Future of Health and Care

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Of course health is an important consideration in all policy decisions. The overall response to the pandemic has demonstrated that.

The hon. Lady is right to raise the issue of integration and to ask what plans there are for the integration of health and social care. Indeed, that is at the core of the proposals, as I set out clearly in my statement, and at the core of the White Paper. The integration of health and social care has improved significantly this year as a result of people having to work together in the pandemic. Fundamentally, social care is accountable to local authorities, which pay for it, and therefore to the local taxpayer, whereas the NHS is accountable to Ministers and central Government. The combination of these two vital public services is a challenge that I think can be addressed through the integrated care systems. We have been working very closely with the Local Government Association in England and the NHS to try to effect that integration as much as possible.

The hon. Lady raises the issue of funding. Of course, the NHS has record funding right now, and rightly so, but these reforms are about spending that money better to improve the health of the population, to allow new technology to be embraced, and to remove bureaucracy. It is not about having to spend more money on a reform; it is about reforming in order to spend money as well as possible.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

When I was in the Army, I was badly hurt, and I was put under the care of the NHS. In turn, it sent me to a private practitioner, in Harley Street actually, who did me the world of good, and I paid nothing. Now, as an MP, I am frequently asked, “Are the Government intending to privatise the NHS?”. My reply is, “No, of course they aren’t, and very little of the NHS is privatised.” Could I ask my right hon. Friend to inform me how much of the NHS is privatised as a percentage and whether the plans are to increase it or not?

[Matt Hancock]

The NHS is not privatised at all. The NHS is delivered free at the point of care, or free at the point of use, according to need, not ability to pay. Of course, the NHS buys all sorts of things—it buys goods, technology, scalpels and services of different scales and sizes—and it employs people, and this combination is essentially what the NHS is made up of. It matters not the name of the provision; what matters is the care for the patients, and the quality of support for the population’s health. The pandemic has demonstrated that what matters is the outcomes, and the coming together of different types of provision has always contributed to the delivery of care for patients, as my hon. Friend set out. That will no doubt happen for the entire future of the NHS, which I have absolutely no doubt will go from strength to strength, not just now, after the last 72 years, but for the next 72 years, and after that.