Health and Social Care

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who is one of the most indefatigable and courageous campaigners on health issues in the House. It is also a pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) on an excellent maiden speech. My great grandmother was brought up just outside Ayr, and I was christened in Symington church. I will look out for the hon. Lady when I next visit the church, because I am sure she will be a very good MP indeed. It is a particular pleasure to follow so closely my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (James Davies) and to congratulate him on an excellent maiden speech. To oust an incumbent is certainly a result, but to do so in such style, adding 1,200 to the Tory vote—a swing of nearly 4%—is a great achievement. I wish him well in his career.

I admire my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd not only for making such an excellent speech, but for making it so early. When I was first elected to the House, I wanted to make my maiden speech in the debate on the Address. I asked my Whip, a young man called John Major, but was told, “You could make it during the debate, but it is high profile and you really have to get it right. You could make a 10-minute speech then, but my advice is to wait.” I therefore waited until an Adjournment debate on small businesses, for which I had an excellent 10-minute speech ready to go. Whips in those days had none of the tact and charm of the current occupants of the Whips Office, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). About 20 minutes into that debate, the Whip on duty passed me a note that read, “We’re short of speakers, so can you make it 25 minutes?” My maiden speech was therefore a disaster, unlike the two that we have heard already today.

There is a great deal in the Queen’s Speech that appeals to me. I particularly welcome those measures designed to boost enterprise and wealth creation. During the election campaign in my constituency there was a lot of focus on the NHS—I will come to that in a moment—but also on wealth creation, the private sector and small and medium-sized enterprises. I particularly welcome the full employment and welfare benefits Bill and the enterprise Bill, which will look again at some of the regulations that need to be removed from small businesses.

I was struck by a recent report from Open Europe that noted that since 2010 the EU has introduced more than 4,500 new business regulations. Some of them might be very positive, but some will impinge upon the ability of small businesses to operate flexibly and profitably. It is therefore incredibly important that the Prime Minister, when renegotiating our membership of the EU—I wish him well in that—looks at some of the social costs, particularly with regard to social and employment law. I hope that he takes his time in doing that, because I do not believe that we should be in a huge rush; it is far better to have successful negotiations that are conducted over a lengthy period than to rush into them in the way some people have recommended.

My constituency has an outstanding local foundation hospital. It unfortunately went into special measures, but it is now making really good progress. I pay tribute to the staff and the new management, who are turning it around, and to the efforts that many people are making in that regard. There are three areas that I want to flag up briefly, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), whom I congratulate on his appointment, will take them on board.

The first area, which has already been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), is the cost of agency staff. We have seen a boom in agencies supplying doctors and nurses to hospitals. One of the key drivers pushing up debt in many foundation hospitals is the cost of agency nurses and doctors. I have seen that in the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King’s Lynn. As my hon. Friend said, there is then a domino effect whereby hospitals find it more difficult to employ permanent staff. I was appalled to read a recent report showing the amounts of money that some of the biggest medical recruiters are making, and therefore the money that is being taken out of the NHS. It is really important that the Minister and his colleagues wrest the initiative from those expensive agencies and look carefully at a nationally negotiated framework to ensure that the NHS uses its obvious power and strong collective bargaining to sort the problem out.

The second area I want to mention is the need to make every conceivable effort to join up NHS acute care and continuing care, into which the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) put so much effort and work when he was care Minister. As he pointed out, it is not just about resources; it is about better co-ordination, more dynamic and innovative management and having a really strong partnership between the private sector, where most of the care homes and nursing homes lie, and the public sector. I am very impressed by what the Minister has said about that, and by what the Secretary of State has said. I hope that they can work together to make real progress on that.

The third area, which I heard about regularly while campaigning in my constituency, and particularly in my discussions with doctors, is the current GP contract. In my judgment, it is not just a question of the problems with care causing the crisis in A&E; it is also the fact that many people cannot see their doctor when they want to. Lynndoc is a federation of different GP practices in King’s Lynn that does outstanding work to provide out-of-hours cover. I believe that it can be done, and it really is an absolute priority.

Those three areas are crucial to ensuring that the £8 billion that has been dedicated for the next few years is properly spent. But today we heard a tale of two speeches: the Secretary of State, who was calm, statesmanlike and receptive; and the shadow Secretary of State, who was still fighting yesterday’s war and trying to weaponise the NHS. We have to move on from that and work together to make this great service an even greater success.