Murnaghan 23.02.14 Interview with Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Do you find it hard to get an appointment with your local doctor? If you do, you’re not alone, the Royal College of GPs says growing numbers of patients are not able to get appointments with their GPs. The College says more than 34 million patients will fail to get one this year. The Department of Health disputes that. I’m joined now from Leigh in Lancashire by the Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, very good to talk to you Mr Burnham, welcome to the show. These figures, it sounds a bit alarmist doesn’t it, 34 million people not able to see their GPs. I mean it’s not able to see their GPs when they want, they would eventually and this is a problem that has dated way back into the Labour years hasn’t it?

ANDY BURNHAM: To be honest though, Dermot, what I hear wherever I go, people come up to me and say, I’m getting up in the morning, I’m ringing the surgery at eight or nine o’clock and I’m being told there’s nothing available for days. It is so common to hear that as I go about and it’s likely to get worse. The Patient’s Association are saying it soon could be the norm to wait up to a week for a GP appointment. There are two things that lie behind it, if I could just explain this. The first is funding, as the Royal College is saying, we’ve seen primary and community care cut faster than the rest of the NHS and GP services cut by a billion pounds since the election, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, as well as that, the coalition have scrapped guarantees that Labour brought in that you could have a GP appointment within two working days, within 48 hours. You may remember, Dermot, Tony Blair being challenged on this issue in the 2005 general election, in a live TV debate, and following that he brought in these guarantees and that really improved access and those were cut within weeks of the coalition coming to power.

DM: Yes, the guarantee came in but it didn’t always happen because I remember the last time I went to see my GP, sorry to be personal about this, was in the Labour years, I’m lucky enough not to have had to go since and I tried that on and couldn’t get an appointment in two days, a lot of people will be listening to what you are saying and it wasn’t all milk and honey under Labour.

ANDY BURNHAM: No, of course, I accept that, that’s why we made a big priority of improving access to GPs services as a government because it wasn’t good enough, as you say, and in places there were still longer waits than two days but actually towards the end of our time in government when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, he prioritised evening and weekend working for GPs, he made extra funding available so that surgeries could open late into the evening and at weekends as well, particularly helping those who find it hard to access GPs during working hours. Again that funding was cut and opening hours reversed so people don’t have the guarantee of an appointment within 48 hours and the later opening has gone too and that’s why I say, and we’ve been saying for weeks now, it’s harder to get a GP appointment under David Cameron and this research today from the Royal College backs that up.

DM: Okay, can I just ask you about a couple of other issues, Labour party membership of course and I know you have got the big conference coming up at the beginning of next month on 1st March and Ed Miliband, your leader, saying this is a seismic change, it’s your Clause Four moment, it’s a huge difference, is it really? Three quid or whatever it is to have a vote in the Labour party, is it that seismic, is it that big a difference?

ANDY BURNHAM: I feel so, absolutely Dermot, it’s the most exciting change internally within the Labour party in my political lifetime. It gives us a chance to truly live up to the name, the People’s Party, because what it’s saying is that for a small amount of money we can open up what we do to a much broader range of people and that is actually a really important thing in terms of tackling the cynicism there is about party politics so I think it is really exciting. Ed Miliband has shown real leadership on this and it sets up the possibility of the Labour party moving into a new era and it also secondly starts to turn the tables on our opponents, how are they financed, how are they getting their money? I revealed that two private health companies whose shareholders between them have given £1.5 million in donations to the Conservative party since the election have received NHS contracts worth £1.5 billion. Now I will put it to you, Dermot, that that is the biggest scandal right now in party political funding and I’m not certain why the media aren’t asking more questions about that. So it is a very big change both for Labour in a strong position but also to ask big questions of our opponents.

DM: Well as you know, we do ask them when we have them on but you’re on right now and the big question about this change to the Labour party funding, you know, what polls have you got that no one else has got that tell us that tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people are clamouring to join the Labour party, to pay that three quid, to build up this huge base of membership when all the other polls that I look at are saying that the public are becoming ever more apathetic about politics as a whole?

ANDY BURNHAM: I think that’s right, that is true, I said it myself, there is a lot of cynicism, isn’t there? I think it puts a challenge down to us, doesn’t it? It means that people like me and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet and others need to work hard to make ourselves relevant, to listen more to people at grassroots level. Ed Miliband said yesterday that we didn’t do that enough when we were in government and I’ve always said that if we were listening to people at grassroots more we would have done things like build more council housing earlier in the last government so it’s about change. It’s not just a cosmetic change or a technical change, it’s really about saying can we change who we are, what we are and the way we go about politics? Get our feet on the ground, get much more rooted in our communities, working hard to bring those people in to the Labour party. As I say, it sets up the possibility that the Labour party can truly live up to its name of the People’s Party and personally I find that very exciting.

DM: And if you had been listening to those people earlier you would also while you were in government not have let as many new migrants in as well. I know you’ve admitted to that in the past so let me ask you about the renewed debates between the Lib Dem leader, the Deputy Prime Minister and Nigel Farage, would you like to see if Mr Miliband would like to consider joining in?

ANDY BURNHAM: Well we’ve got a very clear position on Europe particularly. I support the free movement of labour across Europe and I believe that is something that is has benefited this country in the past. The UKIP position seems to suggest it is always a one way street but I remember my dad having to go to work in Germany in the early 1990s and in Ireland because he couldn’t find work here and we all remember Auf Weidersein Pet. I think that two way street of British people also having taken advantage of moving abroad into Europe to get work, well that’s something that we have benefited from in the past and I think we need a broader debate about these things rather than the narrow minded debate that UKIP seek to put forward but that said, I don’t think that …

DM: Sorry to interrupt Mr Burnham, it’s not the point you’re making, it’s where you put them. Will Mr Miliband, would he consider putting them in that debate that’s going to take place between the UKIP leader and the Lib Dem leader, make those very points?

ANDY BURNHAM: Well that’s up to Ed, that’s not my call but as I say, Labour doesn’t shy away from this debate and I was going to go on to say we shouldn’t accept everything that comes out of Europe. I’ve said before that while I support the free movement across Europe I don’t always support free movement of benefits and I think that’s a thing that we need to … the Labour party are now saying, we’re developing that hard headed position on Europe under Douglas Alexander so we believe in the European Union and the benefits that it brings our country in terms of jobs and prosperity but we don’t accept everything that comes out of Europe and that’s the position that’s been developed under Ed’s leadership and we will take that position very confidently into this year’s European elections.

DM: Okay Mr Burnham, always good to talk to you, thank you very much indeed. Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham.