NHS Services (Access)

Debate between Liz Kendall and David T C Davies

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to close today’s debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), who spoke very powerfully. In fact, hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken with great passion and commitment about the NHS and the vital role it plays in their constituents’ lives and in their families’ lives. Many hon. Members, including the hon. Members for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) and for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), have rightly praised NHS staff for working tirelessly to deliver good quality services despite all the challenges they face.

However, we have also heard countless examples of what the Alzheimer’s Society, the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the British Medical Association and many others said in their letter to The Independent last week. It stated that

“Signs of a system buckling...are everywhere…The NHS and our social care services are at breaking point and things cannot go on like this.”

We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Corby (Andy Sawford) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) about how more and more people are struggling to get an appointment with their GP, with one in four waiting at least a week and thousands waiting more than two weeks.

Hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), spoke about how the huge cuts to local council care budgets mean half a million fewer older and disabled people, some of the most vulnerable people in society, are getting vital services, such as home care visits or home adaptations. This is leaving their families struggling to cope and to pick up the pieces.

Fewer services in the community mean that increasing numbers of frail, elderly people end up ringing 999, going to A and E and getting stuck in hospital when they do not need to be there, causing them and their families distress and costing the taxpayer far more. Ambulance services are under huge pressure, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said. Hospital A and Es have now failed to meet the Government’s lower four-hour waiting target for 63 weeks in a row. A and E performance over the summer has been worse even than at the height of last winter. Delayed discharges from hospital are at a record high and cost more than £250 million in the last 12 months alone—money that could have paid for a year’s home care for 37,000 older or disabled people. Where on earth is the sense in that?

Rising emergency admissions and delayed hospital discharges mean planned operations are going backwards, too. More than 3 million people are now on the waiting list. The 18-week maximum wait target has been missed for the last two months in a row, and the NHS has missed the 62-day wait for vital cancer treatment—

[David T. C. Davies]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Liz Kendall]

I will not. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman is going to talk about Wales, 90% of patients get their treatment within that target, compared with 84% here, so let me save him some time and bother.

The Government’s failure to keep people out of hospital and keep waiting lists under control, means the NHS is facing a looming financial crisis, too. Two-thirds of all acute hospitals are already in deficit to the tune of £500 million. They predict they will end the year £1 billion in the red, piling on the pressure for even greater service cuts and worse standards of care in future.

The tragedy is that it did not have to be this way. After 13 years of investment and reform, the previous Labour Government left the NHS with the highest ever patient satisfaction rates and the lowest ever patient treatment waits. But we were not complacent. We understood that the NHS had to face up to even bigger challenges: our ageing population, the increase in long-term conditions and huge medical advances, at a time when there is far less money around. For that reason, we had a plan in every region to reform front-line services, through Lord Ara Darzi’s NHS next stage review, by delivering some services in specialist centres so that patients got expert treatment 24/7 and by shifting other services out of hospitals and into the community. It was a move towards prevention joined up with social care to help people stay living at home. Instead of going ahead with our reforms, however, the Government scrapped them and forced through the biggest backroom reorganisation in the history of the NHS, wasting three years of time, effort and energy, and £3 billion of taxpayers’ money that should have gone on patient care.

The Health Secretary told the House today, and said on the “Today” programme, that the Government had saved £1 billion.

Care Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liz Kendall and David T C Davies

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

I am sure that my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly want to do everything they can to improve care and support. Today we are discussing the care sector in England, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give his support to what we are proposing.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Liz Kendall]

I am really sorry, but I want to make a bit more progress. I have a lot of new clauses to get through, and Back Benchers have also tabled new clauses and amendments.

We also know that many care workers do not even get the minimum wage at the end of the week, because they are not paid for their travel time, among other things. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs recently undertook an evaluation of minimum wage enforcement in the social care sector. It found that a staggering half of all care providers had failed to pay the minimum wage to at least one of their employees, yet despite Ministers’ insistence that such people will be named and shamed, not a single provider in the care sector has so far been identified.

We need to look at all those employment issues, which I think have a fundamental impact on the quality of care. If the Bill is to promote well-being, shift services towards prevention and improve standards, we must get to grips with those issues; otherwise, it will not work. New clause 17 would require the Secretary of State to conduct an overall review of the economic and financial factors affecting employment, publish the results and consult on the findings.