Future of the NHS

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne), my constituency neighbour, on securing this debate, which is hugely important. I listened to the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), speaking about data and so forth, and there are clear points there, but I want to focus on the experience that my constituents, my family and my friends have of the NHS. Let me declare an interest in this debate as a Unison member and a former Unison health representative, which I am glad to say hugely informs my interactions on this subject.

There has never been a more urgent need to talk about our NHS. All of us from across the House regularly attend drop-ins with cancer charities and other medical charities, and they tell us about the situations that they face and the backlogs. We all make arguments about those things, but we cannot just see them in isolation: we cannot look just at cancer figures or mental health figures; we need to look at the NHS as a whole system and at how we can make it better.

I want to refer to some of the figures after 13 years of Tory Government. We know that satisfaction with the NHS is at a 25-year low of 36%. That is a drop from 70% in 2010, when Labour left government. Some 7.2 million people are waiting to start planned NHS treatment, which is nearly three times the figure when Labour left power. Before the pandemic, the number was already 4.6 million, so this is not just a covid-related issue, though covid clearly made things difficult—the figure was increasing anyway. Just 80% of patients with an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer saw a specialist within two weeks, which means that more than 42,000 people wait too long.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such a powerful speech, and I declare that I am also a proud member of Unison. Cancer Research UK recently held a drop-in session in Portcullis House, and I must say I was quite surprised to see the statistics for my constituency. We have a world-class hospital quite close to a world-class cancer treatment centre, but even in my constituency of Vauxhall over 300 people have missed the 14-day window and have been waiting longer. Does she not think that this is a big issue right across the country and something the Government need to get a grip on?

[Liz Twist]

I most certainly agree that that is a shocking figure. We need to make sure that we are really addressing all those issues very urgently. Those cancer waits are really important for what happens when undertaking treatment and the possibility of cure, so we really need to get on top of that.

When we look at accident and emergency, which has been much in the news, we see that 11,000 patients died after waiting more than 11 hours in A&E in 2021-22. The Government have just changed the target to 76% of patients waiting less than four hours in A&E by March next year, but we really need to return to the original target. Just changing the figures does not mean that people get better or that fewer people die; it means that the figures have been changed, and people understand that. My constituents know that.

More than 1.5 million people are waiting for key diagnostic tests such as MRIs, which is an increase of 95,500 from this time last year, whereas in May 2010 just 536,262—actually, that still sounds like a big figure—were waiting for key diagnostic tests. We need to get better, not worse, at doing these things.

One in seven people cannot get a GP appointment when they try to do so. All of us know, as constituency MPs, that one of the issues people consistently raise with us is that they are unable to get appointments in a timely fashion, so something that needs seeing to now is perhaps only seen to in a few weeks’ time. That is despite the really heroic efforts by a lot of our GP practices and surgeries, and the staff working in them, to try to make sure that people can get the advice they need when they need it. We know there is a shortage of GPs. Just in my constituency, people talk to me about that regularly. I regularly discuss with the NHS and with the new integrated care boards what is happening in that area, and things are really difficult for us at the moment.

At the same time, there are huge numbers of nursing vacancies in the NHS, with 47,000 posts unfilled, according to the latest figures. Some 40,000 nurses and 20,000 doctors left the NHS in the past year, and only 7,000 of those people retired. Surely, we must agree that patients need care and the NHS needs staff, and that it must be a priority to resolve this situation. That is why I am so pleased to see that Labour has a plan to address those workforce issues, because those workforce issues are at the heart of the difficulties within our NHS. It is not problems with NHS staff or that people are not working hard; they are working hard and, if anything, really becoming burnt out.

[Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Ind)]

I am delighted to hear that Labour has a plan. Would the hon. Lady please share it with the Health Minister in Wales? If Labour has a plan, it would be really good to have it in Wales, where Labour does not seem to have one at all.

[Liz Twist]

Well, I thank the hon. Member for that comment, but I will stick to my constituency in the north-east, if he does not mind.

As I was saying, this is not an issue with the staff themselves. The staff are working really hard and really down to the bone, and that is leading to the situation being made worse with people leaving or taking retirement. All of us will have friends and family who work in the NHS—certainly in the north-east, we have a huge number of people working in the NHS—and we see the strain on them, and on their faces, as they try to cope and deal with the issues they see day in and day out, so it is really important to address that.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend and I were in a meeting earlier this week with the regional care board, and it told us that, in the north-east, we actually perform a little bit better on elective care. However, it also told us that the growth we can expect in the north of England is going to be much smaller than elsewhere in the country. Does that concern my hon. Friend as it does me?

[Liz Twist]

That certainly concerns me and, yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that. Actually, I would say that in the north-east we have really good and positive acute services, which are the ones he is talking about, thanks to the hard work of so many people, but what we lack is the preventive work and the work to avoid people becoming ill in the first place. We have the lower life expectancy and the health inequalities that my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow talked about, so it is important to our people that we do that.

I was interested to hear the comments of the right hon. Member for West Suffolk on health inequalities. He is right to identify them, but what the Government have done is reduce the amount available to public health to address those issues before they develop. It is great that we have good hospitals and good-quality services, although they are really under pressure, but unless we address those public health issues and fund public health services, we are not going to tackle some of those issues.

The other aspect of that is social care. Once again, the Government have failed to tackle social care, and we know that one of the key things in tackling social care is getting people discharged from hospital, and getting them and supporting them to be independent at home. However, we really need a plan and to think some more about this. It may be a different Department—[Interruption.] No, it is the same Department now—sorry; my mistake—but we need to tackle that issue if we are going to make real progress.

I want to talk a little about mental health services. Many Members will know that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention. We see the impact of a whole range of different policies, and the inability to access services. Too many mental health patients are forced to seek mental health treatment through emergency or crisis services. One in 10 ends up in A&E. We need to ensure adequate access to mental health services for both children and adults facing mental health crises.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about isolation and mental health, particularly for teenage boys who, sadly, have the highest suicide rates. There has to be a reach-out and an understanding that overcrowding, poverty, bad housing and many other things contribute to mental health stress. It is not just a medical condition.

[Liz Twist]

It is absolutely right that socioeconomic factors have an impact on the number of suicides and lead people to suicide ideation. It is clear that mental health services for young people are struggling. People can be identified as having mental health problems, referred to child and adolescent mental health services and still not get the support they need for years. It is a difficult situation and something needs to be done. Mental health is an integral part of our NHS and needs to be dealt with effectively.

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend raises a valuable point. I am passionate about mental health, but at the moment we have no plan. The 10-year plan for mental health services and the way forward was abolished and nothing has been put in its place. Does my hon. Friend feel that that has contributed to the fact that we are seeing so many issues in our young people and elderly, and anxiety in our teenagers?

[Liz Twist]

I most certainly agree that there is a need for a mental health strategy. I have spoken to voluntary organisations that work in the field such as YoungMinds, which is concerned that young people put a huge amount of effort into commenting on the proposed mental health strategy, but that has now been subsumed in the wider health strategy that the Government talked about just a few weeks ago. There are real concerns from not just YoungMinds but many quarters that the mental health strategy will be lost in a wider mix. I hope that the Government will listen to that. YoungMinds engaged a huge number of young people to talk about this issue, and those people feel that their views are not being considered.

There are so many things that I could talk about but I will not, you will be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to confirm that our NHS is hugely valued by my constituents and everyone in the country. We need to ensure that it works well and effectively and that we have the staff that we need. I hope the Government will look at the workforce plan, because that is key to many of the issues we face. My constituents need the NHS, and we need it to work properly. I am glad that Labour has plans to do that in future.