argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. People will be astonished to hear Labour Members wasting their time talking about a privatisation of the NHS that is not happening when they were responsible for PFI, the worst possible privatisation that has done such enormous damage Another point that the shadow Health Secretary did not mention was the quality and safety of care in our NHS that Labour left behind. The Francis report revealed massive problems—short staffing, a culture of denial and cover-ups—and they were not just at Mid Staffs but, as we now know, at Basildon, Morecambe Bay and many other trusts. Since we have been in office we have changed that. We have put 31 hospitals into special measures, which is more than 10% of hospitals across the entire NHS, and we have recruited record numbers of doctors and nurses I want to tell the House about one hospital that was put into special measures. Care was unsafe at Wexham Park in Slough—so much so that fewer than half the hospital staff were prepared to recommend the care provided there to their own friends and family—but it has gone from having six of its eight clinical areas rated as requiring improvement or inadequate, to having all eight of them rated as good or outstanding. It has come out of special measures, as have 15 hospitals in total, and we should all commend the staff who have worked incredibly hard to turn around those hospitals.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I have often from this Dispatch Box been prepared to praise some of the achievements of the last Labour Government. They did bring down waiting times, but they did not focus on the quality and safety of care What we now know from the CQC’s new regime, which has just finished its first round of inspections, is that 56% of our hospitals are good or outstanding. One could say that it is disappointing to know that 44% of hospitals are not, but to those who would use that as a political weapon I say this: we are the only country in the world brave enough to set up an independent inspection regime, and if we want to have the safest, highest quality care, the first thing we need to know is where it is good and where we need to improve it. I thank the chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, for his outstanding work in raising quality.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Lady is right that the Care Quality Commission was set up by the last Labour Government, but it did not have independence from the Government in its inspection reports. When we legislated for that, Labour tried to vote it down. We got it through and changed the inspection system, and it is working extremely well I want to move on to the substance of the debate, which is about the funding of the NHS. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) on his courage—indeed, his chutzpah—in confronting the issue of funding, despite inheriting a Labour policy to cut NHS funding by £5.5 billion a year by the end of the Parliament. He is right that there has never been greater financial pressure—we have had the financial crisis in 2008, the deficits and the growth in demand from the ageing population—but he must accept that that makes it all the more extraordinary that Labour wanted to cut the NHS budget in 2010 and to cut it from the current levels in 2015. I simply say that we could, as a Government, have chosen to cut NHS funding from this year’s level by £1.3 billion, as under Labour’s plans, but we would have had to lay off 11,000 doctors or 40,000 nurses.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): That is not the problem with our script; it is the problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s script, because as shadow Health Secretary he sanctioned a policy that would have given the NHS £1.3 billion less this year, and at the last election the then shadow Chancellor said he would give not a penny more to local authorities, whereas we are seeing social care funding go up by £600 million this year. More money is going into the NHS and the social care system under a Government who are committed to funding them both What is especially wrong with the argument made by the shadow Health Secretary, whom I welcome to his place for his first Opposition day debate, is his suggestion that the Government have not honoured their promises to the NHS. What did the independent commentators say at the time of last year’s spending review? Simon Stevens, whom he quoted, said "our case for the NHS has been heard and actively supported." NHS Providers, which he quoted, said it was "a good settlement for the NHS." The King’s Fund, which he quoted, said it was "a good settlement for the NHS" In fact, because of the Government’s commitment to the NHS, we are spending 10% more on it as a proportion of GDP than the OECD average—that is more than Norway, Finland, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is right. I congratulate him, because he was part of the shadow Health team that persuaded the then shadow Chancellor and Leader of the Opposition that we needed to make that investment, thanks to which the NHS is doing 5,000 more operations every single day.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Michael Andrew Gove (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend has been very gracious in taking interventions from all sides, and also in citing independent voices. Has not the independent King’s Fund also pointed out that the sustainability and transformation plans that he is overseeing are the "best hope" of securing long-term improvement for both health and care in this country? Does he agree that the Opposition should pay rather more attention to those independent experts, rather than repeating their own press releases?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is right that just occasionally we should listen to experts—but only very occasionally. In the spirit of listening to experts, and as the Leader of the Opposition is here, I will tell my right hon. Friend something else the King’s Fund has said that he will agree with, which is that "claims of mass privatisation were and are exaggerated." Let us not go chasing down rabbit holes The result of this Government’s commitment to the NHS is that real-terms spending per head has gone up by 4.6%, which is double the rate in Scotland and three times the rate in Wales. The hon. Member for Leicester South also mentioned the National Audit Office. He did not mention that the numbers quoted in the NAO report are last year’s figures. He chose not to mention this year’s numbers, which were published last week. They show that 40 fewer trusts are in deficit. Yes, a year ago, half of trusts were missing their financial plans, but now 86% are hitting those plans The latest figures, from Friday, show that the deficit will fall 73% from last year, and even lower than the year before. Why is that? It is because of a sustained effort by the NHS to tackle the problem. [Interruption.] The Opposition do not want to hear this, but the truth is that the NHS is gripping the very problem the shadow Health Secretary called a debate on. Agency spend, one of the biggest challenges, is on track to go down from £3.7 billion to less than £3 billion. The rates paid for agency nurses are down 18% on a year ago, and for locum doctors they are down 13%. Our procurement changes are on track to save half a billion pounds. The money we raise from international visitors is up three times, from £84 million to £289 million.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the calm and dignified way he is dealing with this debate, as compared with the Opposition. May I put in a plug for local community hospitals, not just in my constituency but right across the country, and how vital their retention is for good quality care in the future?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend, who himself personifies calm and dignity. Community hospitals are indeed extremely important. Their role may change, but they will none the less continue to be a vital part of provision in most of our constituencies.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I will make some progress, but I will find time to give way to hon. Friends who I know want to come in I want to pick up on a particularly extraordinary comment made yesterday by the shadow Health Secretary. He said: "aggressive efficiency targets have contributed to deficits" That is a curious thing to say, first because his own spending plans would have meant £5.5 billion more efficiencies. If he thinks our plans are aggressive, I just wonder how he would describe Labour’s approach. Secondly, I know we are all Corbynistas now, but basic economics suggests that efficiency plans do not increase deficits, but reduce deficits. That is what we need to do in the NHS, because we want the money to go to patient care There is another danger in the shadow Health Secretary’s argument, a trap that is very easy not just for him but for many commentators to fall into: the suggestion that this is a uniform problem across the NHS that it is powerless to grip without further Government intervention. The reality is that there is huge variation across the system. The deficits at good or outstanding trusts are five times less than the deficits at other trusts. If all trusts had the same financial performance as the good or outstanding ones, we would have a surplus of nearly half a billion pounds. Half the deficits are from just 22 trusts. We see this variation on a very specific level. For example, the amount paid for a pair of surgical gloves, which are very important to all hospitals, is £1.27 in some hospitals and just 50p in others. As for waiting lists, of 1,000 people who are waiting more than a year for their treatment, which is unacceptable, there is just one person from an outstanding trust who has been waiting that long. Some 93% are from trusts that require improvement or are inadequate. This is why we have a huge programme to support and improve those trusts and deal with the challenges they face.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not blaming hospitals. We are supporting hospitals to deal with the problem. The root cause of the problem, set out in the Francis report, was hospitals covering up bad problems. We said no to that and said that we were going to sort it out by having more nurses on our wards. That is why, in the four years that I have been Health Secretary, we have had 10,000 more nurses on our wards.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the public are finally starting to see through the usual Labour smokescreen that is high on rhetoric and low on alternative solutions, with very patchy and poor delivery when Labour is given the chance? My right hon. Friend’s approach to the health service—a quiet delivery of change and proper funding—is what the public are looking for.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): It is noticeable that the two potential solutions we have heard have been from Opposition Back Benchers—the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the former shadow Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton)—and not from the Opposition Front Bench. My hon. Friend makes an important point The shadow Health Secretary is right to hold the Government to account for the funding of the NHS and the social care system, but it is a big mistake to distil all issues around the NHS into the simple issue of money. That subcontracts the responsibility for safe, high-quality care to politicians. If we are going to be the safest and the best quality system in the world, that has to be everyone’s job, everyone’s focus and everyone’s commitment—politicians, yes, but managers, doctors, nurses, porters, healthcare assistants and every single person working in NHS On the way forward, we first need to move to accountable care organisation models and the "Five Year Forward View", including the STP process. The shadow Health Secretary called STPs "secret plans", but in fact 28 of the 44 have been published and the rest will be published before Christmas. Many in the House, on both sides, objected to the Health and Social Care Act 2012 because they felt it did not do enough to support integrated care. Well, now we have a process that is bringing together the NHS and the social care system, acute trusts and primary care, at a local level. That is a big prize and we should support it, not try to make political capital out of it.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): That is exactly what we need to sort out. We have the STP process to stop people doing their own thing, instead of having a co-ordinated, well-planned strategy. If we stick with this process, embrace innovation and technology and retain a relentless focus on safety and quality of care, in this Parliament we will see a million more people accessing mental health treatment every year; 5,000 more doctors working in general practice and a transformation of services through GPs; a new four-week cancer waiting time standard that will save 30,000 lives a year; more failing hospitals turned around; the weekend effect tackled; more doctors and nurses; and an NHS staying true to the promise made to patients in 1948 that safe, high-quality care would be there for everyone, regardless of income. That is what this Conservative Government will deliver, and I urge the House to support the amendment.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Sarah James (Wollaston) (Conservative, Centre-right): We know it does, and the CQC report describes social care as being at a tipping-point; it is in a very fragile state and we owe it to all our constituents to try to come together to agree where we go from here. Many have proposed a royal commission to look at future sustainability, but we have had commissions: the Barker commission set out the options, and the House of Lords is looking at future sustainability and the range of options I urge colleagues across the House to try to agree, rather than having this continual confrontational debate. The best way forward would be for all parties in this House to agree that this is an enormous challenge. My personal belief is that we should stick with our current very equitable system of state funding of our NHS, look at the various options and agree between us that we need to address this. We cannot keep ducking it; we owe it to all our constituents to adopt a much more constructive tone to our debate We know that the current position is unsustainable, and that was reiterated in today’s National Audit Office report. We can continue to shout across the Chamber about how much is spent, but we know this will be a challenge whoever is in power, and I urge all colleagues to focus instead on a different approach. Yes, more can be done within the NHS, but I am afraid that the elastic is stretched far too tight for social care to make any more efficiencies. We now need to work together to see how we can fund this going forward.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My starting point is that funding in the NHS must be used effectively and efficiently. To that end, we expect the NHS to deliver savings and best value for money There are a number of issues relating to social care in the NHS where there is considerable scope for solving existing problems, for ensuring that better health care is delivered and for achieving sustainability, and there is no better place to start the discussion of those issues than bed-blocking Oxfordshire’s historical performance on bed-blocking is poor. It came 151st in terms of headcount last November, with 158 people. Bed-blocking decreases the availability of beds and has adverse effects on patients, particularly when they are elderly—for example, incontinence in the over-65s increases, and muscle wasting in the over-80s after 10 days of hospitalisation is equivalent to 10 years of muscle wasting otherwise By September, the headcount had fallen to 113 people, improving the county’s performance to 108th—a massive improvement of 50 places over that period. That was achieved through a joint initiative by the clinical commissioning group, Oxford University Hospitals, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and the county council, all working to move people out of hospital when they have been appropriately treated However, that improvement was also achieved by putting £2 million into funding extra temporary care beds in care homes, where people can stay until they are ready to return to their own homes, move to a permanent care home or receive care in their own homes. That joint and positive thinking is something I would encourage as we integrate social care and the NHS.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I do, and that is precisely what the organisations in Oxfordshire have been trying to achieve The second point I would make relates to how we produce better-serving hospitals. In my own area, the Townlands Memorial Hospital, which is in Henley but which serves the whole of south Oxfordshire, has recently gone through a major reprovision. It now has an increased number of facilities serving the population of the area, but the beds are not in the hospital. Although limited in number, they are in an adjoining care home, whose opening I happened to attend with the Duke of Gloucester only the other day. It is good to see the issues at the hospital finally resolved That is the way forward for local hospitals: better treatment for people in their home through a system of what has come to be called ambulatory care. Such a system prevents the problems I mentioned, with patients suffering when they stay in hospital for a long time. This view comes not from politicians but from clinicians both local and national. The national clinicians I would point to are those in the Royal College of Physicians, who are fully behind this process. This method costs more in the first instance but provides better value for money and increases better patient outcomes The third area I want to discuss is what can happen when we integrate the staff providing care who are employed by the county council and those who are employed by the NHS. This allows us to ensure that the pay and service requirements of both groups of people, who are doing exactly the same job, can be harmonised in a much more positive way. That sets out a good scope for efficiency in the operation of social care within the NHS model. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker), in that I would like to see them fully integrated, but until then I have set out a very good method of being able to operate in those circumstances and to co-operate in order to achieve the outcomes that I have mentioned Sustainability and transformation plans focus on organisations working together and are the best hope of improving health and social care services in the long term. That is not my view but that expressed by the King’s Fund when it looked at the plans. I fully agree with its assessment of the situation and of these plans, which are working towards achieving the same outcomes.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Andrew William Murrison (Conservative, Centre-right): How much worse does the hon. Gentleman think that the deficit in South West Wiltshire would have been had Labour won in 2015 and uprated NHS spending by just £2.5 billion, rather than the figure we are currently enjoying?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very pleased to be able to close what the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) described as an interesting debate. I would describe it as an occasionally high-pitched debate, to which a number of Members made constructive contributions. I must say to the hon. Gentleman that those constructive contributions came from the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who made a characteristically impressive speech, and from Back Benchers on my side of the House, whose contributions, I might add, outnumbered those from Back-Bench Labour Members by four to three—or one third—although this was an Opposition day debate. Where are the Labour supporters for the motion, I ask the hon. Gentleman? We shall have to see whether they turn up to vote; they certainly were not prepared to turn up to speak The funding of the NHS is clearly a subject that is close to the hearts of most Members in the Chamber, precisely because it, along with the contribution of all who work in the NHS—to whom I pay tribute, as did the Secretary of State, but as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston failed to do—is what keeps the NHS going. The Government are committed to the NHS, and committed to ensuring that it is free at the point of use.