Local Pharmaceutical Services

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I think that this is the first time I have spoken when you are in the Chair, Mr Howarth. I hope that I do not receive a yellow card from you, given the rumour that is going around at the moment that the refereeing system from soccer will be brought into this place.

I do not have a constituency interest to declare inasmuch as the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) does. I thank her for securing this debate, but I represent urban Rotherham, which is a little different from some of the other constituencies represented here. My interest is that I chair the all-party pharmacy group, as I have done for nearly five years in this Parliament. I also have a personal interest in pharmacy and its development.

I am sure that most of us know that pharmacies provide services that are vital to some patients. Without financial support, we could lose them and patients would not be easily able to access other health services. The current system ensures that the benefits of access to pharmacy networks are spread widely. Furthermore, if small pharmacies have to close, local patients may find it harder to access and receive advice on medicines and support for healthy living services, such as stopping smoking or weight loss, that pharmacies have begun to offer.

The lack of a pharmacy in many areas could lead to additional strain on other parts of the NHS. The hon. Lady mentioned GP surgeries and A and E. We all know about the pressure on A and E: I think nationally 50% of people who attend A and E get no treatment whatsoever. Some of them may not need treatment, but what they should get could be provided by a pharmacy or dentist, not by the local hospital. I think last year we had 76 people turn up at Rotherham’s A and E with toothache. Quite frankly, we need to start educating the population a bit more about where they should go, but clearly the pharmacy has a major role to play.

Two of the four organisations who support the all-party pharmacy group are the PSNC and Pharmacy Voice, which have been highlighted by the hon. Lady, and I have talked to them briefly about this issue. The all-party group has not looked at that in the past four years, but we have looked at lots of issues and had many meetings with both Ministers and civil servants about pharmacy developments. Those organisations tell me that they certainly believe that sufficient funding is available in the NHS to support pharmacy, as has already been said, but they are concerned about the responses that some contractors have received locally.

PSNC has pressed NHS England to give this matter urgent attention, stressing the impact on contractor and patients of any delay. As was pointed out well, there are four weeks to go and there must be deep concern in areas where matters have not been settled that pharmacies may go under. Those two organisations also believe that NHS England needs to consider and confirm its position on each of the pharmacies urgently. The overwhelming majority have strong cases for continued funding.

There are many reasons why a pharmacy is a vital component of a community. Indeed, pharmacies lie at the heart of a community. Community pharmacies are the most accessible health care locations in the country: they are the more than 11,500 places in England where people can go to get their prescriptions dispensed and receive advice from experts on medicines and support to help them make lifestyle choices. Many community pharmacies offer extended opening hours and weekend services. Unlike many GP services, they are more available to the population than ever before.

In one of the last two meetings of the all-party group, we looked at the new medicine service that pharmacists are deeply involved in to help patients to adjust, if need be, to the medicines prescribed to them. Then, just last week, we had a round-table discussion with many organisations representing patients with mental health problems on whether issues such as mental health should come under that new service. That debate is ongoing, but it shows the potential for pharmacists to help people.

Community pharmacy also helps to prevent ill health and protect the public. The provision of smoking cessation services, which has already been mentioned, as well as health checks and, here in London, seasonal influenza vaccination programmes and emergency hormonal contraception are all examples of how pharmacies help to reduce public risk and mitigate potential downstream costs for the NHS.

This winter, the all-party group looked deeply at influenza vaccines. London is contracted to do that, unlike many other parts of the country, which is another area where we can take the burden off GP services. I have no doubt that we all read the e-mails we get constantly from the British Medical Association about the pressure on GP services, and measures such as professional pharmacists giving influenza jabs seem to be common sense to most people. We should look at expanding the London contract.

Committed, trained, competent pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, dispensers and counter assistants are often the first point of contact for the public. More than 1.6 million visits a day are made to community pharmacies, which is more than to any other primary care provider. Many years ago, I saw the real strength of pharmacies. I took my family of young children to Spain. One of them fell ill and I said in the hotel, “We may need a doctor,” and they said, “Well, just go up to the local pharmacist.” I have to say that I was impressed, not just that they could understand my Yorkshire accent—or English, if that is what it is—but by the advice we got, with no need to go and bother anyone else. It was clear that, years ago, other parts of Europe were using pharmacists as the great pillars of strength that they are. We now do that, but we should continue to do so. Indeed, that is one of that major reasons why I took over the chair of the all-party group.

At a time when the England’s high streets are under siege, it is important to remember that pharmacies employ local people and help to bring variety over and above betting and charity shops—another vital issue—with a network of premises reaching out into communities, especially deprived ones. There is no evidence to show that simply reducing the number of pharmacies will improve care for patients. Central to the future development of community pharmacies is supporting them to become hubs for health care in local communities, to be the first port of call for health advice to help people to manage their health and well-being, both in self-limiting common conditions and in supporting greater self-care in the management of long-term conditions.

We do have healthy living pharmacists up and down the land now. About 10% to 12% of pharmacists give people advice on lifestyle issues on a daily basis. I do not want to encourage the Front-Bench Members to start having a go at one another about the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that went through earlier in the Parliament. I did serve on the Bill Committee, and as the Minister has heard me say before, I supported some of the changes, particularly moving public health back into the community.

There are two things in that Act that have not been on people’s lips since. One was reducing health inequalities. It is essential to have local pharmacists, working in areas where we have known inequalities. The other one was population health. Again, we do not seem to be talking about not looking just at people who are ill. I have often said that the national health service has been a national ill health service in reality: it responds to people who are ill.

If we are to get public health right and improve health in this century, we must move away from the idea that the NHS is here as an ill health service and towards being proactive. Lifestyles are a bigger threat to public health than anything else. Population health is crucial and I see no better primary health care practitioners with better numerical access to the population than local pharmacists. Although that is not about the potential threat to pharmacies, which should be protected—quite right, too, in the circumstances—that will be a growing issue and pharmacies should become a proactive health service in years to come. To lose pharmacists through these changes, if they happen, will not help in any way whatsoever.

I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say to some of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North, particularly on the ticking clock, which stands at four weeks. If I was running a business such as a pharmacy now and I had got as close to that time as that, I would be deeply worried, as I would be for the people who work in the pharmacy with me.

Maternity Services (Morecambe Bay)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There were, clearly, very serious flaws in the way the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman operated, particularly in the case of Joshua Titcombe. My hon. Friend will know that the PHSO is accountable to this House through the Public Administration Committee, and not through the Government and the Department of Health. The Public Administration Committee is considering this issue in a great deal of detail to see what lessons need to be learned. I think one of the issues is the level of expertise within the PHSO and, with the greatest of respect, a certain lack of confidence in its ability to understand when there has been a clinical failure. I think everyone agrees that one of the things we need to do is to ensure that it can draw on medical expertise. It needs to make sure that its culture is as open and transparent as the culture it would like to see inside the NHS.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said that the fitness to practise of seven midwives is currently being considered by the National Midwifery Council. Given that this matter goes back over a decade, were any health professionals, either doctors or nurses, referred to their regulatory bodies during any of the incidents he outlined earlier?

[Mr Hunt]

I am not aware that they were. If that turns out to be the case, that would be extremely worrying. Since Dr Kirkup started his investigation, he has been in touch with the regulatory bodies throughout the process. He has not waited until today to refer back to them any names of people where he thinks there may be a concern.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I visited the Haven last week with my hon. Friend, and I was enormously impressed by everything I heard, including the extraordinary testimonies of people with personality disorders who had benefited so much from the Haven’s service. In my view, it would be incredibly sad and very worrying if that service were to be lost. I am happy to invite the clinical commissioning group and the mental health trust to a meeting in the Department to discuss how it can be saved.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I recently met the five UK Youth Parliament Members from Rotherham, who talked about the lack of facilities for mental health help in education, both further education and state education. May I say to the Minister that it is all right saying that it is up to local commissioning groups, but where is the leadership, when our young people are being left in extremely difficult situations and are seen by some professionals but, sadly, not health professionals?

[Norman Lamb]

The local Members of the Youth Parliament the right hon. Gentleman met make an incredibly important point. I refer him to the children and young people’s mental health and well-being taskforce, which will report very soon. I think that the role of schools will be crucial in its conclusions, and I encourage him to look at the report when it emerges.

National Health Service

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, and to follow the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith).

My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) mentioned private health insurance. In America, 80% of the population have great health care through private health insurance, but for the many people who cannot afford any private health insurance and rely on charity, it degrades very steeply. My parents used to have to rely on charity in the 1930s in this country. If any so-called political party is talking about returning to health insurance, I have to say that people will get what they can afford and the bulk of people will get very little. What Nigel Farage said the other day was completely consistent with UKIP’s 2010 manifesto— I have a copy of it.

I want to talk briefly about the pressures on accident and emergency. It is no coincidence that when the economy is being run more “efficiently”, as I think the hon. Member for Norwich North put it, through cuts and austerity, there will be an effect on services. Figures from an Age UK report that came out this week show that despite rising demand from growing numbers of people in need of support, the amount spent on social care services for older people has fallen nationally by £1.1 billion, or 14.4%, since 2011, even accounting for additional funding from the NHS, and by a total of £1.4 billion, or 17.7%, since 2005-06. That is quite a large cut.

According to the Health and Social Care Information Centre, between 2010-11 and 2013, the number of older people receiving home care fell by 31%, from 542,000 to 370,000; the number of day care places plummeted by 66.9%, from 178,000 to 59,000; and the number of older people receiving vital equipment and adaptations to help them remain safely at home dropped by 41.6%. This is the austerity that the people on the Government Benches say our economy needs.

[Sarah Newton]

rose—

[Kevin Barron]

In a few minutes—let me get to my third page, and I will gladly give way.

Spending on home care has dropped since 2011 by 19.4%, from £2.2 billion to £1.8 billion, while the amount spent on day care has fallen even more dramatically, by 30%, from £378 million to £264 million.

[Sarah Newton]

I read the Age UK report with great interest, but the data, which the hon. Gentleman has cited, is aggregated information from across England. Not all local authorities are cutting social care. Some really good local authorities are coping with the reductions in funding from central Government, prioritising the needs of the most vulnerable people in their communities and finding innovative ways of working with the NHS and the voluntary sector to improve the self-reported well-being of the people they serve. It is not the blanket situation across the UK that he describes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Barron]

That is not a denial that the figures are true. They are true. These are the facts and figures of what austerity under this Government has introduced to local government and social care.

The cuts have happened at the same time as the number of people aged 65 and over has increased by 1.2 million. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said:

“This devastating scorecard speaks for itself and it lays bare the fact that our state funded social care system is in calamitous, quite rapid decline. Today, many hospitals are finding it hard to discharge older people and commentators are asking why this challenge seems to be growing, year on year. A big part of the explanation is revealed by this scorecard: the marked decline in central government funding for social care and the resultant reduction in support for older people to live independently at home - this at the same time as their numbers are rising.”

She continued:

“Until recently the impact of the decline in social care has been relatively hidden, but social care is a crucial pressure valve for the NHS and the evidence of what happens when it is too weak to fulfil that function is clear for us all to see.”

She maps that out pretty well.

Councillor Izzi Seccombe, of the Local Government Association, said the system was “chronically underfunded”. She said:

“Councils have protected our most vulnerable people as far as possible, often at the expense of other services, and we will continue to prioritise those most in need.”

She continued:

“However, the combined pressures of insufficient funding, growing demand, escalating costs and a 40% cut to local government budgets across this parliament mean that despite councils’ best efforts they are having to make tough decisions about the care services they can provide.”

This councillor is the Conservative leader of Warwickshire county council—not somebody from an urban area but a Conservative who knows exactly what austerity is creating in Warwickshire, and probably elsewhere as well.

On 7 January, following an urgent question on A and E and major incidents, I raised in the House an issue about an elderly member of my family. In response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and me, the Secretary of State mentioned the better care programme but said little else about the problems facing people in hospital. That member of my family was actually my mother, who was in Rotherham hospital, having been admitted to A and E on 9 December. Two days later, she was told she could go home, as there was no medical need for her to be there. She spent her 93rd birthday in Rotherham hospital on 24 December and was discharged on 5 January—with no medical reason to be in that hospital all the time from 11 December until then.

I have since checked the reductions in my local authority’s adult services budget. This year thus far, the reduction has been over 6%. Over the last full financial year, the reduction was over 8% and previously 4% and 3%. That has a cumulative effect on people’s ability to be looked after in the community. People stand at that Dispatch Box or anywhere else talking about “the need for austerity”, well that shows the price of that austerity. My mum is good; she is back at home with a good care package, and she is fine. She wants to continue on her own as much as she can, but many people cannot do that. If we want austerity, we will have such problems.

On 7 January, no mention whatever was made on the Front Benches about the situation. Yesterday, the Government acknowledged the impact of social care cuts and announced £25 million-worth of emergency funding for 65 council areas experiencing the most severe delays in discharging elderly patients from hospital. No mention at all was made by the Secretary of State when he opened the debate today. It was hidden away, but it is in the national press if anyone wants to look for it. The Government know the situation: they know what problems have been created in A and E in hospitals up and down the land by these cuts, yet no mention was made, even though the motion specifically mentions A and E problems.

I shall finish now, but I must say that if people want austerity and if they want to fight a general election on the basis of being better at the economy than the other side, they need to realise the price paid for it. My mum survived it, but many people in this land are not surviving it. In my view, it is not a price worth paying. We need serious change—and I say that not only to the Government Front-Bench team, but to the Opposition Front-Bench team. We need to make serious changes in this country to look after our most needy people. We are not getting that under this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is not the Labour party, because all it wants to do is to turn the NHS into a political weapon. It might just think about the impact on NHS patients and staff when it does this. It does not help anyone and it is bad for the NHS.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

T9. Does the Under-Secretary of State remember the case that I raised in an Adjournment debate of Mrs Monica Barnes and the inadequate service she received from the health service ombudsman’s office? The ombudsman’s office has today announced a consultation on a new service charter. Does he welcome it and hope for a better service for our constituents?

[Mr Hunt]

There have been a number of problems with the service offered by the ombudsman. There has been a lack of expertise in the ombudsman’s office to investigate the most difficult cases. This is obviously a responsibility of Parliament not of mine, but I have had good discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who chairs the Public Administration Committee, about how the services can be improved.

A and E (Major Incidents)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I congratulate the doctors and nurses who are working very hard in his local hospital and point out that there are a number of historical problems. The £71 billion of PFI debt is one of those and it means that more than £1 billion every year is diverted from the front line. We have done something about the top-heavy management structures and, as a result, across the NHS we have 9,000 more doctors and 3,000 more nurses. It is very important in this debate that we focus not only on short-term pressures but on dealing with the long-term issues in the NHS. That is what we want to do in his area and in every area.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

On 9 December, a member of my family was admitted to Rotherham hospital through A and E after a fall at home. She was told two days later by a doctor that there was no medical reason she should be in hospital. She spent her 93rd birthday, on 24 December, in Rotherham hospital and was discharged on Monday of this week, having at last got a care package together. Does the Secretary of State think that the cuts to Rotherham borough council’s social services have helped or hindered the situation?

[Mr Hunt]

We need to have much better working between the health and social care systems. If the right hon. Gentleman supports that, he should support the better care programme, which from April of this year will see co-operation between the local NHS and local authorities in 150 local authority areas for the first time. Instead, Labour is calling for that plan to be halted.

Physical Inactivity (Public Health)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) on securing this debate. I do not want to repeat too much of what has been said. As people will know, I have had an active interest in public health for a number of my years in the House, and I have said on numerous occasions that the public health issues for the 21st century will not involve sanitation, fresh water supplies or bad housing, although unfortunately, in such a rich country bad housing still exists; they will have more to do with individual lifestyles and behaviour, including smoking, drinking alcohol in unhealthy amounts and other things. Inactivity is a major threat to public health in the 21st century.

My hon. Friend talked about the national health service being a sickness service. I have used it on many occasions, and for most of my life it has really been a national ill-health service. It reacts to people on the basis that there is something wrong, and we must move away from that. I say to the Minister that although I do not have many compliments to pay about the contents of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, moving public health into local government so that it becomes a part of local society was a proper thing to do. Also in that Act, although I have heard little about them since, were provisions on population health and how we measure it, and on health inequalities, from which constituencies such as mine suffer badly. I would like a lot more to be done on that issue.

There is a wealth of evidence clearly showing that an active life is essential for physical and mental health and well-being. A number of diseases, including cancer and diabetes, are affecting an increasing number of people at an earlier age, as are conditions such as obesity, hypertension and depression. Regular physical activity can guard against such conditions. We must enable people to take control of their current and future health.

Boosting parents’ understanding about active play and physical literacy is essential for children as well. My childhood was not spent on Xboxes, or even in front of television for much of the time. Most of the time, if the weather was right, we were outdoors, climbing trees or playing football on the street, and up to all sorts of things. We had a far more active life than my grandchildren do. Outwith activities such as football and so on, they lead a pretty sedentary life in front of televisions and in their play.

Being active increases quality of life at every age and increases everyone’s chance of remaining healthy and independent. The benefits do not stop there; there are many other social, individual and emotional reasons to promote more physical activity. Being active plays a key role in brain development in early childhood, and it is good for long-term educational attainment. Increased energy levels boost workplace productivity and reduce sickness absence.

As Members have hinted, the experience of other countries tells us that getting the whole nation active every day will happen only if we involve all sectors. Countries such as Finland, the Netherlands and Germany have turned their inactivity situation around—not in years, I admit, but in decades in places such as Norway. We all need to engage with such strategies in our communities. In order to make real and lasting change, we must take a long-term, evidence-based approach, building on what we know works, and embed physical activity into the fabric of daily life, making it an easy, cost-effective and normal choice in every community in England.

I will finish by giving an example. More than 20 years ago in my constituency, a then coal mining village called Thurcroft set up a programme with the local public health organisation called Thurcroft Healthy Hearts. It brought schoolchildren and pensioners together to discuss issues such as smoking. Inevitably, as it was a three-year programme, it ended after three years. Little evaluation of its benefits was done, although people were asked if they were happy with it and they said yes. However, from that programme came Thurcroft walking group. I walked with the group a couple of years ago. Its members are elderly people who have been meeting once a week to walk together, which has been to their general benefit. That is what we need more of in our society.

NHS Services (Access)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

We are here in the Chamber today in a week when we have seen health service workers on the picket lines for the first time in 30 years, and we have seen midwives out on strike for the first time in their history—we have had midwives working in the health care system in this country for 150 years, I think—yet most of the spat we have listened to up until now this afternoon has been about who bid what for Hinchingbrooke hospital and so forth. I wonder what people outside—not just people who work in the health service, but those who rely on it and do not have the option to go elsewhere, into the private sector—think about this situation.

We have a Government—if they had been a different Government, I would probably be saying the same thing—where the case for the defence we heard from the Secretary of State this morning about how well our health service is doing comes from independent experts in Washington. I have never in my 30 years in here heard someone doing that. Philadelphia lawyers are presumably the people saying that; I thought it might be a reference to Washington, County Durham, but, no, I assume it is Washington in the USA where people are saying we have got a good health service, not the British Medical Association or the royal colleges of nurses, GPs and everything else who constantly e-mail Members on both sides of this House about the state of health care in this country and the demoralisation of the staff—hence the first picket lines for 30 years. Here we have a Secretary of State who seems to think he can find somebody to defend him who is an independent expert from Washington DC. I think that it is shameful that the Secretary of State comes to the Dispatch Box and uses arguments like that.

Let me tell the Secretary of State—although he is not listening; he is engaged in other things—that everybody knew what was going to happen when this Government came to office in 2010.

[Mr Simon Burns]

rose—

[Kevin Barron]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a bit, because I may mention him, as he was a Minister at the time. This Government came to office and passed a Bill through Parliament that was going to introduce competition into the national health service and mean a massive reorganisation, and billions of pounds were going to be spent in doing that—billions of pounds that could have been spent elsewhere—and the case for the defence is, “We’ll make a billion pounds a year in this Parliament.” Well, it is not there yet, Ministers.

It was not just the reorganisation of the national health service that was mentioned. The Government also told us at the same time that they had got to make efficiency savings of 4% a year, something that the health service had never done, and something the public sector had never done. Indeed, people said at the time that the private sector had never done it either.

That is the situation we had when that Bill went through Parliament. They were warned about the consequences of that not just by politicians in the House, but by people who gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee. I served on it. The Bill was stalled and came back in again. Evidence after evidence came in saying what has happened was going to happen.

We have had massive reorganisation. I just wonder if the Secretary of State—if he is prepared to listen—will tell us how many of the 4,000 NHS staff who were laid off and paid redundancy were then re-employed by the NHS, some of them on massive six-figure sums. How much did that cost the NHS? How much did that take away from mental health services or other services that our constituents rely on? None of this is in the debate at all, and Ministers all know perfectly well what the situation is.

Week after week, we hear these platitudes from Ministers. The Secretary of State said not too long ago, “When you go into hospital, you’ll get a named consultant,” but what does having a named consultant matter to most people? Are they going to work seven days a week, 24 hours a day so we can phone and say, “Can we come and see you?” No one has mentioned the latest one we have had, which I thought was wonderful—

[Mr Hunt]

rose—

[Kevin Barron]

The Secretary of State can come in in a minute. This latest one is a consequence of a speech made by the Prime Minister: we are going to be able to see GPs seven days a week. Well, the Royal College of GPs does not think so. I say this to the Secretary of State: “We could see a GP, not far from this place, seven days a week until you lot got in.” We could do so in the Victoria NHS walk-in centre, and I used to go in there, as my GP is elsewhere, but it closed years ago.

We put in walk-in centres—sometimes in the face of opposition from GPs, I have to say. A GP objected to them in my constituency, as I raised in the House at the time, so some of them were saying they did not want them. They gave seven days a week access to GPs.

I understand that my time is up, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I want to finish by saying this: whatever happened at Hinchingbrooke or anywhere else, we never ever had to have competition law on the statute book. We have now. Do not tell me or anybody else out there that the Secretary of State has not got plans to privatise properly the national health service, because I am convinced that he has.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Poulter]

If the hon. Lady has concerns about local commissioning decisions, she should take them up with local commissioners. Time forbids me from going into the rationing of services by the previous Labour Government. It is important that clinical services are now designed and delivered by front-line health care professionals, and if she is concerned about them, I am sure she will take that up with her local CCG.

The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) referred to a work force crisis in GP training. It is clear that under this Government 1,000 more GPs are now in training and working in the NHS than in 2010 when we came into government. If it is not accepted that that is good start, we have committed to training an extra 5,000 because we want more people working in general practice.

We have ensured that 1.3 million more people are being treated in A and E compared with the number in 2009-10. We have halved the time that people must wait to be assessed, and every day we are treating nearly 2,000 more people within the four-hour target compared with the number in 2010.

Competition was introduced into the NHS not by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 but by the previous Labour Government, of whom the right hon. Member for Leigh was a Minister. The Labour Government opened the door to private sector providers when they opened the first independent sector treatment centres in 2003. The Labour Government gave £250 million to private companies and independent sector treatment centres, regardless of whether they delivered that care. Labour was more concerned about giving money to the private centres than about ensuring that quality care was delivered. Labour paid independent private sector providers 11% more to provide the same care as NHS providers. That is Labour’s record on the private sector in the NHS—a record that shows that it is more committed to the private sector than any previous Conservative Government.

[Kevin Barron]

If that is the case, will the Minister—as a Back Bencher, he sat on the Health Committee—tell us why there were so many clauses in the Bill that introduced the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading into our national health service?

[Dr Poulter]

The right hon. Member will be aware that Labour’s legislation, which gave the private sector the opportunity to tender for contracts, saw 5% of NHS activity—I believe that figure is correct—provided by the private sector at the end of the last Labour Government. In the Health and Social Care Bill, we wanted to stop the unregulated approach. We wanted greater emphasis on integration of health care services. It was not just about the private sector provider fixing someone’s hip and forgetting what sort of care was available when their hip had been repaired and they had gone home. It was about ensuring greater emphasis not just on competition and what was best for patients, but on integrated and joined-up services to ensure that people were properly looked after when they left a treatment centre. We stopped the cherry-picking of services that happened under Labour, and we are proud of that.

We will take no lessons from the Labour party on NHS finances. Labour was the party that crippled the finances of so many NHS trusts with PFI deals, and it was the party that during its final year in government saw the number of managers rise six times as fast as the number of nurses.

I am proud of this Government’s record on the NHS and I am proud of our record on integration. There will be a clear choice at the general election next year: a Conservative-led Government who have delivered for patients, a Conservative-led Government who have delivered on cancer services and a cancer drugs fund, and a Conservative-led Government who will continue to ensure better care for people with long-term medical conditions. We have a proud record on the NHS and I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to oppose the motion.

Question put.

Patient Safety

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I start by welcoming my hon. Friend to her new position as Chair of the Health Select Committee, which I think she will do brilliantly well. I also thank her for the fact that she had been talking about this issue long before she took up that post, and as someone who has worked in the NHS, she has always recognised its importance.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that NHS staff should not wait until the outcome of the new Francis review before speaking out. My view is that the atmosphere is beginning to change inside the NHS. We are getting trust boards that are now spending much more time talking with safety, but the reason I wanted to have this review is that there are problems and issues across the world with people in health care speaking out, and nowhere has really embraced the culture of safety that we have in the airline, nuclear and oil industries, where concerns about safety are on a completely different level. I know that I have the wholehearted support of NHS staff in this mission; I think it is a shame that we do not have the support of the Labour party.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

In response to the Francis report in relation to the duty of candour, the Government said that it should be on institutions and not on individuals. Given that the Government appear not to want to bring in new regulatory bodies in relation to individual action inside the national health service, does the Secretary of State have any faith in the regulatory bodies currently looking after health professionals, given the state that Mid Staffs hospital ended up in?

[Mr Hunt]

We looked carefully at whether the duty of candour should apply to individuals, and we decided against that because we were worried about creating a legalistic culture in trusts. However, we are working with the regulatory bodies. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise concerns, as they were indeed raised in the Francis report. Following on from my earlier response, one of the lessons that we learned from the airline industry is that pilots are professionally protected if they speak out, so on balance it is to their advantage to speak out rather than to shut up. As a result of that reporting of safety incidents, near misses and so on, the industry has achieved a remarkable reduction in accidents. I would like to see whether we can do the same thing in the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least, I call Sir Kevin Barron.

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give us an update on the proposed licensing of e-cigarettes by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency? Does her Department believe that e-cigarettes could be used in smoking cessation programmes?

[Jane Ellison]

When I brought the regulations before Parliament, we were clear that those e-cigarettes for which a medicinal claim is made must be subjected to medicinal licensing arrangements. Once they are licensed as medicine, they can be prescribed as part of NHS smoking cessation services.