A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I have spoken to two constituents this week who have both given me permission to share their stories. The first is Lachlan Robertson, the son of Christine Robertson, who was a dementia sufferer with some additional medical needs. Mr Robertson described to me what he called “the Kafkaesque chaos” of trying to get someone—anyone—in the health and social care system to take responsibility for his mother’s care. Very sadly she died last year, quite unnecessarily, after a fall that took place in hospital that should never have happened.

The second constituent is Nick Stokes, whose wife Joy died earlier this year of cancer after a litany of missteps and misdiagnoses by his GP’s surgery. Mr Stokes believes his wife would still be with us if she had simply been able to see a doctor in person, rather than be fobbed off with a series of phone calls and online consultations.

These constituents give me licence to be blunt. We all—I certainly do—revere the founding principles of the NHS and honour the staff who work in it, but the fact is that the systems that manage the NHS and, in particular, its internal communications, too often let patients down, and that is why profound reform is so needed. The watchword of that reform should be the simple word “humanity”. We need more human systems.

I am entirely in support of all the digital revolution that is happening. Yes to more online telemedicine, and yes to artificial intelligence and machine learning—I yield to no one except possibly the Health Secretary in my enthusiasm for technology—but all of this tech should simply have one focus, which is to enable more face-to-face consultation and better internal communication.

I particularly welcome the steps that have been set out towards more integrated care services. That is absolutely the right principle. I particularly thank the Health Secretary for the announcement that happened this very day of a new integrated care centre finally being built in Devizes after many years of campaigning. I pay tribute to Ministers and also to my predecessor, Claire Perry, who campaigned long and hard for this treatment centre. It means we can finally end the long tradition of the MP for Devizes standing in an empty field with the Health Secretary on a photoshoot pointing to the empty plot of land where this building is going to rise, because as of next month, shovels will go in the ground. We will now get our integrated care centre, which is absolutely in keeping with the principles that the Government are setting out.

I encourage the Government to be as bold as possible in the reforms that are coming. We are no longer in the 1940s, when a great state system was created. We are not in the 1990s, when market disciplines were introduced into the NHS. We are in a new era, and we need a new NHS that is not state-led, not market-led, but properly community-led. I think that is the direction of travel that the Government are on, and I welcome it wholeheartedly.