Sir Jeremy Hunt
MP for Godalming and Ash · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I speak today as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for financial markets and services. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which states that I accept speaking engagements from financial services companies.”
“Chief executives of banks made very ill-judged decisions to continue paying themselves large bonuses at a time when the rest of the country was suffering, and the country suffered a longer and deeper recession at that time as a result of our exposure to the financial services sector, which was much greater than that of our peers.”
“We are in a much, much better state than we were in 2008.” But I do think that it has gone slightly too far in the other direction. Sometimes we can over-correct.”
“What further action will the Government take to improve access to finance for small and medium-sized enterprises and scale-ups, which has been a particular issue in the period since the financial crisis?”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her role in helping to salvage Barings. I did not know that before. She is absolutely right to raise that issue. I do not say this in a party political way, because my party pretty much supported it at the time, but there is no doubt that, in the run-up to the financial crisis, regulation was not as tight as it n…”
“To their credit, this Government have built on those reforms with the Leeds reforms, the Pension Schemes Act 2026 and the forthcoming Financial Services and Markets Bill, all of which are extremely welcome. But, as the hon. Member for Buckingham and Bletchley said, our competitors are not standing still.”
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“Does she also agree that the founding principle of the NHS—that no matter who you are, rich, poor, young or old, you should be able to access the care you need—is fundamentally undermined by the way we treat people with dementia, whereby people who are wealthy are able to pay expensive care home fees but people of limited means find that they are cleaned out of absolutely everything when a loved one gets dementia?”
“I know that the Minister is working hard behind the scenes to get a resolution to these issues, and I thank her for her efforts to do that. Does she agree that the NHS will fail in its objective to deal with the covid backlog if the social care system continues to export its most vulnerable patients to our hospitals, filling up hospital beds that cannot then be used to deal with the enormous backlog of cancer and other operations that we have?”
“Did the Prime Minister talk to Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Suga about the tremendous success of social care reforms in Japan and Germany? Did he talk to Prime Minister Trudeau about the brilliant innovation in care home villages in Canada? Did he talk to President Biden about the amazing things that older people are doing, including the most powerful job in the world? Did he return to Downing Street refreshed and resolute, and say to his neighbour, “No more international conferences until we fix the crisis at home: it is time to back Boris and get social care done”?”
“So may I urge the Health Secretary to be as cautious with the language we use as he rightly is with NHS bed capacity?”
“May I start by saying that I totally agree with your expression of disappointment, Mr Speaker, that in a parliamentary democracy Parliament heard about this news after the media, and much as I respect my right hon. Friend it should be the Prime Minister who is here this evening? I happen to support these measures and the caution the Government are showing, but may I suggest to my right hon. Friend that one of the reasons for the disappointment many people feel is the use of words like “irreversible”? Tonight, Sir Patrick Vallance said that we will be living with covid for the rest of our lives. If there is a vaccine-busting variant that threatens another 100,000 lives, these measures will not be irreversible, and we have a duty to be completely honest with people about the bumpiness of the road ahead.”
“Today, the Health and Social Care Committee published its report on NHS and social care staff burnout, which chronicles the emotional exhaustion and chronic fatigue felt by many frontline staff in the past year. Much support has been put in place; the 50,000 nurse target is welcome, the extra doctors and nurses hired during the pandemic extremely welcome, but still we have shortages in nearly every specialty, leading to a sense of despair. Will my right hon. Friend consider the recommendation that we make today that Health Education England should be given the statutory power to make independent workforce projections, rather as the Office for Budget Responsibility does for Budget forecasts, so that we can at least look doctors and nurses in the eye and say that we are training enough of them for the future?”
“Can we show more flexibility in exceptional cases such as that?”
“It is incredibly encouraging that just three out of 12,000 cases of the delta variant were double-jabbed, but is the debate inside Government now about a potential short, temporary extension of the restrictions to allow more people to get both jabs or a more permanent slowing down of the easing of restrictions? That is a massive difference to all our constituents in terms of what may happen following the announcement next week. Secondly, could the Secretary of State look at one particular group who have been very hard hit over the last year: the parents of disabled children? He will know about my constituent Laura Wilde, who took her nine-year-old daughter, who has cerebral palsy, to Lanzarote for physio that she was unable to get in England and is looking for flexibility in the quarantine rules when she comes back.”
“Friend take in the short term to ensure that, in terms of surge testing, the vaccine roll-out and improvements to Test and Trace, we really are able to open up as everyone wants on 21 June?”
“The House should know that when serious allegations were made at yesterday’s joint Committee hearing, we asked for evidence to be provided, and until such evidence is provided, those allegations should be regarded as unproven. In the meantime, we are in the midst of a pandemic, and we need the Health Secretary to be doing his job with his customary energy and commitment. I want to ask my right hon. Friend about comments made by Neil Ferguson on this morning’s “Today” programme. He said that the Indian variant is now dominant in the majority of local authority areas and, indeed, is the dominant variant, and that the opening date of 21 June is now in the balance. Given how desperate businesses up and down the country are to return to normal, what additional measures can my right hon.”
“I congratulate the Minister on the outstanding roll-out of the vaccine programme, which is a source of enormous pride to all of us, on all sides of the House. As we emerge from lockdown, we all want it to be a permanent change. For most families, the biggest priority is to make sure that schools remain open, even if we find that new variants arrive in the UK in the course of the autumn. We know that children do not tend to get bad symptoms, but they can spread the virus, so is it time to look at vaccinating the over-12s, as they are doing in the United States? Is it time to look at whether we can use some of the US Food and Drug Administration analysis to speed up that decision-making process, so that by the time children come back in the autumn, schools are protected and we can be confident that they will be able to stay open?”
“The obvious reform is to give Health Education England the statutory duty to publish annually long-term workforce requirements to act as a kind of Office for Budget Responsibility-style discipline on the Government to train enough doctors and nurses. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider that. In conclusion, integration of care—offering joined-up care to patients—is a vital objective, but without enough doctors and nurses to do it, and without a social care system that is able to integrate with the NHS, the worthy objectives that we all have for these reforms will not meet the aspirations that people on both sides of the House rightly have.”
“I know that money is a big issue—this is a very expensive thing—but if the NHS really is a priority for this Government, the social care system has to be as well, and I urge him Godspeed and all strength in the battles ahead to secure the reforms for social care that are so urgently needed. The second omission is around workforce reform. We have a NHS where there are gaps in nearly every medical specialty, as well as in nursing. I was proud to set up five new medical schools and that had a big increase in the number of doctors, nurses and midwives we trained, but even with 50,000 more nurses and 6,000 additional doctors, we need a major overhaul of workforce planning.”
“However, there were two omissions from the White Paper that I do need to mention. The first—social care—has been mentioned this afternoon, and I know that the Secretary of State will say that reforms are on the way. I just want to say to him, as the only person here this afternoon who has done his job, that I had four winter crises in a row because we tried to fix the problems of the NHS without trying to fix the problems of the social care system at the same time. If we fix one system and not the other, the social care system will continue to export its most vulnerable patients into hospitals, where they are much more expensive to treat and it is much worse for them, particularly people with dementia.”
“Indeed, I am happy to say that they have had particular success at the hospital where Sam was treated, where there has been a big change in culture. However, that is the reason why, with these new reforms, it is absolutely essential that safety and quality is at the heart of what we ask from the new integrated care systems. It is vital that they are outward-looking to the needs of patients and not upward-looking to the requirements of NHS bureaucracy. I am delighted that the Secretary of State wrote to me yesterday confirming that safety and quality would be one of the core requirements being asked of the new integrated care systems. On that basis, I will support the reforms and the Bill, as, I believe, will the Health and Social Care Committee, based on the report that we published last week.”
“An independent inquiry ultimately decided, in two investigations, that every single NHS organisation that they had dealt with—the GP surgery, the out-of-hours service, NHS Direct, as was, and the hospital—had failed Sam in his care. Scott and Sue are a modest couple—the last people to kick up a fuss—but they said that when they asked politely for a meeting to discuss Sam’s care a few months after his death, the shutters came down and no one was prepared to talk to them; it was like talking to a brick wall. Ultimately, it took them six years to uncover the truth of what happened to Sam. We should never, ever put a grieving family through that kind of agony. That is why I focused on safety and quality. It is why I introduced Ofsted-style ratings for hospitals, care homes and GP surgeries, which I think have had some success.”
“Let me start by thanking the NHS and care staff who looked after my constituents in South West Surrey so magnificently in the last year. Every resident of Farnham, Godalming and Haslemere is in their debt and incredibly grateful. As this is Dementia Action Week, I also particularly thank those who looked after people living with dementia, whether care home staff, home visitors or family members. It is to the quality and safety of NHS care in normal times, as well as during pandemics, that I shall address my comments this afternoon. I will never forget the first members of the public who came to see me when I was Health Secretary to talk about issues of quality and safety. They were a young couple from Devon called Scott and Sue Morrish, who lost their three-year-old son Sam to sepsis.”
“Many of the new variants come from abroad, so clarity on borders policy is essential. We now know that the first wave was largely seeded by people coming back from their spring holiday break in Italy, France and Spain, so will my right hon. Friend provide absolute clarity on the amber list? Should my constituents in Farnham, Godalming and Haslemere—indeed, all our constituents—go on holiday to countries on the amber list even when it is no longer illegal?”
“Is now not the moment to overhaul our long-term workforce planning for the NHS so that we can give the public confidence that we really are training enough doctors for the future?”
“I welcome the announcement on the public inquiry and the timings. The Prime Minister will know that the Science and Technology Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee are doing their own inquiry which is hoping to report in July, so the Government will have an early chance to learn immediate lessons. However, it would be crazy to ask Ministers and officials to spend time with lawyers going through emails, texts and WhatsApps when we want their entire focus to be on the pandemic. As we seek to support the NHS going forward, the pledges on an additional 50,000 nurses are very welcome, but does the Prime Minister know that we also have shortages in nearly every single specialty for doctors?”
“I thank the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for securing this question and for her tenacious campaigning for Nazanin. I also thank the Minister for mentioning Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz, the other dual nationals, because they, too, have families who are desperately upset by the incarceration of their loved ones. What will the consequences be for Iran of this hostage diplomacy, other than words? We know that it does not fundamentally care what we think or say, and it has to know that there will be consequences. We have to do our part by settling the IMS issue, which, however unjustified, is being linked to Nazanin’s incarceration, and that is taking a very long time. Ultimately, what will the consequences be for Iran of continuing with hostage diplomacy? Otherwise, it is all bark and no bite.”
“The Office for Budget Responsibility says that the economy will return to pre-pandemic levels of activity in quarter 2 of next year, so why do the Government not commit to returning to 0.7% at that point? It is the fact that they will not do that that makes people worry that this is a conscious political choice, not force of circumstance caused by the pandemic. According to Save the Children, 400,000 children in Yemen will not be fed because of this cut in British aid. I know that the Minister has to defend decisions that he has not personally made, but is this not defending the indefensible?”
“Friend agree with the letter that he recently received from the three main health think-tanks, which says that Health Education England should be given a statutory duty to publish regular, transparent, independent, objective workforce projections, so that we can ensure that we really are training enough doctors and nurses? That approach is strongly supported by the Health and Social Care Committee and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. I hope that he will support it too.”
“It is a pleasure to see you face to face, Mr Speaker, after some time. The Health Secretary is absolutely right to put India on the red list and to explore mandatory vaccination of certain frontline workers, however difficult and sensitive that decision may be, but he will know that in the last week NHS waiting lists have risen to nearly 5 million people, which is nearly one in 12 of the population of England—the true cost of the pandemic. It is equally true that we have had capacity problems in the NHS for some time. That is partly why we have opened five new medical schools. Does my right hon.”
“At the Liaison Committee three weeks ago, the Prime Minister confirmed that there would be a 10-year plan for the social care sector, like that of the NHS, to fix the crisis in social care. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what he thinks that 10-year plan needs to contain, and whether external organisations such as Age UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, Care England, and the Health and Social Care Committee, will be able to contribute to the Government’s thinking on that plan? Will they be able to do so before the plan is published later this year?”
“My message to the Minister is that I know that she cares about this and that behind the scenes she is doing everything that she can, but what is the point of being in Government if not to grasp the nettle on difficult decisions that can transform the lives of ordinary people? Now is the moment to rise to that challenge.”
“We should look at models in Germany and Japan, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South rightly said, when thinking about the best way to fund that. This is a big ask, but the country was bankrupt after the second world war in 1948 when, with cross-party support, we had the vision to set up the NHS. This is the equivalent challenge for today. It is in tune with the values of the British people. We are a kind country, but our social care system is not kind to the older people who depend on it and get 15-minute slots. It is not kind to the people who work in it.”
“We have to address the catastrophic care costs that see one in 10 people pay more than £100,000 and the terrible dilemma people face of losing their entire life savings to pay for their care home, when they want to leave those savings for their loved ones after they have gone. We should not be forcing people to make those choices in modern Britain. We have to do more for the workforce, where turnover is about a third. A third of social care staff leave their jobs every year—up to 40% in domiciliary care. Many of them do not get the minimum wage because they are not paid for the time between appointments, yet we know how amazing they are. We need more funding; we cannot duck that now. The Select Committee thinks a minimum of £7 billion is needed to deal with the catastrophic care issue, the growth in the demography and the minimum wage.”
“This time is different, however, because we have just had a pandemic that has shown the whole country how amazing our care staff are and how dependent we are on a group of people who do extraordinary work on very low wages. If we are not going to fix it now, I do not think we ever will. At the same time, the ageing population has continued to age, and last year was the first in human history with more over-65s in the global population than under-fives. The Health and Social Care Committee undertook a report on this subject last autumn. We are clear that there are three core elements to the reforms.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and to follow such excellent contributions from the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper). I completely agree with the comment just made by the hon. Member for West Lancashire: it is now or never. Over the last two decades, we have had 12 White Papers, Green Papers and consultations, and four independent reviews and commissions. I am ashamed to say that a number of them happened when I was Health Secretary for nearly six years, and we were unable to make the progress that I wanted. In the last decade, we have had five Select Committee reports from both the Commons and the Lords.”
“Was the Health Secretary as concerned as I was by the comments by former Finnish Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb, on the “Today” programme this morning about the threat by the EU Commission President to block exports to countries that were ahead in their vaccination programmes? He said that that was a “political reality”, irrespective of any breach of legal contracts that it might involve. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that it is incredibly dangerous to make threats to the supplies of vaccines and components, alongside casting aspersions on their safety at the very moment when vaccines are the only way the world is going to get out of our covid straitjacket?”
“I welcome this integrated review. I recognise how difficult it is to do one during a pandemic. I am worried about designating China simply as a systemic challenge, given the terrible events in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Will the Prime Minister keep that under review? Does he agree that because the 0.7% cut is strictly temporary, relating to the pandemic, there is no need to amend legislation? Finally is not one of the most important reasons to build up Britain’s might to stand squarely behind individual British citizens in peril, such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, so that there are no more victims of Iran’s vile hostage diplomacy?”
“The long-term plan budgeted for a 2.1% increase in salaries, which has now gone down to 1%, but an even bigger gap in last week’s Budget was identified by the Office for Budget Responsibility as a lack of funding from next year for annual covid vaccinations, for Test and Trace, for long covid and for millions of catch-up operations delayed by the pandemic. What discussions has the Health Secretary had with the Chancellor about that gap in funding, and where will that money come from?”
“Friend thinks that that might be a solution to the accountability issue.”
“I congratulate the Health Secretary on the brilliant progress of the vaccine roll-out, which is a personal achievement for him as well as a collective achievement for the Government. I also thank him for transparency in that programme and the transparency on the risks of the new Brazilian variant. I would like to ask about transparency in another area, which is the new integrated care systems that he is planning in his White Paper and the concerns expressed by the Nuffield Trust, the King’s Fund, the Health Foundation and NHS providers at this morning’s Health and Social Care Committee about the lack of detail on how the public will know how well their local ICS is doing. Sir Robert Francis told the Committee that he favoured asking the CQC to Ofsted-rate the new ICSs and I wonder whether my right hon.”
“Can I add my support to the previous question about the urgent need to sort out the issue of Kuvan, because I too have constituents suffering very badly from the long wait that they have had? I wanted to talk to the Secretary of State about support for NHS frontline staff, who have done such a magnificent job this year but worry that, even now, we are not training enough doctors and nurses for the long-term needs of the NHS, and that is the crucial way that we will reduce the pressure on them. Will he be publishing a workforce plan this year, will that have independent projections of the number of doctors and nurses the NHS will need in every specialty over the next couple of decades, and will he commit to funding the number of training places that we need to make sure that we meet those needs of the future?”
“Talking of optimism, the Prime Minister’s approach feels similar to that of Harold Wilson, who said he was an optimist but one who always carried a raincoat. The Prime Minister’s caution is absolutely right in the face of these new variants, when we are potentially so close to the finishing line. But as we get there, will he recognise the brilliant work of our health and care staff by building back better for them, potentially in next week’s Budget, by announcing that we will finally make sure we are training enough doctors and nurses with a long-term workforce plan and by giving the social care sector a 10-year plan, just as we gave the NHS one 10 years ago?”
“I also welcome the public health measures, particularly those on obesity, given the high mortality rates that obese people have had during the pandemic. However, these integrated care systems are going to be very powerful, so my question to the Health Secretary is this: how will the public know in their area about the quality and safety of care, and whether waiting lists are being properly managed? How will they know how good all that is? Is he planning to ask the CQC to do Ofsted ratings, as it successfully does for hospitals and GP surgeries?”
“May I start my comments by thanking the brilliant staff at the Royal Surrey County Hospital for the wonderful care they gave me—this morning, as it happens, when I unfortunately slipped over and broke my arm on a morning run? I have just come from the hospital. It is a very big deal to do a structural reorganisation of the NHS, and I know from my time as Health Secretary how distracting it can be, but it is none the less the right thing to do and a brave thing to do, because NHS staff want nothing more than to be able to give joined-up care—joined up between hospitals, GP surgeries, the social care system and community care—and the current structures make that more difficult than it should be.”
“I strongly support the new measures. The higher the number of new daily cases, the more opportunities for variants and mutations to emerge, including ultimately some that may be immune to the vaccine. So does the Health Secretary agree that the central priority now must be to bring down the number of new daily cases, and as we do that, is he planning to introduce enhanced contact tracing for all new cases, including Japanese-style backward contact tracing and genomic sequencing of every new case?”
“I congratulate the Minister on his leadership of the vaccine roll-out programme, which really is one of the most impressive anywhere in the world. Indeed, I also commend the Health Secretary for the foundations that he laid last year. Now that we know that mutations and variants are the name of the game, I want to ask the Minister about a worst-case scenario: a variant that is wholly immune to the vaccines that we are currently distributing. How possible is it that we could see that in the next few months in the UK? Has the Manaus variant, which people are particularly worried about, arrived here from Brazil? If we did see such a variant, what is the timescale not just to develop a new vaccine that works against it, but to manufacture it and get it approved by regulators so that it is ready to go?”
“I thank the Health Secretary for liaising with me on the issues in Surrey over the weekend, where the actions taken by him and the outstanding leader of Surrey County Council, Tim Oliver, are absolutely right. My right hon. Friend mentioned that, at the weekend, we reached the milestone of offering the vaccine to everyone in care homes, except for where there has been an outbreak. Does he agree that we should crown that tremendous achievement by making 2021 a year as significant for the social care sector as 1948 was for the NHS—the year it was founded—with a long-term financial settlement implementing Dilnot and setting it up for the future with a 10-year plan?”
“On Monday, Baroness Harding said that 40% of the people asked to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace were not fully doing so. That works out at a worrying 30,000 people every day who are potentially still spreading the virus, many of them still going to work. Because that is such a big threat to our containment strategy for the virus, could the Prime Minister say what he thinks we need to do to deal with that issue? In particular, is it now time to consider making a blanket offer to those asked to self-isolate, that we will make good any salary they lose? In the end, that may be cheaper than having to extend furlough if the case rate remains high.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. This week the Office for National Statistics said that prevalence rates nearly doubled during the November lockdown, and today’s REACT—real-time assessment of community transmission—study says that infections are still rising. Is not the reality that these new strains are massively more dangerous and harder to control than many realise? If we are going to bring down the horrific death rates that we are now seeing, should we not secure our border, with quarantine hotels, end household mixing outside bubbles, and follow Germany in mandating FFP2—filtering face piece—masks in shops and on public transport, to give better protection to wearers?”
“Friend use this landmark moment to follow what Italy has done and close down all such units, so that these highly vulnerable people can be looked after more humanely in the community?”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for a comprehensive response to Sir Simon Wessely’s superb review, which I was proud to commission at the request of the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), whose commitment to mental health issues has been unparalleled. However, he knows that changes in the law only matter in so far as they affect the lives of real people, and his Department’s own data says that we still have more than 2,000 people with autism and learning disabilities locked up in mental health units, often supposedly temporarily, and sadly sometimes experiencing terrible breaches of human rights, such as the frequent use of restraint. Will my right hon.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the speed of the vaccine roll-out and, in particular, his foresight in setting up the vaccine taskforce as far back as last April, which has made that possible. Personal thanks from my mum, who is getting her vaccine tomorrow at Epsom racecourse. Understandably, however, the public’s expectations about how quickly they will get their vaccine are now running well ahead of the system’s ability to deliver, causing floods of calls to GPs’ surgeries, which are already very busy. What can we do to set expectations among the public that getting to population-level immunity will be a marathon, not a sprint?”
“I congratulate the Minister on getting this programme off to a flying start: to vaccinate 2 million people, including a third of over-80s, six weeks after the first dose was approved is an extraordinary achievement unmatched by any similar country. May I ask him about the speed of the roll-out? Many people want teachers to be jabbed as quickly as possible, but is it the case that all those in groups 1 to 4 will need their second jabs before we can make real inroads into other key groups? And will he publish the breakdown of numbers vaccinated not just by region but by local authority area, because a lot of people would like to know just how many people have been vaccinated in their local area?”
“I fully support these measures and recognise how difficult the decisions are. Before Christmas, we were told that testing was happening at the Public Health England facility at Porton Down that would tell us within a couple of weeks whether the vaccines worked against the new strain. Would the Prime Minister update us on the latest on that, and if there is a glitch with the vaccine programme, are we implementing a plan B involving, for example, mass testing of high-transmission areas, deprived communities and so on so that we can properly isolate as quickly as possible anyone who could transmit the virus?”
“Should not our entire focus for the next eight to 12 weeks be on saving lives, getting the first dose of the vaccine out to every single vulnerable person, stopping the NHS collapsing and putting NHS frontline staff at the front of the queue for the vaccines so that we keep safe the people upon whom our safety depends?”