National Health Service — House of Commons, 2015-01-21
Topic: Health
Chloe Rebecca Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a wise point Tomorrow, I am visiting a walk-in centre and the hospital that serves my constituents. When I am there, I shall be explaining, as I have several times in the House recently, my support for the NHS in Norwich and across Britain, my thanks for what the staff are doing and my understanding of what the patients, my constituents, need from the NHS I want to make three points in the debate. My first point is that, as many hon. Members have said this afternoon, the NHS is under unprecedented demand. It does it no disservice to acknowledge that and bring it into the debate. I for one welcome the decisions that allow for increased numbers of doctors and nurses in urgent care—that is true in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals Trust; for an increased number of operations to be carried out each year—that is true everywhere in the country; and for increased hours at GP surgeries. I recently learned to my pleasure that Norwich doctors will apply for the next round of the access fund. They have not done that before and it is very welcome. The Government have made the fund available and it could be of great benefit to patients in my area I am also grateful to the Government for the decisions made early—earlier than ever before—that have allowed for winter pressures to be dealt with. Again, that directly benefits the area of Norfolk that contains the Norfolk and Norwich hospital. I am particularly pleased that the use of that funding will be planned jointly with local authorities through the system resilience group. That is incredibly important. I will turn to that kind of joined-up working in my final remarks Let me make a point about the motion. We have heard wise contributions from Back Benchers on both sides of the Chamber. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) rightly asked us not to use the name of his area as a shorthand. He is right that we ought to look much deeper. As a further example, the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) rightly spoke eloquently about mental health. Unfortunately she is not in the Chamber, but I am sure she will be back before the winding-up speeches. I intervened on her to ask why the motion does not refer in its own right to mental health; it is a great shame that it does not. The motion is 10 lines of overblown and fly-blown rhetoric. It asks for an NHS that is "fit for the future", but makes no mention of mental health being equal to physical health, which I believe strongly. Mental health and physical health should be equal in word and deed, and in budgets. Indeed, I have been discussing that with the Minister recently through parliamentary questions The truth is that the motion is rather sad and inadequate. It betrays even the usual standards of political football that are played on Opposition days. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said in his opening speech that it is time for honesty. To that end, we would like to know whether his party leader believes in "weaponising" the NHS. To that end, we would like an end to the shabby leaflets on the NHS that go around the country I would have liked mental health, which is an important topic, to replace the waste of words in the motion. The motion is a pathetic reuse of the tired and crumbling money-making policy—the mansion tax—that not even all Opposition Members agree with.