The National Health Service

Gerald Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you were in the Chair when I was granted an Adjournment debate by Mr Speaker on a subject which I will discuss again today. I was a patient at the time and I came out of hospital to speak.

I have a very long involvement with the health service. I sat on a royal commission on the NHS, having been appointed by Barbara Castle 40 years ago. For me, it is incredible, 40 years on, to still hear the same arguments over and over again. I wish the Health Secretary was in his place. I enjoyed writing a report on hospital complaints in England for the Department of Health when David Cameron was Prime Minister. I was very much hoping to get assurances today that the recommendations we made then have all been acted on. I do not believe that they have been.

I was also on the Welsh hospital board many years ago with Aneurin Bevan’s sister. It is quite useful to have people in this place who are a bit older, who have long memories and who can remember what has been said and done and promised. I remember going to the United States, talking to health professionals there and realising that two thirds of all personal bankruptcies in the US were because of inadequate health insurance. I think that that was still the case when I last checked. I very much hope that that does not become the norm in this country.

As a recent patient, I would like to thank everybody in the English health service and the Welsh health service for their care, because I would not be here today were it not for them.

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

Would my right hon. Friend like to pay tribute to the NHS in Wales? As my constituency neighbour, I am sure she appreciates all the good work done in Wales.

[Ann Clwyd]

I have been a critic of the health service in Wales, as my colleagues know, but I am also an admirer of much of the good work it carries out, particularly in my hon. Friend’s constituency at the Prince Charles hospital in Merthyr Tydfil and at University Hospital Llandough in Cardiff, where I apparently almost died in August. I am grateful to be alive, and I thank all the doctors and nurses involved.

Over 200,000 people in Britain suffer from venous leg ulcers, a form of chronic wound. It is highly painful, I can tell you, and socially isolating. For most, treatment involves managing the symptom—the ulcer—rather than addressing the underlying cause, yet proven surgical interventions are available to treat this underlying condition. Clinical guidance is comprehensive, but the evidence shows that local-level implementation is extremely patchy.

The UK spends between £940 million and £1.3 billion every year managing venous leg ulcers. Most of that comes from the need for community nurse visits to support patients in managing their conditions. Seventy-five per cent. of costs alone can be attributed to community nursing, placing a huge strain on community care, yet evidence shows that where clinically appropriate, a surgical intervention approach is cost-neutral in year one, and that is what I would like to hear about from the Secretary of State.

While early intervention incurs high initial costs, these are quickly offset by lower one-year community nursing costs. The issue is that most cases are simply never referred to a specialist vascular service. Seventy-five per cent. of venous leg ulcers do not receive a comprehensive vascular assessment, as enshrined in National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance. Sixty-four per cent. of clinical commissioning groups’ commissioning policies were found to be non-compliant with NICE guidelines for the treatment of the problems responsible for venous leg ulcers.

The opportunity to provide cost-neutral treatment, proven to heal ulcers faster and help to prevent recurrence, is missed, causing unnecessary pain and suffering for thousands. I can tell the House that it is the most painful thing that has ever happened to me. I know many, many people who are living in this pain now. How can we ensure that primary and secondary care providers, commissioners and local authorities are brought together, made aware of the benefits and able to deliver early intervention in venous leg ulcers? Quite simply, it will save NHS funds and save the suffering of so many people.

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[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), and I pay tribute to all her work over many years on mental health. The need for investment in our NHS across the UK has never been so crucial, and I pay tribute to the Welsh Government’s innovation and passion in preserving and investing in our Welsh NHS and to all those who work in health and social care not just in my constituency, but right across the country.

Public health decisions should be made based on the health needs the people of this country, not on private profit. The past decade has been incredibly tough, and Tory austerity has continued to bite hard, but the Welsh Labour Government have set an example to follow. They have been able to meet their commitment to invest more per head in health and social care services than in England. The NHS in Wales still operates based on the needs of those who rely on it and has not been offered up to private companies. I understand that a third of contracts have been awarded to private providers since the passing of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, but the Welsh Labour Government have stayed true to NHS principles, leading the way in contract reform, investment in community pharmacies, social care and much more.

Under the Welsh Labour Government, the Welsh NHS is leading the way in many areas, with ambitious targets and investments, such as keeping prescriptions free of charge for those who cannot afford the English prices of the medicines they need, maintaining a bursary for those studying to become healthcare professionals, making new advanced drugs available to patients after an average of just 12 days, compared with 90 days in England, and much more.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

It is great to see Welsh Members championing the NHS in Wales, because it is a shame that Government Members spend too much time attacking it. In addition to free prescriptions and the rest of the list, does my hon. Friend agree that free car parking makes a huge difference at hospitals in his constituency and mine for both patients and visitors, by ensuring that they do not incur huge charges when receiving treatment or visiting family?

[Gerald Jones]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The NHS in Wales has a good story to tell about the provision of parking, which I know from visiting my dad in hospital over recent weeks at the Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil.

[Chris Ruane]

Before we leave this list of Welsh firsts, does my hon. Friend agree that Wales pioneered presumed consent for organ donation, being one of the first nations in Europe to do so? The Conservatives criticised the policy, but they have now adopted it.

[Gerald Jones]

Wales is leading the way in many areas in health. Despite the bluff and bluster that we hear from the Conservatives, the Welsh NHS has many positive attributes. We must continue to be vigilant to ensure that our NHS is not subject to the vagaries of a Trump-style trade deal with the US. The Welsh Labour Government have stated emphatically that our NHS is not for sale, and that should be the case right across the UK.

At this point, I make a plea for the Government to do more to find a solution between the NHS and the pharmaceutical companies with regard to Orkambi—a drug for cystic fibrosis sufferers, including eight-year-old Sofia from my constituency. We need progress on this issue across the UK. I appreciate that progress made by this Government will apply in England, but any attempts to break the deadlock, wherever it is in the UK, will help CF sufferers right across the UK.

We all know that not only health, but public services generally have been under pressure for a decade due to hard Tory austerity. The Tories are certainly not the party of the NHS, as they claim to be, and the neglect shown by the Government in the Queen’s Speech to other areas, including social care, mental health and education, is a real cause for concern. The Queen’s Speech was a missed opportunity by this Government to tackle the hardship felt as a result of continued austerity measures, with cuts to things such as social care and local government funding. It is important to recognise that local government has an important role to play in public health and social care, and it has been significantly underfunded in recent years. Time and again, we have been promised an end to austerity, yet there was little in the Queen’s Speech to give us any evidence of the fact that this policy has come to an end. Our local councils are suffering. They are able to provide visible services that we are aware of, which people sometimes take for granted, but the opportunity to deliver those services is held back by the austerity measures to which they are subjected.

This Tory Government have starved our local authorities of resources for almost a decade, and although in the early years some councils were able to stretch their budgets to keep some of the vital services going, all that is left to cut now are jobs and services that are closest to the people. Although local government in Wales is devolved to the Welsh Government, we know that the budget given to Wales by this Government is some £4 billion less per annum now than it was in 2010, which has had a huge knock-on impact on public services across Wales. That is wholly wrong, and this Government must act to show that austerity really is coming to an end. For this Government, as they have done in recent weeks, to use the police as a political propaganda tool, after almost a decade of slashing budgets and making constant cuts to policing and preventive public services, while violent crime has soared and conviction rates have reached record lows, is shameful.

In the closing moments available to me, I wish to raise something that was not in the Queen’s Speech, and that was an error. The theme for today is the NHS, but we are talking about the Queen’s Speech more widely. One of the missed opportunities was that there was no mention of the Government’s plans to put right the cruel injustice felt by women born in the 1950s and address the anger felt by so many thousands of 1950s women in our country, many of whom would have worked in the NHS, social care and health services. It is more than two years on from the last Queen’s Speech, which also failed to make any mention of this issue, which at that time had already been a huge injustice for too many years. This shows just how long this Tory Government have failed to act on this issue. So they must act, to get a fairer deal for the many thousands of 1950s women and bring an end to this shameful legacy of state pension inequality. We all know—I include many Government Members—that this issue will not go away until justice is done.

We do not know how long this Government have left—I hope for the sake of the country that is not too long—but it is clear from this Queen’s Speech that the Government are out of touch and out of ideas.