NHS Winter Pressures

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

First, integrating health and social care through the integrated care boards. That is what we put in place from July, recognising that actually the pressures on the NHS are often as much about pressure on social care as they are about pressures in the NHS itself. In particular, if we look at ambulances, we see that often it is the delay in domiciliary care that is driving the blockage on the wards, which in turn applies there. Secondly, it is recognising that there are workforce pressures, which is why NHS England has been working on the workforce plan that has been set up.

Thirdly, we have already set out our elective recovery plan. Over the summer, the longest waits—those of over two years—were largely cleared. [Interruption.] Opposition Front Benchers chunter, “How’s it going?” Let us look at how it is going, compared with the Labour Government’s two-year clearance in Wales. Before Christmas, there were about 60,000 people in Wales who had been waiting for more than two years; in England there were fewer than 2,000. We are making progress on the longest waits through the work of Jim Mackey, Professor Tim Briggs and Getting It Right First Time. We are innovating with the surgical hubs and the community diagnostic centres. That, in turn, gives greater resilience to the electives that used to be cancelled when there was winter pressure. With hot and cold sites, they are much more resilient.

Finally, I must take issue with what my right hon. Friend says. In France, Germany, Canada and many other countries, the massive spike in flu and covid pressure, combined with pressures from the pandemic, has placed similar strains on healthcare systems. It is simply not the case that the issue affects England alone.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am really not clear how, despite all the warnings, the Government have got themselves into this position after the biggest crisis in the NHS. We all know that it is a no-brainer to invest in social care to reduce bed blocking, so what exactly is the purpose of the pilot that has been announced for Hull and the Humber? It will tell us what we already know: that what we need is investment in social care and reform of social care.

[Steve Barclay]

We recognised very early—in fact, NHS England recognised it in the summer—that this winter was likely to be extremely hard, both because population resilience to flu would be lower as a consequence of the pandemic and because of the combination of pandemic backlogs with the ongoing level of covid admissions. As I have said, we have more than 9,000 patients in hospital with covid and a further 5,000 with flu; that comes on top of the other strains from the pandemic that we have seen. The measures taken, such as boosting the vaccination programme, extending it to the over-50s and being the first place to have the bivalent vaccine, were part of the package in NHS England’s operational plan.

We also recognised—this point goes to the heart of the right hon. Lady’s question—that social care is central. That is why, notwithstanding the other economic pressures that the Government faced, health and education were prioritised in the autumn statement, with an extra £6.6 billion in funding for the NHS over the next two years and an extra £7.5 billion in funding for social care. That was recognised with a clear prioritisation in the autumn statement. The reality is that we have had a massive spike in flu cases, meaning that there have been 100 times as many hospital admissions for flu as there were last year.