Health and Social Care Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I am surprised that the Health Secretary was asked a direct question and did not answer. I would simply encourage my right hon. Friend to keep asking the questions that he feels are important for the future.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Mr Nash’s wife also bankrolled my opponent at the last election—for all the good it did him. However, something else was not in the Tory party manifesto, and that was cuts in the health service. I have in my hand a letter from the chief executive of my primary care trust that simply states that

“healthcare in North West London will face a £1bn shortfall in funding by 2014/15, given these upward pressures.”

Is that not something else that the Tory party did not tell the truth about, and something on which it is not following the Labour Government?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend won his seat at the last election because he helped to expose the truth about the Conservative plans for housing—a truth that it denied but which has now come true. He is absolutely right. The truth about what is happening in the health service now is that patients are starting to see the signs of strain and services being cut, and that is not what they expected when they heard the Prime Minister, before the election and afterwards, promising to protect the NHS.