A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Edward Argar Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I start by welcoming the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) to her new post, and I wish her well in it. I apologise to her that she is facing me giving the wind-up rather than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or the Paymaster General. However, given her encounter with the Paymaster General yesterday, she might be quite grateful for that.

Since the previous Queen’s speech in January 2020 we have all collectively been engaged in responding to the biggest crisis since the war, fighting a highly infectious and highly dangerous virus that has caused so much disruption to our economy and our society. Everyone has made huge sacrifices to get this virus under control, and I would like, as I often do on these occasions, to once again put on record my thanks to everyone in the NHS and social care, and the entire British people, for the massive part that everyone has played in that effort.

We now have a way out, thanks to the vaccination programme that is making this country safer every day, and I pay tribute to the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), for his work on that; but we all recognise that alongside that successful vaccination programme we must all, as a society, learn to live with residual elements of covid for some time to come. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary’s vaccination programme has been the biggest and fastest in British history. Around seven in 10 adults have had a first dose, including my right hon. Friend and me—I resisted any temptation to do so without my top on—and around four in 10 have had a second. As we have rolled out the programme, we have been able carefully to remove some of the restrictions that have been so difficult for us all. Even this week we have been able to restore more of those precious moments, like meeting friends and family indoors or having a pint inside a pub once again. As we do that and take the road to recovery, we must take forward what we have learned about all parts of our health and care system, and draw on the spirit and endeavour that we have seen in our vaccination programme and so many other parts of our response, to make the lasting reforms that will allow us to build back better and make us a healthier nation. There is still a lot to do and there is no time to stand still.

This Queen’s Speech sets out an ambitious, positive programme to seize that opportunity. As my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary set out, we need to tackle waiting lists through our catch-up and recovery plan to support the, I believe, 4.7 million people in England—around February—waiting for treatment. We need to continue to deliver our manifesto commitments of 40 new hospitals and 50,000 more nurses. And we need to level up on the health inequalities that the pandemic has laid bare. To meet that challenge, we have an agenda to transform our health and care system, and to give us those firm foundations that we need to thrive in the years ahead.

We have set out our plans for our health and care Bill to enable greater integration—I saw, in my years serving as a local councillor, as I suspect many colleagues in the House have, the benefits of the NHS, local authorities and social care working ever more closely—to reduce bureaucracy, and to strengthen accountability to this House, so that we can allow staff to get on with their jobs and provide the best possible treatment and care for their patients, and give the NHS and local authorities the tools they need to level up health and care across the country.

We will also give the funding and support to help our NHS recover and deliver the care that people need, bringing the total package of additional covid-19 funding to our healthcare system to £92 billion—on top of the legislation that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary and I passed last year, which will see funding in our NHS increase by £33.9 billion by 2024.

The virus has attacked many parts of our society and our healthcare system. Before returning to some of the key themes in the health space and the care space, I want to mention some of the contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) highlighted the importance of knowing what the bidding criteria will be for the extra eight hospitals that we have committed to bring forward. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you and my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) came to see me earlier this week to talk about your proposals for Doncaster hospitals. We recognise the eagerness of colleagues to know what that procedure will be, and we will be bringing that forward in the coming weeks. I highlight, of course, that that is dependent on the spending review as well.

Let me turn now to the shadow Secretary of State and some of the points that he raised, which I will endeavour to address. He is a good man, and I know that he will still be basking in the joy of Leicester City’s success on Saturday. He raised some important points. First, he asked where diagnostics were in all of this. I remind him that, in 2019, we brought forward £200 million of additional funding to provide around 300 new diagnostics machines, which have already been bought for our NHS, and we have set out plans for the future for 44 diagnostic hubs.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about capital spending. A total of £3.7 billion in the first tranche has been allocated for our 40 new hospital programmes. He will know, because his constituency neighbours mine, that he is one of the beneficiaries of that, with a new hospital in Leicester. I also point out to the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that Tameside General Hospital has benefited from considerable capital investment —£16.3 million in 2019 thanks to this Conservative Government and, atop that, there is the £450 million of extra money that we brought forward for urgent and emergency care last year, of which around another £2 million is going to Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust. This is a record of investment by this Government in communities up and down our country.

The shadow Secretary of State was pressed a couple of times by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) on whether he supported the use of private sector hospital facilities to help get those waiting lists down. He dodged answering that question. I know that he is a sensible and pragmatic chap, and I know that he will recognise the need, as we do, to use every resource at our disposal to get those waiting list down. I hope that he will not give in to the siren voices of some on the Opposition Benches who, in their comments, have highlighted what I think is a real issue for the Opposition. I am talking about this sort of Orwellian “Animal Farm” type tendency: four legs good, two legs bad; public sector good, private sector bad. It is a binary approach. The reality that we have seen throughout this pandemic is that the key has been partnership working: public, private, and voluntary sectors working together, putting ideology aside to get the best outcomes for patients. All I say is that those who advocate a binary approach are actually letting down our public services. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Leicester South is getting a new hospital.

Let me move on now to other contributions. I turn to the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Anum Qaisar-Javed) and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), both of whom gave eloquent, accomplished speeches. I wish that I had been as eloquent in my maiden speech. They are clearly strong advocates for their constituents. I sincerely hope—indeed, I am sure—that we will rightly hear a lot more from them in the future, and that is all to the good of our democracy.

I want to pick up on a couple of other contributions. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is a strong champion of the cause of those with acquired brain injuries and brain injuries, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) came to see me relatively recently to talk about the importance of that group of people in our resetting of NHS services and our recovery of waiting lists. Not only do I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, but I am always happy to meet him to further discuss those issues if he feels that I can be of any assistance.

Turning to some of the key themes of the Queen’s Speech particularly in the health space, the virus, as many hon. and right hon. Members have highlighted, has attacked our population’s mental health just as much as our physical health. On top of the record funding we have already given to mental health—an extra £2.3 billion a year for mental health services by 2023-24, plus the £500 million of additional investment that my hon. Friend the Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health announced recently—we are determined to address the impact of the pandemic on mental health and wellbeing. I know that that objective and that desire, whatever the party politics that sometimes occurs in this Chamber, will be shared across both sides of this House. While we will rightly be held to account, I hope that we can all move forward in seeking to improve services in that space together. I also hope that we will be able to work together in reforming the Mental Health Act 1983, which, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, has not been fully updated for nearly 40 years, and in so doing, give people greater control over their treatment and ensure dignity and respect.

As Members have highlighted, there is also more to do so that everyone receives high-quality, joined-up care in our social care system. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend have been absolutely clear in their determination that we will bring forward our proposals for reform of social care this year so that everyone receives the dignified care they deserve within a system that is sustainable. While I hope we can move forward together, I will take no lessons from Labour, which, in its time in power, had, in seeking to address this, one royal commission, two Green Papers, and a spending review in 2007 at which it said that it would be the main focus. That is 13 years of consultations and no achievement. I hesitate to draw attention to it, but some of those years would of course be years when the right hon. Member for Leicester South was at the heart of government in the Treasury and in No. 10.

As we do this work, we will be drawing on the considerable strengths that have played a starring role in this pandemic—the technology, the research, and the life sciences so beloved of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—to drive innovation in our NHS and social care to make life easier for patients and staff alike and to help us all live healthier and happier lives. In that vein, we will, for example, increase public spending on research and development to £22 billion.

It is an honour to make the final contribution to this Queen’s Speech debate on behalf of the Government. We have seen before us a stark choice between a Government with a clear, ambitious vision for our country and its health and an Opposition yet again devoid of ideas, tired and lacking in energy, whose only solution is yet another policy review. That has been the response to the damning verdict of the electorate when they said they were fed up with being taken for granted and let down by Labour. Over the past six days of debate, we have heard about this Government’s ambitious agenda to level up all parts of our country: an agenda to beat this virus and beat it together, and an agenda that will unleash the potential of the whole of the United Kingdom. I commend the Queen’s Speech to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.