NHS (Government Spending)

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I apologise for not being in the Chamber for the beginning of the debate.

The issues raised in today’s debate about the challenges of providing health care for a population that is ageing and living longer with complex health conditions in a context of fiscal austerity and rising costs are some of the most pressing ones facing us as policy makers. We all acknowledge that it is difficult and there is no easy soundbite solution to the long-term challenges, but I do not believe that those challenges are insurmountable if we are prepared to prioritise health spending and address pressure points in the system.

[Lilian Greenwood]

It is interesting that the hon. Lady was talking about the costs of an ageing population. Is she aware of Monday’s report by Action on Hearing Loss, which showed that as a result of budget cuts and rising demand two out of five audiology departments offer patients a reduced service? The chief executive of Action on Hearing Loss described that as having a cruel and senseless impact on people with hearing loss. Should the Government not respond to that?

[Dr Whiteford]

I was not aware of that report, so I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing it out.

We all know that we do not have one NHS in the UK—we have national health services in each of the home nations that operate independently of one another and are accountable to the devolved institutions—but it is worth noting that in recent years our distinct national health services have gone down divergent policy paths. Those of us who remain committed to comprehensive health care, available free at the point of need, understand that the model is under ideological threat. I have been horrified by the NHS reforms in England that have removed the statutory duty of care, and that, as we speak, are enabling the creeping privatisation of services. For the sake of the peoples of these islands, those reforms need to be reversed, because the reality of devolution is that Westminster still holds the purse strings. The funding formula by which the devolved Governments receive their block grants is directly related to budget decisions made for England in devolved policy areas, so decisions to cut spending in NHS England, or to privatise services, have a direct knock-on effect on the money made available to the Scottish Government.

There has been a 10% cut in Scotland’s fiscal resource budget since 2010, and a 26% real-terms cut in Scotland’s capital budget. Nevertheless, the Scottish Government have increased the health resource budget by 4.6% in real terms, and every penny of additional budget consequentials accruing from health spending has been spent on health. This coming year, health spending in Scotland will break the £12 billion barrier for the first time.

The practical consequences of increased health spending in Scotland can be seen in record staffing levels—up 6.5% overall, with record numbers of consultants, over 1,700 more nurses and a 7% increase in GPs. We have cleaner hospitals—cases of MRSA are down 88%, and C. diff is down 81% in elderly patients since 2007. Our waiting times for in-patients and out-patients have improved dramatically. More than 97% of in-patients were treated within the 12-week target in the last quarter, and 90% of patients are now being seen and treated within 18 weeks of initial referral. Perhaps most telling of all, there has been a drop in the hospital standardised mortality ratios of almost 16% since 2008 and a sizeable reduction in premature deaths in the most deprived areas. And we have honoured our pay commitments to our NHS staff.

The Minister and other Members have today made many comparisons between the NHS in England and the NHS in Wales, but there have been no comparisons with the NHS in Scotland. That is because across a range of indicators the Scottish NHS is outperforming the NHS elsewhere, precisely because we have not gone down the privatisation route.

Just yesterday the brand-new Southern general was handed over to the NHS—an NHS hospital, paid for without the use of discredited private finance initiative or public-private partnership schemes that have been an atrocious waste of public money and are still costing NHS Scotland over £225 million a year. In the north-east, anyone visiting Foresterhill can see all the building work that is going on to improve facilities. Under previous Governments, NHS Grampian was severely short-changed by the funding formula, but the SNP Government have been closing that gap and next year will put in an additional £49 million, a 6% funding increase to bring it into line with other health boards.

We cannot be complacent about the pressures on our NHS. Despite the best efforts and commitment of staff, our NHS is under strain and it does not always get it right. As MPs we often see when things go wrong, but we need to see that against a background of increasing patient satisfaction overall and continuing improvement in patient care, despite enormous pressures. We heard earlier today that some of the pressure on A and E emergency care is a consequence of people having problems accessing primary care. Another area where pressure in one part of the NHS has extensive knock-on impacts is in relation to delayed discharge, which puts tremendous strain on patients, whether they are stuck in hospital desperate to get home, or stuck at home desperate to get into hospital for treatment, because no beds are available.

The Scottish Health Secretary announced an additional £100 million earlier this month to address delayed discharges, but the underlying issues are not just for the NHS. Back in 2010 the report of the Christie commission highlighted, among other things, the need for joined-up services between health boards, local authorities and others, and preventive early interventions to meet the challenges of rising costs and changing demographics in the context of tight public finances. In Scotland, much progress has been made since then, but nobody would pretend that there is not a lot still left to do, or that the process is straightforward. However, we just need to look at how the non-means-tested free personal care has enabled thousands of people to live at home to see the human benefits of what is increasingly being recognised as a cost-effective policy.

It is precisely those efforts to join up health and social care that are threatened by the austerity agenda and the promises of further cuts that both Front-Bench teams seem to have shackled themselves to. Local authority budgets are already under pressure, and further cuts to the public services that they provide, including social care and preventive early intervention work, risk driving up still further the acute pressures on our NHS. Our NHS is precious. Most of us depend upon it. We need to prioritise it and provide the resources that it needs to meet changing demands on it.