Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on a superb election victory and on a great speech from a real local champion. That result shows how important it is for the Government and the Mayor of London not to get ahead of public opinion on green energy. We all want more green energy but it must be economically driven and we must take the general public with us. I am afraid that the Mayor of London, certainly in outer London, has not taken the public with him. In Lincolnshire we have an aspect of green energy that affects my constituency, with 10,000 acres ringing Gainsborough to be put under solar panels. That will involve a huge loss of agricultural land, enough to feed the city of Lincoln every year. We all want solar panels as long as it is proportionate, but 10,000 acres ringing one small town in Lincolnshire is overdevelopment.

The advantage of the King’s Speech debate is that we can range quite widely, and in the few minutes I have, I shall raise a few general points. We have a new Foreign Secretary, a new Home Secretary and a new Health Secretary. The challenges facing the Foreign Secretary are enormous, both in the middle east and in Ukraine. On the earlier intervention, I am all in favour of a ceasefire, but it must be by both sides, and there is no intimation yet that if Israel were to announce a ceasefire, Hamas would follow suit. If Hamas are now prepared to commit themselves to a permanent ceasefire with Israel and respect the right of Israeli citizens to live in peace and tranquillity, I am sure we can have a negotiation on that basis, but I do not see that happening.

We also need to have a tone of compassion for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are not Hamas. I was quite impressed by what President Macron was saying on this. The Israeli Government have the right to defend themselves, but it must be in proportion, and I think we are all devastated and concerned about the plight of women, children and babies in Gaza. The Israeli Government have to deal with this issue in a proportionate way.

On Ukraine, I do not suggest a ceasefire, because that would simply benefit President Putin, but if there is a stalemate, I am not sure that we can go on thinking that we can solve the problem by pouring in more and more weaponry. Eventually there will have to be some sort of settlement.

This is a debate primarily about the NHS. We in Lincolnshire suffer from a poorly performing NHS. I have constituents—people of my age—who have paid taxes all their lives and who suddenly fall ill, go to A&E in Lincoln and have to stay there for 24 hours, often in pain and difficulty. More and more doctors are insisting that people who want an appointment have to go online, and fewer and fewer doctors are providing prompt face-to-face service. The NHS simply cannot continue as it is.

We have a new Health Secretary and, as I have said before, I think we need fundamental reform. Frankly, our counterparts on the continent, in France, Italy and Germany, get a much better service. We have to look at some sort of social insurance system by which people who pay taxes all their life are entitled to treatment within a certain period and, if they do not receive that treatment, the state will assist them to go private.

I have made the point many times that a previous Conservative Government gave tax relief for private health insurance. This Government have not progressed that idea, which I do not think would be a wildly popular one, but we have to do something. The NHS is consuming an ever-larger proportion of the national budget and delivering a worse and worse service.

Over the next 12 months up to the general election, I hope the new Health Secretary will think big ideas to try to give people, particularly those of pensionable age, some right to the healthcare that they have paid for all their life and that they do not get at present. Having more children brushing their teeth at school under a putative Labour Government will not solve the problem; it is far greater than that.

Of course, we also have a new Home Secretary, who has an enormous challenge. I have confidence that he will speak up for Conservative Britain and Conservative voters who are deeply unhappy about the very high levels of both legal and illegal migration. It is completely unsustainable to carry on with the current net migration rate of some 600,000 people a year, which is overwhelming our services, the NHS, housing and everything else. It is said that we need these people to work in the NHS or in care homes, but we need to provide proper wages so that people who already live in Britain want to work in the NHS or in care services.

We should not allow employers to think they can solve their problems by constantly importing labour from abroad. There is a simple solution to help solve this problem. The average wage in the UK is about £34,000 a year and, at the moment, a person can enter this country for a job paying £26,000 a year. If we said that migrants have to earn a minimum of, say, £34,000 a year, we would bring in high-quality staff and not undercut our own indigenous labour.

[Mr Jayawardena]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have a structural problem because of our country’s ageing population, and that we need to have more children in this country so that we meet our replacement rate for the first time since the 1970s?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have made a personal contribution by having six children. They are all now in their 20s and 30s, and they are finding it unbelievably difficult to get on the housing ladder. The Government really have to solve this problem. We cannot just fill this country with more and more people so that our young people cannot get on the housing ladder and cannot find a place to rent.

I am a bit dubious about reforming how landlords can evict tenants. I just want supply-side reforms to ensure there is more housing coming on to the market for young people to rent. I want the Government to be far more proactive on building houses, if necessary in grey areas on the green belt. That might not be universally popular with my colleagues, but we certainly have plenty of room in Lincolnshire. If people want to come up to Lincolnshire and build houses, they are very welcome. We will do our bit.

I am very dubious about the smoking ban and, as a libertarian, will vote against it. It will not solve the problem, and I believe it will result in a massive increase in criminality. Every time we ban something, we simply increase the criminal class. I am not sure a ban is even enforceable. In 50 years’ time, old boys will go into a tobacconist and say, “I am 64 years old and am entitled to buy cigarettes, but my friend here, who is 63, cannot buy cigarettes.” It is ridiculous, and it is not enforceable. I do not smoke, and smoking is decreasing all the time. The people who smoke are heavily taxed. I do not believe we can solve this or any other problem by banning things. Conservatives have to be primarily about freedom. They have to be about low taxation and deregulation. We have to give something for our own people to vote for, which is why I have talked about these issues and, in particular, curbing legal and illegal migration. I am a victim of that, as is the Home Secretary, because the previous Home Secretary was going to open a camp for asylum seekers in his constituency. I do not know whether the Home Secretary is still going to do that; if he decides to row back on that idea in his constituency, I hope he will not close that camp in Essex but keep open the putative camp at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, as that would be completely unfair. Being a fair-minded person, he will not do that, I am sure. I shall be knocking on his door soon to say that we need a compromise, as we cannot have 2,000 illegal migrants overwhelming local social services. After that brief run around the King’s Speech, I am sure you will be grateful if I now sit down and let others have a go, Mr Deputy Speaker.