NHS and Social Care Funding

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The point that I was making is that my local authority also faced significant cuts and had to make choices. It chose to prioritise adult social care as the single most important service that it delivered, so it had to make difficult cuts in other areas. However, the choice to put adult social care at the top of the list of priorities was the right choice six years ago and remains the right choice today. If councils chose to put adult social care at the bottom of their list, that was not the right decision.

There is no acute A&E department in my constituency, but it is served by A&E departments in Gloucester and Cheltenham. I visited the new chief executive at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and met some of the staff in the A&E department—the hospital has had its challenges—and she is working hard with her management team on turning around the performance of A&E, which has not been up to scratch. I talked to her about the processes they are putting in place, and I am confident that, with the hospital’s hard-working staff and improved leadership, they will be able to hit the targets that the Government have asked them to meet.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I joined Gloucestershire police on a night shift last Saturday, and I went to Gloucestershire royal hospital A&E, too. I saw professional and compassionate staff offering care in no doubt pressured circumstances. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current STP process in Gloucestershire must be the occasion to enhance capacity elsewhere in the county and that that must include bolstering and enhancing A&E provision at Cheltenham general hospital?

[Mr Harper]

The whole point of the STP process is to ensure that we have capacity across the health sector. One important thing that the Secretary of State talked about is the other changes to the health and social care system—indeed, that is mentioned in the Prime Minister’s amendment, which is why I will support it. In that I agree completely with the Chair of the Select Committee. We have to look at the two things together.

Unlike what the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) said, in Gloucestershire we are lucky to have a single CCG and a single county council, which work well together with lots of joint working, and they increasingly want to bring health and social care together. That is exactly what the Chair of the Select Committee said, it is the right thing to do and it is what the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire said is being done in Scotland to help deliver a better service.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) is right that, the more we can improve capacity in the system to ensure that people can access primary care where they need it and can access social care where they need it, we will take pressure off the accident and emergency system. Indeed, when I visited the A&E department, it had a good triage system in place, with general practitioners based in the department to ensure that people with conditions that can be treated by general practice are signposted and treated in an appropriate setting, rather than damaging the service’s ability properly to deliver acute care to those who really need it. We need to consider such steps, going forward.

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[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise some of the serious concerns that have been caused by this Government’s refusal to fully fund our NHS. The Government are running out of places to cut corners to save money on the NHS. They are showing a lack of respect and compassion as they fail to provide the healthcare that people need and deserve. Those who need care at home are having to make do with 15-minute flying visits.

We have seen the pressure in A&E departments building over the past six years and yet every year we reach a winter crisis that is somehow a surprise to the Government. We have seen an increase in A&E waiting times, with more than 1.8 million people waiting more than four hours in 2015-16—an increase of over 400% since 2010.

Bed-blocking is increasing as our underfunded social care services struggle to deal with demand. We have seen an increase in the number of patients waiting on trolleys to be treated or admitted, and an increase in the number of hospitals running out of beds. We are also about to see a 12% cut to community pharmacies, which will lead to the closure or reduction in services of our local pharmacies. The time it takes to get a GP appointment is also increasing.

This is not the most complex of problems. If we want a proper functioning full person-centred care system that works with compassion and treats those in need professionally and efficiently, this Government must fund it.

[Alex Chalk]

In 2015, the head of the NHS, Sir Simon Stevens, said that the NHS needed £8 billion. It was this party that committed to fund it; the Labour party did not. If the hon. Lady is so keen on funding the NHS, why did the Labour party not pledge to do so back in 2015?

[Naz Shah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

Let me turn now to pharmacies. This Government fail to grasp the fact that cuts to one service will have a direct impact on another. Let me be clear: only two months ago, I stood on the Floor of this House to condemn the proposed 12% cut to community pharmacies, which could mean the closure of 25% of the 42 pharmacies in my Bradford West constituency. That highlights the short-sighted approach taken by this Government. They are attacking all forms of primary healthcare and frontline services on which people rely.

If the figures are correct, nearly 30% of people who attended A&E services in Bradford royal infirmary over the past month could have been treated elsewhere for minor ailments. Many of them could go to their local pharmacy, through our local ailments scheme, or see their GP. What is the Government’s long-term approach to these systemic issues if they continue to water down primary care services? All we will see is an increase in the number of visitors unnecessarily attending A&E and an increase in the problems faced by those needing access to services.

The impact of the reduction in GP services is the same. Only a few months ago, I campaigned with the local community to save Manningham health practice. The proposal was temporarily put on hold, although we still have fears. Thankfully, we managed to prevent that centre from being closed down in the short term, but others in my constituency are at risk. Many other MPs have GP surgeries in their constituencies that face uncertain futures due to the funding restraints. This paints a picture not only of the underfunding of primary care services, but of a strategy that simply does not work together. Even a simple understanding of healthcare provision would allow us to see that if we decrease NHS services in one sector, there is an impact on the rest of it and an increased pressure on other service providers. But this Government continue to underfund and cut funding to all aspects of frontline services, and they expect the quality of care to remain the same. Where is the long-term planning that will ensure that people get access to the care that they deserve and are entitled to?

The Government’s strategy is the same when it comes to local government social care funding. The cuts to local social care funding have been dramatic. As many other hon. Members have highlighted, nearly £4.6 billion has been taken out of the social care sector since 2010, mainly through local government funding cuts. My district of Bradford has just had to announce that it will need to find another £8 million in savings from its social care budget. The authority is trying to be innovative and trying to find ways to ensure that there is no effect on frontline care by putting its resources into prevention. For me, the Government still fail to recognise the impact of deprivation on care needs. In one of the four most deprived constituencies, health issues go hand in hand with deprivation. The cuts to local government funding make that even more evident. It is not the work of our exceptional healthcare staff that has caused this crisis. It is the reduction in funding and the short-term strategy of this Government that are responsible. It is time for them to wake up and provide the healthcare provision people deserve.