Health and Social Care Budgets

Peter Heaton-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) on securing this important debate. It will not surprise colleagues to hear that I am unashamedly here to speak up for Devon, and North Devon in particular. We are part of the south-west, and it is significant, looking around the Chamber, to see so many Members from the south-west from all sides. It is because we are concerned that rural areas in the south-west are not getting our fair share in the distribution of available funds.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) in unequivocally welcoming the extra money that the Government have put into health and social care. The £10 billion extra for the NHS over this Parliament and the £2 billion for social care announced in the Budget are extremely welcome, as are the extra revenue-raising powers that have been given to local authorities for social care, and I thank the Minister and his team for those.

However, we need our fair share in areas such as Devon and the south-west. As has been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), we face a sustainability and transformation plan that is causing huge concern among my residents in North Devon and among those of other colleagues here from Devon constituencies. There are particular concerns about the future of some acute services at North Devon district hospital. I have said before and I will say again that any cuts to services at that hospital would be absolutely unacceptable. That is because of what I describe as the three Ds: distances, demographics and deprivation. I will not rehearse the arguments here; the Minister knows them well. He has been kind enough to hear me out on many occasions, as have the Secretary of State and many others. Those three factors in Devon and in North Devon in particular mean that we have to look at a fairer way of funding our health service so that we get the services we need. I repeat that any cuts to services at North Devon District Hospital would be absolutely unacceptable.

The holy grail of social care is the integration of the health and social care systems, which many colleagues have mentioned. I want to pay tribute to the Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust, which does better than most in working with its social care partners to ensure that packages of care are in place when people are able to move out of hospital. I welcome the hard work of all the people who work in the North Devon services to achieve that.

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I will not. The Chair was clear about the time limits; I apologise to my hon. Friend.

I will end by saying we must remember the three Ds. Let us work together across parties to find a long-term solution for the fairer funding of health and social care.