter to most people? Are they going to work seven days a week, 24 hours a day so we can phone and say, “Can we come and see you?” No one has mentioned the latest one we have had, which I thought was wonderful—