NHS and Social Care Funding

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Two days ago, the Health Secretary read out a statement in this Chamber on the crisis in our NHS. His answer to his Government’s failure to meet A&E waiting time targets is to downgrade those targets, rather than seeking to take any action to treat the malaise at the heart of our NHS.

The Health Secretary heaped praise on our hard-working and dedicated NHS staff—praise they richly deserve—but it will ring hollow with many of them. I speak from years of experience working in the NHS as a clinical scientist with staff of all grades, skills and experience. The simple truth is that NHS staff are demoralised, and, as I said two days ago, they continue to work with care and compassion in spite of, not because of, his action.

Since that statement, I have been inundated by NHS staff wanting to tell me their stories: of how the service they were once proud to work in is now in perpetual crisis; of the strain of wanting to do their best for their patients but being prevented from doing so because of short staffing, overcrowding, delayed discharges and underfunding; of the emails they get from Ministers demanding to know what they will do about the failure to meet targets; and of their listening to the same Ministers telling the public that the NHS does not have a problem.

Health managers are saying that we have a perfect storm of ageing patients who need more care just at the time when social care has been cut to the bone, leaving hospitals to pick up the pieces. An A&E doctor at Manchester royal infirmary told me:

“Crisis is the new normal”.

The doctor said that it has become usual to have 10 patients waiting in a corridor.

In my constituency of Heywood and Middleton, the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has just been the subject of a damning report revealing appalling neglect in maternity care that led to the avoidable deaths of mothers and babies. The trust had the most 12-hour A&E waits in October and the second most cancelled urgent operations in November. In December, it was forced to divert ambulances 14 times in total, one of the highest figures in the country.

Social care across Greater Manchester faces collapse. That is borne out by the delayed discharge figures for Greater Manchester, which doubled in the year to October. Greater Manchester asked for £200 million for social care in the autumn statement, but the issue was not even mentioned. Some see Greater Manchester’s devolved healthcare system as a solution, but even its chief officer, Jon Rouse, says that although devolution can help closer working it is not “magic dust”.

I remind the Health Secretary of the NHS constitution for England, which was updated in October 2015 and establishes the principles and values of the NHS in England. It sets out rights to which patients, the public and staff are entitled, and it sets out pledges that the NHS has committed to achieve. Enshrined in the constitution is the patient’s right to be cared for in a clean, safe, secure and suitable environment and their right to be protected from abuse and neglect—in other words, not to have to wait in an A&E corridor.

Patients and the public have the right to be involved in the planning of healthcare services, in changes to the way that healthcare services are provided and in decisions affecting the operation of those services. For NHS staff, one of the pledges is to engage staff in decisions that affect them and the services they provide, yet I see precious little evidence of staff, patients or the public having any input into the 44 STPs covering the regions of England, which appear to have been drawn up behind closed doors and are shrouded in secrecy. Their impact on healthcare in our regions could be huge, but where is the public involvement?

Patients are being failed on this Government’s watch and their rights to safe care are being neglected. All the Health Secretary has for NHS staff is the occasional flurry of warm words, yet the war he waged over the junior doctors’ contract showed his real attitude towards NHS staff. Nye Bevan said:

“no government that attempts to destroy the Health Service can hope to command the support of the British people.”

That is from Bevan’s book of essays “In place of Fear”. Sadly, the current Health Secretary has managed to achieve “replacing the fear”.