National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford]

There are a number of provisions relating to the Secretary of State which state that everything that is decided has to put patients first, rather than competition. That is the key difference in this Bill. The Secretary of State will have to be satisfied that every penny raised from private income serves the needs of patients. The Secretary of State will set the limit, which can be variable, but it will have to come down because this House will demand that.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Is it not true that, under this Government’s reorganisation, between £3 billion and £5 billion has been wasted as a result of tendering exercises?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says—it would be churlish for me to say otherwise—and I am grateful for the way he said it. The things Opposition Members were saying back then have happened, and we can see the effects of the Government’s reorganisation in the NHS. With the new figures that came out this morning, we see that A and E has missed the Government’s target for 70 weeks in a row. The A and E figures are the barometer of the health and care system. They are the best place to look if we want to see whether there are problems in the health and care system. The fact that the target has been missed for 70 weeks in a row tells us that severe storms are building over the NHS.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I am glad my right hon. Friend raised that. It takes us back to pre-1997, when people who could not get beds were lying on trolleys. I am sure he remembers that. I can remember a hospital in Coventry that was falling down. As a result of the Labour Government, we got a new hospital.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right. The Labour Government inherited a situation where almost three quarters of the NHS estate was built before 1948. We transformed that, as well as bringing those waiting lists down. He is right to remind us.

I cannot believe that Government Members have not had the guts to be here today to argue for their own policy on the NHS. Or is it that under the shambolic regime of their new Chief Whip, who is now inflicting the same chaos on the parliamentary Conservative party as he did on England’s schools, the Government did not think they could win the vote today, so they did not dare to bring their troops here to hold it? I do not know what the reason is, but they clearly do not believe in their own legislation and the catastrophic reorganisation that followed. An unnamed senior Cabinet Minister has been quoted in The Times as admitting that it was their single biggest mistake.