National Health Service

Debate between Helen Jones and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will make some progress.

I mentioned record numbers of delayed discharges. There are also record numbers of people visiting A and E, record numbers of frail people being admitted through A and E, record numbers of people waiting on trolleys and record numbers of people trapped in acute hospital beds. This is the simple question that has not yet been answered by this Government: why is there this unprecedented pressure in accident and emergency? Until there are proper answers to that simple question—and agreement about the true causes of the A and E crisis—we will not be able to move forward with a proper solution, and that is the point of today’s debate.

When the Secretary of State came here to answer the urgent question two weeks ago, he was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) what he saw as the causes of the increased attendances at A and E. Let me remind the House of what he said:

“We have looked into that matter in huge detail. There are probably three broad factors that are behind the increase in demand. One is the ageing population...The second factor is changing consumer expectation among younger people who want faster health care…The third factor is a refusal by NHS trusts to do what they were pressurised to do in the past, which is to cut corners to hit targets.—[Official Report, 7 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 280.]

In other words, “Nothing to do with us, Guv.” It is the same old story with this Secretary of State. It is always someone else’s fault: older people’s fault, younger people’s fault, the previous Government’s fault—anyone but him.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend knows Warrington well. As well as increasing ambulance response time and having fewer GPs than we had in 2010, we are now seeing one of the last specialisms—spinal services—moved from Warrington to Walton with no public consultation whatever. Does he agree that this is exactly the result of the Government’s reorganisation in which no one is accountable for any decisions and the future of hospitals such as Warrington is at risk?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right; I do know Warrington well. Speaking up for my own family who live in Warrington, I will not accept a situation in which their services are taken away without them having the democratic right to challenge those decisions. But that is what has been growing under this Secretary of State. We had the decision on Lewisham—the most outrageous example—in which he tried to close a successful A and E that was serving a very deprived part of London, without any proper process, and he lost in the High Court. Then we had a clause brought before the House that tried to close hospitals anyway. That is what the Government want to do; they want to ride roughshod over local people and close services where they want to, and we will not let it happen.

NHS Services (Access)

Debate between Helen Jones and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is rightly outlining this Government’s failures on health. Is he aware that towns such as Warrington face a triple whammy, whereby the number of full-time equivalent GPs is down, ambulance response times are up and yet while this Government last year gave £10 million to Cheshire West and Chester to deal with winter pressures, they gave absolutely nothing to the hospital in my constituency? Does he think that decision was politically rather than health based?

[Andy Burnham]

Many questions are raised by that decision. Areas of the country where services were being run well would say that they did not get money and instead the money was given to areas where things were not working properly. The situation my hon. Friend describes is what is happening across the NHS in England. The Government have cut the GP budget, the mental health budget and the social care budget, and all that has led to increased pressure on hospitals. There are too many people in hospitals right now in England. The wards are full and people cannot be sent back home because the social care is not there. So the wards do not become free, and A and E cannot admit people to the wards because no beds are available. A and E therefore becomes blocked. Ambulances cannot hand patients over to A and E so they end up queuing outside, meaning that ambulance response times get worse. That is the knock-on effect of the Government’s policies across the NHS, and the deteriorations she is seeing for her constituents are mirrored right across the country.

NHS

Debate between Helen Jones and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to say that the single most important underlying cause of the A and E crisis is the severe cuts that we have seen to adult social care. That has created a situation in which older people are trapped on the ward and cannot go home because there is not adequate support at home. That means that A and E cannot admit to the ward because the beds are full. Hospitals are operating way beyond safe occupancy levels. Because of that, the whole hospital begins to jam up and the pressure backs up through A and E. When A and E cannot admit to the ward it becomes full, so ambulances queue up outside because they cannot hand people over to A and E.

That is exactly what is happening in our NHS at the moment. A and E is the barometer of the whole health and care system. If there is a problem anywhere in the system, it will be seen eventually as pressure in A and E. That is what is happening. The simplistic spin from the Conservative party, which says that it is all to do with a GP contract from 10 years ago, is discounted by expert after expert.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend rightly said that back-ups in A and E cause problems elsewhere. May I draw his attention to the fact that over the past 18 months, more than 1,600 people have waited more than 20 minutes in ambulances outside Warrington hospital before they could even get to A and E and the clock starts ticking? North West Ambulance service says that it cannot be accurate about the waiting time for hundreds of incidents. Does that show that waiting times may be even worse than first thought?

[Andy Burnham]

I fear my hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know Warrington hospital well and the pressures that have been on it, and I agree that ambulance response times have increased across the country because so many ambulances have been held in queues outside A and E, unable to hand over patients to A and E staff because it is full. That has left large swathes of the country—particularly in rural areas—without adequate ambulance cover, and very serious incidents have taken place across the country, not least in the Minister’s area of Norfolk where people have not received ambulances on time. That is the consequence of the pressure on A and E not being addressed, and it is threatening to drag down the rest of the NHS.

Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Debate between Helen Jones and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned about the growing pressure on Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments across the country over recent months; notes this week’s report from the King’s Fund which concludes that waiting times in A&E recently hit a nine-year high; further notes that in the Labour Government’s last year in office 98 per cent of patients were seen within four hours; believes that a combination of factors lies behind the extra pressure on hospitals but that severe cuts to social care budgets are one of the most significant causes; is further concerned that one in three hospitals in England say they do not have sufficient staffing levels to deal safely with demand on services; further notes that over 4,000 nursing posts have been lost from the NHS since May 2010 and that a recent survey by the Health Service Journal revealed that a further round of front-line clinical job losses are planned for the coming year; further believes that the Government has failed to show sufficient urgency in dealing with these problems; and calls on the Government to bring forward an urgent plan to ease pressure on hospitals by, amongst other things, re-allocating £1.2 billion of the 2012-13 Department of Health underspend to support social care in 2013-14 and 2014-15, and ensuring adequate staffing levels at every hospital in England.

Since the turn of the year, the Opposition have been warning the Government about building pressure in A and E departments, and yesterday there was confirmation of just how bad things have got. This year, waiting times in A and E hit a nine-year high, according to the King’s Fund. The pressure is not confined to A and E, however, and wherever we look we can see warning signs: hospitals operating with close to 100% bed occupancy, way beyond safe recommended levels; a treatment tent in a car park; long queues of ambulances outside A and E, double the number waiting longer than 30 minutes; a huge spike in the number of A and E diverts, where ambulances are turned away from units that cannot accept any more patients; reports of some hospitals issuing more black alerts in the past year than in the previous 10 years combined; more cancelled operations than for a decade; and a 30% increase in bed days lost to delayed discharges because care plans cannot be put in place, leaving older patients stranded on the ward and A and E unable to admit them.

The evidence is clear: this health and care system is showing serious signs of distress. In truth, A and E is the barometer of the system, and problems or blockages anywhere will soon show up in A and E as the pressure backs up. The situation requires decisive action and a comprehensive plan, both of which have been distinctly lacking in the Government’s response so far.

Today the Prime Minister complacently implied that the problems had been fixed, but for 34 of the 38 weeks this Secretary of State has been in post, major A and Es have missed the Government’s lowered A and E target. Today, six in 10 trusts are warning that next winter will be even worse. The Government’s response to date has been totally inadequate for the scale and urgency of the problems. First, they came to the House and denied there was a problem. On 15 January, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) stated that

“patients are being treated in a much more timely manner than under the previous Government.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 720.]

An inaccurate statement without any basis in fact.

As the pressure built, it was clear that that line would not hold, so the Secretary of State’s spin operation began. He said that the root cause of the pressure was the 2004 GP contract and changes to out-of-hours care. One must ask how the Secretary of State pushed that line with such confidence, given that a freedom of information request from his Department revealed that the first time he went to an A and E as Secretary of State was on 3 April—a full six months after he was appointed. Even then, it was the A and E within walking distance of this building. Did he just repeat back on camera what the first person he met said to him?

Throughout the early months of 2013 the NHS was going through the worst winter for a decade, yet the Secretary of State did not bother to visit any A and E department to see for himself the ambulance queues, the patients held on trolleys, or the staff stretched to breaking point. Just weeks before his first visit to A and E, he told us that hospitals were “coasting”. What an unbelievable statement. Would he have dared to say that if he had actually visited an A and E beforehand?

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the pressures on A and E comes from this Government’s cuts to adult social care? We all know that if old people are not given care in their own homes they are more likely to end up in hospital, yet the Government have cut more than £2.6 billion from adult social care, and more than 230,000 people are now not getting help, compared with four years ago.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Two-thirds of NHS finance directors have identified social care and its collapse as the single biggest driver of the pressure on A and E. The Government do not like to talk about that because of the record my hon. Friend just outlined, and I will come to that later in my remarks.

The Secretary of State visited his first A and E in April, and NHS England requested action plans only on 9 May, when hospitals had already been battling with the problem for months. It is simply not good enough. The NHS needs leadership and he has not provided it; instead, he has stuck to the spin. He continued to blame the GP contract, even when experts queued up to tell him it was not the cause of the problem. The NHS Confederation, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the King’s Fund and the Foundation Trust Network all told him that the causes lay elsewhere, but he was not listening because it did not suit his argument. When the NHS needed a Secretary of State, it was left with a spin doctor-in-chief.

That brings us to the crux of this debate and the charge that I lay directly at the Secretary of State’s door. By persisting with spin and by diverting attention elsewhere, the real causes of this crisis have been left neglected.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Helen Jones and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My knowledge of Scottish politics is okay, but I think I am right in telling the hon. Gentleman that it was the Labour Administration who brought in the education maintenance allowance in Scotland, so I warn him off that subject.

I have detailed the lives of some of the young people I have met in recent weeks who are receiving EMA because it is important that the House focus its mind on those young people before we get much further into the debate. I want to clear up one myth at the beginning. EMA is overwhelmingly used to provide the basics to support education—travel, books, equipment and food.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that Lib Dem-Tory run Warrington borough council recently passed a motion asking the Government to think again on tuition fees and EMA? In their letter to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Liberal leader and the Tory deputy leader said that the removal of EMA would cause real hardship. If the Government’s own allies do not support them, how can they go ahead with this?

[Andy Burnham]

I am aware of that, as I represent a neighbouring authority area. It shows that some Liberal Democrats at local level have more guts than some of their colleagues in this place, because they are prepared to say what is right and what is wrong and to stand up for the young people in their area who they know will have their dreams shattered if this help is taken away from them.