Future of the NHS

Guto Bebb Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams]

How will breaking up the NHS improve that? The hon. Gentleman should be concerned that some of the measures PCTs are having to take are increasing the risks of cardiovascular disease for many patients. As for international comparison of our NHS, it is known to be one of the most cost-efficient health systems in the world.

Bariatric surgery provides another example of where the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines have been replaced with more stringent criteria, rationing access to care in order to balance the books. There are many other examples. According to one survey published last week, demands for bariatric surgery have risen by 17%, but approval for such surgery has fallen by 22%. These are the so-called efficiency savings, as we heard from the Secretary of State, of £20 billion nationally and 4% each year.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

We hear a lot about the effect of efficiency savings on the NHS in England. Under Labour party proposals, Wales is not suffering from efficiency savings, but from cuts of £435 million in the NHS budget this year and £1 billion in the next four years.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Does not the hon. Gentleman think that that is why we won the election in Wales?

The savings required are 4%, and if the Government get their way with the new economic regulator Monitor, they could go as high as 7% each year—far more than our NHS is capable of coping with.

My constituent, Peter, was refused a cataract operation, yet his vision was so poor that he was able to see the world only through a haze; as a precision engineer, furthermore, he was not able to do his job and faced the threat of redundancy. In other cases, non-compliance with NICE guidelines—on familial hypercholesterolaemia, for example—is leaving people at extreme risk of untreated cardiovascular disease.

Health professionals have almost without exception castigated the Bill for what it will do to the NHS in completely opening it up to the market, with competition law applying in full and allowing private health care providers to cherry-pick profitable services. A hospital medical director said last week that he did not know how his hospital could continue to provide care for unprofitable patients.

The unprofitable services for most hospitals are elderly care, mental health, paediatrics and maternity, which are essential services for all communities. Instead of service providers and commissioners working together to provide the best quality care they can for their patients, the trend is for hospital trusts to maximise income and compete against each other. We are already seeing that lack of co-operation when PCTs look at alternatives in commissioning. Trusts are reluctant to collaborate when they see that it might reduce their income, even if it improves the quality of patient care. Similarly, the Bill gives GPs a financial interest in restricting or refusing treatment in order to make savings and to get bonus payments from the NHS commissioning board.

Labour wants genuine savings that will enhance patient outcomes rather than produce the diminishing effect that we are currently seeing, and we believe that we can achieve that. We want hospital specialists and GPs to work together to deliver clinical care pathways that improve the quality of patient care and bring care closer to home. One local PCT is trying to introduce the use of drugs that are cheaper—and unlicensed—to treat age-related macular degeneration, but it is under severe pressure from the pharmaceutical industry. That is another way in which we could reduce costs.

There is no doubt in my mind that, unamended, the Bill threatens the founding principles and values of the NHS. It removes the duty to provide a comprehensive health service, and provides an opportunity for the new NHS commissioning board and GP consortia to charge for services. It involves a costly, ideologically driven reorganisation of the NHS that has no mandate from the British people, and no support from health professionals and that will mean the end of the NHS that we know and love. As I have said before, the NHS is not just an organisation that plans and provides our health care; it reflects the values of our society on which this country set such store.

I know that there are many members on this side of the House—