National Health Service Funding

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will give way in a few moments.

By 2017, NHS spending per head will level out, and, head for head, by 2018 NHS spending will be falling under this Conservative Government. Trusts ended last year in deficit for the second year running—they were £2.45 billion in deficit and they are reported to be heading for a deficit of around £670 million at the end of this financial year.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Is this the explanation for the secret plan in County Durham to cut the number of beds for frail elderly people by 20%?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I will be coming on to those secret plans as I develop my speech.

We will be spending less on the NHS as a proportion of GDP than our European neighbours such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. The NHS maintenance budgets have been repeatedly raided, with billions that had been allocated to capital routinely being switched to revenue to plug gaps.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend, who himself personifies calm and dignity. Community hospitals are indeed extremely important. Their role may change, but they will none the less continue to be a vital part of provision in most of our constituencies.

[Helen Goodman]

Since the Secretary of State thinks community hospitals are so important, will he guarantee that the Richardson in Barnard Castle will stay open?

[Mr Hunt]

I think the hon. Lady will be happy to know that such decisions are made not by Health Secretaries of either party but locally.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford).

I want to touch briefly on the importance of clear data, the current financial position, and the need to agree on a settlement for the future in this House rather than continuing to have such confrontational debates.

I can see how the £10 billion figure has been arrived at: by adding an extra year, starting from 2014-15, and by transferring budgets to NHS England. When the Secretary of State refers to the NHS, he is actually referring to NHS England. He is not including public health. He is not, for example, including Health Education England. However, it is crucial that they are considered. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire said, when we talk about transferring money from public health to the NHS England budget, we are cutting off our ability to control the increase in future demand. We face significant challenges, which we will not address unless we invest in those future services.

We sometimes talk about public health as if it were not frontline care, but it is. We are talking about, for instance, services to help people with addictions and sexual health services—really important costs for the NHS. There is also the challenge of the reduction in Health Education England’s £5 billion budget, £3.5 billion of which is spent directly on the wages of health service doctors who are undergoing training, but also delivering frontline services. Cuts to Health Education England cut us off from future sustainability, because that is the budget that trains, retains and sustains our existing workforce. This is all crucial to frontline services.

The other way in which the £10 billion figure has been arrived at is by changing the baseline from which we calculate real-terms increases. I would say that it has never been more important than it is now for the public to have confidence in the data that we use. Trying to return us to talking about total health spending is not trying to be awkward; it is trying to be honest with the public. It is difficult to argue that more funding for health and social care is necessary if a £10 billion increase has been claimed. It is important that we continue to use the same consistent baselines that have been used in the past, so that the public can see what has happened to total health spending.

I welcome the front-loading of the settlement, and I welcome the fact that the NHS has been relatively protected in comparison with other departments, but the scale of the increase in demand is extraordinary. When Simon Stevens talked about welcoming the increase that had been granted, he made it clear that it was dependent on a fair settlement for social care and a radical upgrade in public health, and those two aspects are lacking.

I think that both sides are correct. I can see how the Secretary of State has arrived at the £10 billion figure, but whenever that figure is used we should also present a figure that refers to total health spending in the way in which it has always been referred to in the past. I think that that would help to build the Secretary of State’s case for an increase in funding as we go forward.

Like others, I hope that we shall see an uplift for social care in the autumn statement, because the impact of social care on the NHS is now profound. There cannot be a Member in the House to whom it has not been made clear by people who come to his or her surgery that the state of the care system is in collapse and providers are in retreat. Even those who can afford to pay are finding it difficult to gain access to care.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

In my constituency there are some villages where no social care is available because none of the private providers can afford to deliver it. Does the hon. Lady, in her role as Select Committee Chair, know whether that applies in other parts of the country as well?