National Health Service

Gareth Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Although the words “shocking legacy” are ringing in my ears, I find it difficult to believe them, given Labour’s legacy on the NHS compared with what it inherited in 1997. Expenditure was increased from £30 billion in 1997 to £103 billion when we left office, and we had record patient satisfaction ratings. It beggars belief that that can be considered a shocking legacy.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

rose—

[Grahame M. Morris]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will continue my introduction and give way in a moment.

I wish to recognise the contribution of the NHS staff, who are the source of great pride. They have done such a great job, and continue to do so, even in difficult circumstances, in delivering the very high levels of patient satisfaction reported in the recent surveys.

In November 2010, the Backbench Business Committee selected my application for a debate on the impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department of Health, the NHS and public health. So many of the issues that have been raised are implanted in my mind, not least the loss of the funding for a new hospital that would have served many of my constituents in the south of Easington. I am concerned about the particular reference that has been made to that and I would be grateful if the Secretary of State or the Minister would deal with that in their closing remarks. A value-for-money assessment was made by both the Department of Health and the Treasury and it was found that the best way to take forward that proposal was with public funding, rather than through the private finance initiative route. The disingenuous position repeated by those on the Government Benches, including the charges laid against the Labour Opposition about our support for PFI, has been compounded. I remind right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches that in the case of the new hospital planned for my area we were directed to the PFI route, despite the criticism that has come from the Secretary of State and other Members on the Government Benches.

I am pleased that the motion focuses on the failed personal pledges of both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State. A key promise was made to increase real-terms expenditure on the NHS, but it is another broken promise. It is probably the most fundamental one, as the NHS is such a beloved institution of the whole British public. Before the election, the Conservatives promised to protect the NHS and give it a real-terms budget increase year on year. The coalition document promised a 0.4% real-terms budget increase for the NHS over the spending review period.

I am sure that we all saw the expensive billboards before the election, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) referred. They showed the Prime Minister, then Leader of the Opposition, saying:

“I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.”

That was not really about rebranding the NHS; it was more an exercise in conning the British public. Whereas Labour gave a guarantee to protect the front line of the NHS, the Health Secretary, then the shadow Health Secretary, saw a cynical opportunity to give a guarantee on spending. We now know from the Treasury’s own figures that that guarantee was false: it is a promise that has been broken. It was a guarantee that went against all the Tory mantra. We are constantly told by the Conservative party that public service delivery is not about how much we spend but about how we spend it—in fact, we heard that today from the Prime Minister in relation to police numbers. However, the Tory promise was never about protecting the NHS; it was about protecting the Tory brand.

Even the Tories’ biggest backers realise that the promise to increase funding on the NHS was a con. The Secretary of State cited James Purnell a little earlier, so perhaps I might cite Fraser Nelson, who is not a well-known socialist—he writes for The Spectator and is a right-wing commentator. He says:

“It has become clear now that there was a cynical competition to dupe the British public into believing that if they voted Tory at the General Election, the NHS would be safe.”

After 13 years of unprecedented rises in the NHS budget under Labour, and efficiency measures such as those on procurement—

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to close the debate on the Government’s record on the NHS and to follow such excellent contributions from many hon. Members.

My hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) rightly spoke of the waste of the Government’s NHS reorganisation. The Government have spent £850 million on redundancy payments for primary care trust staff who will be re-employed in commissioning organisations elsewhere. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) rightly asked the Secretary of State, who is moving from his usual place on the Front Bench, why he was not aware that trusts are re-banding nurses in order to save costs. Labour Members, who talk and listen to front-line staff, know that only too well.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), whom I was privileged to sit alongside in the Health and Social Care Bill Committee, rightly raised the risks of the Bill widening health inequalities and worsening patient care. My right hon. Friend was right when he said that the Bill will be one of the Government’s biggest mistakes.

The hon. Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) rightly raised the important issue of the need to integrate health and social care and develop more community-based services, although Opposition Members believe that the Government’s NHS reorganisation, and their huge cuts to local council budgets and social care, will make that far harder, not easier, to achieve.

Before the general election, the Prime Minister made three key promises on the NHS. He promised no more top-down reorganisations; he promised patients up and down the country a bare-knuckle fight to save their local hospitals; and in both the Conservative manifesto and the coalition agreement, he promised that he would increase health spending in real terms in each year of the Parliament. Barely 18 months later, he is forcing through the biggest reorganisation in the history of the NHS—the NHS chief executive says that it is so large, it can be seen from outer space. Local NHS services in Bury, Burnley, Hartlepool and Chase Farm are not being saved or reopened as the Prime Minister and Secretary of State pledged, and, according to Treasury figures, spending on the NHS was cut by more than £750 million in real terms in the first year of this Government. That is three promises made and three promises broken by a Prime Minister who claimed that his personal priority was spelt out in three letters: NHS.

[Gareth Johnson]

Is the hon. Lady aware that in the past 40 years, real-terms spending on the NHS has been reduced on only five occasions, the majority of which were under a Labour Government?

[Liz Kendall]

I wish the hon. Gentleman had been here at the start of the debate, when it was made clear that the last real-terms cut in NHS spending was in the last year of the previous Conservative Government.

Doctors, nurses, patients and the public know the truth about this Government’s plans. When the NHS should be focused on meeting the biggest financial challenge of its life and on improving patient care, it has instead been plunged into chaos. At precisely the time that the NHS needs maximum leadership and financial grip, the Government’s reorganisation is creating havoc. First, they said that they would scrap primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, and replace them with GP consortia. Then they changed their mind, merging PCTs and SHAs in supposedly temporary clusters and replacing consortia with clinical commissioning groups and new clinical senates, and now they have changed their mind again: PCT and SHA clusters have apparently been saved as part of the Government’s huge new national quango, the NHS Commissioning Board, which will employ more than 3,000 people.

Professor Malcolm Grant, the Government’s own choice to run the NHS Commissioning Board, last week called the Government’s plans “completely unintelligible”. The very people who are supposed to be running the NHS are confused and wasting time trying to figure out ill-thought-through Government plans. That time and energy should be spent on patients. Far from cutting bureaucracy and saving taxpayers’ money, the Government are creating hundreds of new organisations and wasting more than £2.5 billion in the process, when this money should be spent on front-line patient care.

What has been the result of 18 months of a Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government running our NHS? Thousands of front-line clinical staff are losing their jobs and posts are being frozen, piling pressure on those who remain. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State shakes his head, but this month the Royal College of Nursing has surveyed 6,000 of its staff and made it clear that 20% of the nurses and health care assistants surveyed said that their job is going to be cut, that 40% are seeing recruitment freezes in their trust and that 13% are seeing bed and ward closures in their trust. Who is more likely to be accurate? The nurses and health care assistants working in our NHS, or the Government, who are denying that any of these changes are taking place?

The result is that patient care is going backwards. Far from what Ministers claim about waiting lists being fine, the number of patients waiting longer than four hours in A and E is now double that of last year. Twice as many patients are waiting more than six weeks for their diagnostic test, and six times as many are waiting longer than 13 weeks. Anybody who has waited, or has had a family member who has waited, more than three months even to get their test knows how worrying and frightening it is, yet the Government deny that there is a problem. Furthermore, 48% more patients are now waiting more than 18 weeks for their hospital treatment.

Despite all the evidence, the Government are in denial. They deny that the number of front-line NHS staff and the number of staff training places are being cut, yet a recent survey by the Royal College of Midwives has shown that six out of 10 SHAs have been freezing staff training places because of the cuts. Given that the Government promised 3,000 more midwives, that is a problem, particularly in constituencies such as mine that have increasing birth rates.