Healthcare

Baroness Knight of Collingtree Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree]

My Lords, we need to retrieve the excellent reputation which Britain once had in the healthcare stakes. Not long ago, we were the envy of the world in those stakes but we are not today. Recently, I read a list of figures which showed how far we had slipped back in survival rates, standards of care and so forth. We used to be top and we are now sixth, seventh or even lower. This Government are resolved to do better and, even in the truly desperate financial state in which the previous Government left us, they are safeguarding the NHS budget. I think the figures are a little better than stated earlier by the noble Baroness.

British people love the health service and gladly support it with their taxes, but they expect to get value for their money and a good standard of healthcare when they need it. In thousands of cases, the previous Government failed them. A system grew up in which the individual patient did not matter. The most significant and important of all the new aims is that every patient will matter. You can have brilliant accountants, business experts and superb organisers running the health service, but if the welfare of patients is not a top priority, you will not have a worthwhile service.

In recent years I have raised scores of cases where patients have been treated extremely badly in hospitals and most died. Not once did any of those patients receive an apology and many of the cases I put forward were not investigated at all. The only response I ever received from hospital trusts was outrage that I should have had the barefaced cheek to criticise them at all. What on earth did mere patients matter? I am mightily relieved that this is to change. If the noble Lord, Lord Winston, thinks that there has been just one tiny case of bad treatment of patients since this Government took over, I will gladly give him my files of the other cases I have mentioned.

I am very relieved that this is to change because it seems to me that doctors and surgeons still sometimes retain their status as being one step down from the Almighty. I absolve every Member of this House from behaving anything like that, but some still do. Of course they are wonderful people and they are true saviours in many cases, but they should not treat patients as inanimate, deaf and blind objects to be discussed as if they were not there. I hope that we shall reach a situation where patients are addressed correctly and not by their Christian names, unless they have asked to be so addressed and they should not be questioned about it. I hope that they will not be put in mixed wards, unless it is an intensive care ward. I also hope that cases such as my noble friend Lady Masham brought forward will mean that we shall have switches that cannot be switched off unless there is clearly someone to turn them on again or switches that will not go off. I ask my noble friend if these vital improvements might perhaps be achieved in less than three or four years, as the report indicates. We need them so much.