argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I beg to move, That this House notes with concern that the deficit in the budgets of NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England at the end of the 2015-16 financial year was £2.45 billion; further notes that members of the Health Committee wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about their concerns that Government assertions on NHS funding were incorrect and risked giving a false impression; and calls on the Government to use the Autumn Statement to address the underfunding of the NHS and guarantee sustainable financing of the NHS I begin by reminding the House that, six years ago, the then Conservative leader promised to "cut the deficit and not the NHS." The previous Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), told us that he would "properly fund public services" and that "investment in public services would come before tax cuts."—[Official Report, 27 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 837.]
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is eagle-eyed, and I congratulate him on reminding us that the Government should have balanced the books by 2015, and that they completely failed on that pledge Then the new Prime Minister made this promise: "We will be looking to ensure that we provide the health service that is right for everyone in this country."—[Official Report, 7 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 333.] Fine words, but it is by their deeds that they shall be known. What did we actually get? An NHS that is going through the largest financial squeeze in its history. Far from protecting the NHS through the years of this Tory Government, NHS spending will represent an average annual increase of just 0.9%—a decade of barely any increase in spending despite an ageing population with increasingly complex needs.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a few moments. By 2017, NHS spending per head will level out, and, head for head, by 2018 NHS spending will be falling under this Conservative Government. Trusts ended last year in deficit for the second year running—they were £2.45 billion in deficit and they are reported to be heading for a deficit of around £670 million at the end of this financial year.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I will be coming on to those secret plans as I develop my speech We will be spending less on the NHS as a proportion of GDP than our European neighbours such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. The NHS maintenance budgets have been repeatedly raided, with billions that had been allocated to capital routinely being switched to revenue to plug gaps.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a moment. The former Education Secretary needs to calm down, Madam Deputy Speaker Public health budgets, which fund projects to tackle teenage pregnancy, excessive alcohol consumption, sexually transmitted infections and substance misuse and to provide anti-smoking interventions, will have been cut by 9.7% by the end of this Parliament. That is a completely false economy leading to greater demands on the acute sector. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) so brilliantly outlined last week, the adult social care budget has been slashed.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman was the Minister who took the Health and Social Care Act 2012 through this Parliament, and who wasted £3 billion on an unnecessary top-down reorganisation. He should be apologising to the House, not making those comments.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Gloria De Piero (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that when funding is cut, our hospitals seek to raise cash in other ways, such as the unacceptable level of car parking charges at our hospitals—charges which the Government promised before the last election to clamp down on?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I shall make a little progress because many other Members want to speak and I want to give them a chance The scale of the financial pressures engulfing the NHS are such that the chief executive of NHS Providers, Chris Hopson, said recently: "The gap between what the NHS is being asked to deliver and the funding it has available is too big and is growing rapidly." The King’s Fund said, with respect to the NHS deficit, that "it signifies a health system buckling under the strain of huge financial and operational pressures." In the most damning assessment of the Government’s handling of the NHS, the National Audit Office concluded today that financial problems in the NHS "are endemic and this is not sustainable." Even the former Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said that "in 2010 we knew we had to implement a tight budget squeeze for five years, but we never thought it would last for ten."
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Joan Marie Ryan (Labour, Centre-left): In Enfield we are short of 84 GPs going forward and we have just had a hospital crisis at the North Middlesex hospital, where there were not enough doctors for our A&E to be safe for patients, yet the only thing we hear about is the sustainability and transformation plan locally which, as far as we can see, is not only secret but about taking £22 billion out of the NHS.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): The chief executive’s comments to the Select Committee speak for themselves. Talking of repudiation, when are we going to get £350 million a week, or were the Tories typically saying one thing before the people voted and something completely different after they had had their say? That is what the ex-Education Secretary should be telling us Let me remind the House what the Health Committee said. I see the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) in her place, and she said: "The continued use of the figure of £10 billion for the additional health spending up to 2020-21 is not only incorrect but risks giving a false impression that the NHS is awash with cash." She is sitting only a little further down from the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). Perhaps he can have a word with her if he disagrees The Secretary of State hopes we do not notice that he is stretching the timeframe over which he presents this funding allocation. He hopes we do not notice that NHS spending has been redefined by the most recent spending review. He hopes we do not spot that he is cutting billions from public health budgets and other Department of Health funding streams—a £3 billion cut. But we have noticed.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): In a few moments We have spotted the Secretary of State’s conjuring act because we have seen this Tory trick before—robbing Peter to pay Paul. The result of this trick is cuts and underfunding, more pressures flowing through to the frontline, and, as the NAO said, "Financial stress…harming patient care" In all our constituencies we see ever-lengthening queues of the elderly and the sick waiting for treatment. Across the board, we see the worst performance data since records began.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): What world is the Secretary of State living in? Half a million patients have waited for four hours or more in A&E in the past three months—the worst performance for this time of year for more than a decade—and he says it is nonsense. Some 350,000 of our constituents are waiting longer than the promised time for elective treatment—some have been waiting more than a year—and he says it is nonsense. Delayed discharges from hospitals are at record levels, and he says it is nonsense. The number of people waiting for 12 hours or more on trolleys has increased by over 700% since 2011-12.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I praise the hard-working staff in the NHS every day of the week, but I rather suspect that staff in the NHS will have more sympathy with the position I am outlining than with the right hon. Lady’s position, not least when, according to surveys, 88% of NHS staff think that the NHS is under the most pressure they can remember, and 77% think that there is less access to resources, putting the quality of patient care and clinical standards at risk. That, I say to her, is what NHS staff are saying.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): It beggars belief! We tripled investment in the NHS, and the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends voted against every penny piece. When we left office, we had the best waiting times and the highest satisfaction levels on record. That is the difference between a Labour Government and a Conservative Government on the NHS.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): I am going to make a bit of progress, because I am aware that Members want to speak We have seen what the reality of six years of Tory underfunding and cuts in our NHS are all about, and there are more stealth cuts to come, which will add further pressures. For example—these are small things, but they all add up—cuts to the Care Quality Commission mean that it will increase its fees for NHS hospitals, other trusts and other providers. Some trusts will have to pay over £100,000 as a result of these cuts. Reductions in education and training tariffs will put more pressures on trusts and on the frontline. In the House the other week, we debated how cuts to community pharmacies will lead to increased demands on the NHS Only last week, news slipped out about the privatisation of NHS Professionals. A body that makes a profit for the NHS and ploughs that back into the NHS is going to be privatised, and that profit will presumably go to private companies The combination of all these cuts and privatisations, the utter failure to deal with the crisis in adult social care, and the lack of planning for an ageing population with complex needs will directly lead to greater demands on the NHS, bigger cuts, and deficits across the board. It is in this context that the NHS is also expected to find £22 billion of so-called efficiencies and to redesign services across England completely as part of the sustainability and transformation process Where sustainability and transformation plans are about transforming services in the interests of patient care, reversing fragmentation and ensuring more collaboration in geographical areas, we will consider them carefully. We will want to look at every single STP to see whether those plans are genuinely jointly owned, and whether they tackle the crisis in social care, guarantee better access to care for the long term, and are transparent and financially viable. What we know so far, though, is far from reassuring, because we can see from the 19 or so STPs that have been published that the ground has shifted. It has become obvious that what began as a project to transform services for patients and build up community services is now more about closing the financial gap: "Of course, the driving force behind STPs is the emergence in the last two financial years of substantial deficits." Those are not my words, but those of Andrew Lansley just a few weeks ago. The STP areas that we have seen so far have been racking up shortfalls of about £10 billion that can be filled only by cuts to hundreds of beds, closing hospitals, downgrading A&Es, downgrading maternity wings and withdrawing treatments.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is extremely knowledgeable about the health service and has been campaigning vigorously on the STPs. She is completely right. We will see hospitals merged in the Merseyside area and in London, hospitals lost in Durham, and efficiencies found by changing staffing levels. In fact, the STP for Cheshire and Merseyside, the area that she represents, talks enticingly of "Exploration of a Factory Model" Doesn’t that sound nice With cuts to services and rock-bottom staff morale, we have the Sports Direct approach to the NHS, with the Secretary of State playing the part of Mike Ashley. The public deserve better than this bargain basement approach. Scaling back the acute sector while not investing in the community sector simply does not work. The Prime Minister might have ruled out extra funding—
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Rosemary Elizabeth Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): Perhaps the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) would like to tell me how cutting the A&E at Southport and Ormskirk hospital and giving local community and acute services to Virgin Care can be a positive story for the NHS.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Rosalie Winterton (Labour, Centre-left): Is not one of the problems with local planning the recruitment of GPs and the lack of GPs locally? Would it not help if we were to amend the Health and Social Care Act 2012 so that clinical commissioning groups and NHS England could provide directly salaried GPs instead of being prevented from doing so, as is the case at the moment? That is a practical example of something that would save money and increase the local provision of GP services.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Morale among GPs is at an all-time low. She identifies another problem that has emerged because of the 2012 Act. I hope that the Minister will respond to her important point.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Helen Mary Jones (Labour, Centre-left): Is my hon. Friend aware that the Cheshire and Merseyside group has not only refused to publish details about the STP, but refused my Freedom of Information Act request for information about the meetings that were held on the STP and who was present at them? Does that not simply give rise to suspicion that this whole process is being driven by cuts rather than the need to improve care?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will now make a bit of progress because I know that other Members are anxious to speak The Chancellor should respond tomorrow to the growing body of evidence that the NHS has not been given the money that it needs. Tomorrow, we need an end to the scandal of crumbling hospitals. Tomorrow, the Chancellor must put right the Government’s greatest betrayal on adult social care. Tomorrow, the Government must deliver the long-overdue investment that our NHS needs.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): What sense does it make to carry on cutting inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax, at a cost of billions to the Exchequer, while at the same time failing to fund our national health service or to give social care the money it demands? The Prime Minister lets the CBI know that she is prepared to give away billions extra in corporation tax, but she tells us that there is no more money for the NHS. The Chancellor will be prevented from acting tomorrow not by financial constraints, but by the ideological constraints that the Government have placed on themselves. It is time to give the NHS the funding that it needs. I commend the motion to the House.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Christopher Paul Farrelly (Labour, Centre-left): Can the Secretary of State explain why he has made scores of redundancies in north Staffordshire? In my 15 years as an MP, I have never seen the local NHS in such a meltdown, with a scorched-earth policy of cuts and closures, and more to come with next year’s still-secret STP. When will the Government realise that pressures on social care and the NHS are such that those services are unsustainable without decent further funding and investment?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Rosena Chantelle Allin-Khan (Labour, Centre-left): I am a junior doctor in A&E, of which the right hon. Gentleman speaks, and I can say that morale is at an absolute all-time low. We have a recruitment and retention crisis in A&E. We are losing all the fantastic staff whom we have been able to recruit because this Government are not recognising and accepting the fantastic workforce on our A&E frontline. All the doctors are leaving.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Rosena Chantelle Allin-Khan (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to speak again. I shall refer at length to St George’s hospital in my speech, but it is very unfair of him to bring it into this debate. It is because of this Government that St George’s hospital is operating at a £50 million deficit. It is because of this Government that we are now in special measures. It is—
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman has the nerve to talk about the inheritance from a previous Administration, when what we inherited in 1997 was people dying on waiting lists of more than 18 months for heart operations.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Joan Marie Ryan (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman talks about the inspection regime, but I think I am right in saying that it was not something he and his Government introduced. The Care Quality Commission was introduced by a Labour Government, as far as I am aware. As I know from North Middlesex hospital, hospitals end up in special measures because they are underfunded and under-supported, and cannot get the doctors they need.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Keith Anthony Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): It is important that we focus not just on the level of spending but on where we spend the money. With long-term conditions such as diabetes, is it not essential to focus on preventive work, which in the long term will save the national health service a huge amount of money?
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Andrew Murray Burnham (Labour, Centre-left): The Secretary of State is trying to blame hospitals for the deficit, but the point is that the spend on agency staff has ballooned in England over the past six years. The reason is that the Government, and their predecessor, cut nurse training places and left hospitals in the grip of private staffing agencies. It is therefore simply not fair of the Secretary of State to stand at the Dispatch Box and blame hospitals for a problem of the Government’s making.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Robert Charles Douglas Flello (Labour, Centre-left): In Stoke-on-Trent, the CCGs sit on the STP group. We have still not seen the report, but we have seen an executive summary. When the STP group suggests one thing, the CCG undermines it by closing community hospitals and cutting community beds. They are not working together; they are working against each other.
National Health Service Funding — House of Commons, 2016-11-22
Topic: Health
Siobhain Ann McDonagh (Labour, Centre-left): The "South West London Five Year Forward Plan", published last week, states its intention to save a staggering £828 million by 2020—a contribution to the attempted national saving of £22 billion by 2020. However, that draft sustainability and transformation plan, published by the south-west London partnership, does not shed much light on how it will actually be managed other than by reducing A&E attendance by 40% in three years. That is a totally implausible aim that has not been achieved by any health system in the world—let alone one so strapped for cash That unsustainable ambition brings us to the long-standing proposal, which has so often been denied, to reduce the number of acute hospitals in south-west London from five to four or even—God help us—three. The five acute hospitals are St George’s, Croydon, Kingston, Epsom and St Helier, whose closure I have been fighting for 18 years. Of those five acute hospitals, St George’s will rightly be protected from closure. It is also clear that Croydon university hospital or Kingston hospital are unlikely to close, which leaves just St Helier and Epsom, both of which have been under threat before. No amount of vaguely-worded statements from the partnership will change the fact that the intention is to close St Helier. The STP clearly states that the partnership needs to "Review our acute hospitals to ensure that we meet the changing demands of our populations, and to ensure that acute providers deliver high quality, efficient care… we will need four acute hospital sites in south west London" It continues by stating that the partnership will "undertake further work, including analysis of revenue implications on 3, 4 and 5 site options" Not only will one acute site definitely close, but commissioners are considering the closure of two sites. We know from the STP’s former iteration in 2011, the Better Services Better Values programme, that the closure of St Helier was the main recommendation. Despite that, however, colleagues on the Government Benches, including the hon. Members for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) and for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), have been taken in by the STP, peddling the myth that no hospitals will close When is a closure a closure? If A&E and maternity services, and all the associated diagnostic and other services, are removed, that is precisely a closure. I want to make it clear to the House, the Government, the partnership and, most importantly, my constituents that we have come together as a community before to fight the closure of St Helier hospital and will do it again. We will do that not only for those who use St Helier, but for those who use every hospital in south-west London. The closure of St Helier would mean the undermining of all those other hospitals.