Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Dorrell Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

With respect to the hon. Lady, she cannot talk about alleged cuts in the NHS while her Front-Bench team support a policy of real cuts in the NHS budget. In the last Opposition day debate, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said that he thought it was irresponsible of the Government to increase the NHS budget in real terms. That means he wants a real cut in the NHS budget, which would make the staffing issues to which she referred much, much worse.

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the most effective things we can do to improve the patient experience of health and care is to improve the co-ordination, not just between the hospital service and community-based health services, but between the NHS and social care, and to put in place the infrastructure, including the IT infrastructure, to make that real?

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point—in fact, I will be giving a speech on this tomorrow—because, in the end, if it is not possible to see a full medical record of some of these frail elderly or heaviest users of the NHS going in and out of the system throughout the year, it is not possible to give them the integrated, joined-up care that they desperately need. This will be a very big priority for us.