Future of the NHS

Beth Winter Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

The impact of the Health and Care Bill on Wales is limited, but I have come to speak in the debate because over 150 of my constituents signed the petition, and because it is right for people from across the UK to defend the NHS as a service that is run publicly, in the way that the great Welsh hero Nye Bevan intended. I have real concerns about the situation faced by the health service and the care sector, both in England and in Wales.

The King’s Fund has estimated that NHS commissioners spend £9.7 billion on services delivered by the private sector, which represents around 7% of NHS revenue spending. While we are handing over NHS provision to the private sector, waiting lists are going up, waits for treatments are getting longer, NHS pay is going down, staff sickness is going up and staff vacancies are going up. The Health and Care Bill does nothing to address that—indeed, it will make things worse. Many of my colleagues have already set out concerns, particularly about the new integrated care boards and the private sector’s increasing role on them. The Bill will also reduce oversight of how contracts are awarded, and move the NHS from being a regulated market to a less regulated one.

The Bill will do nothing to improve social care. It has been two years since the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised a plan for social care. When will we see that plan? Unison has found that more than two thirds of care staff said they were so busy at night that they managed to get only a couple of hours’ sleep, and staff are sleeping on makeshift beds in offices. A quarter of the workforce are on zero-hours contracts, and only about 10% are getting the real living wage. Why is this Tory Government continuing to fail our social care sector, its recipients and its workforce? In 2019, I stood on a manifesto that pledged to establish a national care service. That would have been a historic development along the lines of the establishment of the NHS in 1948, but regrettably, we are not in a position to implement it.

I want to make a few comments about the position in Wales. I suggest that people look at the Welsh Government, because in spite of Tory austerity Governments and years of underfunding, we have successfully managed to retain a largely public sector NHS. We have free prescriptions, and we are now proposing significant extra funding for local authorities to help with maintaining and developing the social care sector. Last year’s co-operation agreement and the programme for government in the Welsh Senedd committed to the implementation of the real living wage and to establishing a Welsh national care service, which will be implemented by the end of 2023. Before Christmas, the Welsh Social Services Minister, Julie Morgan, pledged that the Welsh Government would provide Welsh local authorities and health boards with £43 million so that they can implement the real living wage—not the living wage that the Tories are proposing—from April.

I reiterate my support for those campaigning to defend a publicly owned and run NHS and to deliver a similarly public national care service. We are trying to do it, and we will achieve it in Wales, despite the barriers put up against us by the Tory Government. I really hope that we will have a Labour-led Government in Westminster soon to do the same. Diolch yn fawr.