Health and Social Care

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Andy Burnham

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I am grateful that the Secretary of State has intervened because yet again he has got his facts wrong. Am I not correct in saying that in the first two years of the last Parliament the Government cut staffing further from the levels I left by 6,000? [Interruption.] No, he and his predecessor cut nurse places by 6,000 in the first two years of the last Parliament. Separately, they cut nurse training places, leading to a shortfall in nurse recruitment of around 8,000 in the last Parliament. When the Francis report was published, the NHS had fewer staff than it had in 2010 and fewer nurses coming through training.

The Secretary of State likes to blame everybody else, but how about taking a bit of blame himself for once? He left the NHS in the grip of private staffing agencies, and since the Francis report a small fortune has had to be spent on private staffing agencies. The figures have gone through the roof on his watch and he has failed to do anything about it. That is why people will not believe that the NHS is safe in his hands.

[Paul Farrelly]

Would my right hon. Friend care to remind the Secretary of State of a privatisation that has increased the NHS deficit and not improved efficiency? After the proposed transfer of a scanning contract from the Royal Stoke university hospital there was rightly a public outcry. The scanner remains there, but none the less the private company, Alliance Medical, is staying in there, taking its cut and the cost to the taxpayer has increased.

[Andy Burnham]

I remember visiting with my hon. Friend. Let us put the facts on the record. The Secretary of State said a moment ago that privatisation was not happening, but it is happening. It is affecting my hon. Friend’s constituents, where cancer scanning has now been privatised. What happened? The contract was, I believe, given to Alliance at £87 million, whereas the NHS had bid £80 million. It was given to the private sector, however, which has now subcontracted the NHS at the same price of £80 million, creaming off £7 million. That is a scandalous waste of NHS resources when the NHS is facing a £2 billion deficit this year.

National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Andy Burnham

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

It is one of the biggest scandals of recent times that people in this House who have links to private health, and many more in the other place, put through legislation that did not have a mandate from the British people and from which they would benefit financially. The story of that will one day be told in full.

The reorganisation has dragged the NHS down and left it on the brink. A reorganisation that was meant to put GPs at the heart of the NHS has left patients waiting days or even weeks to get a GP appointment. This week, there was news that the NHS has missed its cancer standard for the third quarter, leaving thousands of cancer patients waiting more than two months for treatment to start. It is a reorganisation that has systematically run down the NHS and opened the door for it to be sold off.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

The reorganisation was unnecessary. My right hon. Friend is no doubt aware that in Staffordshire a £1 billion cancer contract has been put out to tender. The newly rebuilt local hospital is concerned that that will destabilise its finances. Does he agree that we should be very careful about going down that route without proper consideration?

[Andy Burnham]

The example that my hon. Friend quotes is the best example of the fact that the Government see no limit at all on the scale or extent of privatisation in the NHS, both in terms of the monetary value— £1 billion—and the fact that they are prepared to put cancer services out on the open market.

National Health Service

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

No. Let me explain the position to the hon. Lady so that she understands it. It is correct that in the previous Parliament, not Monitor, but the chief executive of the NHS, suggested that the NHS would have to make around £20 billion of efficiency savings over the four years of this Parliament. That is called the Nicholson challenge, which I accepted. However, contrary to what the Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box last week, it was intended that every penny of that money would go back into the NHS to help it to deal with the pressures that it faces. I am afraid that the Government are again misrepresenting my position.

My position is different from the Secretary of State’s because that challenge, on its own, would have been all-consuming for the NHS, meaning that it would have had to focus every ounce of its energy on rising to that challenge. The last thing in the world that the NHS needs is a huge reorganisation, because it will take its eye off the ball, meaning that it cannot rise to that challenge.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that during the so-called “pause for thought”, nothing was done to stop the NHS reorganising ahead of legislation that was yet to go through Parliament? Was that not contemptuous of both Parliament and of the genuinely held concerns of Liberal Democrat coalition partners?

[Andy Burnham]

Frankly, it is disgraceful that primary care trusts were allowed to disintegrate before Parliament had given its consent to those changes, leaving the NHS in limbo in most communities represented in the House. I have said that the Government have put the NHS in the danger zone, and I mean it. There is no capacity on the ground to help the NHS through these difficult times. It has lost the grip it would have needed to take us through the financial challenge, and I lay that charge directly at the Secretary of State’s door.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Paul Farrelly and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

We did plenty of things to improve the quality of teaching, including through Teach First. I spoke about giving all young people the chance to get into the best sixth-form colleges in the country, so that they can access good teaching. Would the hon. Lady care to explain how, under her party’s plans, those young people will carry on being able to benefit from the very best teaching and get the best opportunities in life? I do not think she can do so.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

EMA was being piloted when my right hon. Friend and I joined the House, and it has been a real achievement in the 10 years since. Some 1,700 students at Newcastle-under-Lyme college benefit from it, and it has raised staying-on rates. Where is the fairness in removing that income from those students and their households? Is it not the case that the impact of that will be felt not in the likes of Surrey Heath but in Bermondsey, Sheffield, Leigh, Manchester, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent?

[Andy Burnham]

It will be felt keenly in such places. Combined with the trebling of tuition fees, my worry is that it will have a depressing effect on the aspirations of young people in the former industrial and inner-city communities that we worked so hard to lift during our time in government. That is why today’s debate goes to the heart of why I and many of my hon. Friends came into politics. We care passionately about people’s opportunities in those areas, and we are not prepared to see the ladder kicked away from under young people in the way that the Government propose.

The evidence that I have given on the educational benefits of EMA demolishes the claim that it has no benefit to society beyond persuading 10% of students to stay on. Until recently, I was at a loss to understand how Ministers could make that one-sided argument and use such selective facts to back up their decision, but maybe I have stumbled on the answer. Last week, I came across a parliamentary question answered by the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), asking how many further education and sixth-form colleges the Secretary of State had visited since he was appointed in May. I shall share with the House the revealing answer:

“The Secretary of State has made no such visits since this date.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 342W.]

The Secretary of State was quick to get to his feet a little earlier, and I trust that he will rise again now to correct what surely must have been an inaccurate answer.