NHS: Long-term Strategy

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I would like to begin by placing on record my personal thanks to the thousands of NHS staff across Manchester: nurses, doctors, paramedics, healthcare assistants and sports staff. I remain grateful for the care they showed my mother and both my parents-in-law in their last days at the height of the covid-19 pandemic. I am proud that so many members of my own family have chosen to dedicate their working lives to the NHS. They deserve not empty platitudes but respect. These are not crises of their own making.

This disaster is the direct result of decisions made by Government over the last 13 years. Nearly 10% of the UK’s population is on the NHS waiting list, and there are three times as many patients on NHS waiting lists as there were 13 years ago. In November, 37,000 waited more than 12 hours to be seen in accident and emergency departments across the country. When Labour was in power, it was just one hour.

Over the last few weeks, the NHS in Greater Manchester has experienced some of its busiest days ever. Over 98% of beds in our hospitals are occupied. Thankfully, we have not faced critical incidents in Manchester’s hospitals. That is in no small part thanks to the hard work of local clinicians and staff, and because the devolution of NHS decision making to Greater Manchester allows greater flexibility and collaboration between hospitals, primary care structures, local councils and the combined authorities. That reflects the findings of the Griffiths report—it marks its 40th anniversary this year—which found not only that effective management is the backbone of a high-quality health system, but that there must be devolution of power from the political centre to the operational frontline.

We cannot fix the crisis in the NHS without fixing the crisis in social care. There are 165,000 vacancies in social care. Carers leave the profession every day because they can get a better deal working in a supermarket than they can working in care. Despite the crisis, the Government still have no plan. The truth is that our NHS heroes and their patients have been let down by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and their predecessors. Members on the Government Benches know it, too. After 13 years of Tory failures, only the Labour party now has a plan to fix our NHS.