Health and Social Care

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure we all feel enormous gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for introducing and leading this debate because she is one of the great experts in this House on the subject, particularly in covering doctors. I look forward to hearing from other expert voices, too, in this important debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, for his wise words on the problems and dilemmas facing the dentists. My remarks may be more general because of my lack of specific, detailed expertise in the various medical and social care fields being discussed. None the less, that in no way reduces the anxieties of lay observers of the scene, such as myself, over what will happen in the dilemma now facing our medical and social care services as a result of the decision made by the people in June.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, implied, as time goes on we seem in the Lords to have more and more debates on Brexit and its consequences on different sectors and in general terms. They are having them in the Commons as well, thank goodness, but ours may be more numerous. Next Thursday there will be another debate here about the agonising dilemmas of Brexit. We face a grotesque, difficult and almost unassailable situation with what happened at the end of June and the Government’s attempts—I feel sorry for the Minister, who is directly involved, and for the Prime Minister—to deal with these huge and sometimes insoluble dilemmas.

All the time, we are approaching that horrible date when Article 50 will launch the actual negotiations. This will be some time in March, according to the Government’s latest pronouncement. I have tabled a Question for 19 December asking whether they might kindly give an exact date by then, but maybe that will be too early. Until that date comes this is really a phoney war in one sense, but one of the greatest importance as the doubts and second thoughts begin to develop. They are at very early levels. I have tremendous respect for the people’s decision on 23 June—that is of course axiomatic for all right-thinking parliamentarians of both Houses—but there are indications that second thoughts and doubts are beginning to creep in.

I refer particularly to the excellent submissions we have had from the medical field in preparing for this debate. In the time available, I should like to quote from the briefing that the BMA sent us in some detail. Page 2 of that briefing says:

“It is important to acknowledge the contribution made by European migrants, including doctors, in delivering and sustaining public services, such as the NHS, care services, and our universities. Doctors from the EU have become essential members of the UK’s medial workforce and the NHS is dependent on them to provide a high quality, reliable and safe service to patients. These highly skilled professional have enhanced the UK health system over the years, improving the diversity of the profession to reflect a changing population, bringing great skill and expertise to the NHS and filling shortages in specialties which may otherwise have been unable to cope. We unreservedly condemn the xenophobic attacks by individuals who have taken the referendum result as a green light to attack the NHS staff who care for them”.

I wholeheartedly endorse that, as I think others will.

The dark forces unleashed by the elements in that decision which are not the general elements of a generous population in the British political system in normal times have to be taken into account as time goes on. It will not be easy. I am grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, who are experts in these fields, are on the Opposition Benches to guide us along these difficult paths. If NHS employees and professionals from the EU, the EEA and non-European areas are excluded from the results of negotiations which are not very successful after all, that would be a calamitous decision for this country in every way.

All the Ministers on the Government Front Bench are good listeners, but the noble Lord, Lord Prior, is one of the best. I am sure he will be kind enough to respond at the end of the debate if I ask him two direct questions. First, what guarantee will the Minister give that EU citizens currently working in the UK—there are 90,000 in social care alone—will have their right to live and work in the country maintained after the UK leaves the European Union? That applies, of course, to other people. Secondly, will the Minister make maintaining mutual recognition of medical and social care certificates a red-line issue for Brexit negotiations? Not much has been said so far, apart from some vague allusions to the subject and some hints here and there, in a very disconcerting and disorganised way, so we need that guidance.

Things are going to get worse as time goes on and as the public begin to manifest second thoughts, to which I have referred, about this whole, unhappy, nightmare business of trying to negotiate leaving the European Union. Most people in this country increasingly realise that we do not need to leave the European Union to maintain a figment of imagined sovereignty that probably last existed in this country and in other countries in about 1912. Even then, a few years later, British Armed Forces were under the control of a French commander-in-chief in the First World War.

So many letters and emails are now pouring in, grumbling about what happened at the end of June and asking what parliamentarians are going to do about it. I shall quote just one of them. I shall not give the name of the person who wrote it because I have not had time to contact him in order to do so. He writes: “We must assume that this is an irreversible notice, yet these are the issues. Sixty-three per cent of the electorate did not chose to leave the EU in the referendum. This Government is proud of running the country, but it does it on the basis of 24% of the population, the lowest figure in the post-war period. In Europe, that cannot be other than a minority Government. Of the 37% who chose leave within the binary option available, how can we know that they intended a hard Brexit? Even the top leave campaigners have rejected that possibility more and more rapidly from now on. I know it is difficult to believe this, but even Nigel Farage has admitted that he knew that the referendum was and is advisory only. Finally, Brexit campaigners have created a dangerously toxic EU debate where facts do not matter”.

That is just one example of the letters and emails that are beginning to pour in. I believe that the national petition has now been signed by well over 4 million people and that number will grow as time goes on. There may be plenty of time for these negotiations, but if they get plenty of time for sensible decisions to save this country in the future, I for one—not only for medical and social care reasons—will be deeply grateful.