National Health Service

Lord Mawhinney Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawhinney (Con)]

My Lords, the wording of our debate in part says,

“the ability of the National Health Service to meet present … demands”.

I think we all agree that when it meets present demands, it does so in an exemplary way. The problem is that it does not meet all demands and the failure to meet demands is increasing. I picked four important points at random and was interested that, at least in part, they overlap those inadequacies to which the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, drew attention.

There is very little integration between health and social services. We are sad about that at the community level but is it realistic to expect that to happen if, at the government level, there is not integration between health and social services? Perhaps the time has come to reverse the decision to separate them that was made some years ago. Thousands of people urgently need hospital treatment who cannot get it because beds are blocked by frail, elderly, blameless people who cannot otherwise be cared for. That is a failure in demand.

All around us, GP surgeries are closing, some of them permanently. I think 20 closed permanently in the county of Northamptonshire just last year. No one knows how many are being shut on a short-term basis because we cannot get the GPs to keep them open. It is a failure of demand when two or three weeks elapse before you can see your GP and when your chances of dying are 16% greater if you happen to be admitted to hospital over the weekend.

One of the problems with the NHS is that it is embedded in politics. That is not a new phenomenon: it was true when I was on the Front Bench doing my thing 25 years ago; it remains the case. Any chance to change the structure for the future has to deal with that political problem. Maybe a royal commission is the way forward, or something smaller, independent, with public consultation could lead the way. I can think of no place better than your Lordships’ House, which is full of expertise, common sense and vision, to lead the way to make it possible to engage the politicians who now lead us, on both sides of the House, to look at the possibility of a better future.