Leaving the EU: NHS Funding

Debate between Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. This is such an important point for our economy, as we know in my part of London, where the Barts trust has the largest predicted overspend in NHS history. Does he agree that it is vital that those who campaigned on the pledge that this money would be provided are held to account, because communities such as mine are suffering without investment in the NHS?

[Mr Umunna]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. When I had the pleasure of visiting her constituency the other week, I saw for myself the situation that she describes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Umunna]

The right hon. Lady pre-empts what I am about to say; I shall come on to that precise point.

To be clear, I want the Minister, on behalf of his Department, to give the same commitment that we are asking the Treasury to make, and to outline how his Department will make good on this pledge. I shall explain why this is a pledge that the Government should deliver. The Minister might give a number of reasons, perhaps echoing the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), to explain why the promise given by his ministerial colleagues during the referendum should not be treated as such. I will deal with each of the main possible reasons in turn.

First, there are those who claim that this was not a pledge at all. Nigel Farage, the interim leader of the UK Independence party, said that it was one of the mistakes that he thought the leave campaign made. The current Transport Secretary, who was also a member of the Government at the time of the referendum, has said that Vote Leave’s specific proposal was, in fact, to spend £100 million a week of the £350 million for the NHS that was originally hoped for, commenting that that would be an “aspiration” to be met. Let me tell the Transport Secretary that the poster that the Vote Leave supporters all stood next to did not say that this was an “aspiration”; it was a pledge—pure and simple. There was no qualification on the poster or on the big red bus. This statement was made, and the people who made it should be held to account for it.

Secondly, many leave campaigners deny ever using the £350 million figure. One of them said:

“I always referred to Britain’s net contribution of nearly £10 billion—some £200 million a week…rather than £350 million.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 20WH.]

It is true—my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) touched on this—that the Office for National Statistics said that the £350 million figure was misleading, but the head of the Vote Leave campaign said:

“the £350 million figure is correct and we stand by it.”

Vote Leave, whose banner Government Ministers campaigned under, carried on citing the figure, as my hon. Friend said, and those Ministers must now be held to account.

[Stella Creasy]

I take my lead from the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), who sadly does not appear to be in this Chamber. He was one of the most prominent members of the Vote Leave campaign and said that Brexit must give the NHS a boost. In my part of town, a boost to the NHS is the vital funding that we need to get our NHS back on track. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should listen to the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip about that point?

[Mr Umunna]

I shall come on to him shortly.

A further thing that is said—again, I think this has been touched on—is that not all the people who made these pledges were members of the then Conservative Government. Perhaps that could be said of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson). Well, of the five current members of the Cabinet whom I mentioned, three were members of the then Government and one—the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip—attended the political Cabinet at the time. Yes, the Secretary of State for International Trade was sitting on the Back Benches, but countless other Ministers from outside the Cabinet at the time who are now serving more than make up for that—for instance, the hon. Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and for Stockton South (James Wharton). I could go on. Those are just a few of the people who posed by those posters and next to that big red bus, and they must be held to account.

Finally, it is said—this is the crux of the argument advanced by the right hon. Member for Broxtowe—that the commitment was given by one side in a referendum campaign, not by a Government. I am sorry but that simply will not wash. Many of those people were put up to appear in the media and to campaign on Vote Leave’s behalf precisely because they carried the authority that attaches to Government Ministers. That was why they were used. That was why they were asked to stand by that red bus, and to stand by those posters.

All those key Vote Leave campaigners, whether they were Ministers or not, were Members of this House. If our democracy is to mean anything, it must mean that Members are answerable to the electorate for their policies, and held to account in the House for the things that they say. People cannot go around the country casually promising the world and betraying people by failing to deliver, but then expect to get away with it. We will not forget; we will not let up. It was in the name of parliamentary sovereignty that those Ministers campaigned, and it is time that the House, on behalf of the people whom we are elected to represent, took back control, if we want to use that phrase, and made those Ministers answer.