A&E Services
Debate between Helen Whately and Jamie Reed(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Reed
I have been generous with time, so I must press on.
In 2013, the Government announced a call to action to improve general practice access and experience for patients. They set out six key indicators to rate the quality of access and experience for patients. One year later, every single indicator had shown a deterioration in performance. Fewer people described the overall experience of their surgery as good and fewer people were able to get an appointment. The Government must address that finding. Only by addressing the crisis in general practice in addition to social care can the Government begin to relieve the pressures on A&E departments.
When the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister discuss the NHS in this House, they like to use words such as “openness” and “transparency”. Sadly, their actions betray that sentiment on a routine basis. I refer again to Professor Keogh’s seminal letter to the Secretary of State two years ago in which he refers to the use and principle of transparency in the NHS as representing
“a turning point for our health service from which there is no return.”
Except that, for this Government, it seems that there is a return.
Currently, NHS England publishes the performance measures for each A&E in England every week. Those figures contain a wealth of information for each trust and it makes that data available to the public. The data show how each A&E department is performing across a range of measures, and it can be used to target specific interventions at trusts that are struggling. This reporting time period also means that issues can be identified quickly and resolved promptly. Rather than taking action to ensure that hospitals in England meet this target, the Government are seeking to hide the performance data. We will not be able to see how A&Es are performing each week; we will have to wait until the end of each month. By publishing a significant number of performance measures from across the NHS on the same day, the Government appear to have found an innovative way of burying bad news—publishing even worse news at the same time. Patients deserve better than that. Clearly, Ministers find it more palatable to be reminded of their failings just once a month, rather than at the end of each week. This move is designed to make the red box lighter and the scathing headlines kinder. Will people not conclude that the monthly publication of A&E data—unlike other monthly data sets—has nothing to do with patient care and everything to do with political and media management?
Mr Reed
I must make some progress.
The issues facing A&E departments, GP surgeries and social care services will not be solved by amending the date on which performance indicators are published. The public will be rightly sceptical about the motivations behind the reduced publication of data that illustrate both good and bad performance. It is a move designed to take the pressure off Ministers as they turn a blind eye to the pressures that they are inflicting on our health service.
The pressures that the Government have introduced into the health service have built up until the system can no longer cope. A&E is full to bursting and social care has been cut to the bone, which means that patients cannot be discharged, wards are getting fuller, there are delays for admission and more people are waiting longer for treatment. That is indisputable. In England, the target for seeing 95% of patients within four hours has been missed for 100 weeks in a row. Instead of easing the pressures in A&E, this Government have decided to make it harder for patients to see the effects of Government policy on the services that they use by restricting the performance data that are available. Under this Government, it is getting harder to see a GP, harder to be seen at A&E and harder to see how the NHS is performing.
Not only is the record of this Government shameful, but their cynicism and complacency are, too. Professional bodies and Opposition Members have long warned the Government that the path they have placed the NHS on is damaging the service, working against patients’ best interests and causing unprecedented professional concern. Having done that, the Government are now trying to evade scrutiny. Today, Ministers must explain why they are seeking to make NHS performance less transparent and to hide the damage caused by their policies from patients and the public, and how they intend to protect services and tackle hospital deficits this year.