Delivery of Public Services

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr McFadden]

I will make some progress.

This is happening not just in the field of justice. Record numbers of patients are waiting for NHS treatment, and they are waiting longer than ever: the waiting list for NHS treatment is now 6.5 million, with more than 300,000 patients having been on the list for over a year.

Given that the system had to focus on dealing with covid, some might point to pandemic effects. There would be some justification for that argument if we had not gone into the pandemic with waiting lists that had already rocketed, but we went into the pandemic with waiting lists of 4.4 million patients, almost double the number on the lists when this Government came to power. Long waits and more people waiting are not just features of the pandemic. The number waiting more than 18 weeks is now 2.5 million, but even before the pandemic that number was nearly three quarters of a million. Some 840,000 patients were told in April that they will have to wait more than a month for a GP appointment—if they can even get through to the surgery in the first place. Millions of people are struggling to get any access to NHS dental treatment. Last year 2,000 dentists left the NHS, almost one in 10 across the whole country. There are 4,500 fewer GPs than in 2013, and Conservative manifesto promises to increase the number of GPs have been broken repeatedly. These delays are not the fault of NHS staff or the patients; they are the result of 12 long years of the Conservatives presiding over the system we have and it is time they took responsibility for the backlogs and the delays that have resulted from their long period in office.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The situation in our dental services is so dire that people are having to carry out do-it-yourself operations at home without anaesthetic or any other medical facilities. Does he agree that it is disgraceful that people are having to resort to such measures as a result of the Conservatives’ backlog given that we are the world’s fifth largest economy?

[Mr McFadden]

My hon. Friend is right. In a debate on the subject last week, the shadow Health Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), outlined a horrific case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I know and obviously share the hon. Lady’s passion for the north-east. The enormous success of our plan for jobs is something that we ought to be celebrating today. We have had the fantastic news that unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975, which is an enormous achievement and one that we should all be collectively delighted by. We face global inflationary pressures, which are a serious challenge not just for this country but the eurozone, America and, indeed, the entire developed world as we both recover from covid and handle the consequences of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and we are absolutely focused on rectifying that through a concerted programme of action. Obviously, we have put together a £22 billion package of support for households, and we will take future steps as the situation warrants.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

According to an independent analysis of the Government’s own 12 metrics for measuring progress in levelling up, Bradford East is behind on almost every single one, with lower pay, productivity, Government spending, transport investment, school grades and life expectancy. I am perplexed by how the Minister can stand there and tell us that he is serious about levelling up when the Government refuse to do anything to level up places such as Bradford East.

[Mr Clarke]

The whole point is that that is precisely what we are not doing. We have created a West Midlands mayoralty which is channelling huge amounts of public money into supporting—[Interruption.] Sorry, the West Yorkshire mayoralty. The point stands. We have created a West Yorkshire mayoralty which is designed to drive forward growth and opportunity in that region. We have a whole programme of action, from the levelling-up fund and our wider commitments around jobs and growth, which the hon. Gentleman knows, as well as I do, will make a massive difference to the future of Bradford and the rest of West Yorkshire in the years ahead.

Health and Social Care Levy

Imran Hussain Excerpts

1st reading
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, especially given the effect on those young people who are having to repay their student loans, which takes their effective marginal tax rate close to 50%. We have to look at the fairness of that.

This is not a plan to reform social care. A mere 15% of the extra £36 billion raised in the next three years is earmarked for social care and the mechanisms by which that will be dispensed are unclear, but vital to any prospect of an improved outcome. Indeed, they are so unclear that the Minister could not give us any insight into them during his opening remarks. This new money will not be available until 2023 and it will therefore not help a single family struggling now with the catastrophic cost of paying for their loved ones to access social care. It is far from certain that the NHS will not simply swallow up all the money allocated from the tax increase to try to tackle the backlogs in the NHS caused by Government cuts and exacerbated by the effects of the covid pandemic.

This new money will not make up for the huge cuts that this Government have been responsible for making to the social care system in the past 11 years. Age Concern estimates that 1.5 million people in need of care have been denied it as a result of the 7.5% per head cut in funding that this Government have delivered since they were first elected in 2010. The burden has fallen on family members and unpaid carers, many of whom have had to put their lives on hold to deliver care to loved ones with little or no support. The huge cuts to local authorities over the same period have stretched the care system beyond breaking point, yet the Prime Minister had nothing to say about any of that yesterday.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

No, because I would run out of time.

This is not a plan for social care, even though the Prime Minister is claiming that it is. The system needs fundamental reform, but this is tinkering at the edges. A real reform of social care would involve wholesale change from top to bottom. It would deal with those who require care now, not ignore them and their needs as the Government have done. There is nothing for them in the Prime Minister’s announcement. A real reform would have a plan for care workers and their future, with training, career progression, decent pay and an end to zero-hours contracts, to low minimum wage remuneration, to 15-minute appointments with no pay for the time it takes to drive from one client to another and to fragmented contracts that wreck lives.

At the moment, there are 112,000 vacancies in the care sector, and staff turnover is 34% a year. That indicates the need for fundamental reform. The pay for working in an Amazon warehouse or a supermarket is higher than the pay for caring. Surely that is wrong. The covid pandemic and the shameful betrayal of care workers and those who require care, which unfolded during the first wave of covid-19, told us all we needed to know about the ramshackle nature of a system that this Government have allowed to teeter on the verge of collapse for the past 11 years.

The Prime Minister’s announcements are totally inadequate to the scale of the task, if there really is a plan to fix social care. All that those who work in care got out of his statement was a tax rise and no pay increase. Those trying to access care now got nothing. Those trying to provide domiciliary care were not even mentioned, and nor was the growing army of carers. Protecting the assets of those needing to access care for long periods is not a substitute for fundamental reform of the system; it is not a plan for social care. It is a sign that the Government are dodging a long overdue and necessary reform. The Prime Minister’s so-called plan breaks election promises. It is half-baked, inadequate and unjust.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is pretty obvious that there has been a major funding crisis in local government over the past 10 years. Local councils have had bigger cuts to their budgets than any other part of the public sector, around 30%.

[Imran Hussain]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of local government, unlike the Minister, who barely acknowledged its existence. Does he agree that the last decade of ideological austerity and cuts by this Government has meant that local government budgets have been slashed by up to 50%, directly contributing to this crisis?

[Mr Betts]

I have made my position clear on the extent to which local government has been unfairly cut compared with other parts of the public sector.

Across the piece, local councils of all political persuasions have done a brilliant job of protecting their communities over the past few years. They have done it by giving priority to social care, but that has still meant real-terms cuts due to the demographics, with more older people, with people with learning disabilities living longer and with increased costs and demand for children’s social care—demand for the latter two has gone up faster than the demand for elderly care over the past few years.

In protecting social care, there have still been real-terms cuts. There are 1 million more elderly people not getting care who would have received it in the past. Other services, such as parks, libraries, buses and highway safety, have all been cut by up to 50% in local authorities across the country. We are repeatedly asking our constituents to pay increased council tax, often for care services they are not receiving, when the services they do receive are being cut to shreds. That is the reality.

As representatives of both parties in the local government sector said to the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government, we cannot sort out the funding problems in local government without sorting out the funding problems in social care. That is the reality.

We are in the middle of a Select Committee inquiry, and we will be taking evidence from Ministers. I hope they will start to explain to us how the care plan will solve that problem. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee have received estimates that the funding gap for social care alone is between £2.5 billion and £4 billion a year, which does nothing to restore services to the level they should be at or to address the real problems of low pay, which will eventually destroy the service because it will not be able to recruit people as alternative jobs, such as at Amazon, pay so much more. That is simply the reality.

How much money will come from the levy? Paragraph 30 is the only bit that talks about money: £5.5 billion over three years. The gap is between £2.5 billion and £4 billion a year, yet we know the £5.5 billion has to fund: the cap and floor system, which will be at least half of it, maybe more; and the £500 million for workforce training, which is welcome. The money goes nowhere near funding the current gap, let alone bringing about any improvements or bringing people into the social care system who are currently excluded. It just does not do it.

The Government have said they will

“ensure local authorities have access to sustainable funding for core budgets at the spending review”.

All will be revealed in the spending review, but the key bit is that the Government say they expect

“demographic and unit cost pressures”

will be met

“through council tax, social care precept”.

We have had 5% council tax increases year on year, and a lot of it has been to fund social care, so we are going to get above-inflation council tax increases again, are we? If we say national insurance payments are regressive, council tax is now regressive, too. That is the reality.

Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution, which highlights the points. Does she agree that much of the debate is around tier 3 support, not to say that tier 2 areas have no support whatsoever, which emphasises the point that she makes?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I say to the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) who keeps chuntering: you had your chance, mate. Let other people in.

For hundreds of years, Mancunians have been told to know our place, but we have never listened—from the People’s History Museum to the Mechanics Institute, from our science and industry to women’s suffrage. We will not be told what our place is, and we will not be bullied into taking it. We are proud of our history and proud of our collective contribution to our great country and determined to build a great future together.

This is not just about Greater Manchester; this is about all of us. We will not be picked off one by one. We will not be offered the crumbs when we helped bake the loaf. We deserve a fair slice and our people deserve a Government willing to protect them and to do as the Chancellor promised—“Whatever it takes”. In recent days, it has been Lancashire, Liverpool and Greater Manchester. Next week, and in the weeks ahead, it will be communities in other parts of the country that find themselves in tier 3. If the Government are prepared to wilfully inflict so much harm on their own people in the middle of a pandemic in one part of the country, they will do it to people elsewhere as well.

We are staring down the barrel of a bleak winter, because the Government have lost control of the virus: infections are rising; hospital admissions are rising; and deaths, tragically, are rising. The testing system has collapsed. People and businesses across the country will be anxious that they will not be able to make ends meet and put food on the table. Our motion today will ensure a fair national deal for the country, a vote of this House on it and the Government’s own promises to workers kept. Madam Deputy Speaker, I commend this motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards), although she may have been better spending her time talking about the debate and not historical facts that have no bearing.

While much of this debate has focused on tier 3 restrictions in the light of the Government’s shambolic handling of the deal with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, worryingly little is being said by the Government about support for those regions living under tier 2 restrictions, as Bradford and West Yorkshire currently are. Under those restrictions, our businesses may not have been told to close, but let me be clear that they still face significant downturns in trading, and our hospitality sector in particular is being savaged by those rules that tell us only one household can meet up. Many people are still on furlough in tier 2 areas, as their jobs are not expected to properly return until the country opens back up again. They face the prospect of having to survive the winter on a fraction of their normal wages.

Despite the jobs and incomes that are at risk, the Government are doing nothing for tier 2 regions. Indeed, when I asked the Prime Minister just last week whether he would guarantee that local authorities will receive the support they need to help local businesses and protect the incomes of already low-paid workers, he ducked the question, telling me about funding we already know about, with nothing concrete about support for the weeks ahead.

Between March and September, my constituents saw almost 4,000 more people left unemployed, almost 1,000 of whom are aged 16 to 24, and we already have average wages that are £100 a week lower than the rest of the country. We cannot lose any more jobs or risk a further fall in wages, and the Government must act to protect jobs and incomes, because the job support scheme will not be enough to discourage employers from letting staff go. I therefore urge Ministers to accept calls from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to give the region what it needs to protect jobs, businesses and communities and to engage constructively with West Yorkshire leaders to that end.

There must be a specific focus on the self-employed, who risk being forgotten, as they very nearly were by Ministers at the start of this crisis. Our taxi drivers, delivery drivers, tradesmen and others all deserve support, and their loss of business and income is through no fault of their own. However, if the Government force West Yorkshire into tier 3, we need to know now and be prepared. There can be no delay, and Ministers must agree to financial support packages in time. Failing to do so will leave businesses in limbo and those in low-paid employment, working fewer hours, or not working, deeply worried about how they will get by this winter.

Based on our population and the financial packages already secured by Liverpool, South Yorkshire and Lancashire, West Yorkshire will need, as a starting point, £75 million for a population of 2.5 million people if we are placed under tier 3 restrictions. Anything less would be an insult to people living in the north. In conclusion, I and other Labour Members will never stop fighting for our constituents and their jobs, businesses and communities. The Government need to step up and give regions in tiers 2 and 3 the assistance that we desperately need.