Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Opposition Front-Bench position. We are looking forward to the exchanges with him and his colleagues, including during questions today.

Twenty-two trusts have told us, in the course of our looking at where the impediments are to their financial sustainability for the future, that the nature of the PFI contracts entered into by the previous Government is a significant problem in this respect. It is absolutely right for the NHS to build hospitals, which is why we are, for example, building a new hospital at Whitehaven in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. [Interruption.] I beg his pardon—in the constituency of the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed); we are building so many new hospitals. The nature of the PFI projects we enter into must be to provide value for money and be sustainable in the future. That is something that the previous Government failed to achieve.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

3. What representations he has received on the reorganisation of urgent care in the past six months.

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

A search of the Department of Health’s database revealed that 131 items of correspondence, and five parliamentary questions relating to the reorganisation of urgent care were received in the past six months. In addition, I have received three requests to meet MPs on this subject.

[Steve Baker]

Wycombe hospital is currently going through a consultation on a change to urgent care services, and it is doing so in the context of the betrayal felt after “Shaping Health Services” in 2004, which removed our accident and emergency department. I would like to escape this cycle through mutuality. What is the Government’s position on mutuality? Will the Minister join my call for directly owned community health services?

[Mr Burns]

The Government have supported the right to request, which has enabled 45 staff-led social enterprises to be established. This policy has supported approximately 25,000 staff into social enterprises, with contracts of roughly £900 million. NHS staff have been assisted by a wide-ranging programme of support from the Department.