The National Health Service

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who spoke so powerfully about his experience of the NHS and the importance of early diagnosis of cancer. He said in his opening remarks that we should have been discussing Brexit. I say to him and his colleagues that there is no version of Brexit that would benefit the NHS, social care, science and research or public health, so I urge him to look again at the way he has voted over recent days. That is something we heard compellingly and repeatedly—

[Lucy Allan]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Wollaston]

I will not give way, simply because of Madam Deputy Speaker’s comments about time pressures.

We heard those views on Brexit powerfully and consistently from all those who gave evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, so I again urge the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider.

No debate about the NHS can take place without considering alongside it social care and public health. I start by thanking all those who work in all those sectors, who are working under pressure as never before. I reiterate the powerful points raised by the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. I will not repeat his points about the pressures, including the financial pressures, because I agree with him. However, as parties write, structure and frame their manifestos, I urge all colleagues to look at the evidence and at the asks of the NHS’s workforce and leaders.

I welcome an NHS Bill in the Queen’s Speech—I was going to ask the Secretary of State this, but unfortunately he has left his place, so I hope it will be addressed in the summing up—but have the Government looked carefully at the work that was done by the NHS, alongside the Select Committee, to frame those asks? People in the NHS were clear that they did not want another top-down administrative disorganisation of the NHS; they wanted something targeted. As was set out by my former colleague on the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), they want the scrapping of section 75. They want a common-sense approach to getting rid of the endless and wasteful procurement rounds. They want an approach that allows all parts of the NHS and partner organisations to work together more closely. I want to hear from the Minister in his summing up that the Government have heard that loud and clear, and that it will all be adopted, because it has cross-party support in the Select Committee and a very clear evidence base. That would help us to implement the long-term plan much more quickly.

I would also like the Minister to say more about when we will hear the Government’s proposals for social care, because the knock-on pressures from social care on the NHS are enormous. Far too many people end up in far more expensive settings, where they do not want to be and where they are put at greater risk, for the want of good social care in our communities. This is a political failure. Two Select Committees—the Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee—worked alongside a citizens’ assembly to come up with a consensus approach. We have to get away from the back and forth of, “Is it a death tax?”, “Is it a dementia tax?” The fact is that we already have a dementia tax in the NHS and social care. The result of the failure to grasp this issue and come up with a long-term solution is that 1.4 million people are going without the care they need. It is a failure on the part of all of us to grasp this problem and come up with something long term and sustainable.

We need to take a far more evidence-based approach to public health and prevention. To give an example of that, today the Health and Social Care Committee published our “Drugs policy” report. Last year, 2,670 people died as a direct result of drug use. That is an increase of 16% on the year before. That figure can be doubled if we include all the causes of preventable early death among people who use drugs. Again, we know what works. I urge the Government to look at the international evidence, to be bold and to consider making this a health responsibility—to say that we will help addicts and that we will radically improve treatment facilities.

There has been a 27% cut in resources for drug treatments, and as a result people are dying unnecessarily. I am afraid that we are not being bold enough in saying that we can save these lives and benefit people’s wider communities if we are just prepared to take the step of destigmatising drugs and seeing drug use as an illness rather than something for which, for personal possession, people should be banged up in jail. We should allow our police forces to continue to go after the dealers—the Mr Bigs—rather than criminalise people, especially given that, frankly, we saw competitive drug-taking stories during the Conservative leadership election. I would ask whether any of those people would have been in the position they were had they had a criminal record.

The point is that people are dying completely unnecessarily because of our current policies. Our drug policies are failing, and they are particularly failing those who are dying, their families and all the wider communities that are being subjected to the harms of unnecessary acquisitive crime, discarded dirty needles and so forth. Let us look at the evidence, and let us be bold—not just on drugs policy, but on so many of the other things that are leading to serious health inequalities, such as childhood obesity. Let us be evidence-led in our policy and let us try to get away from the party divisions.

In closing, I would just like to express again my sincere thanks to all those who are helping us out there in our emergency services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate. I particularly want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), because if we could all speak about this issue in the way that she did, we would have a much more constructive and productive debate.

We have spent so long in this place listening to the same people talking about Brexit, dominating the agenda and crowding out those of us who want to speak for our constituents on other issues, so I am delighted that today we are discussing the Queen’s Speech and the NHS.

Unlike the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), who forgot that he had put in to speak in today’s debate, I have long been anticipating this opportunity and writing long speeches that will not get heard today, but I know I will have an opportunity on other occasions. I want to speak about the fears and concerns of the people of Telford. For the last six years there has been an ongoing debate about the future of our A&E and our women and children’s unit. I accept that this issue is not of the Secretary of State’s making and that a revolving door of senior executives has set the agenda. I am glad to see that the Secretary of State is trying to help out on this issue and that discussions are ongoing about keeping our A&E in Telford. I am grateful for his efforts.

In the blizzard that is Brexit, it has inevitably been impossible for senior Cabinet Ministers to properly focus on the day job. Mistakes will happen, and I think that this is one such case. This summer, we watched with mounting excitement as the new Prime Minister set out an energising domestic agenda with the NHS at its heart. We heard about his genuine desire to tackle the concerns of leave-voting, left-behind communities and their sense of being ignored. In August, as plans were unveiled for 20 hospital upgrades and 40 hospital new builds, we saw genuinely touching videos of the Prime Minister visiting hospitals across the country, from Boston to Harlow. There was something moving about the way he acknowledged the sense of identity that people have when talking about the NHS—the sacred promise between the people and the state—and talked about levelling up.

As summer rolled into autumn, on 2 October, just 70 days into the new Prime Minister’s premiership, he stood on the stage at our conference in Manchester and made a brilliant and inspiring speech. I heard him speak of his clear understanding that opportunity is not being evenly distributed and that it is the job of Government to unlock potential, level up, narrow inequality and deliver on the priorities of the people. He spoke about his mother, who taught him about the equal dignity and equal worth of every human being, and said that the NHS sums up that idea, because it does not matter who we are or where we come from; the NHS is there for us. My spirits were lifted by that vision, which my constituents would inherit under the new Conservative Government.

The Health Secretary was sitting in the front row watching that speech, and he too was surely moved by what he heard. But within hours, he was back in his office in London and, with a stroke of his pen, he was signing his approval for a scheme that we in Telford have been fighting for the last six years. As is the way with these things, it was the outpouring of rage on social media that reached me first. It seemed that the Secretary of State had approved a decision that would see Telford lose its A&E and women and children’s centre.

I know that the Secretary of State wanted to get this right for Telford; he told me so. He knew how important that centre was for our community, because he had visited, yet when that decision was made, there was no press release, no announcement and no briefing for MPs. There was no attempt to justify to my community why this was good for them. What member of Government makes a difficult decision that undermines the credibility of the central plank of the Government’s domestic agenda on the very same day that the Prime Minister sets it out?

I understand that, in this crazy environment, mistakes are made, and it takes a little humility and bravery to admit when they have been made. It is not enough to wear the badge, echo the platitudes, stand on a stage and say, “I love the NHS”. The Secretary of State needs to show that he cares about the people who use the NHS, no matter where they come from. In this case, it seems that the people of Telford were forgotten. This is a great Queen’s Speech, but it must not just be words. We have to mean it if we are to be the party of the NHS, and there is work to do in Telford to demonstrate that that is the case.