Future of the NHS

Debate between James Gray and Andrew Gwynne

Monday 31st January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. This has been a spirited and emotional debate, and one that captures the unique place that the NHS holds in the heart of this nation. On behalf of the Labour Front Bench, I want to personally thank the petitioners and the campaigners behind the petition, because the NHS is more than just an institution. It is an example of the difference that politics, society and individuals can make. It gives us hope that Governments can make real differences to people’s lives, so long as there is the requisite willpower and determination to do so.

Over the last 12 years, NHS staff have had to move heaven and earth just to keep the service on its feet. They have faced extraordinary upheaval, underfunding, neglect and Government mismanagement. I would like to place on record my thanks to all NHS staff, at every level, for the work they have done—not just over the last 12 years and before, but particularly in the last two years, when we were hit by the covid pandemic and the NHS was placed under enormous strain. I am in awe of the work that the staff have done, but I am angry that they have had to step up to try to mitigate the failures of this Government.

Even before the pandemic, the scale of the crisis in the NHS was stark. Covid has compounded the problems, but it did not cause them. Any attempt by the Government to blame covid for the state of our national health service is nothing more than an abdication of responsibility.

This debate is about the future of the NHS, but to understand the future, we must understand how we got here in the first place and how the steps we must take are informed by principles that have been too easily forgotten by the Conservative Government. The NHS is Labour’s finest moment: emerging from the tragedy and upheaval of world war two, the British public decided to put their faith in a Labour Government. British people suffered from endemic health inequalities and squalid living conditions, and were bearing the brunt of decades of public health neglect.

The NHS, spearheaded by the great Aneurin Bevan and Clement Attlee, aimed to change all of that. Many said it could not be done, but it was. It was done through courage of conviction and a belief in the necessity of a service based on need rather than income—a simple principle with revolutionary consequences.

We now find ourselves in 2022, almost 74 years on. If the Labour pioneers who built our health service were here today, what would they see? They would see record waiting lists, an acute staffing crisis, morale at its lowest ebb, health inequalities growing, and a Government fundamentally incapable of addressing their own failings. Yet if they twisted the dials of their time machine to 2010, they would see an NHS in a pretty healthy condition. Waiting times had dropped, public satisfaction was at the highest level ever, and hospitals were staffed at record numbers. In 12 years, that progress has been systematically undone.

The first priority of the next Labour Government will therefore be to sort out the immediate mess that the Tories have left our health service in—once more. That means throwing everything at slashing waiting times and reducing the care backlog, and it means recruiting, training and retaining the staff we need across the NHS and social care. The last Labour Government brought average waiting times down from 18 months to 18 weeks. We will have to do the same again as a matter of urgency. That must all come alongside a long-term plan for the care workforce and wider reforms to fix social care.

However, the Government are doing none of that. Instead, they are faffing around with an unnecessary and distracting top-down reorganisation of the NHS, in the form of the Health and Care Bill, while doing precious little to tackle waiting lists or address the staffing crisis. I would be grateful if the Minister recognised those concerns in his response and outlined what steps the Government will take to ensure that any NHS reorganisation comes alongside a proper plan to address soaring waiting times and critical staffing shortages.

However, the future of the NHS is about more than just addressing the immediate crisis; it is also about adapting to the needs of our population and recognising that health is about more than just surgeries and hospitals. Last week, here in Westminster Hall, I spoke about health inequalities and about how health is all too often viewed as an isolated issue, without considering the external factors that influence our wellbeing. Wellbeing is linked to our communities, our access to green spaces, our mental health, our opportunities and much more. If we fail to consider those influencing factors, our health service will always be geared to address the symptom, as opposed to the root cause of the symptom.

That is why the future of our NHS relies on prioritising preventive health measures. One example of that is Labour’s recent announcement that we would recruit more than 8,500 mental health professionals to support 1 million more people every year. That is exactly the kind of progressive, proactive and preventive policy that the Government should be driving. Such an investment in mental health would mean that every community had access to a mental health hub for young people, and every school specialist support. Wellbeing would be addressed beyond the clinical setting, and the health consequences of stress, depression and anxiety addressed before they reached the hospital waiting room.

So far, I have seen little evidence from the Government that they realise the importance of preventive health measures. In fact, I would go as far to say that the withdrawal of funding from community centres, green spaces and sports clubs over the past 12 years shows that the Government are not sensible and are not serious about preventive health policy. In his response, perhaps the Minister will correct me on that and advise how the Government intend to reverse their disastrous cuts to local services, which have had a calamitous impact on health outcomes.

Our NHS was built to provide security. It was built to recognise that our prosperity is innately linked to our health, and that we all deserve to live long, fulfilling lives—all of us, irrespective of our background or where we have come from. It is an issue of basic respect. To be healthy and have access to care is not a privilege; it is a fundamental right of every human being, a right that we expect the Government to protect and defend at all costs. The job of the Government of the day is to pass the national health service on in a better condition than they found it in when they came to office. I am afraid to say that this Government have failed in that obligation massively.

I am hopeful, however, that with the right support, the right investment, the right approach and the right values—values matter when it comes to our health and wellbeing—Labour can undo years of neglect and equip the NHS with the tools it needs to survive and then to thrive. That day cannot come quickly enough.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

We have a few minutes in hand so, unusually—although I am told it is perfectly in order—I will call the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, Andy McDonald, to make a brief contribution.