Health

David T C Davies Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

What is happening in north-west London is going to make patient care better. It involves the seven-day opening of GP surgeries, over 800 more professionals being employed in out-of-hospital care, and brand new hospitals. That is a huge step forward, and the hon. Gentleman is fighting a lone battle in trying to persuade his constituents that it is a step backwards.

This Government recognise the pressure that the NHS is under, as I was telling the shadow Health Secretary. The fact that the population is ageing means that the NHS now needs to perform 850,000 more operations every year than when he was in office, which we are doing. That means that some patients are not receiving their treatment as quickly as we would like, so NHS England is this week announcing programmes to address that, ensuring that we maintain performance while supporting the patients waiting longest for their treatment, something that did not happen when he was in office. We will not allow a return to the bad old days when patients lingered for years on waiting lists because once they had missed their 18-week target, there was no incentive for trusts to treat them.

A and Es, too, are facing pressure and are seeing over 40,000 more patients on average every week than in 2009-10. NHS staff are working incredibly hard to see and treat these patients within four hours, and it is a tribute to them that the median wait for an initial assessment is only 30 minutes under this Government, down from 77 minutes under the last Government. However, as we did last year, we will continue to support trusts to do even better both by improving their internal processes and working with local health economies to reduce the need for emergency admissions. This will be led by NHS England, Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

We have heard some comments from Opposition Members about waiting times. My right hon. Friend will be aware that fewer than 2% of patients in England wait for more than six weeks for diagnostic treatment, but is he aware that the figure is 42% of patients in the Labour-run NHS in Wales?

[Mr Hunt]

I am aware of those shocking figures, and I am also aware that the Royal College of Surgeons says that 152 people died on waiting lists in Wales at just two hospitals because they did not get their treatment in time. I gently suggest to the shadow Health Secretary that the Labour party might want to fix what is going on in Wales if it is really serious about patient care, because how Labour is running the NHS in Wales is an absolute disgrace.

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[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The shadow Secretary of State is clearly not going to give way at the moment.

[Andy Burnham]

The Prime Minister set his own test for his reorganisation: its effect on waiting times. This month, waiting times hit a six-year high. Almost 3 million people are now on the waiting list for treatment, up by half a million since 2010, but that is not all.

[David T. C. Davies]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The shadow Health Secretary does not seem to want to give way to anybody from Wales. Is there any reason for that, and could it be a case of discrimination of some sort?

[Mr Speaker]

I am always interested in the ingenious interventions of the hon. Gentleman, but that is not a matter for the Chair and I will not speculate on it or in response to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). We will return to the shadow Secretary of State.

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[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Interestingly, health is not even covered in the Queen’s Speech, but we are debating it so I will say a few words about it. The good news is that my granddaughter has just been accepted by Liverpool university to study midwifery, so that is some compassion coming back into the health service. The bad news is that on Friday I had a meeting with GP commissioners who came to see me because they are teetering on the edge. I am talking about the Northumberland commissioners who are running the doctors consortium. They had a budget, worked to it and were doing all right until the Government came along and clawed money back. I would not mind if the Minister tried to say why the Government clawed money back from them; I would be interested to know that.

We know what is happening in the health service and we know why there is no Bill. Since this Government came to power we have seen creeping privatisation; no corner of the health service is untouchable as far as privatisation is concerned. Sometimes I just wonder what is going to happen in the next few years—God forbid if the Tories get elected again, with this lot here in charge. Are we going to be paying for our health service? Are charges going to be put on the health service? That is a good question to ask to see whether we can get a denial from the Government—

[David T. C. Davies]

rose—

[Mr Campbell]

Sit down, you will have your Welsh question in a minute. It would be good if the Minister could deny that he has any intention of charging for any services in the health service in the future, because they are creeping in little by little. As for the nurses—the people who run the health service and do all the work—their miserable wage rises are absolutely disgraceful and this Government should be ashamed of taking even that 1% away from them; they should get more but the Government are not even going to give them the 1%.

Let us get back to the reality. This Queen’s Speech was the dullest one I have seen in my 27 years in this place, and I think everyone would agree on that. I sat down and I said to myself, “How can I liven it up? What if it was my Queen’s Speech? What if I jumped on the bike of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner)—although it has been pinched—and got into Buckingham palace to ask them to take my speech to the House of the Commons instead of the one they were going to read out?” My first Bill would be on the national minimum wage—I would put a Bill through to increase it to £10 an hour. My second Bill would be on a shorter working week—32 hours without loss of pay. My third Bill would call for full employment with no redundancies. There would be a repeal of all anti-union laws, and the reintroduction of collective bargaining. My next Bill would restore health and safety for workers. The health and safety budget has been cut by 35%, so we need a Bill to put that right for working people.

My fifth Bill would bring an end to privatisation. There would be no more privatisation of the trains or the buses—[Interruption.] Never mind about the increases and the costs; this is my Queen’s Speech, not Labour’s. There would be no more asset stripping of public facilities. Bill No. 6 would be to get rid of Trident, which would make me popular, especially with the Scottish nationalists.

My seventh Bill would put the buses and trains back into public ownership. It would try to stop the privatisation of the east coast main line, but I very much doubt that we can stop it now, as this Government are hell bent on getting rid of it before they go out of power. But we will restore it to public ownership—at least I hope we will; I hope that our Ministers are listening, and that we will restore it.

My eighth Bill would bring education back under local democratic control. We have heard in the statement today how out of control things are. Local authorities are wavering. Their spending has been cut, and they have very little say over the academies or the free schools. Anything could happen in the education service now, because we no longer have that local watch, so we need to bring it back.

My ninth Bill would be about the national health service. I want free public health care for all. That would be a big Bill and it would cost a lot of money, but we need to stop this creeping privatisation. I would get that money from one place: I would go to the City and tell all those spivs and bankers, “Your bonuses are stopped, because of all the money you have spivved off the working people of this country.” It is the working people who have had to pay for the austerity measures. I would tax those people and get the money for the Bills in my Queen’s Speech.

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[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Living in and representing a constituency on the border has given me a unique insight into the different systems that have now grown up in the NHS in Wales and the NHS in England. One thing has become absolutely clear—not just to me but to any independent organisation that has looked into this—and it is that the standards of care being delivered by this coalition Government are far higher in England than they are in Wales, where the NHS is run by members of the Labour party.

The reality is that, judged on virtually any single indicator that one would care to look at, standards of treatment are better in England than they are in Wales. The waiting times for cancer have not been met in Wales since 2008; the four-hour accident and emergency target has not been met in Wales since 2009; the ambulance response times targets have not been met in Wales for 21 months; and in Wales the funding for the NHS from Labour, which claims to be the party of the NHS, has been cut by 8% while NHS funding has been ring-fenced in England.

That has led to all sorts of situations. For example, an Opposition Member talked earlier about cancer in England. In England, of those people being diagnosed with cancer less than 2% have to wait longer than six weeks for their diagnosis, while in Wales 42% of people being diagnosed with cancer have to wait longer than six weeks to receive a diagnosis. The treatment times are also different; in Wales, people wait around 26 weeks, whereas in England the wait is just 16 weeks.

Behind these dreadful statistics are a range of human stories. I was grateful to the Secretary of State for Health for allowing me to meet him with a constituent of mine, Mariana Robinson. She had been trying unsuccessfully to get treated in Wales for months and there was absolutely no interest in helping her. She wanted to be treated in England; she was one of many people who would rather be treated by this coalition Government in England than by the NHS in Wales. Finally, after a great deal of correspondence and after receiving advice from the Secretary of State in London, the NHS in Wales has finally relented in this instance, and Mariana will now be treated in Bristol. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his help.

Even this afternoon, while I was waiting to speak, I had yet two more e-mails from people who are totally dissatisfied with the treatment they are receiving in Wales at the moment and who would be prefer to be treated in England. I was contacted by an 88-year-old veteran who had served in the Korean war in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. He is in constant pain at the moment and unable to sleep because of a problem with wisdom teeth. He has been told that he will have to wait nine months for treatment in Wales. I do not believe that such a thing would be allowed to happen in England, but he has been told that he cannot seek any treatment in England; he has no right to transfer his health care to a place where it can be provided more efficiently.

Labour Members talked about the privatisation of the NHS. The Conservative party will never privatise the NHS; we have always believed that treatment should be free at the point of service. It is members of Labour in Wales who are responsible for supporting private health care, because they are putting patients in Wales in a situation where the only chance they have of being treated is to go and seek private health care. The 88-year-old veteran of the Korean war was told that if he wanted to have something done about the constant pain he is suffering, he would have to go private.

I was also contacted today by a lady, the retired head teacher of a school in my constituency, who found a lump in her breast. She expected to be seen by someone almost immediately, as she would have been in England, but she was told that the first appointment she will have will be some time in late August.

That is the reality of what is happening in Wales under a Labour-run NHS, and the Leader of the Opposition has said that we should “take lessons”—this is to quote him—from how the NHS is being run in Wales and try to implement them in England. My message today is to warn everyone, particularly Government Members, not to let these people be in charge of the NHS, because what we will end up with in England is longer waiting lists, slower ambulance response times, people not being diagnosed properly and no cancer drugs. Apparently, 150 people in Wales have died while waiting for heart treatment. It is an absolutely disgraceful situation.

I have talked to Government Members about a suggestion that I made in relation to the Government of Wales Bill, which is to let these people put their money where their mouth is. If they think they are doing a good job with the NHS in Wales, they should allow patients in Wales and England to opt to go wherever they want to for treatment. At the moment, we have two totally separate NHS systems, so patients in Wales do not have the right to access treatment in England and, of course, patients in England could not go to Wales. A lot of patients in Wales want to be treated in England. I do not believe there are any patients in England who would want to be treated by the Labour-run NHS, but perhaps there are some out there who fancy waiting longer to be diagnosed and then waiting longer again to get the treatment that they have a right to expect.

Let us see Opposition Members supporting a change to legislation that would allow patients in England to be treated in Wales, with the money required being added to the block grant given by the Government to the Welsh Assembly every year, and patients in Wales who want to be treated in England having the right to access that treatment in England, with the money required being deducted from the block grant that is handed over to the Labour party in Wales every single year. And let us see the direction of movement, because I know that an enormous number of people will immediately opt for the lower waiting times, the better diagnosis and the wider access to drugs that are available to people in England.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are only 3 million people in Wales, and that when we compare Wales with a lot of the English regions and hospitals we do just as well? In London, we obviously have international centres of excellence. In Wales, we spend more cash per head. There is a sparser population and more nurses per 1,000 people, and we have better results on cancer than elsewhere, so there is a mixed picture. He is being completely political and undermining the morale of people working in the health service in his constituency; it is disgraceful.

[David T. C. Davies]

It is not a mixed picture at all and we should be very clear about that. People wait longer for treatment in Wales than they do in England. People wait longer to be diagnosed in Wales than they do in England. People wait longer for an ambulance in Wales than they do in England. Money for the NHS is being cut in Wales and it is being ring-fenced in England, because the NHS will be a priority.

The real disgrace is that Labour Members have always prided themselves on being the party of the NHS and have gone out of their way to do so. Because they have that reputation, they know that in Wales, and possibly in England too if they ever end up running things, they can get away with making cuts and with cosying up to the unions because they feel that people will trust them.

I say to anyone independent and impartial who wants to know what it would be like for NHS patients if Labour Members ever get into government, they should look at what is happening in Wales right now.

[Andrew Gwynne]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman even though he did not extend that courtesy to me or to anyone else from Wales.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Of course, people only needed to see the NHS at its highest satisfaction levels in 2010 to know what Labour in Westminster would do. I will correct the record on cancer waits, because of course Wales has a better record on cancer waits than England does: 92% of people in Wales are seen within 62 days, as opposed to 86% of people on this side of Offa’s Dyke.

[David T. C. Davies]

That is a fairly minor difference—[Interruption.] Oh yes. However, what the hon. Gentleman has forgotten to say, of course, is that those people in Wales will have waited far longer for the diagnosis of cancer than people in England. That is why he is not being entirely straight in putting his facts across. When he is winding up, I challenge him to say whether he thinks what is going on in Wales at the moment is good and something that Labour Members would like to aim for. Is what is going on in Wales what they aspire to?

I urge anyone in the Opposition to look at The Guardian, which recently did an exposé of the NHS systems around the UK and showed that people in Wales have the longest waiting times of anyone in the United Kingdom, and that is the vision for the NHS that Labour Members want to impose on the people of England. I advise people in England to look at the figures before they decide to vote for Labour Members.

I ask the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) if he would be prepared to allow patients in Wales to be treated in England, and patients in England to be treated in Wales if they wish to do so. I doubt very much whether he would support such a thing.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He is obviously not aware that the number of English patients being treated in Welsh hospitals has increased by 10% since 2010.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am well aware of that, but the hon. Gentleman might not be aware that those patients have no choice. [Interruption.] He is laughing, but he does not understand how the system works. There are many patients on the English side of the border who are treated in Wales, but they have no choice about that. They have set up a pressure group, Action for our Health—he can look it up on one of his smart phones—because they are so disgusted with the service that they are getting in Wales that they want to be treated in England. The point is that they do not have a choice, and I believe that they should. Those English patients are very angry about the fact that they are treated in Wales and not given the choice.

When the Secretary of State was talking about some of the things that have gone wrong in the NHS, I heard an Opposition Member shout, “He hates the NHS.” My right hon. Friend does not hate the NHS, but he does believe in putting patient choice and patient voice first. He believes in standing up for patients against vested interests, wherever they may be. I fully support him in that and commend him for what he has done. My only criticism of Ministers in this Government is that they have improved services in England so much that I have an enormous mailbag of letters from people who want to access the services that they have put on offer. If anyone wants to find out what would happen if Labour ran the NHS in England, they should look at the facts and figures for Wales.