NHS Long-term Plan
Debate between Matt Hancock and Karin Smyth(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Yes, absolutely. My hon. Friend is a brilliant advocate for Torbay and for the English Riviera, and has made the case so strongly for his local hospital. I was delighted that we could recently find the funding to support the case that he and local clinicians have made, and I look forward to working with him to make it a reality.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
Before coming to this place, I was a senior manager in Bristol’s primary care trust and then the CCG. I want to pay tribute to the NHS managers who have kept the ship afloat since the Lansley reforms. Today’s plan is clear in its commitment to triple integration and seeking to free commissioners from the barriers to integration in the 2012 procurement rules, but tomorrow the CCG in Bristol will embark on a huge re-procurement process for some community services for the next 10 years based on those old rules. In the light of his plan, will the Secretary of State intervene locally and support my call to pause that divisive community services re-procurement?
Matt Hancock
I will raise the hon. Lady’s point with NHS Improvement, which considers these things. Local provision of services should, rightly, be decided by local clinical priorities, but she makes a cogent point that I will raise with NHSI, and I will ask its chief executive, Ian Dalton, to write to her.
Budget Resolutions
Debate between Matt Hancock and Karin Smyth(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
The £20.5 billion is just for day-to-day running costs—the resource costs. Of course there is a capital budget, too, which includes £4 billion of taxpayers’ money. That goes towards ensuring that we can get the capital built. The critical point is that we have not only that £20.5 billion uplift in running costs but a capital budget. We will make further announcements on the allocation of the capital budget later in the autumn.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for clarifying the £20.5 billion figure, which does not include training or capital. Of course, that contradicts the unhelpful briefing from Downing Street during the summer that it was something like £84 billion. Will he confirm that that £84 billion figure, which has been repeated in the media, is, as the Health Service Journal says, a fib, and that we are talking about £20.5 billion purely for resources in the NHS in England and Wales?
Matt Hancock
No. The £84 billion is the cash figure. The £20.5 billion is the real-terms increase by the end of the five years. If we add up all the extra money, we get £84 billion. It is there on page 36 of the Budget, if the hon. Lady wants to look. The biggest single cash increase comes next year, in 2019-20. It is all there in the Red Book.