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.”
The complete record
Every one of 7,495 lines we hold for Sir Jeremy Hunt, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 42 of 150.
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right not to use the word “bung” in his question and to correct that very quickly indeed. He is also right to talk about productivity. The last Labour Government made important progress in bringing down waiting times. That required significant extra resources. When Alan Milburn had a 10-year plan, there was not a big productivity element to it. This time, when resources are much tighter, we have to make sure that productivity and efficiency gains are at the heart of the progress we make.”
“Today’s settlement covers NHS frontline services. As I explained in the statement, it does not cover public health, but we fully recognise its importance. The hon. Lady talks about the increase in trust deficits. It is true that the number of hospitals in deficit has gone up, but that is because we deliberately decided to be very careful in the way that we performance-managed trusts with deficits. In Mid Staffs, getting rid of the deficit was one of the reasons why the number of nurses in wards was stripped down to totally inappropriate levels. We have to make sure that we handle this in an appropriate way.”
“My hon. Friend knows about that from her own family experience and I thank her for telling me about some of the challenges she has had in the interests of improving them for all NHS patients. She is right that one of the biggest opportunities the NHS has is to standardise best practice across the whole health economy. We collect, share and publish more data than any other healthcare system anywhere in the world, so we have the chance to get this right in a way that is not possible in other countries. I know we are absolutely determined to do so.”
“The hon. Lady campaigns hard on this issue and I believe she is meeting the Minister with responsibility for dentistry tomorrow to talk about it further.”
“Of course I agree with that. My hon. Friend campaigns extremely vigorously on behalf of his own hospital in Cheltenham. Recruitment will be one of our top priorities. One way we want to tackle that is very simply by giving hope to people in the NHS and to people thinking of going into medicine that there is a long-term plan that has the support of the NHS, and which is at one remove from the party politics that we always get around the NHS. I think that is something doctors and nurses overwhelmingly want.”
“The think-tanks who pore over the numbers disagree on that. Some say that it is about enough to stabilise the current situation—that is what Paul Johnson of the IFS says—and others say there is enough room to transform. Who is proved right will depend on how much we do on productivity and efficiency to create the headroom for the real changes we all want to see. That is why we have to get that bit of the equation right.”
“I am feeling extremely generous this afternoon, and it is incredibly tempting just to say yes, but I think I had better not and say that my hon. Friend should follow the right processes. However, Kettering could not have a stronger advocate than him.”
“Any funding commitment made by the UK Government will be appropriated to Wales in accordance with the Barnett formula. That is the procedure that we have followed. The choice for the Welsh Government is whether they put all that money into the NHS or, as they have done in the past, choose to prioritise it elsewhere.”
“It absolutely needs to boost local services. If there is one lesson that we have learnt from the last few years, it is that we will not, in the long run, crack the funding pressures in our health system unless we find a way of properly investing in local services, which I know my hon. Friend has campaigned for so hard.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that issue, which is of great concern to us, as I know it is to him. The Minister of State responsible for hospitals, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), visited the trust last Thursday and I know is working incredibly hard to try to resolve that situation as soon as possible.”
“My hon. Friend asks a profoundly important question. The medical school students who are going to medical school this year will become consultants in 2031 at the earliest, so we have to make sure that we update the way people are trained for the totally different world that they will be facing in terms of technology, medical innovation and the demarcations and roles inside hospitals and community care. This is very much part of the long-term workforce plan that will be announced alongside the NHS long-term plan later this year—it is what that will be about.”
“I have answered this many times, and I am very happy to answer it again. Yes, we will be able to access extra funding by not paying subscriptions to Brussels once the divorce bill has been settled, and that will mean many thousands of extra nurses.”
“My hon. Friend could not have put it better. The only surprise here is that having spent years and years saying that we should invest more in the NHS through the tax system, when the Government actually stand here and say that is what they are doing, the Opposition tell us that they are against it.”
“I am very happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that all this money will materialise, because this is a Government that keep their promises. If he is so worried about the Brexit dividend, he should be speaking not to me but to his own leader, who said that he wants to “use funds returned from Brussels after Brexit to invest in our public services”. Have a word with him!”
“My hon. Friend is right to raise that question, because under the Barnett consequentials, for every £1 per head additional for the NHS in England, there will be £1 per head available for the NHS in Scotland. The Scottish National party has chosen to invest only 84p of every £1, which is why people in Scotland are 30% more likely to wait too long for their elective care in Scotland. That is a choice made by the SNP in Scotland and I hope that it will do it differently this time.”
“It is really extraordinary that on a day that we have announced a £20 billion annual rise in the NHS budget—you could not get a bigger commitment from a Government to state-funded healthcare—Labour is still running off down the rabbit hole of privatisation. If it is any reassurance to the hon. Lady, last year the proportion of NHS services contracted to the private sector went up by the enormous amount of zero.”
“I am happy to do that. My hon. Friend asks the same question as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). These matters are now decided at arm’s length by NHS England because we think that the fairest way is to take the politics out of it, but I am happy to work with him to engage with NHS England on the Cornish questions.”
“I fully recognise the pressures the hon. Lady is talking about. I said what I said about public health because I do not believe there is a sustainable long-term solution to NHS funding pressures unless we have an equally sustainable solution for public health, and indeed for social care, which she also talks about. She will have to wait for us to negotiate our next spending review settlement to understand how we intend to address those.”
“We will set up a single, central procurement system so that every hospital in the NHS can benefit from the efficiencies gained from bulk buying, but we have to do that in a way that does not shut out smaller companies from bidding for NHS contracts.”
“We will consider the provision for working-age disabled adults as part of our review of the whole social care system, because that is extremely important.”
“As the hon. Gentleman knows, we take deprivation into account very seriously when we allocate NHS funding, because it has a direct impact on people’s demand for NHS services, but other things also have an impact on people’s health, such as housing and employment prospects. The bigger lesson is that we need to integrate all our services for our most disadvantaged citizens.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is a big priority for us, which is why this year we will publish a final 10-year NHS workforce plan, at the same time as the NHS plan that Simon Stevens is putting together. Together they are designed precisely to avoid shortages in particular and very important specialties.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right that community pharmacies have a vital role to play. I do not think we use them enough. We need to find better ways for them to help us in the prevention agenda, and one way we are doing that is by integrating medical records so that they can be accessed by pharmacies, which will help them to give good advice to patients.”
“The hon. Lady is right to ask that question, and I encourage her to hold her local NHS to account on that. There are some simple metrics, which we can share with her, that can tell us whether the NHS is using the money wisely, and one of them is whether her local hospitals are managing to reduce their emergency admissions by providing better care in the community. She is right that it is the litmus test of whether the money is being spent wisely.”
“I want to reassure the hon. Lady that, in all our discussions about core social care funding and the funding accessed by local councils, we discuss working-age disabled adults every bit as much as the frail elderly. They are central. Many councils actually spend more on that group than on older people. We will not crack the social care problem unless we take that group of people extremely seriously.”
“It is very significant, first, because we have been clear that a transformation in mental health is central to our ambition for the new 10-year plan, and secondly, because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the Green Paper will over that period see the number of people employed in looking after young people with mental health problems increase from 9,000 by an additional 8,000—a near doubling in the size of the workforce. This financial plan gives us the confidence to say we can deliver that.”
“To stop ideology trumping the needs of patients, the Conservative-led Government in 2012 legislated to stop politicians choosing whether to boost the private or the public sector, formally and legally giving that decision to clinicians who run clinical commissioning groups. I will tell the House why we did that. What would happen if we followed what the shadow Chancellor advocated last year, when he said “we will reverse Tory privatisation by renationalising the NHS” is that 120,000 people would have to wait longer for operations on their hips, knees and for other elective surgery. The price of Labour ideology, putting ideology before patients, would be nearly 200 people waiting longer in every constituency in this House.”
“With the huge pressures facing the NHS and immense efforts by frontline staff to cope with flu, winter and an ageing population, can the Labour party really be trusted with the NHS when it spends its time putting out fake news? Unlike Labour, we do not believe that the NHS should close its ears to innovation in other sectors or other countries. We want the NHS to be the best in the world and there are things to learn from others that will help patients and help the NHS. Sometimes those innovations will even come—dare I say it?—from America. But to copy global best practice from one small part of what is happening in America does not mean that we want to copy its system itself, which I think, and I think most people in this House think, is an affront to that great country, with poor outcomes, lack of coverage and high cost.”
“During Prime Minister’s questions, I hurriedly passed the Prime Minister a note about the increase in Wales in the use of the independent sector. She said at the Dispatch Box that in Wales it had gone up last year by 0.8%. I need to correct that, because in fact it went up by 1.2%—50% more than I thought. Wales, where Labour is in government, is racing ahead. In fact, in pounds spent, the use of the independent sector last year in Wales went up by a third. What that shows is not just that these allegations are nonsense, but that Labour knows they are nonsense. If there was any truth to them they would not be increasing outsourcing in Wales by one third at the same time as branding it as verging on the criminal in England.”
“And boy, did team Labour set about that outsourcing with enthusiasm: not just increasing the PFIs we have talked about and not just giving the first contract for an NHS acute hospital to the private sector in 2009—that was Andy Burnham—but increasing the amount spent on outsourcing by 50% in the last four years of that Government. [ Interruption. ] Fifty per cent. These are the facts. I know the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) wants to do the fake news and the scare stories, but let us just listen to the facts. Let us talk about what has been happening under this Government. In my first year as Health Secretary, the proportion going to the independent sector went up by 0.6%. In the second year it was 1.2%, in the third year it was 0.4% and last year it was 0%. I need to correct the record.”
“I think the shadow Health Secretary knows that, going by some of his comments. What are the facts on outsourcing? The Prime Minister did indeed wax lyrical about the possibility of 40% of acute operations in the private sector being done under the NHS banner—not this Prime Minister, but Tony Blair in 2006. Had we followed Tony Blair’s advice, we would be spending nearly £2 billion more on outsourcing than we currently spend. The Secretary of State from that period also said quite openly, “We intend to use the private sector when it can bring expertise or resources to help improve services.” That is not me, but Alan Milburn in 2002.”
“When I asked officials for advice on what submissions we as Ministers hold on privatisation—this great swathe of secret plans that the Opposition constantly allege—this is the written advice that I got back: “Officials have, since the Humble Address was received, sought to find submissions about the privatisation of clinical or patient services within the period specified, but to this point none have been identified. Her Majesty’s Government has no plans to privatise the NHS.” That was the official advice, but don’t take it from me. The respected King’s Fund said in 2015 that “claims of widespread privatisation are exaggerated.” Another way in which the Labour party loves to try to scare the public is to deliberately muddle up privatisation and outsourcing, which of course are quite separate.”
“I am afraid that it is a transparent attempt to set hares running about NHS privatisation that is not happening. He used the phrase “creeping toxic privatisation”, but the truth is that we know it is not happening and the Opposition know it is not happening. With all the pressures facing the NHS today, to scare staff and the public with fake news is breathtakingly irresponsible. In the motion, the Opposition use the Humble Address mechanism to ask for the release of documents, knowing full well that it will fuel wild conspiracy theories if we refuse to release those documents, as we must for reasons that are nothing to do with the NHS, but to do with good governance. However, there is a flaw in their Machiavellian logic.”
“I welcome the opportunity of this debate to dispel some particularly pernicious myths. May I say how much I enjoyed the shadow Health Secretary’s speech? If they had listened to his denunciation of privatisation and outsourcing, I think my children would have said that Alice in Wonderland has nothing on the Labour party when it comes to taking totally contradictory positions on an identical issue. My favourite thing was the stirring way in which he said, “What concerns me most is contracts handed out that are poor value for taxpayers,” after his Government left £80 billion-worth of PFI contracts for the NHS to pick up the pieces. That costs the NHS £2 billion every year—money that cannot be used for good patient care. He had lots of other gems and we will return to them during the course of this speech. I want to start with the motion.”
“That is exactly the point. Sometimes the quality is high in the private sector and sometimes it is low. When it is low, we will clamp down hard just as we do with the NHS.”
“The National Health Service will include”— [Interruption.] I know this is difficult for Labour Members, but let me tell them what the Conservatives said when we were setting up the NHS: “The National Health Service will include family doctors” and will “cover any medicines you may need, specialist advice, and of course hospital treatment whatever the illness”. Nye Bevan deserves great credit for delivering that Conservative dream, but let us be clear today that no party has a monopoly on compassion, and no party has a monopoly on our NHS. There are some other myths—”
“As Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai said about the French revolution, it is too early to tell. As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) alluded to, there is one ideology that we will not compromise on: our belief that the NHS should be free at the point of use and available to all. And why will we not compromise on this? It is because, contrary to Labour’s creation myth about the NHS, it was a Conservative Health Minister, Sir Henry Willink, who first proposed it in 1944. Here are his words from 1944 announcing the setting up of the NHS: “Whatever your income, if you want to use the service…there’ll be no charge for treatment.”
“As the shadow Health Secretary knows perfectly well, the way that this House works is that Oppositions often vote against the Government when they disagree with elements of a Bill, but that does not mean that they disagree with the principles of the Bill. I remember the hon. Gentleman’s party voting against the Care Act 2014. That does not mean that they disagreed with the principles behind it.”
“I can give the hon. Lady that assurance. I am most grateful to her for raising that issue and reassure her that my hon. Friend the Minister of State responsible for hospitals was at the hospital on Friday, going into detail about how we make sure that there are no delays on that issue.”
“Every day, 168 more people start cancer treatment than did in 2010. This is a huge step forward. On mental health, previously we had no national talking therapy service for people with anxiety and depression; today, 1,500 more people are starting or benefiting from talking therapy services every single day, and we have huge plans to extend mental health provision to 1 million more people.”
“We have had to deal with the fact that over the last seven years, we have had half a million more over-75s. We had to deal with a crisis of care at Mid Staffs, which turned out to be a problem affecting many other parts of the NHS. Yes, it is true that we are missing some important targets at the moment, but let us not forget the extraordinary things that have been achieved despite that pressure, such as for cancer. We inherited some of the lowest cancer survival rates in western Europe. In 2010, only 10% of patients got intensity-modulated radiotherapy; that figure is now 44%. We have two new proton beam therapy machines—at the Christie and University College London Hospitals—and there are 7,000 people alive today who would not be had we stayed with the cancer survival rates of 2010.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which would be echoed by many Government Members who represent rural constituencies. There is a balance to be struck between the benefits of specialist surgery, where greater volumes of a particular procedure are done, leading to better outcomes for patients, and the trade-off that we make with travel times. I know that that is something that the local NHS, in all parts of the UK, thinks through very carefully. There is another myth we always get from the Labour party that I think it is very important to dispel: the narrative about the NHS being in total decline. Let us be clear about the pressures facing the NHS. We had to deal with the financial crisis of 2008, which left this country’s coffers empty.”
“No Government of any party have ever operated in an environment where advice is sought one week and made public the next. Let us look back to what Andy Burnham said in 2007 when he as a Minister was asked to release information. His words were: “Putting the risk register in the public domain would be likely to reduce the detail and utility of its contents. This would inhibit the free and frank exchange of views about significant risks and their management, and inhibit the provision of advice to Ministers.” —[ Official Report , 23 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 1191.] Far from increasing the accountability of the Executive to the legislature, releasing such information would risk weakening it, as more and more discussions would end up taking place informally with no minutes taken at all.”
“Many Labour Members have benefitted from such advice, and all of us would want Ministers of any party in power to benefit from such advice, regardless of whether we support the Government, yet the motion asks us to release not just that written advice from officials, which would have an enormous chilling effect, but notes of confidential discussions between Ministers and officials. In short, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington) said only last week, it would undermine the safe space within which Ministers and civil servants consider all the options and weigh up the best approach. Officials must be able to give advice to Ministers in confidence. The candour of all involved would be seriously affected if there were any fear of those discussions being disclosed.”
“After more than five years in this role, the one thing I have learned is that good policy can be made only through frank and open discussion between Ministers and officials. It will not surprise the House to know that Ministers are human, we make multiple mistakes—not me of course—and it is critical that the Secretary of State in charge of the largest health system in the world can get honest, high-quality advice, but the motion would fundamentally undermine that. This is not a party political point.”
“I should point out that because of what we have done to deal with the problems of Mid Staffs, which happened on Labour’s watch, including through the new Care Quality Commission regime, 2.1 million more patients every year benefit from good or outstanding hospitals than did five years ago. A couple of weeks ago for the first time the majority of hospitals in the NHS were good or outstanding, which is a huge step forward and a huge tribute to NHS staff. That might be just one reason the Commonwealth Fund last year said that the NHS was the best healthcare system in the world. When Labour was in office, it was not even the best in Europe. There is another reason to oppose the motion. It has nothing to do with health policy, but is a much bigger point of principle.”
“No, I do not think it acceptable at all, but I would ask the hon. Lady to bear it in mind that we have 2,000 more paramedics than we did in 2010 and that we have invested in a huge amount of capital equipment for the ambulance services. Of course we need to do more, but, when she talks about A&E, she should recognise the achievements of many hospitals, including her own. Every day across the NHS—even over this difficult winter—2,500 more people are seen within four hours than were in 2010. Labour seems to think that quality problems in the NHS started in 2010.”
“Any measures that affect the honesty and frankness of the advice that Ministers receive would fundamentally reduce that thoughtfulness and reduce the effectiveness of our Government for the people whom they serve. For those reasons—as well as because of all the ridiculous myths about the millions and privatisation—I have absolutely no hesitation in asking my right hon. and hon. Friends to vigorously and thoroughly oppose the motion.”
“My hon. Friend speaks extremely wisely. He is right: it would fundamentally weaken the ability of the Executive—which the Freedom of Information Act tried to protect—to make considered, thoughtful and wise decisions. Ultimately, that would put at risk the credibility of our democracy itself. I think it fair to say that, despite my many faults as Health Secretary, I have pursued transparency in the NHS with greater vigour than has been the case previously. I passionately believe that in this House we must be accountable for the outcomes of all the decisions that we make, but all of us are mortal—all of us make mistakes—so if accountability is the watchword after a decision is made, thoughtfulness must be the watchword before it is made.”
“We saw those qualities latterly, and more tragically, when almost as an aside in her final harrowing few months, she decided that the Government needed to tear up our policy on brain cancer and start again, so basically we have done so. Thanks to her, and many other campaigners from this House and outside this House, we are proud to announce today the Dame Tessa Jowell brain cancer mission, which seeks massively to increase research and improve the treatment of this most challenging of cancers. Today, the thoughts of all of us are with David, Jess and Matthew. We hope and pray that, as a result of her efforts, many more will survive this terrible disease—a final and most wonderful gift of Tessa magic to the nation.”