Oral Answers to Questions

Harriet Harman Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

First, I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for the phrase “devolution revolution”. We should have used that yesterday—it would, perhaps, have given us even more coverage. On the Henbury loop line, she is right to say that this has been warmly welcomed by the local community. I pay tribute to all the work she has done to make sure that that is the case. In terms of the plans the local enterprise partnership comes up with, the whole point of LEPs is precisely that they speak on behalf of the community and that they do not represent a top-down quango approach. My understanding is that as part of the growth deal with the west of England, we have agreed to co-invest in several jointly agreed priorities, including the MetroWest project, which reflect local needs and local wishes.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

With more people going to A and E, not least because of the difficulty of seeing their GP, the average time people spend in A and E has gone up, not down, despite what the Prime Minister tried to claim last week. Last year, nearly 1 million patients had to wait more than four hours in A and E—the worst year in a decade. Is the Deputy Prime Minister, like the Prime Minister, just going to deny this, or will he get his Government to do something about it?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

What I find so curious about the right hon. and learned Lady’s line of questioning is that it comes from the party of Mid Staffs and the party that doubled the number of managers. This is the party that refused to commit to the £12.7 billion funding increase that this Government put into the NHS. Above all, it was her Government who entered into outrageous sweetheart deals with the private sector that meant that a quarter of a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money was handed over to private sector health providers without helping a single NHS patient.

Of course we need to work hard to support our A and E services. They are under greater pressure than ever before, but her party’s approach—cutting the budget, employing more managers and not more nurses, and handing out sweetheart deals to the private sector—is not the way to do it.

[Ms Harman]

Does the right hon. Gentleman really think that the terrible things that happened in Mid Staffs were representative of the situation in our fantastic NHS as a whole? Shame on him! People will see that there is no chance of the Government sorting out the problems in A and E when they are just intent on pretending there is no problem. It is the same old story when the Tories are in power: the NHS is undermined and people suffer. Does he realise that his plan to differentiate his party from the Tories is doomed to fail while he is supporting the Tories on the NHS every step of the way and smearing the NHS as well?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

If the right hon. and learned Lady’s Government were not responsible for Mid Staffs, which Government were? They were in power at the time. The reports made it quite clear that it was because of the manic approach to targets that health professionals in Mid Staffs and elsewhere were taking such false decisions. Does she deny that her party still has not supported our budget increase for the NHS? Does she still deny that it was her Government who gave sweetheart deals to the private sector, and imposed botched privatisation and competition on the NHS? We do not need to take any lectures from her on the NHS.