Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

The business for next week will be:

Monday 10 September—Consideration in Committee of the European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment Decision) Bill [Lords] (day 1).

Tuesday 11 September—Opposition Day (6th allotted day). There will be a debate on tuition fees, followed by a debate on a subject to be announced. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Wednesday 12 September—Remaining stages of the Defamation Bill, followed by a motion relating to the appointment of a new Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

Thursday 13 September—A debate on a motion relating to oil markets, followed by a debate on tax avoidance and evasion. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 14 September—Private Members’ Bills

The provisional business for the week commencing 17 September will include:

Monday 17 September—Second Reading of the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill.

Tuesday 18 September—Motion on the conference recess adjournment, the format of which has been specified by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 13 September will be:

Thursday 13 September—Debate on the dairy industry.

May I say how privileged I am to be appointed Leader of the House? I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), and to the former Deputy Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who takes on important new Government responsibilities. Throughout the House, my predecessor was held in the greatest respect and affection, and continues to be. He saw through important reforms, and I can hope to do no better than to emulate him in how he demonstrated that he understood the importance of being not only Leader of the House but a leader for the House, speaking for the House and representing it in government and beyond, and balancing that with the important responsibility of representing the Government within the House. I look forward to these new responsibilities.

[Ms Eagle]

I welcome the new Leader of the House and join him in paying a warm tribute to his distinguished predecessor. The right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) has given long and distinguished service both in government and to the House. Over the years, he has surprised political pundits with his Lazarus-style tendencies, and perhaps even this time he is merely on a sabbatical and will be back. I also welcome the new Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, and pay tribute to his predecessor, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath).

I also welcome the Chief Whip to his new and extremely challenging job. One of the first things he will have to do is console his colleagues who have been sacked in the reshuffle—and not given knighthoods. If it is any help, I can tell them that, in my experience, being sacked from government does not necessarily mean the end of a Member’s ministerial career. I returned to government in a subsequent reshuffle—under a new Prime Minister.

Over the summer, the Olympics and Paralympics have shown the best of our country, and I salute the tremendous achievements of all our athletes and those who volunteered during the games, who contributed to making it such an inspirational summer. I pay particular tribute to those at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), who did so much to bring the games to this country and make them a success. Also, in the spirit of cross-party unity and wanting, as always, to be helpful, may I single out the part played by the Mayor of London? No one has asked him whether he is a man or a mouse.

Speaking of the Prime Minister, after his disastrous summer, it is hardly a surprise that we have had yet another Government relaunch. After the reshuffle, we have a new right-wing Justice Secretary, an Environment Secretary who is a climate change sceptic and an Equalities Minister who has voted against almost every piece of equality legislation. So now we know: at the end of the rose garden, turn right. Given her record, can the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent statement from the new Equalities Minister, so she can inform the House of her unique approach to her brief?

The new Secretary of State for Health said before the election that a Conservative Government would “crowd-source” ideas, because Conservatives believe in collective wisdom. Will the Leader of the House commend the Chancellor for going to the Olympics stadium the other night to do his own little experiment with crowd-sourcing, and can he tell us what the Chancellor will be doing with the answer he got?

What the British people want is not yet another Government relaunch, but a real plan for jobs and growth, because the Chancellor’s economic policies have failed spectacularly. We now have an economy in the longest double-dip recession since the second world war. Growth forecasts have been cut and borrowing is up by a quarter. The Prime Minister has been on “Daybreak” this morning making announcements that should have been made to this House. When will he learn that cosy chats on the “Daybreak” sofa are no substitutes for a statement to this House? We should not have to rely on urgent questions.

The Deputy Prime Minister said in an interview with The Guardian over the recess that, given the economic situation, it was right to increase taxes on the very wealthy. The next day the Chancellor rubbished the idea. After the reshuffle, does the new roving Economic Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), have the casting vote? With the excitement of the Olympics, I thought I must have forgotten about the Liberal Democrats joining us in the Lobby to vote against a Budget that gave a huge tax cut to millionaires, but according to Hansard the Liberal Democrats voted for it. After the Deputy Prime Minister’s disastrous performance at the Dispatch Box this week, the new Leader of the House might find it difficult to coax him back to the Chamber any time soon, but can he try to get us an urgent statement? The impression at the moment is that the Deputy Prime Minister is saying one thing in public and voting the opposite way in this House.

I look forward very much to working with the Leader of the House. I hope that he can set out his views soon on the proposed House business committee. In the meantime, will he put all our minds at rest, on this first occasion at the Dispatch Box, and rule out a top-down reorganisation of the House of Commons?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her welcome. I am also grateful for her very warm tribute to my predecessor. I know that the House will very much appreciate the intention that he should be further honoured, as a Companion of Honour. It is a rare honour, but one that reflects the regard in which we all hold him.

The hon. Lady is quite right: I recall at the last business questions before the recess that the House was looking forward to the Olympics and Paralympics. In truth, I think all our expectations have been wonderfully exceeded. It has been a most inspirational event, and not only inspirational for a generation, as it was intended to be, but a fabulous showcase for what this country can achieve. We, the Government and the people of this country will be able to depend on that reputation across the world in years to come.

The hon. Lady asked a number of questions and made a number of points. Let me tell her that the changes in the Government are all about ensuring that we take forward our reforms and our focus on growth. All of us, as the Prime Minister absolutely said, recognise the difficulties that we encountered when we came into government. We know—and have known for two and a half years—how difficult they are. In a sense, they have been added to by the problems in the eurozone and the international economic situation. We are not alone in the problems we have to face, so we are focused on growth, and that will be true, as the Prime Minister has rightly said, in every Department—whether in the Department for Education, in developing the skills, the qualifications and the standards that are required; in the Foreign Office, which has been focused on delivering trade and investment, and business relationships across the world; or in the Department for Communities and Local Government, in using the powers that the Localism Act 2011 gave to local authorities and the new planning arrangements to deliver increased growth and build jobs. That is what it will mean in all those Departments. The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that the Labour Government were responsible for the mess that the country was in in 2010, whereas this Government are focused on getting the country out of that mess.

Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (Fraud)

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

May I, through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, thank Mr Speaker for allowing me this evening’s debate. It is pleasure to see you in the Chair on what I think is your first day. I believe that this is the first time that I have addressed the Minister from the Opposition Benches, and I am very pleased to do so. I assure him that it will not be the last time that we will be engaged in these conversations.

From this Adjournment debate on alleged fraud in the Wirral hospital trust, I am looking for three things. First, I am sure that I am not exceptional in the number of constituent cases about alleged fraud that I refer to the relevant authority. In every case I have passed on, whether it be to the Department for Work and Pensions or to the Department of Health, I have never had a satisfactory reply that I could then refer to my constituent. I would not disclose the information, but if I had such a reply, I could say that I had been able to read the papers and assure constituents that they were mistaken in alleging fraud. I could say that a proper investigation had been carried out and we could leave the case there. As I say, however, that has never occurred. One thing I am looking for this evening, then, is for the Government to consider the particular role in which elected representatives sometimes find themselves in handing to the Government alleged cases of fraud, yet never being able satisfactorily to report back to their constituents.

Secondly, I have tried to use the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in order to gain the information that Wirral hospital trust denied me. I was refused on the basis that disclosure of the information would provide me with sensitive personal information such as the name of the person against whom the allegations of fraud were made. However, given that everybody involved in the case knows the name of the doctor, although I have never used it in public, it seems somewhat farcical to use the Freedom of Information Act in this way to prevent my gaining access to reports that have been commissioned.

Thirdly, this saga has been going on for a long time, and I have no intention of letting go of it, so I hope that the Minister might be able to advise me on the next best steps to take to resolve the issue. Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to remind the House of what happened.

All too long ago, one of my constituents was sitting in the surgery at their doctor’s. The doctor was engaged in a telephone conversation with one of his patients, who turned out to be a private patient. During the conversation, for reasons that I cannot possibly explain, the doctor assured the person that they had been treated as an NHS patient although they were being charged as a private patient.

I started to look into the case. I asked both the primary care trust and the hospital trust—Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust—to investigate. I had a meeting with the hospital trust at which the chairman and the senior directors were present, as well as the locally based official who was in charge of countering fraud in the health service. At that stage the doctor admitted that, as a result of an error, he had put through as NHS patients about 180 patients whom he was charging as private patients, but who were being given tests as NHS patients.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Field]

I will give way in a moment to my good and hon. Friend from a neighbouring constituency.

The doctor admitted that that had been an error in all cases, and repaid money. I asked, through its chairman, whether the trust—on the basis of the core of cases of private patients being fed through the NHS—would examine other procedures in the hospital to establish whether any of those 180-odd patients had had scans or X-rays, and whether the doctor had again forgotten to declare that they were private patients when ticking the forms assuring the NHS that they were, in fact, NHS patients.

[Ms Eagle]

My right hon. Friend has raised an issue that affects all of us who represent constituents in the Wirral, which is served by the hospital concerned. Does he think that this individual case of fraud involving an individual doctor raises issues about conflicts of interest that may well resonate in other areas of the NHS, and does he agree, on the basis of his experience of this case, that there are general rules that all Members should consider applying more generally throughout the NHS to avoid such financial conflicts of interest?

[Mr Field]

I strongly agree, and I hope that at some stage the medical profession will give serious consideration to how the interface between the public and private sectors might be policed in the context of health.

As the fraud officer present said that it was quite reasonable to undertake the next stage of the inquiries, I left the meeting, only to find that later the chairman of the hospital trust and her senior executives had said that no such investigation would take place, and that I would not have access to their reports on this case of alleged fraud unless I was prepared to sign a document saying that after reading the information I would never use any of it in public debate. I was not prepared to sign such a gagging clause.

I appealed for access to the documents concerned under the Freedom of Information Act. Because the hospital trust is not known for its efficiency, it applied to block my appeal under the wrong section of the Act. When I appealed to the commissioner, he had to point out to the trust that if it wanted to block my original appeal it would have to use another part of the Act, which of course it then did.

I then appealed to the tribunal, which ruled that I should not have access to the document, or documents, because if I had such access I would gain sensitive personal information to which I was not entitled, such as the name of the person against whom the allegations were being made. As at every stage everyone who was in that room has known the name of the doctor concerned but none of us has made it public, it seems bizarre that it was on those grounds that I was denied access to the counter-fraud report which is alleged to have been undertaken.

Since the attempts to grapple with that individual case of fraud, the same hospital trust has had to repay more than £1 million to what was the primary care trust but is now Wirral Health, because it was found to be fiddling its accident and emergency figures. Quite how that came about and how it was decided that the fraud amounted to £1 million-plus I do not know, but that money has been repaid. I allege that there is a culture of fraud in that hospital trust, which is not being taken seriously by the chairman and the directors of the trust. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

One last point concerns the Freedom of Information Act. I am well aware that the Government have their own legislative programme, but I would be grateful if the Minister would take back the fact that there may be problems in two respects where MPs refer fraud cases to the administration for investigation. One is the one that I touched on at the beginning of my remarks. As elected representatives, we are never put in a position to report back fully to our constituents. Obviously, we deny them any sensitive personal information, but we cannot say that we have read the relevant papers and we would like to be able to assure them that their concerns about fraud are unfounded.

Secondly, I took up the case only because a constituent referred me to a case of alleged fraud. The doctor admits that somehow in 180-odd cases he happened to tick the wrong boxes, claiming the people concerned were NHS patients, rather than private patients. It seems wrong that I am denied access, as the elected representative of an area, to the counter-fraud allegations that have taken place.

There are two issues, and I would be grateful if the Minister reflected on them with his colleagues, although he may wish to comment on them in the debate. The case has dragged on for some time, but as I have said— I know the Minister is convinced of this—I am not going to let it go yet. I would be interested to hear how the Government think that we might take the case forward to a successful conclusion. I wait to hear what the Minister says.