Fairness and Inequality

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Nia Griffith

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I was not sure whether the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) agreed or disagreed that inequalities are bad. I certainly believe—and I can present evidence—that inequalities between rich and poor are bad not just for the people who experience them, but for society as a whole. A large swathe of international academic evidence shows—most poignantly in “The Spirit Level”, published a few years ago—that the gap between rich and poor is bad for everyone in society. Inequalities affect life expectancy, mental health, social mobility, educational attainment and the extent of crime. So I start from the premise that inequalities are bad.

In my previous life in public health, I worked on socio-economic inequalities and their impact on health inequalities, which is what I want to discuss today. Again, I was not clear from what the hon. Gentleman said, but he talked about the separate position of the state and the responsibility of individuals within society. I believe—again, I think there is evidence to support this—that the Government set the tone for the culture of a society, in both their explicit and implicit policies, and how we divvy up spending reflects those policies.

As I said, considerable evidence shows that the systematic, socially produced differential distribution of resources and power—I mean income, wealth, knowledge, status and connections—is the key determinant of health inequalities. Mortality and morbidity increase as people’s social position declines. My constituency contains an affluent part, in Saddleworth, although there are pockets of deprivation, as in every community, and a poorer part, in Oldham East, and that differential is reflected in a 10-year difference in life expectancy, which is a situation that can be replicated across the country.

That social pattern of disease is universal. It is produced by social processes influenced by Government policies, both written and unwritten, rather than by biological differences. There is no law of nature that decrees that children born to poor families will die at twice the rate of children born to rich families. We should, however, take some comfort from the fact that those inequalities are socially produced and, as such, neither fixed nor inevitable. That means that we have some hope of doing something about them.

I am very concerned about the direction of Government policy, which, although largely driven by the Tory party, is to a large extent supported by the Liberal Democrats. The Health and Social Care Act 2012, for instance, completed its passage because it was propped up by them. One of the key objectives of the original policy was to reduce health inequalities, but there is absolutely no evidence that this privatisation Act will do anything of the kind. The Government have tried to suggest that increasing competition in the NHS will improve quality and reduce the number of inequalities, but I recently organised an inquiry in my capacity as chair of the parliamentary Labour party’s health committee, and eminent academics were saying exactly the opposite. One was

“shocked to see the move to wholesale competition and Any Qualified Provider as a primary driver in NHS reforms on the basis of”

very few observational studies conducted by the London School of Economics and others. Another said that

“clearly different drivers are motivating the private healthcare sector”.

In the US, there is both under and overtreatment, and huge disparities in health care. We know that the Government are already putting out to tender seven out of 10 contracts.

Before the Health and Social Care Bill became an Act, directors of public health and public health academics wrote that it would exacerbate inequality rather than reduce it, but the Government pressed on, and they continue to press on. The implications of the EU-US trade negotiations are of particular concern, because the Government have still not committed themselves to exempting the NHS from the free trade agreement. We will challenge them vigorously on that.

The recent debacle over NHS resources allocations is another example of the Government’s total lack of commitment to reducing health inequality. We saw the writing on the wall back in 2012, when the former Secretary of State for Health—the present Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley)—reduced the health inequalities weighting from 15% to 10%, which would have a direct impact on areas where health was particularly poor. Following last year’s consultation about how NHS resources should be allocated, the Government were prompted to withdraw their previous policy and include an element that took account of deprivation in order to avoid another furore, but there are still major problems in connection with the allocation. A recent analysis undertaken by academics shows that the Labour Government’s health inequalities weighting saved lives: three lives per 100,000 in the population. I am extremely concerned about the new formula, and about its failure to take inequalities into account.

However, health policy is not the only problem. Other Members have already mentioned the Government’s economic policies. Although the personal allowance has been increased, the cut in tax credits means that 40% of the worst-off members of the population will be about £1,500 worse off. Those policies are doing nothing to reduce the economic inequalities that ultimately lead to health inequalities.

The Government are reducing access to education by trebling tuition fees and by scrapping education maintenance allowance, which was a key funding mechanism to enable young people from deprived areas to buy books and travel to college. They have now been denied that.

[Nia Griffith]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Welsh Government on protecting education maintenance allowance for the poorest families, for the reasons that she has outlined?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I will indeed. I also want to pay tribute to Oldham college, which has introduced its own system to ensure that people from the poorest backgrounds can still attend college without being financially penalised.

The Government are restricting access to justice through their legal aid changes. Inequalities are also being created through job insecurity resulting from zero-hours contracts. The swathe of policies that the Government have introduced have done nothing to reduce inequalities. On the Government’s so-called welfare reforms, I absolutely detest the divide and rule narrative that has been deliberately introduced in an attempt to vilify people receiving social security as the new undeserving poor. The pejorative language of “shirkers” and “scroungers” has been really disingenuous, and the Government are distorting statistics to try to prop up their welfare reforms. That is absolutely shameful.

Collectively, the impact of public spending cuts is significantly greater in deprived areas. Academic studies also show the relationship between public spending and, for example, life expectancy at birth. The immediate impact of these socio-economic inequalities on health inequalities is already showing. Following the 2008 recession, there was an increase in male suicides, with an additional 437 suicides registered in the UK in 2011, roughly mirroring the increase in unemployment. It will take time for health conditions such as cancer and heart disease to develop. There is always a time lag between such conditions and their immediate precursors. We also know that the protective, positive factors that can mitigate these negatives are being eroded.