NHS Reorganisation

Debate between Jim Shannon and Mike Gapes

Wednesday 12th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) for bringing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). The Minister will not be able to answer all my questions because, as everyone knows, health is devolved to Northern Ireland. However, I will illustrate the issues with NHS reorganisation with some stories from the Province. The Minister has a close parliamentary aide from Northern Ireland, so he knows a wee bit about Northern Ireland.

I thank the House of Commons Library for the help it always gives us. Sometimes its information is enormously helpful, and today is one of those days. I have listened with great interest to the contributions so far; it is clear that, no matter the make-up of the constituency—whether Strangford in Northern Ireland, Mitcham and Morden, Warrington South or constituencies in Glasgow, Cardiff or wherever—there are issues. The NHS is struggling UK-wide, and either the pressure goes or its ability to treat will go. We are caught betwixt those two.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to spending £20 billion extra on the NHS, which is a credit to them. My constituency is on the seaside, and lots of people head that way to retire; I suspect things are the same in many constituencies. Our elderly population is growing, and the future demand on healthcare will be enormous. That is why the £20 billion that the Government have set aside is so helpful—because it gives a golden opportunity to plan ahead. The hon. Member for Warrington South was clear about where that should go.

The Library briefing—I am sure that the Minister has had chance to read it; I know that other Members have—contains six simple lessons from the Nuffield Trust, which are very helpful.

“Lesson 1: Avoid the temptations of a grand plan”.

This refers to the complex and heterogeneous nature of healthcare. We all know that it is complex; that is the very nature of healthcare. There are no one-size-fits-all policies that can address the issues. There has to be more than that.

“Lesson 2: Listen to the public—and don’t pretend you will if you won’t”.

As elected representatives, we know how these things work. When constituents come to us and tell us a problem, we listen intently and respond accordingly. This debate will hopefully be an occasion when we can do just that.

“Lesson 3: Don’t treat the workforce as an afterthought”.

It is very important that the workforce are part of a focused reorganisation plan. With the input of the workforce, there is a way forward.

“Lesson 4: Make sure the funding follows the plan”.

If funding commitments are made, they should be in there.

“Lesson 5: Don’t overrate structural reorganisation”.

In other words, it will not be sufficient to add more to the system that is operating on its own without building that structure up.

“Lesson 6: You need a plan your staff can follow”.

Create a policy and strategy that staff can get behind and support. The best way of doing that is to make sure that staff are involved in the creation of the plan, with staff values reflected in targets. All those things are vastly important, and I know that the Minister, who is a compassionate man and understands the issues well, will be able to respond even to the very generic terms that I put that in.

For Hansard and for the record, I will highlight an issue that I know is important across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: GP out-of-hours services. I emphasise the importance of that service, but we have particular problems with it in my constituency of Strangford. Part of any strategy or plan for NHS reorganisation should look at that.

My local health board is the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust—clearly, not the responsibility of the Minister—which covers my entire constituency. On selected days just last month, the GP out-of-hours service in the main town in my constituency, Newtownards, had to close because it was understaffed, and there are particular reasons for that. People could either follow the advice and go to the nearest South Eastern Trust facility in Downpatrick, some 40 minutes away from Ards—for those who dare to live in Portavogie in the Ards peninsula, not that far from me, it is an hour and 20 minutes—or they could go to the A&E department, which was standing room only. The choice puts massive undue burden on an already drowning service.

I suggest to the Minister—as I have suggested at home; I think it would be helpful—that, whenever GPs commit themselves to operating an out-of-hours service, there may need to be another method of addressing the issues of those who use the service. For instance, why not have a staff nurse to treat minor ailments, taking pressure off the GPs? There are ways of doing things. There does not always have to be a GP there. GPs are predominantly overburdened; they certainly are in my constituency, and I suspect they are everywhere else as well.

I will give the example of my parliamentary aide from just last week, which I believe, unfortunately, is the tip of the iceberg. Her daughter, who has just turned three, is treated in an asthma clinic. She had an extremely high temperature that would not come down to the normal range and which had been going on for nearly two weeks. Her little body fought so hard to control the infection that it was going through that her breathing rate was double what it should have been. The out-of-hours service was rung, and four hours later the call was returned—a long time when the mother and family are getting panicky. The child was lifted out of sleep and brought to a waiting room full of other children who were equally unwell.

Had the service not been able to sound out her lungs, she would have had to travel to the Ulster Hospital, which she ultimately had to do the following week, as her ear infection burst an ear drum. Unfortunately, she is one of many. My aide met doctors who were harassed—not because they were nasty people, but because of their workload—but doing the best they could. When she asked whether there is insufficient funding to pay for out-of-hours care she was told that there is insufficient desire. How do we inspire doctors to be part of the out-of-hours service, which can only function with GPs who want to be part of it?

The new remuneration system came into operation in Northern Ireland in 2003. Although the system was designed to give GP practices much more flexibility on how they deliver services, allowing them to choose how to organise patient care and rewarding them for the quality of that care, the introduction of the new general medical services contract also allowed GPs to opt out of providing out-of-hours services, leaving the system essentially on its knees.

The fact is that the A&E in the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald simply cannot cope without the service. The fact is that nursing homes that rely on GPs coming out to drivers into patients who are in agony and pain, or to call time of death, need the service, as do parents who need someone to sound out the chest of their asthmatic child without being subjected to a four-hour wait in a room with ill, injured and drunk people in the middle of a cold winter’s night.

The service is vital. I read a report in July this year that referred to Wales as having similar circumstances and similar difficulties with their GP service. I am interested to know whether the shadow Minister or the Minister are aware of similar circumstances across the UK mainland. I suspect any MP in touch with their constituents, as we all are, will be able to replicate the stories that I am telling.

I very much respect GPs and the hard work that they do and their right to a social life. No longer do we expect the village doctor to be on call every day and night, but we need them to be available. There are no longer enforceable contracts, and I believe that, in any new NHS reorganisation or strategy, we must find another way of operating the out-of-hours service that gives the care that our constituents want at the times that they need it, which is usually out-of-hours or whenever they are under pressure.

I spoke very recently to a recently retired GP. He had been doing the night shift four nights a week, but realised that that was too much and pulled out. Perhaps if he had been asked to do only one or two nights, he would have stayed. Too much has been asked of too few people. We need to ensure that funding and people are available.

I know he will be mortified, but I am going to name one local GP, because he is a very popular and well liked GP in my constituency. Dr Doyle has his own practice and can be found a lot more than is right, and than is probably his duty, in the out-of-hours surgery. He makes time to help his patients by writing support letters for personal independence payment and employment and support allowance applications and he genuinely cares. I am not saying that others do not care; I am picking out this man as a representative of what happens. I look at Dr Doyle and wonder how much longer he and others like him can possibly continue. We need to spread the burden through the area.

I would urge the Health and Social Care Committee here to look at what is happening with the out-of-hours service, see the good that it does and perhaps look at a different way in which the out-of-hours provision could work. The Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, on which I serve as one of the members from my party, is doing inquiries into many things, and one of them is health. People from Northern Ireland with a knowledge of and interest in health are coming here to make presentations to the Committee. And one thing that crops up is the out-of-hours service.

The question is how we adjust to the demands on the health service for the future. I started my comments by saying how much I genuinely welcome the £20 billion that the Government have set aside. We will get some of that through the Barnett consequential, so we are very pleased, but I see the needs in my constituency among the elderly population. I am also very keen that there should be early diagnosis and that preventive steps should be taken in delivering a health service for the future. If we do that, we will be doing the right thing. We must not just react all the time. Let us have a strategy that looks forward and aims to prevent things happening.

I am a type 2 diabetic, and many in the House are, as it turns out. Our Prime Minister is a type 1 diabetic. We all live with our particular ailments. But how much better would it have been if I had known about my condition earlier. I suspect that I was a diabetic for perhaps a year before I was diagnosed as one. I did not know at the time what the issue was. It was only when I went for a check-up with a doctor that I suddenly realised when he told me what was wrong. That makes me wonder whether there are steps that we can take for education, awareness and prevention. That is what we should be doing.

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee will come to a conclusion in our inquiry on the health service in Northern Ireland, but I will conclude my speech today with this point for the Minister. The problems that I have referred to are specific in some cases to Northern Ireland and to my constituency in particular, but I believe that problems exist UK-wide and therefore that the response must be UK-wide as well.

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. I think that there will be a vote imminently. If so, we will break for 15 minutes and get back as quickly as possible.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Debate between Jim Shannon and Mike Gapes

Thursday 6th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

To be fair to everyone, Mr Gapes, is there a time limit that we all have to observe?

[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

I am not imposing a time limit, but I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman kept his remarks relatively brief.

[Jim Shannon]

The deadline is 4 pm, so we will work towards that.

I thank the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for introducing the debate. I wish him well in his quest to be re-elected as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. Without disrespect to any other hon. Member who runs for it, I have no doubt that no one else would fit the job so well and perform it with such ability. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but I have already given him my commitment. I wholeheartedly support him in underlining the importance of seasonal agricultural workers to our agri-food industry.

I spoke on this subject at length in this Chamber in November. Some Members will be pleased to know that I do not intend to speak for too long today, since the Chair has asked us not to. However, the topic bears highlighting once again because of the urgency of the situation, which other right hon. and hon. Members have referred to. The agri-food industry is important not only in my constituency, but to every one of us across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

My constituency has a very strong agri-food sector. Our employers include Mash Direct and Willowbrook Foods, which have about 60% and 40% European labour, respectively. There is a very clear need for a system that works. I can say without fear of contradiction that Strangford is not only a beautiful constituency, but one that provides a lot of cereals, vegetables, beef, lamb and poultry. Agriculture is a very important part of our psyche in my constituency.

I hark back to the labour shortage in 2008, during which horticulture businesses lost an average of £140,000, as crops were left unpicked in the fields and retailers were left to try to fill their shelves with imported produce. There is no way we can go back to those hard, problematic times, which I know the Minister will have been aware of. The industry contributes some £3 billion to the UK economy and employs about 37,000 people on a permanent basis. The loss of workers and of the ability to work the land would have a massive effect on the local economy—I can vouch for that, as can other hon. Members present—as well as the UK-wide economy. The time is past due to stabilise the industry.

There is no question of Brexit not taking place. There are people who continuously throw up obstacles, negativity and problems, but let us look at it positively. The right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) outlined clearly the positivity that we need. Within this debate, we all have some thoughts to put to the Minister, and I know he will respond to them very positively. It is imperative that we take steps now to ensure that the worker scheme is open to all—Europeans and non-Europeans alike—who have a skill that they wish to use to fill a space. We have such gaps, undoubtedly; the figures indicate that.

I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers Union, which is the sister union of the National Farmers Union, and as a landowner. The NFU and the UFU do a marvellous job on behalf of all farmers, but they also have some very good insurance premiums, which is one reason for our membership over the years. The NFU’s 2015 end-of-season labour survey has shown that, for the first time since the seasonal agricultural workers scheme closed, growers are starting to struggle to source an adequate supply of seasonal workers to meet their needs. Some 29% of respondents stated that they experienced problems in 2015, while 66% predicted that the situation will worsen by 2018. That is the crux of the problem: 2018 is six months away, so this is no longer a long-term outlook, but an impending crisis that demands action as a matter of urgency.

I have every faith that the Government—particularly the Minister, whom I know personally from our involvement with fishing and other farming issues—will respond with the message we need to hear. I ask him to give us, either in his reply or, if he cannot get to it today, in a letter to interested Members, an outline of how the shortfall can be met. I also underline the need to address the issue that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) raised about fishermen, although I know that it is not the subject of this debate.

Since the referendum, labour providers have reported a marked drop-off in interest from EU workers in seasonal work. That was demonstrated by the results of the NFU labour providers survey, in which 47% of labour providers said they were unable to meet the demands of the sectors they were supplying.

I am conscious of time, so I will conclude. The NFU says that the industry currently uses about 80,000 seasonal workers. That figure is expected to rise to 95,000 by 2021. Brexit will bring opportunities, and we need seasonal workers for that. In an industry that is worth some £108 billion to the nation’s economy, there is a need for more opportunities and stability for those who wish to help where help is greatly needed.