NHS Services (Access)

Debate between David T C Davies and Barbara Keeley

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The Government argued that the current NHS reforms—their NHS reforms—would result in major savings to the NHS, making our system more “responsible, efficient and affordable.” I am sure that many Labour Members will agree that reforms under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 have failed to deliver a single one of these aims. The NHS is costing more and delivering less, the quality of care it provides has declined and hard-working staff, particularly GPs, nurses and staff in A and E, are bearing the brunt of the Government's misguided and irresponsible measures.

It seems that senior Cabinet Ministers may think the same as Opposition Members. As we have heard, The Times quoted one as having said:

“We’ve made three mistakes that I regret, the first being restructuring the NHS. The rest are minor.”

I think that it is about time Government Members owned up to their mistakes, and started to share their opinions openly with the House.

The reorganisation caused upheaval in every part of the NHS. Primary care trusts and strategic health authorities were abolished, and commissioning responsibility was transferred to NHS England as well as to clinical commissioning groups. The chair of a health and wellbeing board told me last Friday: “I am left more confused by the NHS England role than by anything I have seen over decades of involvement with the NHS.” More than 440 new organisations have been created, but all the evidence now shows that that has been done at a heavy economic and social cost. Some £3 billion has been wasted on altering the structure of the NHS rather than being spent on front-line patient care, and the reforms have consistently failed to be delivered within budget. In July last year, the National Audit Office stated that the cost of their implementation had been 15% more than originally expected.

Of course, we hear counter-claims from Ministers. When I tried to intervene on the Secretary of State, he would not take an intervention on the issue of management and reorganisation costs. It was interesting to hear what was said yesterday by Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy and management at Manchester business school, on Radio 4 about the savings claimed by the Secretary of State. He said that the Government had under-counted the costs of reorganisation, even to the extent of accepting nil returns from some strategic health authorities. Most tellingly, he said that the best way in which to test the facts was to talk to people in the NHS who had lived through the reorganisation. He said that he had not talked to anyone who thought that the reorganisation had made the NHS more efficient and more productive. He had not talked to anyone who thought that the trauma of total reorganisation and redesign was worth while. None of us understands why PCTs were replaced by CCGs, or why NHS England was created. He also said:

“I don’t think you will find anyone who thinks the new system costs less to run”.

We know that the financial difficulties of the NHS have worsened, not improved. For the first time, foundation trusts have found themselves in deficit, along with trusts that are not foundation trusts. Figures from Monitor showed that 86 out of 147 trusts were in the red, and that there had been a deficit of £167 million in the first quarter of 2014-2015. Alongside that, not surprisingly, we are seeing a decline in patient care. In all areas of the NHS, pressures are mounting and the quality of care is declining. The number of people waiting more than a week for an appointment with a GP is up. A survey of patients in Salford for our CCG showed that a third of the patients who responded had had to wait for days for an appointment, and one in seven Salford patients had had to wait for a week or more. That is better than the national picture, but it is not good enough. For the first time, the NHS has missed its cancer treatment target; and NHS workers have felt the need to go on strike—the largest strike of its kind in over 30 years. We have an NHS in crisis.

As we know, there are many challenges in addition to the damage that has been inflicted by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. We have heard about the mounting demographic pressure on health services. However, despite the increase in the number of people aged over 80, the Government have slashed local authorities’ budgets, causing them, in turn, to change eligibility for social care. I believe that that is one of the most serious failings. My city council in Salford has been subjected to savage cuts of £100 million, and—I mentioned this earlier, and I shall keep on mentioning it—1,000 people in Salford will either lose care packages or not qualify for care this year.

[David T. C. Davies]

Does the hon. Lady think that members of the public should vote against any members of any political party who have imposed a cut on the NHS anywhere in the United Kingdom?

[Barbara Keeley]

I am not going to answer hypothetical questions like that. I am talking about local authority budget cuts, and the parlous state in which social care will find itself after £3.7 billion has been taken away from it.

Constituents have told me about care staff working locally who have been allocated too little time to devote to the people in their care. That is a scandal. I have been told that a single care worker was sent out when two were needed to care safely. I have also been told about patients in nursing homes who have not been properly changed or helped to eat by care staff who are rushing to manage their work load. That is the reality, and it is not the way in which to create a sustainable health and social care system. I therefore wholeheartedly support Labour’s alternative plans. We must create an NHS with the time to care.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) that we must repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 before it causes any additional lasting damage to a health system of which people in this country are rightly proud, although they will not be for much longer. I shall be here on 21 November to vote for the private Member’s Bill. We must find ways of providing the resources to cope with the challenges that the NHS will face. As my right hon. Friend said, Labour has pledged to raise £2.5 billion for the NHS Time to Care fund, which will provide 20,000 new nurses, 8,000 more GPs, 5,000 new homecare workers and 3,000 more midwives. And do we need them? Yes we do.

We must also move towards an integrated model of health and social care. That integration in itself will not solve the financial problems the NHS faces, but moving to a model that allows for equal consideration of all a patient’s health and care needs can improve services and should reduce duplication. Above all, we must place patients and carers back where they belong, at the heart of a health and social care system that works for them and puts their needs before those of the providers and the ridiculous and convoluted commissioning structures that we have been arguing about in the debate today.