Health and Social Care Bill

Karl Turner Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come to some of those points. However, I might just say that, in the space of the last few days, we have had an opportunity to demonstrate that Labour signed up to an enormous, centralised, top-down NHS IT scheme that was never going to deliver, was failing to deliver and was costing billions.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No.

In the space of under two years, my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department and I have delivered a reduction approaching £2 billion in the cost of the NHS IT programme. That will enable us to empower services right across the country to be better users and deliver better IT systems.

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[Andrew Selous]

I will make a little progress.

I also say to Opposition Members that the GPs of Bedfordshire are thoroughly behind these proposals. Dr Paul Hassan, a long-standing Dunstable GP, will be the leader of the clinical commissioning group in my area. He is an excellent GP who has the interests of his patients at heart and he will do an extremely good job.

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman says that he met 400 people in his constituency, not one of whom mentioned their opposition to the Bill. Has he had any communication from any health service professional who has concerns about the Bill? I and many Opposition Members have received numerous e-mails and a great deal of correspondence from such people, as well as from constituents.

[Andrew Selous]

I am aware of one GP in my constituency who has concerns about the reforms. The overwhelming majority of GPs are thoroughly behind them. I find it troubling that Opposition Members do not trust our nation’s GPs, with their wisdom, good sense and commitment to patients, to do the right thing by their patients. They will look at the powers in the Bill and use them for the good of their patients where it is wise and appropriate to do so.

I have to tell Opposition Members that the clinical commissioning group in Bedfordshire has already established a new team to deal with emergency calls from elderly people in care homes. That has resulted in a 40% reduction in hospital admissions and has enabled vulnerable elderly people to be treated at home. That is just one example of the sort of thing that we will see when doctors make use of the powers that they are given in the Bill.

I will cite a few areas of the NHS in which, if Opposition Members think honestly, they will recognise that there were problems when they left office. I will use three brief examples from my constituency. As we heard from the Chairman of the Health Committee and others, one of the important things that the Bill will do, under part 1, is to integrate health and social care. I am extremely grateful to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who has been looking at the issue of delayed transfers of care at Luton and Dunstable hospital. The new structures that will be introduced under the Bill, with the full integration of health and social care, will be helpful in that area and will deal with the serious issue of delayed transfers of care.

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[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I rise tonight to oppose the motion and the amendment. The motion is clear on the e-petition, on calling on the Government to drop the Health and Social Care Bill, and on declining to support the Bill in its current form. I see no mention of the risk register, yet when we debated it several weeks ago the shadow Secretary of State did not want to talk about it; he wanted to talk about the Bill. I shall come to the very confused position of the Opposition on this issue.

I will obviously not support the amendment—that will come as no great surprise to the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)—but I agree with his reference to patients’ organisations. Such references have been missing from the speeches of Opposition Members. I would prefer a reference to patients and service users, because my first point is that the voice of patients has not been heard. Those are not my words, but those of somebody who gave evidence to the all-party parliamentary group on mental health last week. We have not heard the voices of patients in the debate so far—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are welcome to stand to correct me, but I have heard no mention from them of the words and views of patients.

[Karl Turner]

I am obliged to the hon. Lady for giving way. The mere fact that more than 170,000 people have signed the e-petition surely must speak volumes to her.

[Nicky Morgan]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to talk about maths or numbers—

[Karl Turner]

I am not talking about maths.

[Nicky Morgan]

We could talk about the number of people who have taken part in the Royal Colleges petitions.

[Karl Turner]

I am talking about the 170,000 people who signed the petition. What are you talking about?

[Nicky Morgan]

Well, 175,000 have signed the petition, but there are nigh on 60 million people in this country.