Special Measures Regime

Jamie Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I had hoped for a little more consensus on the issue of dealing with poor care. I am afraid that what we had from the right hon. Gentleman was a set-piece speech. However, let me go through the points that he raised.

First, the right hon. Gentleman spoke about nursing numbers. Let us look at the number of nurses since the Government took office. We have 6,200 more nurses on our wards than when he was Secretary of State for Health. Why is that? It is because we took the difficult decision, which he opposed every step of the way, to get rid of the bureaucracy, the primary care trusts and the strategic health authorities—19,000 administrators—so that we could afford more nurses, more doctors, more paramedics and more front-line staff. It is time that he admitted that he was wrong to oppose those important reforms.

The right hon. Gentleman then talked about trusts missing A and E targets. Despite the fact that we are doing better on A and E than he did as Health Secretary, he has missed the point about targets. It was an obsession with targets under Labour that led to the problems in Mid Staffs and many of the trusts that are in special measures today. Let us just take one example. [Interruption.] The Opposition should listen to this example because it provides an important lesson about targets that the Labour party has still not learned. Buckinghamshire had a terrible tragedy in 2004 and 2005, when more than 30 pensioners died in a clostridium difficile outbreak. Why did that happen? The independent report said that the trust was too focused on Government targets.

That is the dividing line. The Opposition want an NHS that is obsessed with targets. The Government recognise that targets matter, but that treating people with dignity, respect and compassionate care matters. Is it not extraordinary that the party that founded the NHS has got itself into a position where it does not care how people are treated in the NHS?

The right hon. Gentleman talked about social care. If he wants more funding for social care, why has he called for the better care fund to be halted, when it will put an extra £1.9 billion at the disposal of the people who commission adult social care?

Let us look at some of the examples that the right hon. Gentleman raised. He talked about Basildon. When he was Health Secretary, the CQC sat on a report about that trust for six months that talked about bloodstains on the carpets, blood on the floors and vital safety measures being ignored. When the reason why the report was not published for so long was looked into, people at the CQC said that they were afraid to publish something that could embarrass the Government of the day. Is it not time that he admitted that the way the Labour Government ran the CQC was wrong? We now have an independent inspections regime, which is a big step forward.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about Cumbria. There are real issues in some of the hospitals in Cumbria. However, when Labour was in office, somebody in one of those hospitals—North Cumbria—was paid £3.6 million because they were disabled for life. Should that not have been a warning sign? There were also issues at Morecambe Bay involving children.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

What are you doing?

[Mr Hunt]

What are we doing? We are doing what I set out in the statement. We are putting more nurses and doctors into hospitals that are in special measures. We are turning around the failing hospitals that Labour swept under the carpet.

Even if Labour has not understood the lessons of Mid Staffs, the NHS has. We have 6,000 more nurses; five hospitals are out of special measures; there is record public confidence in safe and compassionate care; and, from today, we have new plans to stamp out poor care in adult social care. When everyone in the NHS is so keen for those plans to work, is it not time that Labour ended its denial about the past and backed them as well?