Queen’s Speech

Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the gracious Speech. I declare an interest: I have family members who have worked in the NHS for many years.

In the gracious Speech we were told:

“Measures will be brought forward to support and strengthen the National Health Service, its workforce and resources”—


so, a promise of new hospitals to replace leaking, creaking, not fit for purpose buildings. But why were they allowed to get into that state in the first place? While some 34 hospitals will receive £100 million in initial funding for development projects, the money will not be available for some years.

Over recent weeks, my attention has been caught by a number of reports on the NHS. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor working in the NHS, wrote in the Guardian about staff trying to care for their patients amid collapsing ceilings, broken boilers and unsafe fire cladding. But she says that it is people, not bricks and mortar, that the NHS is really crying out for. The Care Quality Commission reported that more than half of the A&E units in England are providing sub-standard care because they are understaffed and cannot cope with the continuing surge in patient numbers. Sally Warren of the King’s Fund reports:

“Staff are working under enormous strain as services struggle to recruit, train and retain enough staff with the necessary skills”.


Nick Scriven from the Society for Acute Medicine told of an inadequate workforce that is haemorrhaging senior staff. He warns that the NHS is reaching a vital tipping point where care will be compromised. But as well as an urgent need for more trained staff, the Government need to act on ways to reduce waiting lists and bed-blocking.

Dame Sally Davies, the retiring Chief Medical Officer, recently called on politicians to put children’s health before company profits. She demanded tough action against the tide of junk food, which is causing obesity and shortening lives. Ten primary school children in every 30 are overweight, which in later life will lead to heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.

In April 2018, the Government put a tax on sugary drinks, which has resulted in manufacturers cutting sugar content by nearly 29%. It is reckoned to have taken 90 million kilos of sugar out of the nation’s diet. But, during the Tory leadership campaign, Boris Johnson, not yet Prime Minister, pledged to halt any new “sin tax”—his words—on sugary drinks. That same day, obesity was named by Cancer Research UK as causing more cases of four common cancers than smoking.

The Government was urged to put a tax on sugar and calories in everyday foods consumed by children. Instead, in March 2017, they challenged companies to reduce sugar and calories in those foods by 20% by 2020. So far, companies have managed a less than 5% reduction. How much healthier might the nation be if it had been a tax rather than a challenge? The Prime Minister apparently prefers to listen to the manufacturers and sellers of junk food in dealing with a health crisis—one assumes for company profits rather than the health of the nation.

NHS: Brexit-related Risks

Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)]

Will the Minister take the opportunity to recognise the contribution that the Windrush generation has made to the development and continuity of the National Health Service?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am very pleased to do so. The Windrush generation has made a fantastic contribution to our NHS and caring services.

National Health Service

Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, commend the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, for securing this important and timely debate. Like other noble Lords, I also come to the debate as a long-term user of the NHS, but one who fears for its future as I see the most tried and trusted institution disappearing almost daily in terms of its ethics, values and what it stood for.

In 2006, the current Prime Minister told us that the NHS would be safe in his hands. He promised that there would be no more pointless, top-down, disruptive reorganisation and that changes would be driven by the wishes and needs of NHS professionals and patients. As a matter of fact, this Prime Minister has presided over the biggest, most costly and I would say pointless reorganisation in the entire history of the NHS. Patients and professionals alike have personally experienced the results of this destructive reorganisation which the majority neither wanted nor needed. No Conservative or Liberal Democrat manifesto contained any mention of this approach, nor was it mentioned in the coalition agreement.

Last October, the CQC report described some A&E departments and maternity units as so short of doctors and nurses that they posed a danger to patients. NHS staff are leaving the profession feeling undervalued, underpaid, overworked and not consulted. The result of this mass exodus means that last year the NHS spent £1.3 billion on agency and contract staff.

Let’s face it. This has been one of the worst weeks in the history of the NHS. Day after day we have heard that one health authority after another is unable to cope with patient numbers, with waiting times increasing, operations postponed, staff demoralised, ambulance services under pressure and many operating below mandatory levels. People are urged to use A&E departments for genuine emergencies only, yet many have been unable to get a GP appointment. As a nation, we are of course living longer. The official statistics show that over the course of the past few years more than 700,000 elderly people have blocked hospital beds because a care home or a support home could not be found to accommodate them.

Throughout the world, the NHS has been admired and even envied for its record in providing healthcare to people when they need it most—publicly owned, publicly funded, publicly respected and publicly accountable. However, the NHS is becoming unrecognisable. I am not alone in fearing for its future. The British people want an NHS dedicated to making a difference rather than a profit; a service which belongs to the people and which is not for sale. I want the workers to be properly represented in the decision-making process, properly remunerated and consulted about how the service is run and delivered.

I, for one, look forward to the British people having the opportunity to rescue the National Health Service and hand it back to those who need it, those who use it and those who care for it.

Queen's Speech

Lord Morris of Handsworth Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Handsworth]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the gracious Speech and to those noble Lords who have delivered maiden speeches today—in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who delivered his from the Dispatch Box.

Unlike previous years, in order to explore the true intention of the Government’s programme it is necessary to read not only the manifestos of the two parties in government but the important document The Coalition: Our Programme for Government. The Government, and indeed the gracious Speech, say that the legislative programme will be based on the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility. Reflecting on what the coalition’s programme commits to in respect of the National Health Service, I find it to be long on expectations but somewhat short on commitment to its users.

For example, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, who has just left her place, pointed out in her question, where is the commitment to guaranteeing maximum waiting times for hospital treatment—the commitment to a maximum wait for an urgent cancer treatment referral, or while in accident and emergency? In the context of the debate in your Lordships’ House, these commitments might sound somewhat pedestrian, but if you are on the waiting list they are vital. Indeed, for some it could be a matter of life or death.

Today, though, I will examine the bigger picture, letting the notion of “freedom and fairness” pass. I want to focus on the principle of responsibility. Tucked away on page 25 of the coalition’s programme for government is a paragraph on the NHS. It says:

“We will establish an independent NHS board to allocate resources and provide commissioning guidelines”.

That statement raises questions and gives no real answers. The creation of an independent NHS board, as set out in that programme, challenges the very principle of political responsibility and political accountability. In essence, the coalition Government are proposing the creation of a superquango to run the National Health Service. What, then, of the promises over a number of years of “no more pointless reorganisations” of the NHS? What of the promise in the coalition programme to reduce the number and costs of quangos? In fact, the proposed NHS board will be the biggest, most expensive quango in the history of the NHS.

The coalition Government will argue that their proposed NHS board will prevent “political interference” but, to many, what has been loosely labelled as such is actually political accountability. Ministers will no doubt say that they want to devolve power, but there is a qualitative difference between devolving power and abdicating responsibility. Ministerial responsibility for the NHS cannot be outsourced or subcontracted to unelected quangos. Ultimately, it is the Government who must be held accountable for the funding and service decisions that shape, influence and affect the healthcare of the nation. Democratic accountability demands that Ministers, as we have seen today, come to the Dispatch Box to be questioned about their decisions on the running of the NHS.

The NHS is a public service that spends more than £100 billion of public money each year. It is an essential front-line public service that makes a difference to the quality of our lives, and we are all stakeholders in it. That is precisely why it is with Parliament that the buck must stop, not with some superquango that does not have to face the electorate or stand at the Dispatch Box.

The proposed NHS board raises a number of fundamental questions, and I hope that the Ministers will give us some answers. Will the board both commission and provide services? Who will own the assets of the NHS? Who will have responsibility for managing and monitoring those assets? How are taxpayers’ interests to be protected and safeguarded? What will the relationship be between foundation trusts, primary care trusts and GP services?

If Ministers really want to improve our NHS and devolve decision-making, I am sure that the best way of doing that is to empower NHS professionals—our doctors, our nurses, our front-line healthcare workers. What the NHS does not need is the creation of a superquango that is unelected, unaccountable and unnecessary.