Delivery of Public Services

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

We pay taxes for the Government to run our public services, and many of my constituents are asking: what is the point? From driving licences, to passports, to immigration decisions, to dental appointments, to ambulances, to GP and hospital appointments, backlog Britain is a daily reality for so many people across the country. If Ministers were running these public services as private companies, they would all be bankrupt—and what is their response? It is to charge us more by putting up our taxes while cutting the number of frontline civil service staff providing those services. How Ministers can think that cutting staff and putting up the cost is the answer to backlog Britain, I do not know.

Ministers have said, and will continue to say, that they must take these measures—putting up taxes and cutting staff—because of the economic situation. But after 12 years of Conservative economic mismanagement, they have only themselves to blame. After 12 years of economic mismanagement, the national public debt has increased by billions, from only 60% of national wealth in 2010 when Labour left office, to 80% before covid struck, to now being nearly 100%—all under the Conservatives’ watch. After 12 years of economic mismanagement and repeated tax rises, tax revenue is projected to hit 35% of national wealth by 2025-26, which is the highest sustained level of taxation since the second world war. After 12 years of economic mismanagement, our economy has gone from flatlining to declining. Britain is becoming less competitive, less productive and less wealthy thanks to the Conservatives’ economic mismanagement.

Now more than ever, with the cost of living crisis affecting so many, the public want to know that their taxes are being spent well. Yet this Government’s disregard for public services is self-evident. Many of my constituents in Bristol North West have written to me over the past few months about the problems they have experienced at the Passport Office, which is just one example of a service in the reality of backlog Britain. All of them are desperate after weeks and months of delay. One was left waiting for nearly six months for their passport to be renewed, with their long-planned holiday in jeopardy and their formal complaints left unanswered. Another had their passport lost by the Passport Office for months, with the result that they were unable to travel to visit a sick relative. A third, also with their passport inexplicably lost, was unable to attend a relative’s funeral despite weeks and weeks of chasing.

I say to the public that they should keep a close eye on this lot in government, because rather than outlining how the Government will fix the problems, the Prime Minister’s response to backlogs at the Passport Office was to threaten the service with privatisation. Year after year, cut after cut, I worry that our schools and hospitals could suffer the same fate. We are an ageing population, and the British people will need to rely on our national health service and social care more in the future, yet right now our health service is struggling to cope.

A constituent recently wrote to me to share their experiences of needing an ambulance during an emergency. They reported that they had to wait for as long as 12 hours for an ambulance to arrive after first calling 999. They explained how they now worry about dying alone in the future. Another explained that they were forced to wait for two months, rather than the expected two weeks, for an urgent cancer referral to specialists. If we want Britain to be competitive in this globalised world, our young and working people need to receive the best education and healthcare available. However, because the Conservatives have left the economy smaller, poorer and more indebted, we will have less money to pay for those public services. Bit by bit, those who can afford to use private services, whether dentists, GPs, care homes or private tutors, will have no choice but to do so—many already do.

I have spoken before in this House about the breadth of problems my constituents have encountered in trying to access NHS dental services, which, in my view, have largely been privatised already by the back door. Constituents tell me that waiting times are getting worse and worse, and that the Government fail to intervene. Next, I am sure that the Conservatives will encourage those who can afford it to go private, leaving underfunded public services for those who cannot. Before long, our public services will be changed forever, with only those families able to afford to pay for the best from the private sector able to get the support they deserve.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, including on privatisation, but there is another point, which is that the poorest in our society pay the most for services. They pay the most for banking services, and they pay the most for energy through prepaid meters and other things. We have a further widening, not just of incomes, but of costs to the poorest in society, pushing them further and further away from being able to live decent lives above the breadline. Is that not a broader effect of what is going on?

[Darren Jones]

My hon. Friend is right, and it is for the Government to do something about it. What is the point of having a Government or paying taxes if the Government stand by and say, “Oh well, this is just something that we cannot really affect”? Inequality is growing and it is now impossible for people to make themselves wealthy in our country without inheriting wealth. These issues are getting worse and worse, and the Conservative Government think it should just be left to the market and that the Government have no role to play.

In the backlog Britain that exists in reality today, whether that is passport services or elsewhere, Ministers sit by. They blame anyone else they can think of and threaten public services without taking any responsibility for their role as Ministers of the Crown. It is their job to fix these issues. Why are they not doing so? Until I see the Conservatives get a grip of the economy—[Interruption.] The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the Minister for Security and Borders are chuntering, but they are welcome to intervene.