Jeremy Hunt: We'll reform nursing to make sure that vulnerable people get the NHS care they need

Jeremy Hunt MP is Secretary of State for Health. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

Anyone who has been to an A&E department in recent weeks will know that they are under pressure. A million more people a year are going through the doors compared with Labour’s last year in office.

Some of the root causes stem from decisions we inherited, like the changes to the GP contract in 2004 which led to a decline in the quality and availability of out of hours care. Falling ill at evenings or weekends shouldn’t necessarily mean a trip to A&E, but in too many cases it does, reflecting many people’s lack of confidence in their local out of hours services.

But it is not just about the number of patients going to A&E – the cases are often more complex too. This is particularly true for frail older patients with long term conditions like dementia. A fall at home might lead to a hospital admission. But because of the barriers between hospitals and social care, arranging the discharge of an elderly patient can be a bureaucratic nightmare, causing distress for the patient and adding to the pressures in hospitals.

Jeremy Hunt MP: David Nicholson has apologised – now Labour must too

Jeremy Hunt MP is Secretary of State for Health. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

Normally I find myself in agreement with much written on ConHome but this morning’s analysis from Paul Goodman was unusually wide of the mark. Labour can and will be held accountable for what happened at Mid Staffs. But the time to do it is now, when David Nicholson has given his evidence and we are in full knowledge of what he did – and what was the responsibility of Ministers.

Let me start by saying I agree with Robert Francis that the primary responsibility for what went wrong lies with the board and management of Mid Staffs Hospital. We should not scapegoat individuals outside the hospital for what went wrong. He also said – which I accept – that Ministers at the time were not personally responsible for what happened.

But Labour ministers did make three catastrophic policy mistakes for which they bear direct responsibility – all of which are having a direct impact on the lack of compassionate care in parts of the NHS today.

Jeremy Hunt: Why the Government's reforms to elderly care are necessary and right

Jeremy Hunt is the Member of Parliament for South West Surrey and Secretary of State for Health. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

As Conservatives, doing the right thing for people who have worked hard and saved all their lives is a top priority. Every year more than 30,000 people have to sell their homes to pay for the cost of care. The current system, which only provides state support if your assets are above £23,250, is unfair and sends out completely the wrong message – that if you work hard, save for your future and want to have something to pass on to your loved ones, your savings can disappear in a puff of smoke if you end up needing long term care. As one in three of us will get dementia and one in ten end up with more than £100,000 of care costs, this is a problem a responsible government cannot ignore.

So my new reform package includes from 2017:

• A cap on care costs at £75,000. The intention is not that people should pay the £75,000, but that they should not have to pay it because they can cover it through, say, an option in their pension plan. Only with the certainty of knowing there is an upper limit to costs will pension companies or insurance companies offer this.

Jeremy Hunt MP: A narrow focus on finance and targets was a large driver of the Mid Staffs tragedy

Jeremy Hunt is the Member of Parliament for South West Surrey and Secretary of State for Health. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

Robert Francis QC’s report into the appalling failures of care at Mid Staffordshire Hospital must mark a turning point for our NHS. It lays bare the dreadful neglect and mistreatment suffered by hundreds of patients between 2005 and 2009. It is truly shocking to read just how comprehensive the failures were right across the system – from ward to Whitehall. Hospital staff, managers, regulators and politicians all failed. It took the courage and determination of the families who had suffered so terribly to get the truth out.

I will need to study carefully all 290 recommendations before outlining our full response but as the Prime Minister said in his statement yesterday, the report makes some fundamental points about the culture of the NHS which apply well beyond one hospital. This needs to be a ‘never again’ moment for the whole health service.

It is clear from the report that a large driver for the awful events at Mid Staffs was the Board’s pursuit of Foundation Trust status under the last Labour Government, which led to a narrow focus on finance and targets at the expense of patients. It cannot be right for a Board to be more concerned with targets and finances than giving the most basic dignity and respect to patients. So we will create a single failure regime where the suspension of the Board can be triggered by failures in care as much as by failures in finance.

Jeremy Hunt: Labour's reaction to Lewisham A & E shows the NHS isn't safe in their hands

Jeremy Hunt is the Member of Parliament for South West Surrey and Secretary of State for Health. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

Sometimes an opposition makes a transition from opposition for opposition's sake to being a government-in-waiting. That is the moment of maximum danger for a government seeking re-election. However, Labour's reaction to my decision on Lewisham hospital last week shows they are going headlong in the opposite direction.

A simple look at the facts would tell you this was a problem over which they should have shown some humility. 

South London Healthcare Trust was set up under the last Government to solve long-standing financial problems. Instead, they left it with a deficit of around £65m per annum  - more than £1m every week being drained from frontline services to support a deficit. Two PFIs signed by Labour between them account for around £60m of cost every year in the Trust.

The solution I proposed did not involve the closure of Lewisham A & E, although that was on the table. But it does remove the deficit, meaning that money can go back into frontline patient care. It also saves around 100 lives a year by concentrating the care for a few more complex conditions - pneumonia, meningitis, broken hips - in specialist hospitals nearby. This was what Labour did with stroke care, reducing the number of London hospitals dealing with strokes from 32 to 8 and halving the stroke mortality rate in the process.

Jeremy Hunt: The four improvements I want to see in the NHS by 2015

Jeremy Hunt is the Member of Parliament for South West Surrey and Secretary of State for Health. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

I have now been Health Secretary for just over two months. I said when I was appointed that it was the biggest privilege of my life. The remarkable people I have met working for the NHS makes me think I was right. I am a strong supporter of Andrew Lansley's reforms, which will unlock ideas, energy and enthusiasm at the NHS front line. But there are other things that need doing too, and I have identified four key priorities to focus on as Health Secretary.

So how do I want the NHS to change for the better between now and the general election?

1. Improve the standard of care throughout the system. Last week's CQC report was sober reading. 10% of health and social care institutions inspected fail to offer basic dignity and care. We need a system where quality of care is considered as important as quality of treatment. Much of the system gets this right and I have seen some brilliant things in my short time in office - but Mid Staffs, Winterbourne View, Morecambe Bay, James Paget, East Surrey...there are too many examples of places where this has not happened. We need more accountability from managers, better training, tougher inspections and more attention paid to what patients say.
2. Bring the technology revolution to the NHS. The way we use technology has profoundly changed society. But the NHS has not kept pace. Patients, especially those with long term conditions like diabetes, want more joined-up care and much of the solution is in better use and sharing of information. We don’t need a top-down, multi-billion pound programme to do this - but Labour's failure to deliver must not mean the NHS puts its head in the sand with respect to technology. We do need the kind of common sense that begins to knit local IT systems together so that when an ambulance is called for a frail older person, the paramedics know in advance if they have dementia. Or so that community health staff get an alert when a diabetes patient hasn’t had a home visit for a long time.
3. Radically improve treatment and care of dementia. There are 670,000 people with dementia in England today – and that figure is going to double within 30 years. For far too long, people with dementia and their carers have not received the care and support they deserve. With our ageing population that must change. More early diagnosis, better research and better support for carers are essential if the NHS is to offer decent, humane support in line with its founding values.
4. Improve mortality rates for the big killer diseases to be the best in Europe. One of the most basic elements of a good health system is how well it helps people get better, yet we languish in the lower half of the European league tables for cancer survival rates, respiratory and many other diseases. We should be the best - and if we were 20,000 lives would be saved every year. I want the NHS to make measurable progress towards this goal over the next 3 years.

A lot of this is a big ask when there are so many other pressures on the system. But if we don't aim to be the best in the world, we never will be and I want nothing less from our NHS.

Jeremy Hunt MP: London 2012 has been a magnificent success

Jeremy Hunt MP is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Follow Jeremy on Twitter.

We can never be complacent with such a huge event, but it looks like London 2012 has been a magnificent success.

Not success that belongs to any one person, organisation or political party, but what happens when we come together as a country.  

Here’s my take on how we’ve done: 

Volunteers

Thanks to 70,000+ brilliant volunteers, we have knocked on the head the idea we are not a friendly country. The courteousness, helpfulness, enthusiasm and smiles from people of all ages and all backgrounds has truly made these Olympics. We are a volunteering nation - as enthusiasts for the Big Society have long argued - and now we have proved it. 

Jeremy Hunt MP: The government is getting rid of the "prizes for all" culture and returning to competitive sport

Jeremy Hunt MP is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

I can sum up our sports policy in three words: more competitive sport.

By banishing once and for all the left-wing orthodoxy that promotes "prizes for all" and derides competitio,n we allow sport to do what it does best of all: teach children to learn about how to cope with both success and failure - and most importantly, learn to pick yourself up when things don't go according to plan.

Today we passed an important milestone in that policy, because 8,000 schools have signed up to our School Games - one third of the schools in the country. This Olympic-style school sports competition means will harness the excitement of next year's games to create thousands of opportunities to play competitive sport up and down the country - and because it will continue every year after 2012, it will be a real sporting legacy.

Jeremy Hunt MP: Why local TV is vital in the context of our localist agenda

Jeremy Hunt is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Since becoming Culture Secretary I have at times been a lone voice in arguing that broadcasting in this country is far too centralised. Most major cities in the US and Canada have 6 local TV stations or affiliates but it isn't just across the Atlantic. France has 40 local TV stations and Sweden has 80 - compared to the UK where we have just one in Manchester and none in major cities like London, Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds.

Here are three reasons why this is not just something "nice to have" but vital to our localist agenda:

1. It will transform local democracy
Think how the leadership debates transformed the General Election. Those of us knocking on doors noticed a startling change: cynicism and apathy were replaced by engagement and interest. We should jump at the chance to transform local democracy in the same way. It isn't just local politicians who could be held to account - locally-elected police chiefs, the new GP commissioning groups and any service delivered with a high degree of local control could be scrutinised properly in a way that simply isn't possible in five minutes of regional news.

2. It will regenerate local economies
Local TV will be a whole new sector of the creative industries, creating jobs throughout the country. But it isn't just the jobs directly created. If you start a new restaurant, tourist attraction or retail outlet in a big city, the ability to advertise locally is essential. But until now we have prevented local businesses using the most powerful medium there is. Local TV will change this, making it much easier for entrepreneurs to get businesses off the ground. Incidentally the need for a powerful new local advertising platform is one reason why I do not believe the BBC should deliver local TV.

3. To devolve power to local communities we also need to devolve control of local media
The media is incredibly important in shaping society. We will not succeed in our localist objectives if we do not also relax the centralised grip of the London media on the way local issues are portrayed. If you look at local TV affiliates in Boston, they also have national and international news - but read to you by someone in your city. The Big Society is about harnessing the energy, enthusiasm and ideas of individual citizens to achieve shared social purposes - the media needs to play its part.

Jeremy Hunt MP: Our plans for the Olympics

Jeremy Hunt MP is Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The London Olympics has been a project with cross-party support right from the outset. Hugh Robertson went to Singapore as part of the bid team in 2005, carrying with him an endorsement from Michael Howard. This was critical to the success of the bid, because the International Olympic Committee needed to know that any decision to choose London would survive a change of government. Seb Coe was more responsible for the success of the bid than any other single person except perhaps Tony Blair, who deserves credit for personally flying to Singapore to lobby IOC delegates.

So this is not a project from which any party should try to derive political advantage. Like the Royal Wedding and Diamond Jubilee that precede it, it will be a national occasion. Latest figures suggest a quarter of UK adults want to go (three quarters of which are from outside London), making it comfortably the biggest sporting event in our history.

It will also be the first time in our history we have staged an event watched live by more than half the world's population - an extraordinary opportunity to show the world Britain at its best. So I have given the tourist industry the challenge of producing the best ever marketing campaign for the UK - and they have risen to it by doubling the amount of money the government puts into tourism marketing with the ambition of getting an additional 2 million foreign visitors to come to the UK post 2012. At the same time, there will be an massive economic boost to East London. What used to be the dumping ground for the capital's waste, with 75% of the land contaminated with tar, petrol, oil and arsenic, will be transformed into East London Tech City which has already secured commitment to invest by companies like Cisco, Google, Vodafone, Facebook and Intel.

Jeremy Hunt MP: Sport is a powerful part of national identity and pride

This week ConHome is highlighting some of the big seven themes that will characterise our blogging in the run up to the General Election  One of the themes is patriotic renewal.  Yesterday Frank Field MP wrote about the teaching of British history. Donata Huggins has discussed a 'British Day' and a television focus on great figures from British history. Tomorrow Brandon Lewis will look at promoting British tourism.

Today Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, looks at the contribution of sport to patriotic renewal.

Last Sunday’s Ashes victory was a feel-good moment that we really needed.  Even the outrage over the release of the Lockerbie bomber was pushed briefly off the front pages as the nation was gripped with excitement. The Today programme gloatingly reported the depressed coverage in Australia –  but when it is the Aussies we are allowed to gloat aren’t we?  Meanwhile our victorious sportsmen, perhaps remembering the post 2005 disappointment, behaved with great dignity and aplomb.

It has not always been easy to be proud of sport in Britain. Last week's violence at Upton Park was an ugly reminder that only a few years back football hooliganism was a massive blight on our sporting reputation. Let's hope swift action by the footballing authorities makes what happened a one-off - as well as a reminder we can never be complacent.

A country’s characteristics are often reflected in the way their play sport. Australian doggedness was perfectly exemplified by their resistance on Sunday. Brazilian flair flows through their football team. For many Andrew Strauss typified British decency in the way he reacted to victory at the Ashes.

If sport defines nations, at its best it also unites them.

You only have to look at the response to our athletes’ stunning success in Beijing last year to see how sport lifts a nation. Sporting glory inspire even those who normally have no interest in sport at all. How else can you explain the cult status accorded to Olympic athletes winning in sports that so few people take part in or even normally watch?

Jeremy Hunt MP: If the BBC has surplus cash it should be returned to licence fee payers or used for a local TV revolution

Jeremy Hunt MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.  He blogs here.

Today the government is going to make its long-awaited statement on Digital Britain. For those of us that think that competitiveness in new economy businesses is vital to Britain's future, this is a very important moment.

Sadly judging from one particular announcement that has been trailed, the government looks like it is more interested in propping up old business models than encouraging the rapid adoption of new models upon which our prosperity will depend. It is rumoured that regional news will be supported from now on by diverting around £100m of licence fee money to commercial broadcasters. Here are three reasons why this is wrong:

1. If there is spare money at the BBC (and many of us suspect that proper National Audit Office scrutiny of BBC expenditure would reveal a lot of waste) should we not at least consider giving it back to licence fee payers before doing anything else? The BBC has just pushed through an inflationary licence fee rise (even though there is no inflation, which is why we opposed it). This rise would be more than cancelled out if this "surplus" cash was used to reduce the licence fee from its current £142.50.

2. What people want is not regional news but local news. Regional news is an outdated model based on the old ITV transmitter regions. The East Midlands region covers Nottingham, Leicester and Derby for example. But people in Nottingham do not have the slightest interest in what is happening in Leicester or Derby - they want to know what is happening in their city. It is a disgrace that Birmingham Alabama has eight local TV stations and Birmingham in the UK - four times the size - has none. Rather than propping up an old business model the government should be working out ways to usher in a new generation of super-local TV stations - surely of vital importance to support our campaign for more locally-elected Mayors.

Jeremy Hunt MP: What I learnt in China

Last Saturday Jeremy Hunt listed the ten questions he was seeking to answer during his visit to the Beijing Olympics.  In this Platform the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport outlines some answers...

ONE: The Beijing Olympics are reputedly costing $40bn. That is more than double our budget, and China has the advantage of much lower labour rates. So where is the extra money going? Is it on Beijing's infrastructure? Is it simply vanity in wanting to host the world's best ever Olympics? I'd like to understand where the extra money is going.

The answer is simple: venues and infrastructure. The $40 bn (not officially confirmed) covered brand new, state of the art, permanent sports venues. London is rightly being careful not to build permanent structures unless we know there will be a good legacy use for them. Oh and the Chinese threw in two new tube lines as well. We did actually try out the tube when there - at less than 10p a ride it felt good not be debiting our Oyster cards a fortune...

TWO: What are the practical things that can go wrong? In Beijing's case they have dealt with pollution by banning cars and forcing factories to shut, but this kind of totalitarian response is inconceivable in London. We need to be smarter in our planning for potential pitfalls. In particular how good are our transport estimates for a tube system that is already bursting at the seams and how well will our security plans cope with the threat of terrorism?

Hugh met the person responsible for transport in 2012. It is a major worry. In particular, the Chinese had dedicated "Olympic" lanes running through Beijing to ease the traffic for those with Olympic passes - something that works fine when you have 6 lane highways running through the middle of the city. I doubt Londoners, with our much narrower streets, will be as willing to accept the kind of constraints on traffic that might cause.  Security remains the big unknown - we have the interim security report due in September and the final one by the end of the year so we will have a better sense of the anticipated threat at that stage.

THREE: The International Olympic Committee reportedly said that we cannot have the shooting at Bisley and the equestrian events in Windsor Great Park as they are too far from the Olympic village. This means we will have to spend money on temporary facilities that will be pulled down rather than enhancing permanent facilities as part of an Olympic legacy. Why then Beijing has been allowed to spread events across seven cities, including hosting the equestrian events as far away as Hong Kong?

Mixed signals here. The truth is that venues have to be approved by the international sports federations, who base their decision on the quality of the facilities offered. They are unlikely to oppose moving a venue if it meant better legacy facilities. The question is money - moving the shooting to Bisley would probably cost more than current plans - and whether the Olympic budget has that slack. I did however sense a politically-correct bias against shooting amongst British 2012 organisers which I thought was totally unacceptable.
 

Jeremy Hunt MP: The ten questions I'll be seeking to answer in Beijing

Jeremy Hunt MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Yesterday I left for the Beijing Olympics along with my Shadow Sports Minister Hugh Robertson. It is a great privilege (and great fun) to be going, but we will be there with the much more hard headed objective of trying to learn any lessons for our own Olympics in 2012. So here are 10 questions I will be seeking to answer:

ONE: The Beijing Olympics are reputedly costing $40bn. That is more than double our budget, and China has the advantage of much lower labour rates. So where is the extra money going? Is it on Beijing's infrastructure? Is it simply vanity in wanting to host the world's best ever Olympics? I'd like to understand where the extra money is going.

TWO: What are the practical things that can go wrong? In Beijing's case they have dealt with pollution by banning cars and forcing factories to shut, but this kind of totalitarian response is inconceivable in London. We need to be smarter in our planning for potential pitfalls. In particular how good are our transport estimates for a tube system that is already bursting at the seams and how well will our security plans cope with the threat of terrorism?

THREE: The International Olympic Committee reportedly said that we cannot have the shooting at Bisley and the equestrian events in Windsor Great Park as they are too far from the Olympic village. This means we will have to spend money on temporary facilities that will be pulled down rather than enhancing permanent facilities as part of an Olympic legacy. Why then Beijing has been allowed to spread events across seven cities, including hosting the equestrian events as far away as Hong Kong?

FOUR: People judge an Olympic Games differently in a developed to a developing country. For China 2008 is intended to be a "coming out" as Tokyo was for Japan in 1964 and Seoul for Korea in 1988. Developed countries are judged much more on issues such as whether the games turn a profit and whether the facilities are used afterwards or become white elephants. What will London need to achieve for 2012 to be a success?

Jeremy Hunt MP: Five hours culture for fifty pence

Jeremy Hunt MP is Shadow Culture Secretary.

Last week was another classic example of a flaky government announcement coming unstuck. This time it happened literally within minutes. Andy Burnham, clearly responding to requests from Gordon Brown to make announcements - any announcement - that might give the impression of government initiative (the "vision" thing) announced a plan to give all children a "right" to 5 hours of cultural activity.

By 8.20 in the morning he had been forced to admit to John Humphrys that it was only an "aspiration". Then it emerged that we do not currently measure how many hours of "culture" children receive. Many may be getting more than 5 hours, some undoubtedly less, but how can you have a policy without being able to measure whether it has worked or not?

Next John Dunford of the Association of School and College Leaders slammed the proposals given that no one had thought out precisely where in the curriculum these five hours would sit. Next to cookery? Instead of citizenship? Nearby the 5 hours of sport that have already been promised and not delivered?

Finally we worked out that the amount of money assigned to the pilot areas for the project was less than 50 pence per child per week - getting five hours of culture out of 50 pence needs a course in magic, let alone culture.

Andy Burnham rightly received near universal derision for an ill-thought out "eye-catching initiative" that should never have made it past the drawing board. More's the shame, because culture does matter. But if the government were serious about policy, they could start by taking a look at:

• Red tape that is putting more and more schools off organising school trips, including cultural ones. Parents for example worry about volunteering in case they get sued if something goes wrong.
• Bureaucracy over things like music festivals, which mean piles of forms have to be filled in especially if children are involved. Why do CRB checks have to be repeated time after time - driving both organisers and volunteers potty.
• Provision of music lessons. There is lots of evidence that learning a musical instrument helps both literacy and numeracy, yet up to 40% of primary school children who would like to are unable to learn an instrument.