Jeremy Hunt – 2020 Speech on the NHS Funding Bill

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative MP for South West Surrey, in the House of Commons on 27 January 2020.

It is a pleasure to see you in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a trustee of the charity Patient Safety Watch. I also wish to correct a detail in the last speech I gave in the House in which I said there were four instances of wrong site surgery every day; I should have said every week. It is still an enormous number, but it is important to get the record absolutely right.

I congratulate the Health Secretary on putting the NHS front and centre of the Government’s agenda. When I was in his job, I fought two general elections with Prime Ministers who were rather keen not to talk about the NHS. The second of the two did want to talk about the social care system, and I think both of us, with the benefit of hindsight, rather regret that. But if the Conservatives want to be the party of NHS, we have to talk about it, and my right hon. Friend is doing precisely that.

I thank my right hon. Friend for putting into law the deal for the future of the NHS that I negotiated in May 2018. It is the challenge of the holder of his job—formerly mine—to stand at the Dispatch Box and constantly say that the NHS has enough money, when in reality it very rarely does. One of the most difficult challenges for Health Secretaries of all parties is meeting people who are denied access to a medicine that is not available on the NHS. He did that with the Orkambi families just before the election, and he did a brilliant job in securing access to that medicine, which will transform the lives of many families. I hope that he will now use the same magic to get access to Kuvan for sufferers of phenylketonuria, including Holly and Callum, the children of my constituent Caroline Graham, who kindly agreed to a meeting.

On funding, the central issue of this debate has been whether the amount the Government propose is enough. The facts are relatively straightforward: we spend 9.7% of our GDP on healthcare, and the EU average is 9.9%—almost the same. Our spending is almost identical to the OECD average and slightly less than that of the majority of G7 countries. Those numbers only reflect the situation today, though. We are in the first year of a five-year programme whereby spending on the NHS will rise by about double the growth in GDP, so we are heading toward being in the top quartile of spenders on health as a proportion of GDP among developed countries. That is a significant increase.

​Dr Whitford

The right hon. Gentleman’s overall figure for health spend is correct, but the public health spend—as opposed to private patients—is only 7.5% of GDP, and that is the figure the public are interested in, not the figure including people who can afford to go private.

Jeremy Hunt

I suggest to the hon. Lady, whom I greatly respect, that the overall figure is actually what counts. I agree that public health spending matters, but it is absolutely the case that we are heading to being one of the higher spenders in our commitment to health. That is very significant and should not be dismissed.

Often, the debate about funding can distort some of the real debates that we need to have about the NHS. One of those is the debate on social care. If we do not have an equivalent five-year funding plan for social care, there will not be enough money for the NHS. That is because of the total interdependence of the health and social care systems. It is not about finding money to stop people having to sell their homes if they get dementia, important though that is; it is about the core money available to local authorities to spend on their responsibilities in adult social care. I tried to negotiate a five-year deal for social care at the same time as the NHS funding deal we are debating today. I failed, but I am delighted to have a successor who has enormously strong skills of persuasion and great contacts in the Treasury. I have no doubt that he will secure a fantastic deal for adult social care to sit alongside the deal on funding, and I wish him every success in that vital area.

The second distortion that often happens in a debate about funding is that while everyone on the NHS front line welcomes additional funding, their real concern is about capacity. The capacity of staff to deliver really matters. I remember year after year trying to avert a winter crisis by giving the NHS extra money, and most of the time I gave the money and we still had a winter crisis, because ultimately we can give the NHS £2 billion or £3 billion more, but if there are not doctors and nurses available to hire for that £2 billion or £3 billion, the result is simply to inflate the salaries of locum doctors and agency nurses and the money is wasted. Central to understanding capacity is the recognition that it takes three years to train a nurse, seven years to train a doctor and 13 years to train a consultant, so a long-term plan is needed. It is essential that alongside the funding plan, we have in the people plan that I know the NHS is to publish soon an independently verified 10-year workforce plan that specifies how many doctors, nurses, midwives, allied healthcare professionals and so on we will need.

Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)

Will my right hon. Friend give us his views on the maternity safety training fund, which I understand is up for renewal soon, and its importance to the midwives of the future?

Jeremy Hunt

When we talk about the workforce, training is vital. We know from the 2018 “Mind the Gap” report on the issues at the Shrewsbury and Telford and the East Kent trusts, among others, that only 8% of trusts supply all the care needs in the saving babies’ lives bundle, so the maternity safety training fund is essential. I hope the Health Secretary will renew it, because it makes a big difference.​

It is vital that we have an independent figure for the number of doctors and nurses the NHS needs, not a figure negotiated between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury because the Treasury will always try to negotiate the number down and we will end up not training enough people. I know the Health Secretary is on the case.

The final distortion when we talk about funding for the NHS is the link between funding and the quality of care. It is totally understandable that many people think that the way to improve the quality of care is to increase funding, but in reality the relationship is much more complex. As the Health Secretary knows well, we pay the same tariff to all hospitals in the NHS, and with the same amount of money some of them deliver absolutely outstanding, world-class care and others do not. Almost without exception, hospitals rated good or outstanding by the Care Quality Commission have better finances than those rated as requiring improvement or inadequate, which are often losing huge sums. The reason for that, as every doctor or nurse in the NHS knows, is that poor care is usually the most expensive type of care to deliver. A patient who acquires a bedsore or an MRSA or C. diff infection, or has a fall that could have been avoided, will stay in hospital longer, which will cost more. It will cost the hospital more, it will cost the NHS more, and finances will deteriorate. Invariably, the path the safer care is the same as the path to lower cost. That is why it is so important that we recognise that the safety and quality agenda is consistent with the plan to get NHS finances under control.

It is also why it is important to remember that the Mid Staffs scandal happened in a period of record funding increases for the NHS. So when it comes to NHS funding, transparency, openness, a culture that learns from mistakes, innovation and prevention are every bit as important as pounds and pence.