NHS Risk Register

Debate between Simon Burns and John Healey

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

There is the precedent of releasing a programme risk register connected with the third runway at Heathrow, but the principle of the Freedom of Information Act is that each case is different—every risk register is different. The reason why this case is important and exceptional and why the Information Commissioner has, on balance, required the Government to disclose rather than withhold the risk register is that the Government’s health reforms are the biggest ever reorganisation in NHS history; that the legislation is the longest in NHS history; and that it has been introduced at a time of unprecedented financial pressure.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm for the House that, on behalf of Lord Boateng, he refused to release a risk register when he was a junior Treasury Minister?

[John Healey]

I do not think that the Minister was listening to the point that I just made: on the Freedom of Information Act, the decisions that Ministers make—I hope—as we did, and the decisions that the Information Commissioner would make on a challenge, depend on the specific information and, in this case, the risk register at stake. This case is unprecedented and exceptional and the Information Commissioner has come to this view because we are faced with such huge upheaval. It involves the biggest reorganisation and the longest legislation, at a time of the tightest financial squeeze for 50 years. Furthermore, this reorganisation was explicitly ruled out in the Conservative manifesto and in the coalition agreement. That is why, less than two months later, the huge upheaval of the White Paper was so unexpected, and why the NHS and the civil service were so unprepared for what they are now being forced to implement.

Hinchingbrooke Hospital

Debate between Simon Burns and John Healey

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

Under the agreements that have been signed, the consultants are there to manage an NHS hospital treating NHS-only patients and to ensure the finest quality of care for the NHS. That is the safeguard.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

At a time when progressive reform of our NHS requires greater collaboration and integration of services, with more being done for patients beyond the hospital, cannot Ministers see that that will be much harder to achieve when Hinchingbrooke hospital and others have been handed over to a private company with a single commercial interest in maximising profits and getting more patients into the hospital? Cannot they accept that it is a privatisation and that it is wrong in principle and wrong in practice?

[Mr Burns]

If it is privatisation—I utterly reject the claim that it is—and if it is wrong, it was the right hon. Gentleman’s Government who gave the powers to do this in their legislation and it was his successor as shadow Health Secretary, when Secretary of State, who instigated the proceedings to bring this about. It is a little odd for the right hon. Gentleman for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), for narrow, grimy and party political reasons, to try to blame us for something that he and his party instigated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and John Healey

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I, too, recognise the small number of organisations that are reporting financial challenges. The Department is continuing to work with strategic health authorities to ensure that those organisations have robust plans in place for financial recovery, while ensuring the quality of services for patients.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

On the subject of financial pressures on hospitals, does the Minister recall the circular to hospitals from Monitor that was smuggled out on the eve of the royal wedding, which raised the requirement for efficiency cutbacks on hospitals from 4% to 6.5%, which is more than £1 billion in this year alone? Will he admit that the service cutbacks that we are seeing in many hospitals around the country are deeper, as that circular confirms, directly because of the Government’s policies?

[Mr Burns]

No, I do not recognise that, because the figure that the right hon. Gentleman has used is an upper calculation, not an actual figure. I say to him that we are making efficiency savings, and that trusts should be cutting not front-line services but inefficiency, waste and excessive management, and reinvesting every single penny in front-line services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and John Healey

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because she has been campaigning on this issue for more than a year, and rightly so. Work is being done on the whole issue of PFI and the NHS to ensure value for money. Given her concerns, I would be more than happy to meet to discuss this particular case.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I want to say to the Health Secretary directly that it is a disgrace how he and his Ministers have ducked responsibility for reassuring more than 30,000 elderly and vulnerable residents whose homes may be at risk because of the financial crisis at Southern Cross. Today’s urgent question is the second time in a month that this House has had to drag Ministers to Parliament to explain what is going on. Southern Cross is set to close down completely by October. Will the Secretary of State give a commitment this afternoon to the residents of Southern Cross, their families and 40,000 staff that Ministers will in future show leadership and make public statements to this House?

Health and Social Care Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Debate between Simon Burns and John Healey

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend is right. We know that the Prime Minister is a PR man. We know that he was forced to call the pause and that, when he did, he was looking for a PR solution. The answer that my hon. Friend flushed out of the Government stands that up clearly.

To return to the motion before the House and the question whether the Bill requires, as we argue, recommittal in full, parliamentary precedent demands this, proper parliamentary scrutiny demands this and, above all, our responsibility to NHS patients to try to get the legislation right demands this. The parliamentary precedent is clear, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) said. The House of Commons Library tells me that the last time a Bill was recommitted in part was 60 years ago. In response to a point of order, the Health Minister cited the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill of 2003 as a precedent. The Labour Government recommitted that Bill in full and gave Committee members the whole of the summer recess to examine the detailed amendments before the Committee sat again. Why are the Government not acting as they should and as Labour acted in government with that Bill?

The NHS, the legislation and the changes to the changes announced last week are all complex, and the House cannot do its proper job unless the Government’s changes to one clause can be considered alongside the consequences for other parts of the Bill and for the health service. How can the promised changes to Monitor’s role be considered without looking at all 29 clauses dealing with its licensing powers? The House cannot do its proper job unless all the areas that the Government say they will change are recommitted.

Why are the clauses on the failure and designation regime for hospitals, which the Government say they will change, not covered in the recommittal motion? The House cannot do its proper job, and organisations cannot give proper evidence to the Bill Committee, unless all the amendments are tabled in good time, so why will there be only two full working days between the tabling of amendments and the Committee sitting? The House cannot do its proper job unless the Bill Committee has sufficient time for scrutiny.

The 64 clauses in the recommittal motion took 45 hours of debate in Committee last time. The Government are now cutting that time in half. The Minister said that he expects 160 amendments in Committee. That allows less than 10 minutes for each amendment that the Government table, and that is before the Opposition table our own amendments and before taking into account the six schedules that are being recommitted.

[Mr Simon Burns]

As a former Minister, the right hon. Gentleman knows about taking legislation through Committee. Given that a number of the 160 amendments will be technical and drafting amendments, will he please tell the House how many minutes he needs for each technical and drafting amendment to be debated in Committee?

[John Healey]

The Minister, his colleagues and the Prime Minister have broken their word so often so far on the NHS that we cannot take at face value what the Minister says. We will wait to see and we will judge what he does when we see the detail of the amendments that he tables.

Future of the NHS

Debate between Simon Burns and John Healey

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Let me help the hon. Lady. For the first time, all parts of the NHS, including the commissioning job, will be opened up to private companies and subject to competition. As I have said, independent sector treatment centres played a part in our being able to clear long waiting lists and restore the quality of service to the NHS, as well as in supplementing the mainstream NHS, not substituting for it, which is what will happen under her party’s Bill.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)]

Just for the sake of balance, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that such treatment centres were also prime cherry-pickers and that between 2003 and 2009, the private sector was paid £250 million for not carrying out a single operation?

[John Healey]

The right hon. Gentleman will know from his current position that the premium that we paid in the first wave of treatment centres was stopped in the second wave. He will also know that by the end of our period in government we had stopped the independent treatment centres programme; and he ought to know that built into his Bill’s impact assessment is what it calculates to be a 14% premium, paid to providers under his proposals.

[Mr Burns]

indicated dissent.

[John Healey]

It is in the impact assessment; I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman take a good look at it.