Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Gummer and Johnny Mercer(8 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ben Gummer)
I am pleased to refer my hon. Friend to the recent appointments of Ruth Carnall to the role of programme chair and Judith Dean to the role of programme director for the success regime in Northern, Eastern and Western Devon. Together, they will lead an intensive diagnostic exercise within the local health economy, which will develop options for change to be implemented in the new year.
Johnny Mercer
Given the news last week that the Northern, Eastern and Western Devon clinical commissioning group that covers my constituency has appointed a special team to ensure the projected £430 million funding shortfall does not become a reality, what can my hon. Friend do to assure my constituents that an already challenged constituency can retain confidence in its health care provision?
Ben Gummer
My hon. Friend rightly points out that there are specific challenges in Northern, Eastern and Western Devon and that is precisely why NHS England has instituted the success regime and why it has moved quickly to appoint a programme director and team. I hope that with the engagement that I know he will lead with his colleagues they will come to a resolution that will ensure that the challenges cease.
NHS Success Regime
Debate between Ben Gummer and Johnny Mercer(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Ben Gummer
I was not aware of that situation and would very much like to talk to the hon. Lady about it afterwards. If the facts she states are true, that is indeed wrong. The whole point of the success regime is to get away from the idea of being able to change one chief executive or commissioner in one provider in a challenged health economy while expecting to see a change to the whole system. We are trying to correct the system so that local care for local people is improved.
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)
If this intervention improves healthcare for my constituents, I will welcome it very much. However, will my hon. Friend clarify the impact on Derriford hospital in my constituency and whether the intervention will put any new management into our hospital?
Ben Gummer
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and welcome him to this place. To repeat the answer I have given several times so far—[Interruption.] Those on the Opposition Front Bench say that I do not know, but I must explain to them once again that this is not about a Minister sitting in Whitehall making a decision having never visited an area. That is what the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) did when he tried to destroy local services in my constituency and other places in Suffolk. This is different. It is about trying to fix problems in these challenged local health economies, which in some places have been present not for months or years but for decades. We are trying to ensure that the decisions are corrected and made by the local commissioners and clinicians.