NHS (Private Sector)

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is exactly the point. The proposal has to be seen in the context of the health system the coalition Government want to create. They want a broken-down system where one hospital is pitted against another, where there is a duty on the Secretary of State to promote the autonomy of NHS organisations, so that they are out there on their own, having to stand or fall on their merits, with a clear incentive to drive up income gained through a relaxed private patient income cap. I shall come to that point in a moment.

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

Ministers are shouting, “Choice”, but is my right hon. Friend prepared to reflect on the merits of the private sector, both in the UK and abroad, in the efficiency of the service that it delivers?

[Andy Burnham]

When the Bill was introduced, great claims were made that it would improve NHS efficiency. That was one of the reasons the Government gave for subjecting the NHS to a huge top-down reorganisation; they wanted to make the system more efficient, but they made a mistake that many people make over time. They claimed that the NHS is inherently inefficient when in fact international evidence shows the exact opposite: the NHS model is the most efficient health care system in the world. That is because control of the system is democratically accountable, and national standards can be set through bodies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and entitlements can be set at national level. If that control is removed, we will see the emergence of a much less efficient health care system, like the many market-based systems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

That is exactly the same question that the hon. Lady asked during oral questions. The Prime Minister and I did indeed go to Salford Royal hospital and we were tremendously impressed by what is being done there but, like other hospitals across the NHS, as part of a process of using resources more effectively and as part of the consequences of a transfer to supporting patients more in the community than in the acute sector, that hospital is changing the way it manages its services, and it is delivering cost improvements. We make no bones about that.

We delivered £4.3 billion of cost improvement in the NHS in the last financial year. We are aiming to do more this year. We delivered £2.5 billion, according to the deputy chief executive of the NHS, in the first two quarters. Every penny saved by reducing costs in the NHS is available to be reinvested in the NHS. That is why we are in a position to improve the performance. The hon. Lady did not talk about how that funding is becoming available through savings on central costs—for example, £150 million extra funding this year announced since Christmas for support for the integration of health and social care.

Was that Labour’s priority? No. Did Labour come to the House and say, “We want to welcome the way the NHS has achieved an increase in the flu vaccine uptake,” or the simple fact that flu activity at this stage is at its lowest level for the past 20 years? No, none of that. The hon. Lady talked about Salford Royal and the way nurses are engaging in some best practice—

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No. I am still answering the previous intervention. Nurses are engaging in best practice to improve the quality of care for patients in Salford Royal. Was that the basis upon which the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) chose to come to the House to talk about the things that matter to patients—the quality of care being delivered to patients? No, it was none of those things.

[Mr Lansley]

No. I answered the hon. Lady’s question.

Labour Members came to the House not to pursue the priorities of patients or of those who work in the NHS, but to pursue Labour’s priorities. They are not in 2012; they are not even in the 21st century. They are back in the past. Talking of the past and somebody who lives in the past, let us listen to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris).

[Grahame M. Morris]

The Secretary of State has quoted a series of statistics. Does he welcome the 29% increase in patients waiting more than 18 weeks since May 2010 as a result of dropping targets?

[Mr Lansley]

Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman. The average time that patients waited for in-patient elective procedures in the NHS according to the latest data was 8.4 weeks, which is exactly the same as at the time of the last general election. For out-patients it was 3.9 weeks, compared to 4.3 weeks at the election. For diagnostic tests, despite the fact that the NHS has performed 440,000 more diagnostic tests, the average waiting time is 1.8 weeks, the same as at the election. Long waits? The hon. Gentleman did not say that according to the latest data published the number of patients waiting more than a year for their treatment went down 40%, compared with what we inherited from the Government at the time of the last election.

The motion is all about Labour’s going back to the past. I am staggered. It is almost like revisiting Barbara Castle’s antipathy towards the private sector, or that of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), the only former Labour Secretary of State now, even including himself, that the right hon. Member for Leigh seems to agree with.

I will ask the House to reject the motion, but in a way I am asking the House to reject those sentiments all over again, because we have been here before with this debate. Far from the House not having had an opportunity to consider issues including the private income cap, I remember having exactly this debate on Report. We were very clear about that. We discussed it when the White Paper was published, we discussed it when the Bill was debated on Second Reading, when it was in Committee and on Report, and it has been debated again in another place. I hope to use this opportunity to trample on some of the myths that the right hon. Member for Leigh and his friends are propagating about the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

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

To respond to some of the misrepresentations of the Opposition, I worked for the NHS for some 12 years and hold it in the very highest regard. I am here to defend the NHS against privatisation, and I make no apology for doing so to Government Members or anyone else for that matter.

It is fitting to pay tribute to all those who work in the NHS and who make it such a tremendous institution. I also pay tribute to members of the British Medical Association consultants committee who took part in Bevan’s run to mark their opposition to the dreadful Health and Social Care Bill as part of the “Drop the Bill” campaign. They ran 160 miles in six days from Nye Bevan’s statue in Cardiff to deliver a postcard to the Department of Health in Whitehall to call on the Secretary of State to drop the Bill.

In the limited time available, I should like to address the point in the motion about the cap and to address Government Members’ misrepresentations. The private patient income cap, which was set up under the previous Labour Government in the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, which established NHS foundation trusts, was a protection against the need for profit overtaking the needs of NHS patients. With all hospital trusts set to become foundation trusts by 2014, a meaningful cap on the amount of resources that can be directed to the care and treatment of private patients becomes even more important.

The passage of the Health and Social Care Bill—it is in the Lords at the moment—can only be described as a shambles. It is an incredibly unpopular measure. There could have been agreement on, for example, clinical involvement in commissioning, but that could be achieved without this incredible disruption to the service. I certainly believe that it is harmful to the future existence of the NHS. There is no mandate or basis for it in the Conservative or Lib Dem manifestos or in the coalition agreement. This NHS privatisation plan might be better described as an NHS privatisation paving Bill—

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Grahame M. Morris]

With all due respect, I have very limited time and I am not going to take any interventions.

Any utterance about the nature of the NHS reforms planned by the Secretary of State during the general election campaign was heavily disguised. He weaved a tangled web in private health care during his seven years as Opposition spokesman on health. A few moments ago, he mentioned Labour’s involvement with the trade unions, but it is the involvement of the Conservatives with private health care interests that should be the subject of scrutiny.

NHS professionals, staff, the public and experts alike have all rejected the ethos of profits over patients, but the Secretary of State will not be deterred. He has defended his move by claiming that foundation trusts have a core legal duty to care for NHS patients. However, at the same time he is telling these trusts that they must make a profit to survive, and that if they run a deficit, they risk failure. That could mean being taken over by another trust or, as we have seen in the case of Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon, being taken over by a private sector provider.

We have not seen the Bill’s risk assessment, but as a member of the Public Bill Committee, I saw the impact assessment, and in point B95 it confirms that rather than improving services at hospital level through performance management, poor providers

“may need to contract or exit completely.”

That has created the ultimate Catch-22 for foundation trusts, with a conflict between patients and profits. A further Government proposal to scrap the provision in the 2006 Act which allows failing foundation trusts to return to NHS control puts further pressure on the need for trusts to pursue profits and has been opposed by the NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson.

I urge hon. Members to vote for the motion to ensure that patient care is placed before private profit and to send a clear and strong message to the Government that they must think again about their plans to ratchet up privatisation in our beloved NHS. The Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) has often quoted Nye Bevan, but to quote Robin Cook,

“If he believes that the spirit of Nye Bevan supports his changes to the NHS then there is a wheel missing from his ouija board.”