Future of the NHS

Debate between John Healey and John Baron

Monday 9th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he draws on his experience as a former Health Minister. While implementation continues apace, there is a so-called pause in the legislation. His point is exactly the one made by the all-party, Tory-led Health Committee in a recent report. If the Prime Minister wants to prove to NHS patients and staff that his pause is not just spin, he must shelve the Bill and make radical changes to his NHS reorganisation plans.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

The shadow Secretary of State speaks as if no reform is needed. However, given that our cancer survival rates are well below the European average and that that costs thousands of lives in this country, does he accept that reform of how the NHS treats cancer patients is necessary?

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman has great expertise in, and commitment to, cancer care. He is right that our survival rates continue to lag behind those of parts of Europe, but I am sure he is aware that the rate of fall in deaths from cancer has accelerated in the past decade. On that basis, and with continued investment and reform, we have a chance of catching up to European levels. However, the reforms proposed in the Bill, as many cancer charities and those who represent patients testify, raise the concern that the great gains made by the cancer networks in integrating and co-ordinating services for cancer patients and sufferers will be put at risk.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between John Healey and John Baron

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I want to make a bit of progress before I give way again.

The public are being told that this reorganisation is patient-centred, but most patients’ GPs will not, in practice, be doing what the Government claim they will be doing. GPs spend an average of only about eight minutes with each patient. If they continue as family doctors, the commissioning will not be done by them; it will be done in their name by the managers in the primary care trust who carry out that function now, or by private health companies that are already hard-selling their services to GP consortia. Those consortia are being sold a false promise as well. Because expanded open-ended choice of treatment means funding unused capacity in the system, it is highly unlikely to happen at a time when NHS finances are under pressure.

Despite the boast about putting patients at the heart of everything that the NHS does, there is no place for patients on the bodies that will make the most important decisions on the NHS. There is no place for them on GP consortia, no place for them on the national commissioning board, and no place for them on the regulator, Monitor.

[Mr Baron]

The right hon. Gentleman talks of broken promises. What does he say to cancer patients who regularly see our cancer survival rates in the lower divisions of the international cancer league, despite 13 years of a Labour Government?

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman has already heard some of my hon. Friends mention the analysis of Dr John Appleby, published in the British Medical Journal online last week. He took to task those who had made the sweeping assertion that somehow Britain’s health service lags behind those of the rest of Europe. It is an argument that the Prime Minister advances. It is an argument for change, he says, because we are still a long way from European standards of care.

Let me read something to the House. We have been told that

“if you have heart surgery in England, you now have a greater chance of survival than almost any other European country – over the last five years, death rates have halved and are now 25 per cent lower than the European average.”

Those are not my words, or even those of Dr John Appleby. They are the words of the Health Secretary, published on ConservativeHome last week.

The Prime Minister argues that this is somehow an evolution and not a revolution. The Bill, however, is more than three times as long as the legislation that set up the NHS in 1948. The NHS chief executive told the Select Committee on Health:

“The scale of change is enormous—beyond anything that anybody from the public or private sector has witnessed”.

The Health Secretary argues that the Bill is somehow an extension of Labour policies. That is wrong, and it disguises again the fundamental changes to the NHS in the Government’s plan. Make no mistake, Mr Deputy Speaker: this is a revolution, not an evolution.

NHS Reorganisation

Debate between John Healey and John Baron

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

My right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor said in response to the Chancellor’s spending review:

“We support moves to ring-fence the”

NHS

“budget”.—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 968.]

People saw Labour’s big investment in the NHS bring big improvements—50,000 extra doctors, 98,000 more nurses, deaths from cancer and heart disease at an all-time recorded low, the number of patients waiting more than six months for operations in hospital down from more than 250,000 in 1997 to just 28 in February this year, and more than nine in 10 patients rating their experience of hospital care as good, very good or excellent.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

How does the right hon. Gentleman account for the fact that the UK is still floundering in the lower divisions of the international cancer league on survival rates?

[John Healey]

We still have a lot further to go. There have been big improvements in international comparisons, but we must go further. It beggars belief that the Government have decided not to press ahead with plans to give patients a guarantee of, for example, receiving test results within one week, especially as hon. Members on both sides of the House recognise the importance of early diagnosis for cancer, and the cancer specialist, Mike Richards, said that this contribution to early diagnosis could save 10,000 lives a year.

Instead of building on those great gains, I fear that the NHS will again go backwards under this Tory-led Government. It is already showing signs of strain. The number of patients waiting more than 13 weeks for diagnostic tests has trebled since last year, 27,000 front-line staff jobs are being cut, and two thirds of maternity wards are so short-staffed that the Royal College of Midwives says that mothers and babies cannot be properly cared for.

This is not what people expected when they heard the Prime Minister say that he would protect NHS funding. In fairness, a proper, long-term perspective is needed on NHS financing. Year-on-year funding just below or even 0.1% above inflation is way short of the 4% average increase that the NHS has had over its 60 years. During the last Labour decade, it averaged 7% in real terms.

There are, and have been for many years, built-in pressures on the NHS: the cost of staff, drugs and equipment rises by about 1.5% above general inflation, and the demands of our growing and ageing population adds £1 billion to the bill each year just to deliver the same services.