NHS (Public Satisfaction)

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) on getting this debate. Like the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), I stand here as the son of a nurse, though she stopped work before the NHS was created. Through her lifetime she saw the improvements in the NHS. I also stand as a man whose niece is fighting for her life in intensive care in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle. She is a young girl of 40 years old. I call her a girl because from the day she was born she has been hit by muscular dystrophy. She has needed the NHS from the first minute of her life. It has been there for every moment, as it was for one of my sisters, who sadly died at 53 of the same disease. The NHS was always there for them, never perfect, but second to none when compared with health services around the world. Those of us fortunate to have better health have always been prepared to pay to ensure that those who need help were able to get it.

Due to my experience with muscular dystrophy, I have the privilege of being the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the subject. That group has shown what we as parliamentarians can do together. We have come together, across the parties, and made huge improvements in the past few years in ensuring that specialist commissioning groups have worked with the all-party group here and with PCTs on the ground, making real improvements in the lives of people suffering from muscular dystrophy. We had a meeting about a month ago in this House. People came from across the country and across the political spectrum, and there were also professionals in the health service. They were all concerned about the direction of travel on which the Government are bent. Their concerns are: will they still be able to access the things they need? Will specialised commissioning groups still be able to work together to deliver the services they want? They have genuine concerns that the all-party group will take forward with the Minister as the debate continues.

This debate is about satisfaction. Why is satisfaction up? There are a number of reasons. Although I have some issues with the hon. Member for Banbury, I agree with him in that I have campaigned against the private finance initiative since before the previous Government took office, since the early 1990s, when the idea was first floated by the former Secretary of State for Health and now Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). I opposed it back then, and I have thought it the wrong direction for my Government to take over the past 13 years. The truth is that my Government had to do something.

The hon. Member for Banbury hit the nail on the head when he said that spending on health was 3% of GDP in the 1980s. We know it was 3% because people were being looked after in Victorian hospitals. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) regularly says, in his area people were being looked after in an old workhouse. That was not good enough for the Labour party, and it was not good enough for the people of this country. That is why we decided that over the period we would increase investment in the NHS, and we increased it by 300%. The people of this country went along with that, including when we put 1% on national insurance contributions. People supported that move because they believed in the service that the NHS delivered. We should never forget that.

During discussions on developing a more capital-intensive NHS, into which a lot of money went, we saw real moves on staff harmonisation, recognising the roles of staff and increasing the responsibilities of people at different levels in the health service. A huge amount of work went into that. While that was happening, other work was being done on improving public health across the board.

The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) raised the issue of productivity. It is strange how he defined productivity. I would be interested to read the report from the NAO on defining it, and I am glad that he has brought it to my attention. Productivity used to be measured in the health service by recording when an episode concluded. An episode could be concluded when someone died. A hospital where more people died was more successful in terms of productivity than one where somebody kept coming back and that episode was not concluded. That is a perverse way to look at productivity. The real measure of productivity is that there are twice as many people alive at 85 and over than there were 20 years ago. Should we not celebrate that? Is that not a productivity increase of which we can all be proud? That is the result of the work done.

I am not going to pretend the NHS is perfect. We know it is not perfect; every one of us as constituency MPs will have dealt with issues.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

It is not a question of not thinking that it is perfect, but one of wanting constantly to improve it. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) offered a view, with which I concur, that an individual’s experience of the NHS is different from their broad view, based on what they read in the press. The personal experience of the vast majority of people is either positive or very positive. The broad view is less so, which is hardly surprising, since the vast majority of editors of news journals in this country do not regard good news as news at all. It is also true that many people have a positive view of services they perceive to be under threat. Take the example of a local school. There is always a more positive view if it is under threat. The problem in this country is that millions of people, sadly, believe the NHS to be under threat.

[Mr Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour: I will discuss that with him later.

As a constituency MP, I have had three cases over the past six years of supporting people making complaints against the NHS. We took them as far as we could, trying to raise resolutions. However, none of those people opposed the NHS as an organisation; it was the specific treatment they had received that they were complaining about. There have actually been hugely improved outcomes, as I know from talking to thousands of ordinary folk across the constituency. How happy they are that we built—thankfully, before this Government got in—a new health and leisure centre in Gateshead. Unlike the Building Schools for the Future money, that was not stopped. We got it built before 7 May last year: thank God for that. The real people who matter—the public—are concerned about where we are going.

We should be thankful for the people who work in the NHS. I get really frustrated and annoyed when I hear coalition Members and the Secretary of State, who seems to take real pleasure in denigrating trade unionists, as if trade unionists were removed from this. The vast majority of trade unionists who represent health workers are hands-on professionals. They are not sitting in an office all day; they are at the coal face. They are not just talking about representing people; they are doing it, day in, day out. It is a disgrace that a party pretending to be the party of the big society should denigrate the people who are part of the largest voluntary group in the country. They stand up for people day in and day out. At the same time as standing up for their colleagues, they work in the service, they represent the service and they fight for the people they take care of. Their voice is important; their voice is informed and should not be ignored.

What do we see? We see Ministers refusing to listen to groups within the health service. I just picked up a report of the Second Reading, when I referred to one of those groups, the King’s Fund. Others include the Ministers’ own colleague, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston); the British Medical Association, denigrated here by the hon. Member for Banbury; the Royal College of Physicians; the Royal College of Nursing and the head of Arthritis Care. Every one of those has been ignored by the Government, on the basis of “We know best.”

Most Conservative Members have had a degree of education way beyond mine. However, in this debate, the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) should be heeded, when he said that a lot of them have been “educated beyond their intelligence”. If this debate does not show that, nothing else does. The truth is that constantly over the past 13 years, health professionals have said to us, “Let us get on with the job.” The promise the Conservative party gave in opposition was that it would do exactly that; it would let them get on with the job, because there has been far too much meddling in the health service. I agree with that but, now, instead of letting them get on with the job, the Government are turning the health service upside down. Not only will it not work, it will make it much worse. It is a disgrace that it is happening.