Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that NHS resources must be allocated in a way that fairly reflects the need for the NHS in every area. Rurality and age are two important factors in that regard. I can reassure him that the current allocations are not set in aspic. The problem with the recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation that NHS England received before was that they would have meant increasing resources to the areas with the best health outcomes at the expense of those with the worst ones. NHS England thought that that would be inconsistent with its duty to reduce health inequalities, but it is looking at the issue this year and we all hope that it will make good progress.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We all know that one of the most important drivers for improving the quality of care for vulnerable and elderly patients is to ensure the adequate training and regulation of health care assistants. That is something that Labour and Sir Robert Francis QC have called for, but that the Government have so far ducked. Will the Secretary of State now accept that crucial Francis recommendation to help to drive up care standards for the elderly and the vulnerable—yes or no?

[Mr Hunt]

The reasons that Robert Francis recommended statutory regulation of health care assistants were twofold. First, he wanted to ensure that people who had been involved in incidents of poor care could not pop up somewhere else in the system. Secondly, he wanted to ensure that everyone had proper training. We are going to solve both those problems, but I am not convinced that a big new national database of 300,000 people is the way to do it.