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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“I commend my right hon. Friend’s campaigning, but I am afraid I have to disagree with him. This is an important step forward; we are absolutely going to be led by the science—we have to be led by the science—and we are giving Baroness Cumberlege full rein to look at what the expert working group did, and to challenge it if she thinks fit.”
“This is something for Baroness Cumberlege to consider, but the broader point is right. We have for too long in each of these three cases, and in others as well, had processes that have not had the confidence of patients. That is why we are proposing today not just specific measures on each of the three issues, but a broader look at the regulatory structure to make sure that patients’ voices are louder and we avoid precisely what the hon. Lady said.”
“I very much hope so, and the crucial point that has come out from the contributions of Members in all parts of the House is that the processes we have had in place to date have not had the confidence of the families affected. That applies to a whole range of issues, and I believe medicine is changing fundamentally: people who are passionate about medical innovation and life sciences know that we need to have a very close partnership with patients in order to make proper advances. But we have not always got this right, and that is what I hope Baroness Cumberlege’s review will help us to do.”
“We will certainly look at all those things, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to draw attention to them. Licensing is one thing, but it is also important to ensure that proper information is available to clinicians and patients, because it appears from these cases that there are a number of drugs and devices that are safe but only in certain circumstances, and that knowledge might not have been properly disseminated. The database that the hon. Lady mentioned will help us to get that right.”
“This is a complex procedure that can go wrong, so it would only ever be used if it was absolutely the right thing for patients. We have looked at this very carefully. Other countries have introduced restrictions on the use of mesh, but we have concluded that that would be disadvantageous to women in certain circumstances. However, that means that we have to take much more care in when it is used so that we avoid those truly horrific complications.”
“I hear what the right hon. Lady is saying. The reason it was important to ask whether there was a causal link was that it has an implication for the compensation to which people might be entitled, but I would like to reassure her that Baroness Cumberlege will have the freedom to look at all the issues that she has raised.”
“In this country, the compensation system works through the courts. There are times when the NHS is liable and there are times when the drugs companies are liable. I hope that Baroness Cumberlege’s work will take us closer to understanding where the liability actually lies, so that we can give relief to the families who have suffered for too long.”
“I understand the respectful tone in which the hon. Gentleman has asked this question. I do not think that anyone has a better track record than Baroness Cumberlege on campaigning for women’s health issues. In her career, she has shown an absolute willingness to take on the medical and scientific establishments when she thinks that that is the right thing to do, and she does so with a great deal of knowledge and a huge amount of passion, so I have every confidence that she will do a good job.”
“I wish I could say to my hon. Friend that those people’s terrible suffering has been taken as seriously as it should have been, but the truth is that we have a system that has not treated patients’ concerns with the seriousness that it should have done. That is why we want to make the important changes that we are announcing today.”
“All I can say is that we completely understand those concerns and the despair that many people feel about this issue, but it is difficult to resolve it quickly when there is disagreement among the scientists. What we are trying to do today is to create a process to resolve that disagreement, and that is what I very much hope will happen.”
“I can confirm that, although it is also important to say that if we discover changes in procedures that will improve the safety of medicine use or medical device use, the people who put those new drugs on the market would want to benefit from any changes in regulatory processes, but what we would not want to do is reduce the speed.”
“Our approach on safety issues is that we are happy to do anything on a UK-wide basis if that is what the devolved Administrations want, because we do not see any benefit in not sharing data. If the willingness is there among the other Administrations, we would be happy to play ball.”
“That was very eloquently put by my hon. Friend. We also want to get closure on this issue, and that means getting the scientific consensus that has eluded us to date. I will certainly mention the Aberdeen research to the noble Baroness.”
“I am happy to do so, but this review is obviously separate from the things that are happening in Scotland. However, we will certainly look at all those issues.”
“International experts from the Commonwealth Fund in New York say that we are the safest healthcare system in the world, but that gives me pause for thought because there is still so much avoidable harm and death in our system right now. If we are the safest, that says that healthcare everywhere needs to improve.”
“That is the entire purpose of the review. Obviously, Baroness Cumberlege will want to involve patients in the process right from the start, and I will talk to her about that. I will also write to the hon. Lady to spell out in detail the way in which the Baroness intends to involve patients in the process.”
“I wish it was easy to give the hon. Gentleman a straightforward answer, but the truth is that there is much scientific disagreement about whether there is a causal link, which makes it difficult to give clear answers to his constituents and, indeed, to mine. I hope that the review will shed some clarity on the situation, because that is what many people want.”
“Baroness Cumberlege has honorary fellowships at the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Physicians, so she is well connected with all the organisations that the hon. Lady mentioned.”
“It is fair and important to say that our regulatory system is admired the world over because we do safety extremely well and take it extremely seriously, but that does not mean that we cannot improve it. The lesson of today is that patients’ voices have not been strong in that process, and that is what we need to change.”
“The NHS needs more nurses, which is why we are making big changes for new entries into the profession, including the new nurse associate role and new nurse degree apprenticeships.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent question. It will strengthen my hand with the Department for Education, which decides what levels of funding are made available from the Institute for Apprenticeships. It has actually given us the highest level of funding, at £27,000, but we never say no to more.”
“I am most grateful. That is a very rare compliment, so I shall savour it. I would gently say to her that the point about nurse degree apprenticeships is that it is possible to transition into nursing from being a healthcare assistant without any fees being paid at all. That is why it is a huge and highly significant change.”
“My hon. Friend speaks very wisely—we do need to be better at retaining our existing workforce. I think that is why the Treasury has given me extra latitude in negotiations on the pay rise—those discussions are currently happening—but we also need to be much better at flexible working and at recognising the challenges people have in their ordinary working lives.”
“I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman say that, because we have published a draft of a workforce strategy in this country, but I notice that Audit Scotland says that in Scotland there is a lack of a long-term strategic plan for the workforce. I gently say to him that there are workforce pressures across the United Kingdom. We have a plan to dramatically increase the number of nurses that we employ in the NHS, and I am sure many people in Scotland would like to see the same there.”
“As we discussed earlier, we are broadening the routes into nursing from just traditional higher education courses, including nurse apprenticeships and people being able to train on the job over four years in a hospital. We hope that a whole group of healthcare assistants who currently find it difficult to get into nursing can become nurses. I think that would be very welcome in Scotland as well.”
“I am happy to do that. It is one of the great successes of NHS Improvement, which should be celebrated, that it has brought down the amount spent on agency nursing by £1 billion in the last couple of years. That is a huge achievement. Every penny of that goes back into frontline care.”
“Perhaps I should set the record straight for the hon. Lady. We have 52,000 nurses in training—more than was ever the case under the last Labour Government, who were planning to cut nurse training places by 6%. We are planning to increase them by 25%. That shows our commitment to nursing.”
“I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but that is not the first time that he has presented a somewhat incomplete picture of what is actually happening. In the last five years, we have 15,700 more nurses, and the reason for those vacancies and for the pressure is that, as he knows very well, under the last Labour Government we had Mid Staffs, which was a crisis of short staffing that this Government are putting right. That is why we want to recruit those extra nurses.”
“This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, and still too many children and young people wait too long for their mental health provision in the NHS. That is why, by the end of next year, we will have invested an extra £1.4 billion, meaning that 70,000 extra children and young people are seen every year.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue, and I understand that in that particular case clinicians are meeting this week to resolve those issues. She is right: we need to expand the number of beds available for children and young people. They are at a record level—1,440, and that went up by another 81 last year—but more needs to be done, which is why we published our children and young people’s mental health Green Paper.”
“I am happy to do that. The simple truth is that it is a tragedy for every child who has to wait too long to access mental health care, because half of all mental health conditions become established before the age of 14. If we do not nip them in the bud, they can get a lot worse. What are we doing? We are setting up a whole new service inside schools to spot such problems earlier and we are going to introduce a waiting time target for CAMHS appointments.”
“I absolutely agree with that. I join my hon. Friend in supporting the introduction of waiting time targets in Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom. How are we doing so far? In terms of the need for urgent treatment for eating disorders, we are hitting 79%, so we are on our way to the 95% target and we want to get there as soon as we can.”
“I did not; I said the opposite. I said that we need to do a lot more and I told the House what we are doing. If the hon. Lady looks at what is happening in her own clinical commissioning group, she will see that the proportion that is spent on mental health has gone up from 12.3% to 13%. She will see that this Government have done a huge amount on mental health. In 13 years, Labour did not have any waiting time targets for mental health and did not introduce parity of esteem—a whole range of things that are now happening and that she should support.”
“We are absolutely going to do that. We have a big programme of expansion in perinatal health support, because there is a lot of evidence that pressures on mothers around the time of birth transmit to their children and can leave lasting damage.”
“I am happy to look into that issue. The hon. Gentleman’s colleague, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), did a huge amount to set up crisis care provision around the country. We need to build on that for the simple reason that, if we are to have parity of esteem, people need to be able to get help in a mental health crisis, just as they are if something goes wrong with their physical health.”
“This is something that my hon. Friend has thought a lot about. A particular area of concern is the growth in mental health problems in young women between the ages of 18 and 24. We are looking carefully at whether that relates to social media use, which is an additional pressure that many of us did not face when we were that age. I thank him for his campaigning on this issue.”
“With respect, we are taking action. Last year, spending on mental health went up by £575 million and four out of five CCGs increased their mental health spend by more than their overall spend. This year, all CCGs will do that. That will apply in Lewisham, as it will everywhere else in the country.”
“The hon. Lady is right to shine a light on that variation, and that is why this Government have introduced Ofsted ratings for all CCGs—to make sure that we understand. It is not just in children and young people’s mental health, but in all mental health where we see that variation. Specifically when it comes to children and young people’s mental health, she will be pleased to know that last year overall spending went up by 20%, and the Green Paper that we published announced an additional £300 million in investment.”
“Our ambition was to halve the number of maternal deaths, neonatal deaths, neonatal injuries and stillbirths by 2030, but because of the progress we have made with our maternity safety programme, we have brought that forward to 2025.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight that area. It is one of six high-impact areas we are focusing on throughout the country. We are making progress, but we know we could do a lot better.”
“It is five years today since the landmark publication of the Francis report on the Mid Staffordshire Foundation NHS Trust. Since then the NHS has made a huge number of changes, not the least being that 34 trusts have gone into special measures and 19 have come out. I particularly congratulate the West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust on coming out of special measures in January and securing a “good” score for its caring: that was a fantastic achievement by its staff.”
“Let me reassure the right hon. and learned Lady that we do not wash our hands of any trusts that go into special measures. The point of the special measures regime is to highlight where Government intervention is necessary. I know the right hon. and learned Lady will agree that a huge amount of very fine treatment happens at King’s every single day, but it is having profound issues in relation to the management of its finances and some of its waiting times, which is why we are doing everything we can to support it.”
“I am well aware of the pressures at Kettering. It is a very busy hospital, and it has undergone a number of changes of management. However, I can reassure my hon. Friend that a big improvement package is there to support it and that we want to take it out of special measures as soon as possible.”
“We spend 9.9% of our GDP on health. The European Union spends 15%, and the richer EU countries spend 9.6%—slightly less than us, on average. We are able to spend more because this Government put the economy back on its feet.”
“Working with senior lawyers, Sir Norman will review how we ensure the vital role of reflective learning, openness and transparency is protected so that mistakes are learned from and not covered up, how we ensure that there is clarity about where the line is drawn between gross negligence manslaughter and ordinary human error in medical practice so that doctors and other health professionals know where they stand in respect of criminal liability or professional misconduct, and any lessons that need to be learned by the General Medical Council and other professional regulators. I will engage the devolved Administrations, the Justice Secretary and the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care in this vital review, which will report to me before the end of April 2018.”
“On the day that we mark the 100th anniversary of giving a voice to women, I want to update the House on concerns in the medical profession that we may not be giving a voice to doctors and other clinicians who want the freedom to be able to learn from mistakes. The House will know that, as a Government Minister, I cannot comment on a court ruling, but it is fair to say that the recent Dr Bawa-Garba case has caused huge concern, so today I can announce that I have asked Professor Sir Norman Williams, former president of the Royal College of Surgeons and my senior clinical adviser, to conduct a rapid review into the application of gross negligence manslaughter in healthcare.”
“It is a fantastic charity. The boy concerned would have been 19 very shortly. It is a very sad story. I thank my right hon. Friend for her campaigning on this issue. We do indeed need to ensure that we have atrial fibrillators everywhere necessary to prevent these tragedies.”
“The hon. Lady always speaks powerfully about the social care system. One of the key parts of the social care Green Paper that we are currently working through is on market stabilisation. We have seen a number of care homes go under, although the number of beds overall has remained broadly stable, but our particular concern is, as she rightly points out, people in the advanced stages of dementia who might not be able to get the care that they want. This is a key focus of our work.”
“Public money is public money, and Members have a right to know how it is being spent, so we will absolutely ensure that those contracts are signed in a fair way.”
“At the heart of the Dilnot proposals was the idea of risk pooling—that there is a randomness in the illnesses that affect us in the later years of our life that we would want, as a society, to do something about. I will confirm what the Prime Minister said in the election campaign: we will consult on a cap on social care costs.”