Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Burns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to explain that the NHS trust and the PCT have made plans for the building to be used by the Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for orthopaedic out-patients and surgery. Those plans should enable clinicians to provide the NHS services needed by local people in much-improved buildings, and I understand that services will be recommenced from those buildings in weeks.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

In written responses to questions about clinical commissioning groups, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) incessantly replies—most recently on 18 April—that CCGs do not yet exist, so how can he offer assurances, as he has done today, that any real progress is being made by the CCGs, when they are currently being supported by PCTs? And will he explain his “now you see them, now you don’t” response?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. As he will be aware from his time on the Bill Committee this Government have for the first time in the 64 years of the NHS put into legislation a duty to reduce health inequalities. That will be done through the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups, each being under a duty to have regard to the need to reduce inequalities in access to and the outcomes of health care. The Secretary of State will also have a wider duty to have regard to the need to reduce inequalities relating to the health service. That will include his duties for both the NHS and public health. It is a great step forward and I am surprised that the previous Government did not think of doing it during their 13 years.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

T4. At a time of major upheaval in the national health service, the people of west Lancashire and other areas of Lancashire are being failed by the chief executive of the Lancashire primary care trust cluster. Living in Yorkshire and working from Lancaster, Janet Soo-Chung has failed to meet with me or other colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr Hoyle). Can the Secretary of State assure me that the necessary time and development is being invested in health services in west Lancashire to ensure that authorisation takes place in a timely way without conditions and that the health services provided to my constituents are good?

National Health Service

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Cooper]

Forgive me; I need to get to the end of my speech.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh dealt with the finances and the myth of real-terms growth in the NHS budget. My local trust is being asked to go beyond the 4% savings compounded over the next four years and will be expected to achieve 6% or £8.5 million in this financial year. On top of that, Monitor expects trusts to make a 1% profit. People who have given evidence to the Select Committee have said it is clear that there will need to be hospital closures in order to release money back into the wider health service. We are told that this is all part of managing demand and redesigning pathways—two horrible phrases that appear to be back in vogue.

I want to deal quickly with the re-banding of nurses to reduce budgets, which the Health Secretary appears to have little understanding of. I am sorry he is no longer in his place. He clearly told the Health Committee that he was unaware that re-banding was taking place. His problem is that Janet Davies from the Royal College of Nursing told the Committee that, although the RCN does not release conversations, that issue was clearly discussed. I really worry about that. Does he have a twin he is sending into meetings on his behalf? Does he simply not listen? It would not be the first time. Or is the truth even worse, and should he be described in terms that Mr Speaker would call unparliamentary? The Secretary of State said earlier that he stood by his answers to the Committee. He has also claimed that he did not receive a letter from me, but I can confirm that he received it at 11.57 on 13 October, and I have confirmation from his office.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rosie Cooper]

I will not.

The point is that even if the Secretary of State was not aware of the re-banding, as he claims, that speaks volumes about how out of touch he is with the hard-working staff he is supposed to represent. Perhaps he would like to remove himself from his parallel universe—

Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Cooper]

Members of the public listening to Government Members this afternoon might wonder whether we were having this debate in a parallel universe, because they have heard the Prime Minister promise that there would be no top-down reorganisation of the NHS, and what did we get? We got the biggest reorganisation in the history of the NHS. The Prime Minister said only recently that everyone was on board and behind the Bill, and yet we find that clinicians, professionals and the public are far from being on board. The Government talk about the protection of services, but the public will have read only yesterday that the Government are meeting McKinsey about the possible transfer, albeit a slow transfer, of up to 20 hospitals.

[Mr Simon Burns]

indicated dissent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rosie Cooper]

I can categorically say that we have asked the questions over and again and we do not get any answers.

[Mr Burns]

The impact assessment.

[Rosie Cooper]

How much? I will give way if the Minister tells me exactly how much it is all going to cost. I shall happily sit down; there you go. [Interruption.]

NHS Future Forum

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

Although it has been difficult to hear during this debate, I would like to address my comments to the statement made by the Secretary of State.

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

Question.

[Rosie Cooper]

Question, sorry. [Interruption.] Let us get to the point and stop playing around. The Secretary of State said in the statement that consortia will now have one nurse and one secondary care doctor and that:

“To avoid any potential conflict of interest, neither should be employed by a local health provider.”

How will the Secretary of State apply that rule to GPs? Would not the Secretary of State and his reforms be best described as like Schrodinger’s cat—in a state of uncertainty and both alive and dead at the same time?

Health (CSR)

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Thursday 11th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Burns]

The shadow Minister must be patient; I will come to social care.

The Department’s capital budget will be sufficient to ensure that key schemes that have already been agreed are continued and that the NHS estate is properly maintained. The NHS capital budget will pay for, among other things, publicly funded projects at North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust, Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, and Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Notwithstanding the real-terms increase in funding, we always knew that the NHS was facing challenging times. That is self-evident and we have never sought to hide behind it; everyone recognises it. As a number of hon. Members said, that challenge is due to an ageing population, expensive treatments, and health care and social care costs rising substantially every year. That is why the NHS and social care need to do more with their resources and make every penny count. In health, we are asking the NHS to secure, as a number of hon. Members said, up to £20 billion of efficiency savings over the next four years through the QIPP—quality, innovation, productivity and prevention—programme.

In addition, every penny of those savings will be reinvested in front-line services, enabling us to meet the costs of increased demand for care. The savings will come from cutting administration costs across the system by a third, as well as from other efficiencies throughout the NHS. Frequently, better care can save money. It is cheaper, as well as better for people, to get the right care first time, rather than the inappropriate or insufficiently relevant care that is involved when people have to go back to be provided with extra care—an expensive way to provide care and not an experience that patients should have.

[Rosie Cooper]

I appreciate what the Minister is saying, but does he not agree that radical change to or redesign of a system often requires investment to get those costs out at the end? We are hearing about lots of cost cutting, but there are no obvious signs of a process or pathway where investment is taking place to get those gains out.

[Mr Burns]

In the overall run of things, the hon. Lady makes a genuine point, but most of the cost cutting that I heard about during the speeches involved accusations of services being cut without the reasons for the status of what are, in many cases, reconfigurations being gone into. Also, until conclusions have been reached, there is no guarantee that those reconfigurations will happen. They might do so, but there is no automatic guarantee that, just because there is to be a reconfiguration, the end product will be what was first proposed.

Furthermore, I heard very little comment—indeed, I do not think that anyone passed comment, although I apologise if someone did—on the QIPP programme, which is so important and vital for raising standards, using innovation to improve quality of care and delivery. In that, we have examples across the country of the NHS finding changes that can make a big difference.

For example, Southend Hospital NHS Trust is saving £160,000 a year by mapping postcodes—patients who live near each other can be picked up together for their dialysis appointments. Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust is saving £1 million a year by implementing an electronic blood transfusion system, which cuts the staff time taken to deliver blood and reduces transfusion errors, thereby improving services for patients. Ten NHS trusts have been piloting a new pathway to improve care for patients, mainly elderly people who have suffered a fractured neck of femur. If that were rolled out across the country, it could save £75 million a year.

Those are just small examples of things that can be done where savings are made, the quality and appropriateness of care improve, and money can be ploughed back into front-line services, which is so important.

While we are talking about resources, I shall answer the important question asked by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). He specifically mentioned Great Ormond Street hospital, but this applies across all the specialist children’s hospitals. The Department is having ongoing discussions with Great Ormond Street and the other relevant hospitals in England about potential—I emphasise “potential”—changes to the tariff for specialist children’s hospitals for 2011-12.

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that no decisions have yet been taken and the discussions are continuing. On his specific question about how much less money is going to be given, there is no answer at the moment, because no decisions have been taken. The discussions will continue. I hope, for the time being, that he is reassured by that answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Burns]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I do not claim that the demographic time bomb will be resolved by this measure. The trouble with personal social care is an historic one; Governments have always been playing catch-up. That is beyond dispute. I am saying that we recognised the growing pressures, and we believed that we had to act. That is why we have done so. It will reduce the problem, but the hon. Gentleman is right that it will not solve it, as more work has to be done. No doubt, it will be done, as we catch up with the past. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman. I now wish to make progress.

We believe that funding social care is important not only in its own right but for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on it—and because the NHS cannot function without social care. Without it, people have to stay in hospital beds for longer, inappropriately blocking beds that other patients could use. It is important that we invest the money to ensure that there are no delayed discharges, and that we can provide an appropriate setting for those who are discharged.

[Rosie Cooper]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I am trying to be helpful. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) is right. The Select Committee suggested that there was a £3 billion or £3.5 billion gap. Evidence to the Committee clearly showed that local authorities believed that if they invested a pound, the saving and the benefit was likely to be seen in the health service through exactly what the Minister mentioned—beds not being blocked and so on. This might help my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), the shadow Minister; I suggested in Committee that the element of funding that lies currently with local authorities should be transferred to the NHS. We would not then have such a gap. The local authorities resisted, but the core of the problem that both Front Benches are outlining is that the £1 billion that the councils have is not ring-fenced and will be spent on whatever provisions are desperately needed. The money that the Minister says is for the NHS will be spent only on NHS re-ablement and other stuff that is absolutely within the NHS, but the local authorities do not believe that. They think that it will be dropped on their toes at any minute, and that they can spend it.

[Mr Burns]

I fully understand the issue that the hon. Lady raised about whether we merge the NHS part of social care in local government into the NHS, or vice versa. That has been an ongoing debate for many years. The hon. Lady may find it difficult to believe, but 13 years ago I was the Minister with responsibility for social care. The argument was raging then. I have no doubt that it will continue to rage for some time to come. I, too, have heard the worries that the money that comes through the RSG will not be spent on social care. From the discussions that the NHS has had with local authorities, I have been led to believe that that will not be such a problem. Given that there is a problem with social care and a need to provide support, there will be a determination and a positive attitude to ensure that the money is appropriately spent on what it is designed for and that it will, with the money from the NHS, make a significant difference to a very serious and sensitive problem that we, as a society, have to address.

In conclusion, the spending review is the necessary consequence of this Government’s facing up to the financial responsibilities and problems that we inherited when we came to power. If we are to secure a future of growth, prosperity and jobs and if we are to fulfil our commitment to increase funding for the NHS in real terms for every year of this Parliament, then we must place our public finances on a stable, sustainable footing.

We will not ask the sick, the disabled or the elderly to pay the price of the previous Government’s economic mismanagement. We are increasing the health budget in real terms and reforming the service, not only to make the most of every penny but to put power in the hands of those who know best how to improve services. I am talking not about the Ministers and civil servants in Whitehall but about the NHS staff and patients on the ground.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Burns and Rosie Cooper

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burns]

May I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the NHS commissioning board will not allocate commissioning budgets directly to GP practices? Neither will they be included in either partnership or individual GP accounts. As is the situation now, those GP accounts will remain entirely separate. Our proposals set out clear lines of accountability in respect of commissioning resources. Each GP consortium must prepare a set of annual accounts, which the NHS commissioning board will include in its consolidated account. I hope that that reassures the right hon. Gentleman.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that patients and councillors will sit on consortium boards, and that the boards will meet in public, so that there will be real transparency and accountability at the point of decision making, and accountability will not be sidelined to health and well-being boards?