Autumn Statement

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barbara Keeley

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I have had many discussions with my hon. Friend on this issue and he is absolutely right. There is a danger with over-zealous regulation that people are focused more on cost than on performance. Like him, I want to resolve the issue.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The Chancellor talked about the creative industries but then announced only that he would look at improving film and high-end TV tax credits. The cultural tax reliefs continue to help our orchestras, theatres, museums and galleries to survive, and they protect jobs. At the 2023 Budget, he extended the uplifted rate of relief until March 2024, after which it will taper, but sadly he also introduced changes to limit what cultural organisations can claim for. Orchestra tax relief is a critical source of income; without it, some orchestras say they could fold, with musicians losing their jobs. Will he look not just at film and high-end TV tax credits but at all the cultural tax reliefs and how they can continue to support jobs in our creative industries?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Having only just delivered the autumn statement I do not want to pre-empt what might be in the spring Budget, but there will be another fiscal event before the end of the financial year in which all these things will be looked at. With respect to orchestras, which are fantastically important to our cultural landscape, I will just say that the typical person playing in an orchestra will get a £450 increase in post-tax pay next year, and that will help them greatly.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barbara Keeley

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am very happy to confirm both those points. I have park homes in my own constituency.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

From his time as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, which we are hearing about plenty in this statement, the Chancellor knows that NHS England spends a ludicrous amount on detaining autistic people and people with learning disabilities in inappropriate and often substandard in-patient care. I know the Chancellor understands this.

[Jeremy Hunt]

indicated assent.

[Barbara Keeley]

He is nodding. He himself said, during the Committee’s inquiry into this issue, that the level of community provision is totally inadequate. Will he listen to himself again and commit to looking into this issue with the Health and Social Care Secretary, so that we are no longer throwing money away on substandard care when autistic people and people with learning disabilities could be living happier lives in the community?

[Jeremy Hunt]

The hon. Lady and I have talked about these issues many times and may I just say, across the political divide, that it has been a privilege to work with her on social care issues and to see the concern she has in public and in private about all these issues? I agree that it is a scandal that we have so many people detained in secure accommodation who could be in the community. I absolutely will work with my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary to see what can be done.

Economic Update

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barbara Keeley

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I am, I think, one of only two Chancellors to have been Health Secretary, so I am very aware of the pressures in the NHS. I am not making any commitments, but when it comes to the NHS the whole country wants to make sure that it can cope not just with winter crises but with the pressures we have had since covid. We will look at that very carefully, but I would also like to see reform in the way NHS funding is spent, because I think we can do better with the large sums that we spend already.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

After the Government’s disastrous mini-Budget, I heard from a constituent, a single person first-time buyer who had been saving to buy a home for seven years and can no longer afford a mortgage. She described that as a kick in the teeth. What does the Chancellor of the Exchequer say to my constituent and all those ordinary people across the country battling price rises, struggling with increased mortgage costs and having their pensions hit by the effects of three weeks of instability caused by the economic incompetence of the current Prime Minister and her Government?

[Jeremy Hunt]

We have listened to her concerns and we have changed our policies as a result. Also, in fairness, the rise in interest rates is not just because of actions taken by the UK Government in the past few weeks but because of global factors, and we will do everything we can going forward to shield people like the hon. Lady’s constituent from those global factors, but we cannot do everything.

NHS Funding Bill

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Barbara Keeley

Legislative Grand Committee & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Programme motion
Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend has huge experience of this in local government, and he is absolutely right. The big surprise for me when we were conceiving of the children and young people’s Green Paper was the willingness of NHS professionals to accept that the people who know the kids best are their teachers, rather than GPs, because the teachers see them every day and are probably going to be better at spotting a mental illness and being able to do something about it.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I would like the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether he supports an important proposal that we put forward at the general election. It was that there should be a trained counsellor in every school to spot mental health problems. Putting that burden on to teachers and others in the teaching profession is the wrong way forward. In Wales, we have the experience that having trained counsellors in schools relieves the pressure on CAMHS. If we want to take children’s mental health seriously and relieve the pressure on CAMHS, we should do this. I have a couple of schools in my constituency that have trained counsellors, and it really helps. The other thing that we proposed was to have a mental health hub in every local authority area, so that children and their families in crisis would have somewhere to go where there would be professionals and charities that work in mental health. Those ideas that we put forward really should be considered, and I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman supports them.

[Jeremy Hunt]

They are both interesting ideas. The plan at the moment is that resource will be given to schools for a teacher to volunteer to devote a proportion of their time to this, and that there will be funding for them to do so, similar to the way in which schools have a special educational needs co-ordinator who is a teacher devoted to the special needs of the pupils in that school. I personally would have no objection if that were a separate counsellor, but this needs to be a resource inside the school—someone who is regularly at the school and who knows the children there. That is the important thing.

With permission, Dame Rosie, I would like to comment on some of the other amendments and on some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston. He rightly talked about the issues around maternity safety, and I agree that it is vital that we continue the maternity safety training fund. That is not directly the subject of one of his amendments, but it is indirectly connected to it. Twice a week in the NHS, the Health Secretary has to sign off a multi-million pound settlement to a family whose child has been disabled for life as a result of medical negligence. What is even more depressing is that there is no discernible evidence that that number is going down. The reason for that is that when such tragedies happen, instead of doing the most important thing, which is learning the lesson of what went wrong and ensuring that it is spread throughout the whole country, we end up with a six-year legal case. It is impossible for a family with a child disabled at birth to get compensation from the NHS unless they prove in court that the doctor was negligent. Obviously, the doctor will fight that. That is why we still have too much of a cover-up culture, despite the best intentions of doctors and nurses. This is the last thing they want to do, but the system ends up putting them under pressure to do it. That is why we are not learning from mistakes. I am afraid that that is the same thing that was referred to in the Paterson inquiry report that was published today: the systemic covering up of problems that allowed Mr Paterson’s work to carry on undetected for so long. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston is absolutely right on that.

I think it is a fair assessment of safety in the NHS to say that huge strides have been made in the past five or six years on transparency. It is much more open about things that go wrong than it used to be, and that is a very positive development. But transparency alone is not enough. We have to change the practice of doctors and nurses on the ground, and that means spreading best practice. Unfortunately, that is not happening, which is why, even after the tragedies of Mid Staffs, Morecambe Bay and Southern Health, we are facing yet another tragedy at Shrewsbury and Telford—I see my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) in her place, and she has campaigned actively on that issue. The big challenge now is to think about ways to change our blame culture into a learning culture.