NHS (Public Satisfaction)

Andrew Love Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I would like to thank the Speaker’s Office for selecting the subject of public satisfaction with the NHS for debate. I will focus on three pieces of research, and on the Government’s attempts to prevent information getting into the public domain, to prevent scrutiny of policy and to cut funding for future sources of information, all while failing to inform Parliament. The three surveys are “Public Perceptions of the NHS and Social Care” by Ipsos MORI from March 2010, the general lifestyle survey by the Office for National Statistics, and the British social attitudes survey by the National Centre for Social Research.

The first survey, “Public Perceptions of the NHS and Social Care” by Ipsos MORI, has been carried out every six months since 2000. It recently emerged that the latest results, from last year, were being withheld from the public domain. Ministers were accused of burying good news because the information clearly shows increasing levels of public satisfaction. On 22 March 2011, the Secretary of State was questioned about that by the Select Committee on Health, and particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). The Secretary of State’s defence was that as previous surveys had not been released, he would not release the information from March 2010. The reality is that the previous data were only ever released following questions by the Opposition. From March 2007, the then Opposition stopped asking for the information, and we can only assume that that was because the level of public satisfaction was increasing, and it did not exactly serve their purpose to draw that information into the public domain.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I want to emphasise what my hon. Friend says. I can recount a conversation I had with a local general practitioner, who told me that in the 1980s, a constituent of mine in need of a hip replacement came to see him. He could not get her a place anywhere within the health service. My constituency is deprived, and it was impossible for her or her family to get treatment privately, so she had to suffer in silence. That would not happen nowadays. My GP, who represents my constituents, told me that that has not happened to him since the early 1990s. Is that not the evidence we need to show that the health service has improved significantly in recent years?

[John Cryer]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I have had exactly the same experience. We were both elected in 1997, and when I became an MP, I regularly had people come to see me with orthopaedic problems who had been waiting for operations for two to two and a half years. Some of them were in serious pain and unable to work. In the past few years, the complaints I have been hearing are that people have not had an operation for four or six months. It is a completely different world.

[John Cryer]

If the Minister will calm down a bit, I will come to that. After the Secretary of State appeared before the Health Committee, it emerged that data until 2010 had been placed in the Library, and the results until December 2009 are on the Ipsos MORI website. I was granted this debate on 24 March and the data were released the following day, Friday 25 March, on the Department of Health website. Previously, the data had not been on the Department’s website. It might be a coincidence, but it struck me that that was a fairly good time to bury good news: it was the day before 500,000 people tramped through central London on the TUC march in opposition to the cuts. The fact that the data were not initially released is unsurprising, given that polling showed a 72% satisfaction rating. Ipsos MORI concluded in the report:

“This level of satisfaction has now been recorded for over a year…suggesting that there has been a…positive shift in the public’s perceptions of the NHS. Pride in the NHS also continues to climb and is at its highest recorded level”.

Pride in the NHS is at its highest ever recorded level—an interesting statistic. We might hear a comment from the Minister about that.

[Mr Love]

The report has some very good news about public attitudes to the NHS. Why would Government, who are in control of the NHS, not want to publish such a report?

[John Cryer]

I will leave that to the Minister to answer, because I have not finished my comments about the suppression of statistics.

My story does not end with the original survey on public perceptions of the NHS. The second of the three surveys is the general lifestyle survey, carried out every year by the ONS on behalf of Government Departments, but that has had its funding withdrawn by the NHS information centre, for reasons best known to the Government. However, Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority, has warned that the decision may break the Government’s rules on consultation. I should point out that the general lifestyle survey provides statistics on public health and does not involve NHS satisfaction rates. It produces figures, information and statistics for testing Government policy and holding Governments to account; it is important that the information be available for holding Ministers to account. If the decision to withhold funding for the general lifestyle survey stands, the information will not be available to us in future.

The Department of Health also intends to withdraw funding for health and NHS satisfaction questions in the British social attitudes survey. The survey will be familiar to many Members. It is carried out annually by the NCSR, which is a pretty respected body, both nationally and internationally. The withdrawal of funding was not announced to the House of Commons, but was leaked over the weekend to Health Policy Insight, which published an interesting editorial that condemned the decision to withdraw funding in fairly colourful language.

The British social attitudes survey charts how NHS satisfaction started at 55% in 1983, which was the year the first survey was published. That plummeted to 35% by the time the Conservative Government left office in 1997. The latest satisfaction rate is 64%, which, according to John Appleby from the King’s Fund, is the highest level of satisfaction since the survey began in 1983, and part of a continuous upward trend since 2002. He said:

“The NHS must have been doing something right to earn this extra satisfaction”.

There is also an interesting quote from the director of the Nuffield Trust, Jennifer Dixon:

“I suspect that public satisfaction will decline because the pressurised financial climate will result in staff unrest, cuts, and the spectre of rationing but also because of the relaxation of some of the process targets that the public hold dear, such as waiting times.”

She continued:

“To overload reform on top of that is the problem and to do both at the same time is very risky.”

I emphasise “very risky”.

The reason for killing off such research is fairly clear. The aim is to obscure the results of Government policies so that they cannot be exposed to the proper scrutiny that we all want, and to prevent comparisons with the records of previous Governments—Labour and Tory. If the information is not available, the records of previous Governments cannot be compared with the record of this Government.

There are a number of questions that I should like the Minister to answer. Will the “Public Perceptions of the NHS and Social Care” survey by Ipsos MORI continue to be funded and to be reported on? If it is not to be continued, will the research be replaced? The research is very detailed and heavyweight. I can provide it to the Minister, although I assume he already has it. I do not intend to imply that Ministers intend to cut funding for that research, but because of other decisions, we start to wonder whether that might be the conclusion.

The Government have decided, apparently without telling Parliament, to axe funding for two other crucial pieces of independent research: the British social attitudes survey, which I mentioned, and the general lifestyle survey, conducted by the ONS, which I also mentioned. Ministers have sneaked out the information that funding is to be cut in a fairly underhand way. Many Labour Members suspect that it is being done so that we cannot draw comparisons with previous Governments. The information will not be available to allow us to say, “Government policies were working but funding has been cut, which is having an effect on public perceptions and services.”

Public perception is crucial. My impression and that of piles of research is that public perceptions are improving and are at an all-time high, but that does not satisfy Ministers, who are engaging in the biggest reorganisation of the NHS since Nye Bevan created it in 1947. If information is in the public domain showing that the public are very happy with the NHS, particularly acute and GP treatments, it does not serve the purposes of a Government who are committed to the wholesale reorganisation of one of the most beloved institutions of British society. I look forward to what the Minister has to say.