Health and Wellbeing Services: Essex

Abena Oppong-Asare Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I thank the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for securing this important debate; I know this is something she is passionate about. She highlighted a number of important issues and concerns regarding health and wellbeing services in her constituency and across Essex, and I am pleased to respond on the Opposition’s behalf. I also thank other hon. Members for their contributions to the debate; I have found it very insightful.

I will start with GPs, as securing the future of general practice is integral to the future of the NHS as a whole. GPs are vital to their communities and contribute hugely to keeping the nation healthy. However, the Government have broken their promise to recruit more than 6,000 GPs in the last five years. Ultimately, the NHS has lost the equivalent of 1,830 full-time, fully qualified GPs since 2015. There is a GP shortage crisis, and Essex is unfortunately on its frontline.

When we break down the numbers of patients per GP in the UK, Mid and South Essex ICB is worse than anywhere else in the country—I do not dispute that. There is one GP for every 2,281 patients. Staff shortages are a vicious cycle that leads to worsening outcomes, and we must train thousands more GPs to finally end that cycle. If we do not, we risk allowing the health of our nation, and the health of the people of Essex, to just get worse.

It is also worrying that the Care Quality Commission warned Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust last summer over failings in three Essex hospitals. It found that medical care had deteriorated, with waiting times not meeting national standards and patients not accessing services when they needed them. The people of Essex deserve better care. They deserve to be seen on time, and to have local hospitals providing quality care for them when they need it most.

In recent years, elective waiting lists have risen sharply in every region and area of England. However, there are large geographical differences, with the east of England being one of worst affected areas. When we compare the figures with January 2020, the waiting list at the end of last year was 113% higher in the east of England. At the start of last year, the Prime Minister made a promise to the country to get NHS waiting lists down. Last month, he admitted the obvious—that he had failed. However, the reality is that the Government have failed in achieving most of the waiting list and waiting time targets since 2010. Unfortunately, that is a result of 14 years of successive Conservative Governments running the NHS.

I will quickly reflect on the worrying state of maternal health services in Essex. We face a crisis in maternity services across the country, with the CQC rating two out of three maternity units dangerously substandard. For the people of Essex, all but one maternity hospital unit is failing. Following the release of the final Ockenden report nearly two years ago, I urge the Minister to respond on the Government’s progress on implementing the report’s immediate and essential actions in trusts across the country. Safe care for women, babies and their families must be the top priority for our Government. It is clear that more needs to be done to improve care and safety in maternity services in England.

The Essex mental health inquiry has been covered in this debate, and I praise the grieving families and hard-working campaigners for their efforts in securing a statutory inquiry. In particular, I want to honour Melanie Leahy, whose son Matthew died more than 10 years ago in a mental health unit in Essex. She has never given up hope of getting justice and fighting to improve mental health provision in Essex and across the country, and she is an inspiration to us all.

Labour welcomed the announcement at that time, and I hope to hear an update from the Government today about progress on the Lampard inquiry. The Secretary of State offered to meet families last year, but that has yet to happen. The Guardian reported today that bereaved families have accused the Minister of dragging their feet over the inquiry into the death of almost 2,000 patients across NHS mental health trusts in Essex. I hope to hear from him about when that meeting is scheduled to take place and when the inquiry’s terms of reference are scheduled to be published.

I urge the Government to do all they can to ensure that the inquiry finally provides answers for the bereaved families, who have been waiting for far too long. While we are most determined to find answers to the specific inquiry, we must be clear that poor mental health services and standards are worryingly prevalent across other parts of the country. We continue to hear of other tragedies in mental health services; those are unacceptable. The Government must treat those incidences as a wake-up call and act in the light of the soaring number of investigations to prevent any further suffering or loss of life.

In recent years, one of the ways the Government could have acted would have been to deliver a reformed mental health Act. Reforms would have finally modernised legislation to strengthen people’s rights and choices within mental health settings. That was a manifesto pledge by the Government, and the Bill is ready to go—“oven-ready” as some on the Government Benches might have said previously. There is no excuse for the delay, but the Government have failed to get it done and deliver those much-needed changes. Labour has committed to introducing such a Bill in our first King’s Speech. Not only will it deliver real change to mental health services across the country, but it will deliver 8,500 new mental health specialists, mental health support in every school and open-access mental health hubs in every community. Those fully funded and game-changing policies will make a real difference to tackling the mental health crisis that we face.

As we have heard, health and wellbeing services in Essex and across the country are facing extreme challenges. If we are privileged to get into government, Labour is determined to make a real difference for the people of Essex and this country by delivering more GPs, midwives, health visitors and mental health support and cutting waiting lists and times. We will deliver a mission-driven Government and break out of the current doom loop. We will push decisions out to communities and finally end the short-term sticking-plaster politics of this Government.