NHS (Government Spending)

Simon Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

The accident and emergency situation is a barometer of a series of failures across the health and social care infrastructure. I shall certainly deal with some of those questions, as will my hon. Friends.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Leslie]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment. My hon. Friend talked about Coventry; last Friday in my constituency in Nottingham I attended a summit with health chief executives, the local authority and others. At the A and E department at Queen’s medical centre more than one in four patients waited for more than four hours in the first few weeks in January—a totally unacceptable situation. This is not something that affects only my constituency; it affects those of all my hon. Friends, and probably even that of the right hon. Gentleman, to whom I will be happy to give way.

[Mr Burns]

I read the motion carefully. It is about the NHS and spending on it, as the hon. Gentleman has illustrated in his remarks so far. Will he explain something that puzzles me? I know that the shadow Secretary of State’s interview with Kirsty Wark on “Newsnight” last night was a car crash, but why is he not opening this debate? He has never been reticent in the past in coming forward to try to weaponise the NHS. Is it because his leader has wrapped him up in cotton wool to keep him away from the public gaze?

[Chris Leslie]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a number of issues there. He has plenty to puzzle over, and he will always be a puzzled individual. The bigger question is where is the Secretary of State for Health when we are talking about these particular issues? [Hon. Members: “There!”] There he is. He is so anonymous he just did not make any impact on me whatever. I am delighted that he has walked in. He is quite unforgettable, isn’t he?

The NHS has experienced problems not just in accident and emergency departments, as has been said, but across a series of services: missed cancer treatment targets for three successive quarters—15,000 people having to wait longer than the recommended 62 days to start their cancer treatment in the past year. It has not always been like this.