National Health Service

Debate between Stephen Hepburn and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)]

If anybody wants to see the direction in which this Government are going with the NHS and what impact their policies are having on it, they should come up to my constituency.

Let us think back to the Prime Minister’s weasel words before the last general election—that the NHS was “safe” in his hands and that he wanted the initials NHS to be synonymous with and to define his name. Then let us look at what is happening today. It is a wonder he can lie in bed straight at night, as we see the NHS in crisis—the only thing it is doing is crying out SOS. He promised that there would be no reorganisation, but what do we get? We get the biggest reorganisation since the NHS was formed, and one set up for one thing and one thing only: to privatise the NHS. Some £3 billion has been spent on that reorganisation and the bill is going up—£3 billion that should have been spent on the sick instead of on P45s going out to thousands of nurses when cuts are implemented. It is disgraceful.

Ministers have only to come to Jarrow to see what is happening. In my local hospital three elderly patients wards have closed, a minor injuries unit has closed and now, to make matters worse, a popular walk-in centre, which sees over 27,000 patients a year, is to close. The closure is opposed by everybody in the area—the council, the trade unions, the patients and the staff.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed that the Government are running true to form, like the previous Conservative Government, when we had bed blocking and people sleeping on trolleys because they could not get a bed in hospital? Has he noticed particularly that local authority budgets could have provided for the elderly and prevented bed blocking?

[Mr Hepburn]

That is exactly the point that the shadow Secretary of State made in his opening speech.

As we heard earlier, local managers are not listening. They are stooges of the Government and they are carrying out the cuts without listening to local people. It is disgraceful. They are not incompetent, and nor are the Government—they know exactly what they are doing. There is a deliberate effort to sabotage the NHS by piling those 27,000 patients a year on to the local doctors.