Health and Social Care Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Jeremy Hunt.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to her new role. As I know, it is the hardest job in Government, but she has a zen-like calmness which means that she is well suited to dealing with the pressures that lie ahead.

There is much to be welcomed today, particularly the pension rule changes, the additional funds for social care and the new powers for pharmacists, but may I ask the Secretary of State to rethink the new two-week access target for general practice? If targets were the answer, we would have the best access in the world in the NHS, because we have more targets than any other healthcare system in the world. GPs alone have 72 targets, and adding a 73rd will not help them or their patients, because it is not more targets but more doctors that the NHS needs. Will the workforce plan to which the Secretary of State recommitted herself—I welcome her commitment to publishing it—include hard numbers, so we can know how many doctors we will need in 10, 15 and 20 years’ time and whether we are actually training them, and will she publish it before Christmas so that staff can at least go into the winter knowing that there is a plan for the future?

Ukraine

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member makes an important point, for which I am grateful, because the humanitarian impact threatens to be enormous. That is why I said what I did about supporting refugees as they come out of Ukraine. We must ensure that we do everything we can to stabilise the Ukrainian economy and support their Government. That is why on Tuesday I announced the $500 million extra package of development aid on top of the £100 million that we have already given. Other countries—our friends and allies—are working with us to do much more.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that the international order as envisaged in the Atlantic charter of 1941 has been the most successful in the history of freedom and democracy and that, as one of the architects of that order, we have a special responsibility to defend it? While today’s sanctions are extremely welcome, this cannot just be about economic measures. We need a fundamental review of our military capability, including revisiting the integrated review, whose assumptions may now be out of date.

[The Prime Minister]

The integrated review begins with the assertion that the most important area for our national security is the Euro-Atlantic area, as I believe I said to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on Tuesday, and that remains fundamental. That is why we have continued with our investment in NATO, and we are the second biggest funder of NATO, as my right hon. Friend knows. He is right in what he says about what is at stake. This is about the whole idea of that wonderful thing that was so inspiring when some of us were young: a Europe whole and free. The fantastic revolution that happened in 1989 and 1990 when communism fell was a great moment for humanity. We must not allow it to slip through our fingers.

Ukraine

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her question. We are helping the countries that are directly vulnerable to an exodus of refugees from Ukraine. We have put another 1,000 troops on stand-by, and this country will continue to do what it has always done and receive those who are fleeing in fear of persecution. That is what we will do.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I strongly support the robust approach that my right hon. Friend has taken, and that indeed he took as Foreign Secretary, but Putin will have predicted and discounted western sanctions long ago. Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we are not to be behind in the diplomatic chess game, we need to do some things that Putin is not expecting? First, we need a sustained increase in western defence capability and spend. Secondly, we need a sustained reduction in the ability of the Russian state to finance its own armed forces. We need economic and financial sanctions that last not just until the next Government decide to have a reset, but if necessary for as long as this dangerous man remains President of Russia.

[The Prime Minister]

We have seen a 10% increase in defence spending in this country, and we will sustain that increase in defence spending. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the financing of Putin’s armed forces; the tragedy is that they have been financed from the proceeds of the sale of Russian oil and gas to western European nations. That is what has got to end.

Living with Covid-19

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I really thought that this would be the moment when the Leader of the Opposition ended his run of making the wrong call on every single one of the big decisions. Time and again, he has had the chance to back the Government on the big decisions, but, I am afraid, he has got it wrong.

Let me turn to some of the points that the Leader of the Opposition has made. The scientific evidence for what we are doing today is amply there in the figures for the rates of infection that I have outlined today and in all the data that is freely available to Members of the House. Members can see what is happening with infection rates, with mortality and with what omicron is doing across the country.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks about the clinically extremely vulnerable, which is, of course, an entirely reasonable question. What we will do is make sure that they continue to be protected with priority access to therapeutics and to vaccines.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman also asks about testing, which is absolutely satirical because week after week, month after month, I have listened to the Labour party complaining about NHS test and trace, denouncing the cost—did you not hear them, Mr Speaker?—of NHS test and trace. Now they want to continue with it when we do not need to go on with it in the way we currently are.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks about our domestic ability to manufacture tests, as though he does not know that we have in this country now one of the biggest manufacturers of lateral flow tests in Europe. This is a Leader of the Opposition who, as I say, has shown an absolutely ferocious grip of the wrong end of the stick. He never ceases to amaze. He was totally wrong on 19 July, when he said we should not open up on 19 July. The Labour party said we needed a roadmap back into lockdown during December. The Labour party wanted—the right hon. and learned Gentleman voted for it several times—to stay in the European Medicines Agency. Contrary to his denials in this House, he voted several times to do so. He has been consistently wrong on all the big calls. He was wrong then; he is wrong now. We are moving forward in a balanced, sensible and proportionate way, moving away from legal compulsion in a way that I think the British people understand, and trusting in them and in their great sense of personal responsibility.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

I support today’s announcement, which is a tribute to British science and to the Government’s leadership in the vaccine programme. Does the Prime Minister agree that when it comes to future pandemics, the real danger zone is those early months when we do not have a vaccine against a new virus and that, in that context, it is about not just whether the NHS can cope, but whether the NHS can cope without switching off other vital, life-saving treatments? If he does agree, it is not enough just to say that we have more doctors and nurses than we had before; we must also ensure we have enough doctors for the future. If he has plans for that, will he please tell the House how he will make sure that we are training enough of them?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend returns to a theme he has mentioned several times. We have a vast plan to recruit more nurses and more doctors than ever before, and there already are more in the NHS than at any time in our history. We have 45,000 more healthcare professionals this year than there were last year, and we will continue to fund them.

Covid-19 Update

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

At the height of the first wave, the Government had the courage to pre-order 400 million doses of vaccines without even knowing whether they worked. That has laid the foundations for our having the best vaccine programme of any large country, so I welcome today’s announcement. It will not surprise the Prime Minister, though, if I draw his attention to the fact that NHS doctors and nurses are absolutely shattered. He will have seen this week that one in six doctors say that they have had near misses or harmed patients because of exhaustion. If he does not want to accept the Select Committee’s recommendations to address the workforce crisis, what will he do to give hope to our brilliant frontline staff?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has a great deal of expertise in this matter. I thank all frontline staff and others in the NHS for what they have been doing. He is right in what he says about how tired people are; they are exhausted, but they are also working heroically and doing an incredible job. It is because there are 17,000 covid cases that we need to remain cautious, despite what we heard from the Opposition Benches. We do need to remain cautious, and we do need to make sure that we continue to recruit for our amazing NHS. There are now 44,000 more healthcare professionals than there were in 2020, and that is as a result of the recruitment by this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course I welcome the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) to her place; but as for the rest of what the right hon. Gentleman had to say, I think balls was the word—you were right first time, Mr Speaker. Your word, Mr Speaker, not mine. I simply advise the House to go back over what I have just said about all the protections that we are putting in place—the winter fuel payments, the warm home allowance, what we are doing to support pensioners, the £650 million we are putting in to support local councils. He talks about long-term energy solutions; is this the same Ed Balls/Davey who was an Energy Minister?

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

4. Hospitalisations in London have peaked, so the Prime Minister was absolutely right to hold his nerve on new restrictions in the last few weeks, but does he agree that the NHS faces not just omicron staffing absences, but permanent and dangerous staffing shortfalls in nearly every specialty? Will he end the cycle whereby those shortfalls continually threaten not just patient care, but sometimes even our freedoms, by overhauling workforce planning by backing Baroness Cumberlege’s amendment to the Health and Care Bill in the House of Lords, having a word with his neighbour in Downing Street and making 2022 the year we finally solve this problem?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member describes a truly tragic and appalling case. I am sure that the whole House will share the revulsion that she has expressed at the outcome of the law’s processes. We will certainly need to have a meeting to see what we can do to address that loophole.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

Q14. NHS staff performed magnificently during the pandemic, but there are now severe shortages in nearly every specialty. Will my right hon. Friend support an amendment to the Health and Care Bill that is backed by 50 NHS organisations and every royal college to require Health Education England to do regular independent forecasts of the numbers of doctors and nurses that we should be training, so that we can reassure people that, despite the pressure today, we are at least training enough doctors and nurses for the future?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have to ensure that our NHS has the staff that it needs. That is why there are 50,000 more healthcare professionals in the NHS this year than there were last year—12,000 more nurses. In addition, there are 60,000 nurses in training—[Interruption.] Somebody on the Opposition Benches asks, “Why are there waiting lists?”. It is because we have been through a pandemic. We are fixing those waiting lists with £36 billion of investment, which the Labour party voted against.

Health and Social Care

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Now we know why over decades the Labour Government totally refused to deal with this problem, and now we know why both Blair and Brown failed to do it: the right hon. and learned Gentleman has absolutely no plan. I was waiting, and I am amazed that he sat down. What is his answer to the backlogs in the NHS? What is his answer to the problems in social care? The Opposition have absolutely no plan. They have no idea how they would raise the money.

Let me answer some of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s questions. We will of course be investing in social care. I thank his sister for what she is doing in social care, but we have lifted people’s wages across the country with record increases in the living wage; we are investing in 700,000 training places for people in social care; and we are making sure that we invest £500 million—that is in the plan I announced today—in the social care workforce.

What this plan will also do is enable us to get our wonderful NHS back on its feet and enable it to deal with the backlogs. The right hon. and learned Gentleman totally failed to explain how a Labour Government would do that. One year of capital gains tax would not even begin to deal with this problem. He has not got a solution and it is deeply irresponsible of him to come to this place without having any kind of alternative.

Let us be in no doubt: if we did what we have heard from the Labour party over the past few weeks, we would still be in lockdown, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposed coming out of stage 4; we would have absolutely nothing by way of dealing with the NHS backlogs; and after decades of inertia from the Labour party we would have absolutely no way of dealing with the anxiety of millions of families across this country who face the prospect of catastrophic social care costs.

This Government are dealing with those things—we are dealing with all of them. We are getting on with it. We are taking the decisive action. We are doing it all together. This is the Government who get on and deal with the people’s priorities; this is the Government who tackle social care; and, indeed, this is the party of the NHS.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

Raising taxes is an incredibly difficult thing for any Conservative Government to do, so I thank the Prime Minister for biting the bullet on this intractable issue that I and many former Health Secretaries have wrestled with.

Does the Prime Minister agree that the demographic challenge—which I know he is personally trying to address with a bit of population growth in Downing Street—means that whether someone pays insurance in America, social insurance in Germany or taxes in the UK, everyone is going to pay more for their health and care? Any Government have a responsibility to make sure that resources are allocated where the electorate’s priorities are, and in this country that is health and social care.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend not only for his support but for all the campaigning and hard work that he did when he was Secretary of State—the first Secretary of State for both health and social care because he sees that the two things go together, unlike the Labour party. What he said is entirely correct.

Afghanistan

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow so many distinguished hon. Members who themselves fought on the frontline in Afghanistan.

President Biden said this week that his

“only vital national interest in Afghanistan”

was to prevent a terrorist attack. Even if that is the case, both he and President Trump should be deeply ashamed—I say this with great sadness—because their actions have returned to Afghanistan to the very Government that harboured the 9/11 bombers.

The truth is that 457 British servicemen and women did not lose their lives simply to reduce the terrorist threat, although they succeeded in that with great distinction. They paid their price in defence of a set of values—values that said that girls should be entitled to the same education as boys, that courts should be independent of clerics, that journalists should not be imprisoned if they speak truth to power. If President Biden believes in those values, it is time the world heard it—and it is time we heard the same from the British Government, too.

Although it is not possible to stay in Afghanistan without US support, we are the second power in a western alliance. For all the failures of this week, and not just in Afghanistan, but in Iraq and even Vietnam, that western alliance has delivered more freedom, more prosperity, more respect for human rights across the globe than at any time in human history. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) just said, those gains are now at risk, not just because of what happened this week but because of the rise of an authoritarian and wealthy China that actively opposes the open societies we believe in.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

As a former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend is right to scrutinise our American allies, but will he acknowledge that the lack of support, commensurate to their sizes, from European NATO partners has also led to the situation we are facing today?

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that. It is not sustainable to ask America to spend 4% of its GDP on defence when the entirety of Europe spends no more than just over 2%.

The threat we face is a threat that all of us face. For 15 consecutive years, the number of free countries in the world has been in decline. Since 2013, according to Reporters Without Borders, press freedom has been in decline. This decade, for the first time in any of our lifetimes, the largest economy in the world will not be a democracy, when China overtakes the United States.

We are proud of our country not just because of what we have achieved and not just because of our wealth, but because of what we stand for. When those values are under threat, and when the Atlantic partnership appears to be fraying, we should be stopping at nothing to rebuild them. That means investing in our armed forces, reversing the aid cut, developing our own technology and rebuilding our global alliances. There is something we can do right now: cut through bureaucracy and ensure that we look after every single Afghani who took risks for themselves and their families because they believed in a better future and trusted us to deliver it.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am just coming to my conclusion.

We cannot reverse what happened this week, but we can limit the damage and learn from what went wrong. That means not just grieving silently at the actions of a close ally, but recognising the threats we face and roaring defiantly in defence of the values we share.

G7 and NATO Summits

Jeremy Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have gone above 860 million vaccines. On top of the 1 billion the G7 is already doing, we pledged a further 1 billion vaccines.

[Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)]

Did the Prime Minister talk to Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Suga about the tremendous success of social care reforms in Japan and Germany? Did he talk to Prime Minister Trudeau about the brilliant innovation in care home villages in Canada? Did he talk to President Biden about the amazing things that older people are doing, including the most powerful job in the world? Did he return to Downing Street refreshed and resolute, and say to his neighbour, “No more international conferences until we fix the crisis at home: it is time to back Boris and get social care done”?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his continued support. I did actually talk to Angela Merkel about social care, and I will tell him what she said at another time.