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Paul Farrelly: I am loth to interrupt the hon. Gentleman in full rant, but earlier, I described some of the advances in north Staffordshire, and I should point out that one of the Labour Government's first decisions in 1997 was to give the go-ahead to a brand new hospital in Amersham. I know that because I contested Chesham and Amersham in the general election in 1997. Would the hon. Gentleman describe the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) as a Labour crony?
Mr. Wilshire: No, I would not. When I asked the hon. Gentleman about £17 million-worth of cuts in my constituency, he said that he did not know the position there. Similarly, I do not know the position in Chesham and Amersham, but I stress that the whole of the south-east suffers the same problems and I have no doubt that a Buckinghamshire Member of Parliament would recount that their local health services face the same difficulties caused by having to pay bills and provide services with the money that the Government give them.
Mr. Lansley: If the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) had been present in Westminster Hall three weeks ago, he would have heard Members of Parliament from Buckinghamshire making the same point about the unfairness of the financial distribution in the NHS and the deficits in Buckinghamshire.
Mr. Wilshire: That is no surprise. Every time I talk to a colleague from the south-east, I hear the same story.
Mr. Luff: I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) made that very point at Prime Minister's Question Time last week, and the same complaint as my hon. Friend makes now.
Mr. Wilshire: I must read Hansard afterwards. I am sure that that would give the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) and me the answers that we need.
My trust is breaking the law by overspending by £17 million. The Christmas before last, the position became so bad that suppliers refused to supply the trust until it paid its bills. That is what the Government have done to a trust that tries to provide the services that my constituents want. Their response to the new crisis is not that that the Chancellor boasts about. Given the amount of taxpayers' money that the Chancellor claims to be giving away, one would have believed that we might get some of it. But no, all we have is a loan of £14 million so that we no longer break the law. I must emphasise that the amount loaned is £14 million, not £17 million. There is also a little sting in the tail in that if my trust is good, does what the Government order it to do and makes cuts, keeps quiet and does not complain, the Government will convert the loan into a grant. However, they will do that only if the trust makes the cuts.
Last September, another interesting development occurred. The Government trumpeted the creation of diagnostic treatment centres—I believe that that name has subsequently been changed. They claimed that that would mean new facilities, more staff and more treatment—the usual spin that we get from the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health. They told me that a company called Mercury Healthcare would open such a centre at Ashford. We then discovered why it was that the Government want services moved out of Ashford—so that the Government can privatise part of it. It occurred to me that that amounted to certain hypocrisy, because Labour Members are always accusing my party of wanting to privatise the NHS, but in my constituency the Government are trying to privatise part of the NHS.
To get to the bottom of this curious development, I thought I would ask Mercury Healthcare all about the new facilities, extra staff and extra treatment on offer. I was dumbfounded when I discovered the truth. Mercury Healthcare is not going to provide any new facilities. It is going to take over one of the wards that has been emptied out by the cuts that the Government have ordered to be made. It is going to take over the theatre, which will no longer be used by the NHS, as the patients have been moved somewhere else. Mercury Healthcare is not even going to employ anyone extra, because it intends to take over the staff that the Government have freed up at my hospital. So much for the spin and the boast about using the private sector to do more, to do it more quickly and to provide better facilities. It is just not true. NHS wards, NHS theatres and NHS staff are to be privatised by this Government, and they have the nerve to accuse us of wanting to do that.
Just after Christmas, somebody within the trust had a little word with me and said, "Have you asked how the Government's plans to produce this treatment centre are going." I said, "No." I therefore made some inquiries. What did I discover? They had got rid of Mercury Healthcare. I have tabled question after question since, and the Government refuse to tell me when they broke off the negotiations or why. All that they do is point me towards yet another press release, which was issued on 17 February this year. What does it say? Surprise, surprise, five more treatment centres will be opened by the Government, to provide new facilities. Who will run them? Mercury Healthcare—the company sacked from Ashford. The Government take them off
one job, put them on another, and claim that they have provided extra centres. That is the spin—that is the way in which this Government act. That is what happens when the Chancellor gets to the Dispatch Box. He tells a tale which he hopes that people will fall for, but they will not when they know the truth.Just as a little footnote, the Government still hope to have a privatised facility at Ashford. They still want to get rid of a ward and to get rid of the theatres. They still want to hand over some NHS staff, but now they want to hand them over to a private Swedish company. That is the reality of privatisation—they cannot even use British; they give away their facilities to somebody from abroad.
The reality of the NHS for my constituents is as I describe it, not as the Chancellor claims. The reality is suffering—let us remember that an A and E consultant said that it may even result in death—not what the Secretary of State claims. As a result of this Budget, and as a result of this Government, my constituents are facing cuts in spending, not more spending. They are facing cuts in services, not improved services. To add insult to injury, they are facing the privatisation of their NHS.
Last Thursday we were treated to the usual round of spin, boasts, claims—all the false things that we have come to associate with a Government who cannot distinguish reality from fiction. Tonight, like it or not, the Government must face the truth—the truth as my constituents see it: the truth that led 12,000 local people to sign a petition pleading with the Government not to make cuts. There seems to be no sign whatever, at least at the moment, that the Government are paying any attention to that petition. From them it is all spin and no delivery; all waffle, and a complete refusal to listen to my constituents or provide them with a decent NHS.
9.5 pm
Mr. Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab): This may be the only thing I shall have in common with the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) this evening, but like him, I must begin by apologising for being unable to be present for the whole debate. I had other work commitments earlier.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health on the commitments that he announced earlier. I note that rather than supporting those advances, the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley) wants to proceed against the non-medical staff in our national health service. I am not sure that I want a health service bereft of security staff: sadly, we need them to protect our nurses nowadays. I do not particularly want to make grand savings by wiping out gardeners in our hospital grounds. I think that medical secretaries do a useful job, indeed an essential one. I think that computer programmers and technicians are crucial to the NHS. By all means let us phase out jobs that we no longer need, but let us not kid ourselves about the people whom the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds has in his sights.
It seems to me that the test of a party's attitude to the NHS is what it does in government. Given the official Opposition's track record, their ever-changing
commitments and the constant mantra that their promises are no more than work in progress, it is hardly surprising that many of us have adopted scepticism bordering on cynicism.I welcome the Budget, which, as the Chancellor rightly pointed out, hails one of the country's longest sustained periods of growth. I am proud to be a member of a party whose Government can boast the lowest inflation for 30 years and the lowest unemployment since 1973. Despite all attempts by those with a very different agenda to paint an altogether different picture, I am delighted that our Chancellor has ensured that our debt is the lowest of any in the G7 industrialised economies. When I think of what the situation was like when I worked with unemployed youngsters in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I know that this country has been transformed. At that time in the west midlands, it was a novelty to meet a kid who had a father in work—or even a male relative who had had a chance to work.
Of course there are challenges ahead. There are currently 555,000 vacancies in the economy. We cannot ignore the investment in higher education and skills training that the Governments of India and China are pouring into their economies. I welcome the Chancellor's announcements about education generally, but I particularly welcome the proposals for a new deal for skills and the 10-year framework for investment in the UK's science and innovation base.
There is an area in which I think we might do a bit more. I want to focus briefly on energy, and renewables and carbon dioxide emissions. It is not clear to me that the Budget has paid quite the attention to those matters that some of us might have hoped. In this country, every year, an estimated 600,000 tonnes of coal mine methane seeps into the air from around 1,000 abandoned or disused former coal mines. That state of affairs, I am told, could continue for the next 50 to 100 years. Coal mine methane has a global warming potential 23 times greater than that of CO2. Capturing coal mine methane and converting it to electricity reduces global warming potential and CO2 emissions by nine times more per kilowatt generated than can be achieved by wind power.
Why, one may ask, is that area of the renewables market not at the forefront of our energy thinking? The answer is that many companies simply cannot afford it in today's cut-throat, competitive energy market. However, a small shift in the renewables obligation could change all that, and it seems strange that that does not happen given that methane captured from landfill sites or sewage farms is covered by that process. The German Government, I understand, included coal mine methane in their renewables legislation. It could be helpful in terms of energy, reducing emissions and the cost to the health of communities, if I could persuade colleagues at the Treasury to have another look at that.
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