NHS Long-Term Plan

John Bercow Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It was a valiant effort, but the hon. Gentleman could not get away from the truth in British politics: when it comes to the NHS, Labour writes the speeches, Conservatives write the cheques. He gamely managed to avoid smiling when he said that this settlement was not enough. He said the same thing on “Sunday Politics” yesterday. Let me remind him that at the last election his party was promising not the 3.4% annual increases that we are offering today, but 2.2%. What today he says was not enough he said in the election was enough to

“'restore the NHS to be the envy of the world”.

His leader said that it would

“give our NHS the resources it needs”.

What we are offering today is not 10% or 20% more than that, but 50% more. In five years’ time this Conservative Government will be giving the NHS £7 billion more every year than Labour was prepared to give. [Interruption.] It is funny, isn’t it, that Labour Members talk about funding the NHS but when we talk about it they try to talk it down? They do not want to hear the fact that under a Conservative Government there will be £7 billion more funding every year—that is 225,000 more nurses’ salaries under a Conservative Government. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is far too much noise in this Chamber. As is my usual practice, I was addressing Education Centre students via Skype this morning. They were from a primary school from Wythenshawe and Sale East. One of the youngsters said to me, “Is it not the case, Mr Speaker, that often Members speak very rudely to and at each other?” I could not dissent from that proposition. I think it would be helpful if Members calmed themselves. The Secretary of State is accustomed to delivering statements and responding to urgent questions in this place, and he knows, and will expect, that there will be plenty of opportunity for people to question him. As he gives his answers, it is only right that he be heard, as I want then to hear every Member.

[Mr Hunt]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The hon. Gentleman said just now that there is

“no such thing as a Brexit dividend”.

I have heard lots of other people say that from a sedentary position. But what did their leader say on 26 February? These were his exact words:

“and we will use the funds returned from Brussels after Brexit to invest in our public services and the jobs of the future”.

So who is right: is it the hon. Gentleman or his leader?

After paying the Brexit divorce bill this Conservative Government will use the contributions that would have gone to Brussels to fund our NHS—that is what the British people voted for. But the main reason we are able to announce today’s rise, one of the biggest ever single rises in the history of the NHS, is not the Brexit dividend but the deficit reduction dividend, the jobs dividend, the “putting the economy back on its feet” dividend, after the wreck left behind by the Labour party. Every measure we have taken to put the economy back on its feet has been opposed by the Labour party, but without those measures there would be no NHS dividend today; with the Conservatives you don’t just get a strong NHS, you get the strong economy to pay for it.

In the next few weeks, as Labour scrabbles around to raise its offer on the NHS, we will no doubt hear that it is offering more for the NHS, but when the Labour party comes forward with that offer, the British people will know that the only reason it has done so is that a Conservative Government shamed it into doing so with an offer far more generous than anything Labour was prepared to contemplate.

Another thing I have heard said about NHS funding is, “Whatever the Conservatives offer, we’ll match and do more,” but the trouble is that the opposite is true, because under this Government NHS spending in England is up 20% in the past five-year period, but in Wales it is up just 14%. That is to say that for every extra pound per head invested in England, in Wales it is just 84p, which is why people are 70% more likely to wait too long in A&Es in Wales. The right response to this statement would be for Labour to say that every additional penny though the Barnett formula will go into the NHS in Wales, but we did not hear that pledge.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about social care, and this matters. I fully agree with him that we need to have a strong plan for social care and that it needs to go side by side with the NHS plan, and we have made some important commitments to the social care sector today. But if he is going to criticise social care cuts, he might at least ask why austerity happened. It was not, as he continually suggests, because of an ideological mission to shrink the state, but to save our economy and create jobs so that we could reinvest in public services. The evidence for that is shown today, with the first ever five-year NHS funding plan, to go alongside a 10-year plan. This is a Conservative Government putting the NHS first and shooting to pieces his phoney arguments about Conservative values.

--- Later in debate ---

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mr Afzal Khan.

[Afzal Khan]

Will the Secretary of State clarify how this money will be divided between the regions? Children growing up in the north, in constituencies such as mine, have vastly different life chances from their counterparts in the south. We do not want this funding to reinforce the north-south divide.

[Matt Warman]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I apologise to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), who was missed out just now, but he has the compensation of knowing that he has an adoring audience who now await his important question.

[Matt Warman]

I would never accuse you of misleading the House, Mr Speaker.

I welcome this bold, ambitious and sufficient funding settlement. Does the Secretary of State agree that over this period we will be able to eliminate not just the funding inequalities but the workforce inequalities so that units such as paediatrics at Pilgrim Hospital no longer face the kind of challenges we have historically?