NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation

Debate between Danny Chambers and Helen Morgan

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

The findings in Lord Darzi’s report are shocking, but Liberal Democrats—there are many of us here today—find that they echo the hundreds of thousands of conversations we had with people on the doorstep across the country throughout the election campaign. In too many ways, the NHS just is not working as it should, and that is a tragedy, because we all cherish the NHS and want it to succeed. It is one of our country’s greatest inventions and a great Liberal idea. It is one of the things that makes us proud to be British.

We all owe so much to the NHS and the incredible hard-working staff who have kept it going under the most intense pressure imaginable. Despite their heroic efforts, there is no doubt that we have a major crisis in the NHS. Let us not forget, because it is so important—these things are intrinsically linked—that we also have a major crisis in care. The message that the British people sent at the general election in July was clear: fixing the health and care crisis must be this Government’s No. 1 priority.

Before I turn to the Government’s plans, it is worth reminding ourselves of the scale and urgency of the challenge. Far too many people wait weeks to see a GP or NHS dentist, if they can find one. Far too many wait months or even years to start vital treatment for serious conditions. Far too many wait for hours in pain and distress for an ambulance to arrive. I recently spoke to a constituent, Emma, whose 11-year-old daughter Charlotte suffers from a medical condition that means she is red-flagged, or a category 1 priority patient, in the case of a medical emergency. Unfortunately, Emma and Charlotte were recently involved in a car crash. Charlotte urgently needed an ambulance, but after two hours of waiting, her father decided to take her to hospital in the back of his car. She starts her journey to senior school this autumn. Her family have had to devise their own response network to keep her safe and secure, and to allow her to attend school in confidence. Our ambulance service failed Charlotte and her family when they were in crisis, and we cannot let that continue.

The problems do not stop there. Across the country, almost 6.5 million people are stuck on hospital waiting lists. That is one in every nine people in England. Two million of them have been waiting for more than six months. Over the past year, more than 100,000 people have waited more than two months to start cancer treatment after an urgent referral. In my constituency of North Shropshire, almost 20% of urgent referrals took more than 43 days and 10% took more than 62 days. The target is 28 days. It is truly heartbreaking. We know that every day counts when patients are battling cancer.

Young people needing help with their mental health are waiting months and even years to access child and adolescent mental health services. There is no help for them until they are in crisis. As if all that was not bad enough, we have hospitals that are literally crumbling. There is a maintenance backlog of £11.6 billion. Buildings are decades past their use-by date. It is shocking but, as my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I know, far from exceptional. Most of these problems go back decades. The truth is that Governments of all parties have failed to put enough capital investment into the NHS. They have failed to face up to the challenge of an ageing population and, crucially, they have failed to tackle the care crisis, with one honourable exception: the Care Act 2014 was passed by Liberal Democrat Ministers a decade ago, with cross-party support. Sadly, it was ripped up by the Conservative Government after 2015.

The failure and neglect of the Conservative Government left the NHS teetering on the brink. There were so many grand promises—6,000 more GPs, 40 new hospitals and cross-party talks on social care—but they were all fantasies. In Shropshire—which is not an outlier—the Royal College of General Practitioners found that the average GP is seeing 475 more patients than they were in 2016. Patients and their loved ones have been let down so badly.

When the scale of challenges across health and social care is so enormous, it would be easy to succumb to pessimism and defeatism—doom and gloom—but we cannot afford to do that. The patients of today and tomorrow cannot afford for us to do that. This moment demands the same urgency, ambition and vision that drove the creation of the NHS all those years ago. We very much hope that the Government will show that ambition. I welcome the Secretary of State’s recognition of the fundamental importance of shifting more focus to primary care—to GPs, dentists, mental health practitioners and community pharmacists—for our young people.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

As the newly appointed Liberal Democrat spokesperson on mental health, I was really concerned to see in the report that mental health is about 20% of the NHS’s burden yet receives only 10% of its funding. Certainly in Winchester—it will be the same for nearly all hon. Members in the Chamber—mental health, and especially the mental health of children, is one of the most commonly brought up subjects.

I know that the Secretary of State agrees that mental health and physical health need to be treated with the same level of importance, but I urge us to recognise that we cannot treat it with the same level of importance if the level of funding does not accord with the demand it is putting on the service. It is not just about funding; it is about making sure that the mental health support that is needed is there in schools, in social care and for people struggling with debt. So many non-medical factors contribute to mental health that we need a cross-departmental look at how we support people’s mental health.

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and we put mental health and access to primary care and health prevention front and centre of our manifesto for that very reason. I encourage the Secretary of State to take our plans where they are complementary to his and run with them. We are happy to have our ideas plagiarised—we will welcome it.

Welcome as that focus is, some of what we have heard gives me cause for concern. First, some weeks ago the Prime Minister suggested that investment can come only after reform. I warn the Secretary of State that I do not think that that will work. The reforms that our NHS needs cannot be done on the cheap. Improving access to primary care means investing in more GPs, more NHS dentists and more community pharmacists. Boosting productivity means investing in better IT systems and bringing hospitals up to date with the new facilities they need. I agree that it cannot be just more investment without reforms, but nor can it be just reform without more investment. We need that investment now. The reports that we have heard of potential cuts to spending in the Budget are deeply concerning. I urge the Secretary of State to guarantee today that they will not happen.

Finally, I am afraid that there still seems to be nowhere near enough focus or urgency when it comes to care. We simply cannot fix the crisis in the NHS without fixing the crisis in care. Right now, more than 12,000 people in hospital are ready and well enough to go home but stuck there because the care they need is not available. That is awful for them and their families, and it is awful for the NHS that 12,000 beds that should be getting used by patients who need them and allowing better patient flow through hospitals are being held up because the care system is in crisis. I urge the Secretary of State again not to put this off any longer but to set up a cross-party commission now so that we can agree a long-term solution to ensure that people get the care they need, when and where they need it, and that carers are properly supported, too.