Autumn Statement

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

These are very important issues. Obviously, the safety of properties in the private rented sector is extremely important. I am not a fan of rent controls, because I am worried that that would reduce the supply of housing to the private rented sector. I point out to the right hon. Gentleman, however, that we lifted the local housing allowance during the pandemic to help people and we are keeping it at that higher level.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

People will note the trademark calm and decency of my right hon. Friend today in his credible autumn statement. The current Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee agrees with his predecessor, who I am glad agrees with himself, in welcoming the independent verified workforce plan that is, of course, the rock upon which we will build a sustainable future NHS.

I welcome the additional social care funding of £7 billion over the next two years, which, as the Chancellor knows, was a recommendation of the Committee, and the £3.3-billion uplift in the NHS budget for the next three years. I ask him—he knows where I am going to go with this—to work with us to push his colleagues in the Department and in the NHS on the long-promised cancer plan. The sharp rise in cancer waits that we are seeing at the moment have a devastating impact on people’s lives, but they also have a domino effect that is understandably having an impact on care across the NHS.

[Jeremy Hunt]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his role as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. I know that he will do a brilliant job and that he will hold me and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to account strongly and tenaciously on everything to do with cancer and public health. I welcome that, because they are very important areas.

Economic Update

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I have the greatest respect for the hon. Gentleman, and we have had many exchanges in this House over the years. I think actions speak louder than words, and I do not think I could have been plainer in going out this weekend and today to accept that mistakes were made. The country wants to see us correcting those mistakes, and that is what we have done.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows that I am very pleased to see him in Downing Street. The sense of relief expressed to me this weekend as I was out and about in my constituency was palpable. I welcome his statement—I welcome its realism and honesty—and I welcome his trademark sense of optimism in his final remark, from which I could certainly learn. He is right that growth demands confidence. Does he have confidence that, when the Bank makes its decisions a week or so after his statement in two weeks’ time, the rise in interest rates, the mere prospect of which is terrifying my constituents, is not inevitable?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generous comments. It is not for the Government to say what the Bank of England does when the Monetary Policy Committee makes its decision on interest rates, but of course I have had conversations with the Governor about what the Bank needs to hear for it to feel that the inflationary pressures will be lower and so it will not have to make as high an increase as some people are predicting. Our constituents’ mortgages are at the top of my mind.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

Like the shadow Health Secretary, I rise to speak in support of amendment 29, which the Government plan to vote down. This wholly innocuous amendment simply asks them to publish, every two years, independent projections of the number of doctors and nurses we should be training. The Government are rejecting the amendment because they think it would compel them to train more doctors, which is true, but it ignores the fact that this is the best way to reduce the £6.2 billion locum bill that is currently devastating the NHS budget.

The shadow Health Secretary was very generous to me, and I return the compliment by saying that I think he is doing an excellent job. I hope he remains shadow Health Secretary for many years.

I ask the House, in the nicest possible way, to reject the compromises proposed by the excellent Minister. The Government are publishing a 15-year framework, but he knows and we know that it will simply detail the number of doctors that the Government think they can afford, not the number of doctors we actually need. In the past—even last year—when the NHS has tried to publish the number of doctors it thinks it needs, it has been stopped by the Government. Why is there this reluctance to publish the number of doctors we are going to need in 15 years’ time, given that 97% of hospital bosses say that staff shortages are having an impact on the quality of care they are giving and there are 110,000 vacancies? The answer is simple: it is because the Government know we are not training enough right now. What message does it send to young doctors, newly qualified midwives and newly qualified nurses, who are incredibly stressed and pressured by the situation on the frontline, if we are saying to them, “Look, it is really tough now, but we are not even prepared to train enough doctors, nurses and midwives for the future to relieve that stress and pressure later on in your career”?

[Steve Brine]

I will support my right hon. Friend in standing up for Lords amendment 29, because when I look back to our time together at the Department, when we published the long-term plan and when I published the cancer plan, I know that the thing that undermined us most of all was when the stakeholders came back and said, “Where’s the people plan that goes alongside it?” Because we could not answer that, we were always playing catch-up. This Lords amendment sets that train back on the right track.

[Jeremy Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. He was an excellent cancer Minister. In our time, the biggest pressure was funding, but now people say that the biggest pressure is workforce. It is devastating for morale to refuse to address this issue at a time such as this. Any Government who care about the long-term future of the NHS have an absolute responsibility to make sure that we are training enough doctors and nurses for the future. Any Government who care about value for money for taxpayers should welcome a measure that will help us control a locum and agency budget that has got massively out of control. That is why opposing Lords amendment 29 makes no sense either for the Department of Health and Social Care or for the Treasury. This is why it is supported by more than 100 health organisations; every royal college and every health think tank; people in all parts of this House; many peers in the other place, including Lord Stevens, who used to run the NHS; and—this is the point I wish to conclude with—by thousands of thousands of doctors and nurses on the frontline.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

Select Committee Chairs have to hold the Government to account, but just occasionally they also have to hold the other parties to account. I am afraid that today is one of those days, because the opposition of the parties on the Benches opposite to this Bill does not bear any scrutiny at all. That is not just because Gordon Brown proposed an increase in national insurance in 2002 to fund the NHS or because senior members of those parties have supported NI as a way of funding the social care system as recently as three years ago; it is because for more than a decade the parties opposite have argued, with some justification, that more money needs to go into the health and care, and this Bill will add £12 billion every year into our health and care system. That is more than any wealth tax would generate—to my knowledge, it is more than any of them have been arguing—and it is more progressive than using plain NI, because it is progressive between the generations. That is because, for the first time, working pensioners will be paying this tax, as well as people who pay dividends.

I may not make friends on my side of the House either, because while I commend the courage of a Conservative Prime Minister and a Conservative Chancellor, supported by his team, in doing what we find extremely difficult, for the right reasons—increasing taxes—I fear that if what we have done so far is tough, what is to come will be tougher still. I say that because if you put your hands into people’s pockets and take money out of them, and they do not see visible improvements in the services they receive, they get very angry indeed.

[Steve Brine]

Will my right hon. Friend use his position on the Select Committee and his vast experience to scrutinise this plan, which I mentioned to the Minister but which I know the Secretary of State has agreed with NHS England and me, as to how exactly they are going to spend every penny of our constituents’ money on this catch-up programme? Will my right hon. Friend’s Select Committee scrutinise that for us?

[Jeremy Hunt]

As it happens, we are currently conducting an inquiry into how to deal with the covid backlog, so I commit to my hon. Friend, with whom I so enjoyed working at the Department of Health and Social Care, that we will certainly do that.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

2nd reading
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

It is unquestionable that we have a challenge with the GP workforce. It is about numbers, yes, but does my right hon. Friend agree that constituents have a big challenge with access to general practice? We currently do not have the right balance between telemedicine and in-person medicine.

[Jeremy Hunt]

There is a big issue, and my hon. Friend is aware from his time at the Department of Health that its root cause is capacity in the system. These capacity issues taken together are why the Health Foundation says that, in just over a decade, we risk a workforce gap in the NHS of about half a million people. That is why this is such a big issue. I urge the Secretary of State to think about that during the Bill’s passage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Brine]

The hon. Lady makes a sensible point. There is obviously a process in place whereby that can happen, but if she is asking whether I agree with a liberal immigration policy to help our health service, then absolutely, yes I do. Addressing the cancer workforce and the wider NHS staffing picture is not an omission from the Bill—we cannot legislate staff shortages out of existence—but if we do not address that issue and face up to our long-term structural gaps, many of the reforms around tackling the backlog and building back better will not amount to a row of beans.

[Jeremy Hunt]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the extraordinary work he did when he was a Minister on early diagnosis of cancer. Is he aware that the Health and Social Care Committee has just opened an inquiry—we had our opening session yesterday—into that issue, and into how we can get the right workforce in place to deal with those important matters?

[Steve Brine]

I was aware of that, and I am pleased to hear it. The Select Committee will soon have Cally Palmer before it—she is the national cancer director and one of the best in the business—and I look forward to following what she says. In advance of the comprehensive spending review, the Bill should include a requirement on the Government to publish modelling of the future supply of the entire healthcare workforce.

On primary care, I welcome the formal creation of integrated care systems, but we need them to realise their potential, and to do so fast. If they are going to work, general practice needs to embrace the wider primary care family, which means finally to recognise the potential of community pharmacy, ophthalmology and dental services as vehicles of prevention as much as of treatment.

Finally, if we move upstream of the Bill, what we do must be about prevention. We hear talk this weekend of a waiting list touching 13 million people. Let us tackle that for sure, but let us also get behind the food and drink clauses in part 5, and think about the future and our children as much as about the present. Several years ago I was fortunate to write up the high fat, sugar and/or salt proposals as part of chapter 2 of the child obesity plan, and I am pleased that the 9 pm watershed is legislated for in the Bill. I pay tribute to Jamie Oliver and his Bite Back 2030 campaign, and the young people involved with that, as well as to Cancer Research UK for its support. I realise that not everyone on these Benches, or perhaps outside, supports that move, and I agree that it will have little impact if that is its grand sum. Ministers need to take the tackling obesity strategy that was published last year, implement it all, and then go again.

I welcome the clauses on the fluoridation of water supplies. Let us stop debating whether we do that and —to borrow a phrase—follow the science.

In conclusion, the Bill is worthy of support on Second Reading. There will be an awful lot of work to do in Committee and the other place, but I will certainly support it this evening.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The reason that we got rid of that guarantee was that the number of people who were able to see a GP within 48 hours was falling in the last year in which the target was in place. It was not working, and that is why the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners were against it. In the same survey that the hon. Gentleman quoted, the RCGP said it estimated that there had been a 10% increase in the number of GP appointments compared with when his Government were in office.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

2. What recent steps he has taken to improve maternity care.

Children’s Heart Surgery

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I actually agree with the hon. Gentleman: one of the biggest casualties of the length of time it is taking to resolve this very difficult issue is morale at the excellent children’s heart units that we have across this country, and recruitment is one of the biggest concerns in that regard. Resources are now allocated independently by NHS England, but I know that its priority is to ensure the safety of services.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

May I thank the Secretary of State for his statement? Once he received the IRP report, he had little choice but to make this decision. I feel sure that it will be met with a deep sigh in Southampton, just because of the lack of certainty that it now extends for the trust there. To what extent will the Safe and Sustainable process now be rolled back? How far will it be rolled back? Is the number of centres now back in the “not sure” box? As he has said, we still face an incredibly difficult decision and there is still a reduction in the number of centres—or is there?

[Mr Hunt]

There will be a reduction in the number of centres at the end of this process, as is clear from what the IRP report says. It thinks we would have better outcomes for children if we concentrated surgery in fewer places, with more comprehensive facilities offered in all those places. However, we need to get the process right in order to get there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The reason there is so much pressure on A and Es is the disastrous GP contract negotiated by the hon. Lady’s party in government, since when—I do not know whether she was listening to what I said earlier—an additional 4 million people every year are going to our A and Es. That is what is causing the huge pressure, and that is what we are determined to put right.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

T10. The Secretary of State will know that the number of people donating organs after their death has risen by 50% in the past five years. Does he credit the network of specialist nurses who support bereaved families in hospital for that increase and, if so, what lessons does he take from that?

[Mr Hunt]

This is an example of a programme that has been a huge success and I pay tribute to the work done by the previous Government as well as this Government in making sure that we can tackle this very serious problem. All I would say to my hon. Friend is that three people still die every day, I believe, because we are not able to get the organ donations we need. We should not think that, despite the success, we have solved this problem. There is much work to do and I personally think that it is something that everyone should think about doing. It can be a source of personal pride to put oneself on the organ donation list and we should all encourage our constituents to think about it as well.

NHS Commissioning Board (Mandate)

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) may know that there is a mental health helpline specifically for veterans because we recognise the importance of this decision. He will also have seen from the mandate that mental health is mentioned in virtually every part of it, whether in the context of avoiding mortality from extreme mental illness or helping people with long-term conditions, which would also cover post-traumatic stress disorder.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

The Secretary of State rightly places survival rates at the top of his agenda and identifies the importance of early diagnosis. When it comes to breast screening, the switch to digital is critical in spotting cancer early. Does he agree that the NHS must move faster in making that switch to digital?

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely agree. That can be hugely transformational in terms of patient outcomes. Many patients would be astonished to know that a full medical record is not available to consultants in hospitals before they operate on them. We need to put that right because it could transform the decisions that surgeons take in extreme cases. So my hon. Friend is right, and we must press on with this very fast.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Brine and Jeremy Hunt

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

8. What recent progress his Department has made on the development of local television.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Last month I announced that 65 locations in the country could be pioneer locations for a new generation of local TV services, and we will be laying three orders before Parliament before Christmas to make that happen.

[Mr Brine]

I thank the Secretary of State for his reply and for driving forward local TV with such belief; that is all credit to him. May I draw his attention to a bid for a local TV licence that is being put together in my constituency, which places the media and journalist facility at the university of Winchester and Southampton Solent university in Southampton at its heart? Does he agree that if local TV is to work this time around, and the next generation of Dimblebys is to be found, we must draw on the technical expertise within our universities and the students and what they have to offer?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He of course knows about this as a former journalist. Those at universities have been among the most enthusiastic people about local TV, not least at Birmingham City university, which has hosted two events on local TV in the past year. The reason is that they see this as an opportunity to found a new sector in the creative industries, which employ more than 50,000 people in the United States. That makes the opposition of the Labour party all the more extraordinary.