NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Jamie Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

In the six minutes available to me, it will not be possible to respond to the 40 or so speeches that we have heard today. I shall just pick out two contributions for special mention. First, so far as I can see, the shadow Secretary of State genuinely believes that an organisation that provides care to 45 million people on a budget of £100 billion should not do planning. That really appears to be the view of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). Secondly, the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) made an excellent speech, in which she used the word “opportunity” in connection with STPs, which is what they provide. She also said usefully that healthcare systems were about “more than buildings.” As we go forward with this process, it is important that we all think about what that means.

The health service is not static. Technology is changing; drugs are changing; expectations are changing; and, as we have heard, demography is changing. It is right to try to make it evolve and help it to change. The STP process is the planning mechanism to do so. It is a planning mechanism to put in place a five-year view—this was in the manifesto—that NHS England has developed. If it is to work, it must have three things: it has to be care driven; it has to be properly funded; and it has to be locally driven. It is all those things.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

rose—

[David Mowat]

I shall not take interventions; I now have only five minutes left.

When it comes to funding, we have put in an extra £10 billion, and it is real money. If that money had been available in Wales, some of the points raised in the debate about the interface between us and Wales would have been quite different. This year, the increase in health funding is 4% in real terms—three times the rate of inflation. The real point, however, is not to do with money—however much the Conservatives put in and however much Labour says it might put in, although we have not heard that yet. But however much is put in, it does not detract from the need for the health service to be managed effectively and properly so that it can improve and innovate.

There is a prize from these STPs. At the end of the process, we will have a health service that is more oriented towards primary and community care where people live. The health service will provide better access to GPs, emphasise prevention more than ad hoc responses, properly address long-term conditions such as diabetes and begin to address more quickly our mental health and dementia commitments. I say again that if STPs do not address those things, they will not go forward. Perhaps the most important of all the advantages is that the unacceptable gap that currently exists between healthcare and social care will be breached. That is at the centre of the whole process.