Managing Risk in the NHS

Debate between Derek Twigg and Andrew Smith

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Smith]

Among the many other dangers of privatisation, is not one particularly relevant to the debate today the fact that transparency will be lost because of private commercial organisations’ unwillingness to share information and be transparent?

[Derek Twigg]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. That is one of the things that we explored during the Committee stage of the Health and Social Care Bill and of course we got no answers. The then Minister, now Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), said that as time goes on the NHS will be more open to the competition laws of both the EU and the UK. That is the real story here, and we will not have that transparency. That is a major part of the problem we are having to deal with.

No matter what statistics we are talking about, losing a friend or loved one is a massive human tragedy that affects everybody. We want to do all we can to reduce the number of early and preventable deaths—that is absolutely right—and put patients’ interests and those of families first. Given what we have heard in the last day or so, one would think that we somehow left an NHS in crisis—an NHS that was not delivering—yet when we left office it had the highest satisfaction rate in history. We had the lowest waiting lists in history and massive reductions in early deaths from cancer, coronary problems and so on. We also saw massive increases in doctors and nurses. We hear this Government talking about increasing the number of doctors, but when did those doctors start their training? They started under Labour.

To give an example, so that we can be a bit fairer about the situation, the Commonwealth Fund produced an international health policy survey in 2010 that looked at 11 countries—and guess what? The UK health service came out best. Just as an example, when those on above average incomes and those on below average incomes were asked whether they were confident that they would receive the most effective treatment if sick, the best results—95% and 92%—were in the UK. That was an international survey. Another question was whether people were confident that they would receive the most effective treatment if sick—and guess what again? The UK came out on top, at 92%. That is the real picture of the NHS that we left behind in 2010—although it was not without its problems and challenges, because pressures were always building up.

I also noticed that pages 4 to 5 of the Keogh report say—this is an important comment that has not been looked at much in the press—the following:

“Between 2000 and 2008, the NHS was rightly focused on rebuilding capacity and improving access after decades of neglect. The key issue was not whether people were dying in our hospitals avoidably, but that they were dying whilst waiting for treatment.”

That is where Labour made one of the biggest differences. I remember regularly having people write to me back in the late 1990s and the early 2000s about having to wait over two years for an operation. People were literally dying because of that. Addressing that was one of the biggest gains that Labour made.

The Secretary of State has now left the Chamber, but earlier I raised with him the issue of mortality. He refused to correct the record. He said that there had been a “slight” improvement by 2010, yet Professor Keogh talks about a 30% improvement in mortality in all hospitals, including those that have been under investigation. That is not to say that those hospitals should not be doing better, but he was talking about all hospitals.