argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution. I know that she, as the relatively new Member for Lincoln, will be campaigning for the future of health provision in her constituency The response of the Prime Minister to those cancelled operations this winter was to shrug her shoulders and say, "Nothing is perfect," but by the end of the winter reporting 185,000 patients, often elderly, vulnerable and in distress, had been left waiting in the back of an ambulance or treated in a corridor for more than 40 minutes. We do not have a crisis in our NHS just in winter; we have a crisis all year round. Since 2010, we have seen a reduction of about 16,000 beds, including more than 5,000 acute beds and nearly 6,000 mental health beds—that is almost 20% of them. Among equivalent wealthy countries, only Canada and Poland have fewer doctors per head, and only two countries have fewer beds per head A report today in The Guardian details how old and out of date the equipment is in hospitals because infrastructure budgets have been raided. According to the OECD, we are bottom of the league for the provision of CT and MRI scanners. Meanwhile, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) has pointed out, eight years of multi-billion cuts to social care provision have decimated the sector and have denied 400,000 people, often the elderly and the vulnerable, the support they would otherwise get Years of pay freeze, and failure to invest in and plan properly for the workforce, have meant vacancies for 100,000 staff, including vacancies for 40,000 nurses, 3,500 midwives and 11,000 doctors. In the past two years, we have lost more than 1,000 GPs. In our communities, we have seen district nurses cut by 45%. We have lost more than 2,000 health visitors in two years. We have lost nearly 700 school nurses. There are 5,862 fewer psychiatric nurses and 4,803 fewer community health nurses than in 2010, and the Prime Minister’s hostile environment has meant the Home Office has turned down visas for at least 400 staff.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Conor Patrick McGinn (Labour, Centre-left): In the St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the spending on agency nurses has quadrupled since 2011. Is it not a fact that under this Tory Government we have a retention, recruitment and resources crisis in our NHS?
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has, with great eloquence, explained why failing to plan properly on the workforce is such a false economy. It means that trusts are spending more and more on locums and expensive agencies I trust that no Conservative Member will try to pretend in this debate that it is possible to reduce beds, reduce staff, cut social care and fail to invest while patient numbers are increasing without the quality of care suffering. If any Conservative Member does try to tell us the opposite, they should look at the latest performance standards. The lack of hospital capacity and staffing means that the waiting list has risen to more than 4 million. Simon Stevens, of NHS England, has warned that "on the current funding outlook, the NHS waiting list will grow to five million people by 2021. That’s an extra million people on the waiting list. One in 10 of us waiting for an operation—the highest number ever." The blanket cancellation of elective operations has seen waiting lists rise by nearly 5% compared with last year, and we have waiting times up and performance against targets down. In overcrowded A&Es, in the past year, 2.5 million have waited more than four hours. Just 76.4% of patients needing urgent care were treated within four hours at hospital A&E units in England in March—that is the lowest proportion since records began in 2010.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): Of course, A&E waiting times would not be as long if the Government were investing properly in primary care. In my borough, we have the ludicrous situation of private companies advertising in London underground stations, saying: "Fed up waiting? Our private GPs can see you now…ONLY £80" Does my hon. Friend agree that people should not be forced to pay £80 to see a GP, and they should not be waiting unnecessarily long in A&E because of the Government’s failure properly to fund and deliver the workforce that primary care needs?
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. The problem is that, when the Government allow our national health service to deteriorate by such a scale and push it into this level of crisis, they are essentially forcing people, often reluctant refugees from a public NHS, into self-pay options. That is what happened last time the Conservatives were in government and it is happening again.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I am delighted that GPs in Broxtowe have been rated outstanding, but patients in Broxtowe will be concerned that bed occupancy rates at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust are at 94.9%. That is what people in Broxtowe and across the east midlands are concerned about.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I know that Councillor Jon Collins of Nottingham City Council is a talented man, but he does not run Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. The people running the health trusts are the chief executives, who have to rely on the budget settlements that the right hon. Lady and her party have been denying—
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): No, I am not giving way again. The right hon. Lady has had two chances; she can contribute to the debate later We have overcrowded A&Es and—perhaps the right hon. Lady can listen to this—patients are not even able to get a bed, often lying confused on trollies in corridors. In the last year of the previous Labour Government, 60,000 people were designated as trolley waits—
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): Mr Deputy Speaker has asked me to make a bit of progress, so let me do so Underfunding and lack of capacity have driven more and more NHS purchasing from the private sector. We have seen beds lost in NHS hospitals, which are then increasingly forced to use the private sector. Spending on elective treatments outsourced to the private sector rose from £241 million in 2015-16 to £381 million in 2016-17. In many instances—from mental health provision and detox services for those suffering from substance misuse, to routine elective operations—we often see a poor quality of service in the private sector. The House does not have to take my word for it; the Secretary of State himself intervened recently to demand that the private sector gets its house in order. These risks have been known for years, since the Paterson scandal, and I note that the Government are not proposing to legislate.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I will make a bit of progress because Mr Deputy Speaker has asked me to do so I say to the Secretary of State that, if he is prepared to legislate, we will support him because we know that, when things go wrong in the private sector—often these hospitals have no intensive care units—it is the NHS that has to step in and act as a safety net, with patients often being transferred from a private hospital to an NHS hospital. That risk has been estimated to cost the NHS £60 million.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): Let me make a bit of progress and then I will try to let others in If the Secretary of State brings forward legislation, we will work constructively with him The latest and perhaps most pernicious consequence of underfunding is the move to so-called wholly owned subsidiaries. Many are saying that this is a VAT scam. Hospital trusts feel that, because of underfunding, they have no option but to transfer staff to these so-called subsidiaries, set up at arm’s length but still owned by the trust. We have trusts paying management consultants a total of £3 million, according to freedom of information requests, for advice on setting up these new arrangements. That is money that should be going on patient care. It will mean a two-tier workforce as new joiners no longer need to be on "Agenda for Change" terms and conditions. That looks to many like forcing staff to pay for the Government-imposed financial crisis in the NHS.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the former Minister of State. We do miss him during our exchanges at the Dispatch Box. The figures that he has quoted are different from those provided by the Library. The Library says that the percentage of the total budget spent on private providers has gone up to 1% in Wales, but it has gone up by 2% in England in the past year. The Department of Health and Social Care may have different figures, but those are the figures from the Library.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Yvonne Helen Fovargue (Labour, Centre-left): Will my hon. Friend send his support to the staff from Wigan hospitals who are today striking in protest at the creation of Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Solutions? Does he agree that that is just privatisation by the backdoor?
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I say to the right hon. Gentleman, of whom I am tremendously fond, as he knows, that I agree broadly with the point that he is making. If my memory serves me correctly, he sits for a Sussex constituency and, of course, in Sussex, we had the shambles of a patient transport contract that went to a firm, Coperforma, which did not even own any ambulances and which was leaving patients stranded on their doorstep waiting for transport to dialysis appointments and to chemotherapy appointments. It often could not then pick up the patients from the hospital and take them home. That contract had to come back in-house. It is these types of privatisation that we believe are doing great damage to the health service.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. Does he agree that private companies are also increasing car parking charges, which is a tax on patients, and that, more importantly, because of the lack of social workers we have bed-blocking in the national health service, too?
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that no, it is not. I agree with the Secretary of State that the "use of the independent sector to bring waiting times down and raise standards is not privatisation." They were the words of the Secretary of State when he spoke at his own party conference the other year. The Labour Government did spot-purchase from the private sector to bring down the huge waiting lists that we inherited in 1997; but our concern is about contracts for delivery of healthcare services being handed out to private sector providers who not only provide poor quality to patients but give the taxpayer a poor deal. It is a different situation.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Gloria De Piero (Labour, Centre-left): Thirty-five pounds a week to watch the basic TV channels from a hospital bed; 60p a minute for a relative to call a patient on a hospital phone; a minimum of £1.80 for the car park for a short visit: these charges are happening at my hospital and at hospitals across the land. They are a tax on sickness and a particular tax on long-term sickness. They have to stop.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has hit upon a brilliant new campaign, which I am sure she will be running. The charges for watching television in wards are absolutely extortionate. It is a scandal; it is a tax on sickness; but it happens because the hospitals, and the health service in general, are so desperately underfunded.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Matthew Toby Perkins (Labour, Centre-left): Chesterfield Royal Hospital is consulting on setting up a subsidiary company. Does it not seem madness that, to save £3 million that the hospital is paying the Government, it is creating this new organisation, which is being funded by the Government anyway? It is the emperor’s new clothes. The money is going round in circles without doing any good.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): In addition, hospitals have wasted millions in consultancy fees in setting up these organisations. They create a two-tier workforce because new joiners will not necessarily be on "Agenda for Change" terms and conditions, and they could at some point be completely sold off to the private sector. It is a back-door privatisation.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I remind the hon. Lady, whom I greatly respect in this House because of her work in the NHS, that we moved away from that system to a preferred provider mechanism because we knew that the any qualified provider mechanism did not work and was not in the interests of patient care or the interests of the taxpayer Let me give some examples. On support services, GPs have warned repeatedly of the dangers of NHS England outsourcing primary care services to Capita, in a contract designed to save £40 million. Those fears proved well founded, as the National Audit Office found that there was a real risk of "serious patient harm" stemming from Capita’s handling of the contract, with major problems around the secure transfer of patient notes, with notes going missing or delivered to the wrong surgery. Capita’s work in providing back-office services such as payment administration, cervical screening tests, medical records and supplies orders had fallen "well below an acceptable standard." On patient transport contracts, I mentioned to the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) what happened with Coperforma. This was a contract worth £63.5 million.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I am sure that the hon. Lady accepts that it is a scandal that the CCGs—her local health economy—are still paying out to Coperforma. She should be getting up and complaining about that. What about support services? Interserve was brought in to provide facilities management across 550 NHS buildings across Leicestershire, with a seven-year, £300 million contract. The contract was scrapped four years early because of reports of patients receiving meals up to three hours late, bloodstains in the corridors and bins not emptied. How about Carillion, which won a £200 million, five-year estates and facilities management contract with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust? It failed to clean the hospitals properly, with reports that infectious waste was seen overflowing in the children’s ward.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Vernon Coaker (Labour, Centre-left): The concerns that my hon. Friend is raising are the same as those raised by the Chair of the Health Committee in a letter to Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, in which she said: "My central concern is that contracted services can seemingly fail to meet the basic clinical requirements without being held to account or compelled to acknowledge and remedy their failings. This risks undermining the effective commissioning of services and could, ultimately, compromise patient care and safety."
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I greatly respect the hon. Lady, and I greatly enjoyed her Red Box blog on mental health provision last week. I know she thinks carefully about these matters, but this is not about ideology. It is about what works. Let us take the example of the East Kent contract for integrated NHS 111 and GP out-of-hours services, which began in January 2017. After only seven months of Primecare running it, the service was placed in special measures after it was rated inadequate. That is happening in her own backyard. This is not working, and that is the point we are making The history of PFI is that when we came into government, a third of hospitals were more than 50 years old. That is why we carried on with the John Major PFI scheme, which was the creation of that Government. Current Cabinet Ministers such as the shadow Health Secretary at the time, now the Secretary of State for International Trade, stood at the Dispatch Box and congratulated the Labour Government on taking up the private finance initiative developed under the previous Government. He said he would not object to the use of PFI "exclusively to fund private capital projects"—[Official Report, 8 January 2003; Vol. 397, c. 181.] In this House, the current Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster gave a "warm welcome" to a PFI in his own constituency. The Brexit Secretary said in this House: "The PFI has many virtues—after all, it was a Conservative policy in the first instance."—[Official Report, 10 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 429.] The Business Secretary said: "PFI was initiated by the previous Conservative Government"—[Official Report, 12 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 787.] The Scottish Secretary has said that PFI is a "successful basis for funding". The Welsh Secretary said: "I am a fan of PFI in general."—[Official Report, 4 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 1124.] We will take no lessons from the Tories when it comes to PFI We have not only seen facilities management contracts having to be brought back in-house in Leicestershire and Nottingham; we have also seen them deliver a poor quality of service across Lewisham and Greenwich. Those contracts at Lewisham Hospital should come back in-house. I know that the Labour candidate in Lewisham East will be campaigning to bring them back in-house, and I hope the Tory candidate will do the same.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): We have always said that, and I do not know why Government Members are so surprised about it. Indeed, the Prime Minister, thinking she had a humdinger, quoted me at Prime Minister’s questions, but I was decidedly nonplussed by her response to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition Perhaps the biggest area in which private contracts have gone out is in community services, where the private sector has taken over 39% of contracts compared with the 21% in the NHS. NHS Providers said last week: "The fragmentation of the community sector is…due to the private provider share of the community…service market being much larger than in other sectors" It also said: "it is almost always a legal requirement for commissioners to go out to tender competitively for community services. Tendering for contracts is therefore much more competitive in the community sector than in the acute sector, and contracts are sometimes won on cost savings, rather than improvements in the quality of care." We have seen this time and again. For example, Serco was awarded a £140 million contract in Suffolk, but could not meet key response times, such as the four-hour response time for nurses and therapists to reach patients at home 95% of the time. Before Serco took over the contract, the target was achieved 97% of the time.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Karin Marguerite Smyth (Labour, Centre-left): I am listening carefully to the Secretary of State’s comments on ideology and the Health and Social Care Act 2012. He will remember that I, in a CCG, was implementing the 2012 Act. Is he saying that he is proud of the Act and that it has worked out as intended?
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I really do think the Secretary of State has some brass neck. The Tory party voted against the creation of the NHS 20-odd times. That is the reality of what happened in 1948, including on Third Reading in this House. It is a Labour creation.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Louise Joyce Ellman (Labour, Centre-left): The circumstances around the recent collapse of Carillion have left Liverpool with an unfinished hospital. Negotiations with a potential new contractor are under way but may require ministerial involvement because of the involvement of other Departments. Will the Secretary of State give me an absolute assurance that he will do whatever he can within his power to ensure that that new hospital is completed as soon as possible?
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Rosemary Clare Duffield (Labour, Centre-left): A few weeks ago, my local NHS trust in east Kent announced that more than 1,000 employees—more than 800 Serco employees and more than 200 NHS employees—working in cleaning, catering, estates and facilities will now be employed by an arm’s length management organisation Most of us in this House will be familiar with ALMOs, but for those watching, listening and reading about them for the first time, although ALMOs may sound a bit like that well-known cuddly Muppets character, they are nowhere near as fun. This is not "Toy Story" but Tory story, a story of endless austerity and endless cuts to our vital and much-loved health and public services ALMOs have become a mechanism by which primarily local authorities, but now it seems NHS trusts too, can avoid responsibility by keeping things such as housing departments and cleaning facilities at arm’s length—away from too much scrutiny, and away from the managers and councillors whose jobs might depend on keeping themselves as far away as possible from that scrutiny.
NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Judith Mary Cummins (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Staff in Bradford have real concern about the plans to create a wholly owned company that could see 300 members of staff at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust transferred out of the NHS, creating a two-tier workforce. Does she agree that we need to keep our health service, in the words of Unison’s campaign, 100% NHS?