Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Frank Dobson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

That is the most extraordinary speech I have heard from a Secretary of State for Health in all my years in this House. As a former Secretary of State, I know that Secretaries of State cannot be responsible for everything, but this is the first speech in which a Secretary of State has claimed he is not responsible for anything. He quoted the Francis report. One of its most significant features was that it said that we should impose a statutory duty of candour on people working in the national health service; if anything goes wrong, they are supposed to come clean and admit responsibility. I hope that there will be a clause in a Bill introducing the duty that says that this Secretary of State should have a duty of candour and admit the things that have gone wrong.

What have Ministers been doing for the past three years? The main thing they have been doing is dismantling the national health service. Staff have been distracted from their jobs, and money—£3 billion—has been diverted into that reorganisation. Some of that has been spent on redundancy for nurses who work in accident and emergency. The Government have been proudly saying, “We have hit our new target.” Well, they reduced it and made it easier to hit. The 111 line has referred more cases to A and E than NHS Direct did. There have been cuts in social care, which have two effects on A and E. First, it means that more elderly people go to A and E for treatment because they are not getting the attention that they were from social services. Secondly, it means that there will be delays in patients going home, both from A and E and from ordinary hospital beds, and that causes delay, too. Walk-in centres have closed, and the Government have given the surplus money back to the Treasury, yet they deny that any single one of their policies has had any effect on A and E services. They have had three years in power, and they are still blaming other people.

The Government claim that the increase resulted from the change to the GP contract. They know full well that that is not true; they know that it was because walk-in centres and minor injuries units were counted in the figures for the first time. If the Secretary of State expects people in the national health service to respect him and take any notice of him, not just regard him as the Catherine wheel of spin, he has to come clean. He is telling people that if they get things wrong in the health service they must come clean and be honest with the public. If he does not apply that to himself he will be a bit like the dad who has told people not to give their kids a leg up, but who turns out to have employed both his daughters: he did not apply to himself what he said everybody else should do. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) was right: there was spare money, but under the new set-up can the Secretary of State get it into the hands of the health service, or did his predecessor throw away that power?