Labour and the Tories played the first half of NHS political football this morning at health questions. The scrap began with Opposition MPs asking what influence Lynton Crosby had over the decision to drop plain packaging for cigarettes. It is their equivalent of the Tory attack on union influence, and as such has a fair bit of clout. The first question came from Labour’s Cathy Jamieson, who asked:
‘Given some of the previous pronouncements by the Public Health Minister I think some of us could be forgiven for thinking that the government’s policy has changed in relation to this. And I wonder therefore if she could advise the House, who overruled her support for this policy? Was it the Prime Minister? Was it the Health Secretary? Or was it Lynton Crosby?’
Ian Austin had a go too. ‘We are not in the pockets of anybody!’ exclaimed Soubry, adding that she hoped Austin could say he wasn’t in the pockets of any trade union either. Even Lib Dem John Pugh joined the fray, asking whether the same ‘high evidential threshold’ that had delayed plain packaging would also be applied across government to other policies involving lobbyists. Then Diane Abbott, who drove the knife in on Friday when Soubry announced the plans were being left on a shelf, had a go:
‘The Minister just said quite correctly that the best legislation is based on evidence. But isn’t it also the case that the best legislation is untainted by the activities of lobbyists?’
The next big bout came when Andy Burnham, still looking rather angry after his interviews this morning, stood up. There was an angry cheer from his side. He said:
‘The Secretary of State will make a statement shortly about the Keogh review. Two of the hospitals investigated are Basildon and Tameside. The last government left a warning in place on both trusts about patient safety. This government has ignored those warnings and allowed both trusts to make severe cuts to frontline staff: Tameside has cut 128 nursing posts, Basildon an unbelievable 345. Given the warnings he inherited, why on earth has he allowed this to happen?’
Hunt replied in a rather terrifying icy voice:
‘Well I’m very surprised, Mr Speaker, that he wants to mention what happened at Tameside. Tameside had high death rates for eight years under Labour. They ignored a whistleblower in 2005, they ignored warnings to Parliament in 2006, they ignored a coroner’s report in 2006, warnings from my predecessor in 2009 and to cap it all, in 2009, they were given a good rating by the CQC. How bad is that?’
Burnham shot back that Hunt was ‘wrong’. Hunt again told him, in his icy voice, that he was surprised he wanted to talk about it. The Labour frontbench, it seemed, had decided to talk about the issue because it worked as part of an ‘ignored warnings’ narrative. Other questions on the 111 number backed this up: frontbenchers were keen to suggest that the current government hadn’t taken heed of warnings from Labour about various policies coming unstuck.
Hunt was more interested in his statement on the Keogh report which, as we shall see, saw some far more aggressive play.
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