NHS

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on it. There are families who are choosing between eating, heating or other essentials, such as prescriptions. That is the reality for many families and it is having an impact on their health. For those on the Government Benches not to recognise that that is the reality of life for many people, I fear for the state that we are in. They have been shouting at me for the past few minutes about scurvy. I can tell the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) that the number of admissions has doubled. There are a relatively small number of cases, but they are on the rise. He really should not sit there barracking and dismissing the whole problem. He would do well to look at the facts.

Today, the Secretary of State says that the NHS got better in the past year. He should say that to the 131,000 people left waiting on trolleys for more than four hours. He should say that to the people finding it harder to get a GP appointment under his Government, left ringing the surgery at 9 am to be told that nothing is available. He should tell that to the families of children who have suffered a mental health crisis, but are told that there are no beds available anywhere in the country and end up being held in police cells. The truth is that the Government have failed to get the A and E crisis under control and it is threatening to drag down the rest of the NHS. In the past 12 months trolley waits are up, waiting times are up, emergency admissions are up, cancelled operations are up and delayed discharges are up, too. That is the reality of what is happening in the NHS.

One of the main reasons for the intense pressure on A and E is the collapse of social care in England. In December, a report from the Personal Social Services Research Unit found that, due to local government cuts, social care support in the home has been withdrawn from about 500,000 older and vulnerable people. These are people who were receiving support in the home, but are no longer getting any help. Even for those people still receiving some support, we continue to hear stories of corners being cut: slapdash 15-minute visits where staff have to choose between helping people wash or helping people eat. If we carry on like this, our hospitals will become more and more full of older people. A and E will be overwhelmed by the pressure and that really is no answer to the ageing society. That brings me to the second part of our debate today: the solution.

What is clear to most people is that there will not be a solution to the sustained pressure on A and E without better integration of hospital services with social care, primary care and more collaboration between the two. What is also clear is that there is now great frustration among people working in the NHS that they are being prevented from developing solutions to the A and E crisis by a large barrier standing in their way: the Health and Social Care Act 2012. This Government like to talk about integration, but the fact is that they have legislated for fragmentation. Under this Government, market madness has run riot throughout the NHS and is now holding back solutions to the care that older people need.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman welcome the exact example that he so urgently seeks: Haltwhistle hospital in Northumberland? It is currently being built and I have been around it. It is integrated, with the local authority on the top floor and the NHS on the bottom floor. That is surely the model and the way forward.

[Andy Burnham]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are examples of good practice out there, but I suggest that he speaks to chief executives of clinical commissioning groups and trusts. They are telling me that the competition regime introduced by his Government is a barrier to that kind of sensible collaboration. The chief executive of a large NHS trust near here says that he tried to create a partnership with GP practices and social care, but was told by his lawyers that he could not because it was anti-competitive. Does the hon. Gentleman support that? Is that what he thought he was legislating for when he voted for the Health and Social Care Act? People are being held back from doing the right thing for fear of breaking this Government’s competition rules.

Recently, we heard of two CCGs in Blackpool that have been referred to Monitor for failing to send enough patients to a private hospital. The CCG says that there is a good reason for that: patients can be treated better in the community, avoiding costly unnecessary hospital visits. That is not good enough for the new NHS, however, so the CCG has had to hire an administrator to collect thousands of documents, tracking every referral from GPs and spending valuable resources that could have been spent on the front line.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

I want to make some progress, but I will give way once more.

[Guy Opperman]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is the right policy to highlight trusts such as Northumbria, which is leading the way on integration between hospice care and local authorities, and which is also assisting another trust, in this case North Cumbria, which is presently in special measures and which we hope will come out of them very soon?

[Mr Hunt]

Absolutely. One of the most encouraging developments in the last year was the setting up of buddying systems so that hospitals in difficulty such as North Cumbria—where I think there was a pay-out of £3.6 million to just one person under the last Government because of some utterly appalling care—are given help by a hospital that is being run well.