A&E Services — House of Commons, 2015-06-24
Topic: Health
Benedict Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): I find it difficult to have to repeat to the hon. Gentleman, as I have to the shadow Secretary of State on a previous occasion, that this is a plan by NHS England. It is a plan that we supported before the election and afterwards, and a plan that the Opposition failed to support. The details of the plan have been worked out by NHS England and will be revealed in due course. Our part of the deal is that we provide the money that it has requested, which is £8 billion. We will see the plan as it is revealed by NHS England. It is an ambitious plan but one that we will fund from our side of the bargain The shadow Minister reveals in his comments and in the motion to which he has put his name that his motives are not pure. He speaks about the reporting targets for A&E departments around the country, but does not mention that the decision to change the reporting standard was made not by the Government but on the basis of a recommendation made by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, who did so as part of a general review of reporting standards. When the shadow Minister talks about reporting standards, he does not mention that we are bringing those for cancer waiting times forward from a quarterly to a monthly basis, which I would hope he would have welcomed. The shadow Minister does not mention that, for the first time, we are introducing mental health waiting times, as well as putting into the NHS constitution parity of esteem, which was not in the original constitution written and instituted by the shadow Secretary of State. Those are two matters of vital concern to our constituents which we are correcting on the recommendation of Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. Nor does the shadow Minister mention that Sir Bruce recommends that the A&E targets are brought on to a monthly reporting basis so that they can have clinical parity with all other standards and produce a better quality of statistical reporting In this debate, the shadow Minister finds himself on the wrong side of the clinical evidence given by Sir Bruce; the Patients Association, which welcomed the change; and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, which said: "The move from weekly to monthly reporting better reflects meaningful trends and will in fact increase the validity of this key metric, by reducing the effect of short term and unforeseeable events" The Nuffield Trust said that "the replacement of weekly A&E figures with a monthly publication of indicators for many targets should help us understand changes in performance in a more meaningful way" The hon. Gentleman is on the wrong side of clinicians, academics, the Patients Association and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine—and on the wrong side of the argument The reason why is that the hon. Gentleman has made a choice. I appeal to the new Opposition Members who are sitting behind him: they can go through the next five years, motion by motion, vote by vote, opposing everything that is done on the basis of clinical evidence, just for the purpose of making political gain. If they do that, I, in turn, will remind the Opposition of the scandal of mixed-sex wards; the scandal of the highest hospital infection rate in the developed world; the scandal of a doubled pay bill for managers; the scandal of Morecambe Bay; the scandal of Mid Staffs; and the scandal of some of the worst cancer outcomes in the world. I will remind them of those every time they seek to oppose us for political reasons. The choice is theirs—or they can take the other tack and try to listen to clinicians, to be constructive and to de-weaponise the NHS I will seek to do what the shadow Secretary of State claimed to want to do, which is to come together and allow the NHS to get on with the job of building 21st-century services. However, if the Opposition make the wrong choice, all they will do is confirm in the minds of the British people that they put politics before the NHS, and that for the Labour party, the party comes first—always—whereas for Conservative Members, the NHS and patients always come first.