NHS Risk Register

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I apologise for my earlier absence. I was speaking in a debate in Westminster Hall.

Today’s debate is not just about reform of the health service; it is about democracy, accountability and transparency. For long periods during the last Parliament, the Labour Government were challenged by Members then sitting on the Opposition Benches to initiate an inquiry into what had happened in Iraq. Those Members were right to challenge the Government over what they had done. Ultimately, after the troops had come home safe and sound, the inquiry took place, and we await the results. The Government were wrong to resist the calls for an inquiry at that time, and we should have got it right.

Similarly, as was pointed out earlier, the expenses debacle showed that Parliament as a whole had got it wrong in trying to hide information from the public. The public did not forgive us for that. One of the main reasons Members such as me are sitting on the Opposition Benches today and not over there is the fact that the public did not trust us because of the way in which we had mishandled that debate—and out of that debate came the position of the coalition in regard to transparency.

On 21 May, the Prime Minister said:

“Greater transparency across Government is at the heart of our shared commitment to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.”

The coalition agreement said:

“The Government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.”

In December last year, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“The third characteristic of an open society is the sharing of knowledge and information. In a closed society the elite think that, for the masses, ignorance is bliss. But in an open society there is no monopoly of wisdom. So transparency is vital.”

Why, then, are we having this debate? If transparency is so vital, why is the risk register not being published? The Government parties are aware of the strength of feeling in the country. The findings of a YouGov poll, published two days ago, showed that 68% of people in the country wanted the register to be released; that 80% of Liberal Democrat voters—that will be only a small sample, of course, because the Liberal Democrats do not have many supporters—wanted it to be released; and that 62% of Conservative voters wanted it to be released.

So what is this about? The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), who is sadly not in the Chamber now—although he has been present for most of the debate, unlike his colleagues—got it right when he said, according to the Liverpool Daily Post last week:

“If the Conservatives had gone to the country at the last election and said ‘we want a market-based health system’ they would have lost the election badly.”

That is the truth. This is a smokescreen: it is about detoxifying the Tory brand on the NHS. To give credit where it is due, the public relations master, the Prime Minister, got it absolutely right: he sold the people of this country the PR view that everything would be okay, and said that the NHS would be safe in his hands. He sold the people of this country a pup. It was a PR stunt backed by the coalition partners, who must wake up and realise that they have a responsibility in the House to put that right. There is absolutely no mandate for this piece of work. They told the people of this country that there would be no top-down reorganisation, but that is what is going on.

The coalition partners told the people of this country that the previous Government had failed on the NHS, despite the fact that 1 million people are treated every 36 hours; despite the fact that people across the country are living much, much longer than they were 20 to 25 years ago; despite the fact that satisfaction was at an all-time high; and despite the fact that we had persuaded the people of this country that it was worth saving the health service and putting in three times the amount of money that was paid into it previously. The myth that productivity did not go up under the previous Government was blown away by reports in recent weeks, so at every level, the Government have been proved wrong.

What do the Government do when they are challenged? They begin to blame the trade unions. I want to tell the House something about the trade unions. By and large, the vast majority of people in them are front-line health-service staff, including full-time officials in the unions which I am proud to belong to: in Unison, the deputy general secretary is a theatre orderly. The head of the health section was a nurse for many years; the head of nursing was always a nurse. In the Royal College of Nursing, people have to be nurses to get a job. The important people, who make trade union policy, are hands-on people who, day in, day out, and night in, night out, go into hospitals and other places where care is delivered, so they know exactly when we get it wrong.

The Government got it wrong on something else. From 1992 onwards, the unions advised the last but one Government and my Government that they had got it wrong on the private finance initiative. Last year, it was proved by a national audit that PFI had been a disaster. If the then Government had listened to the unions in 1992, we would not be here, but the option now for the people in the bunker is not to discuss the matter with the trade unions. That is a disgrace, and we should all support the motion today.