Summer Adjournment

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab) [V]]

As we adjourn for summer recess, one of the most important pieces of legislation that we must consider is the Health and Care Bill, which had its Second Reading last week. The Bill has profound implications for the quality and availability of healthcare for all of us, and implications too for the staff who work in the NHS. It is a matter of very real concern that the Bill removes the requirement for social care needs assessments of vulnerable patients to be carried out before a patient is discharged from hospital. This will put patients at risk and leave families to pick up the pieces, and those without family at risk of isolation and lack of care.

The Government’s plans will lead to a postcode lottery as each integrated care board develops a different plan for its area, and strict financial limits will lead to increased local rationing of care. The Bill provides for the deregulation of NHS professions, and this has the potential to impact on the status and, over time, the level of expertise of the people who work in the NHS, which we value so highly. It is also likely to lead to a downward spiral in the pay and pensions of the workforce, and a reduction in the quality of services that patients can access.

The implications for NHS staff are immense. Professor Kailash Chand, an honorary vice-president of the British Medical Association, has said:

“The core thrust of the new reforms is to deprofessionalise and downskill the practice of medicine in this country, so as to make staff more interchangeable, easier to fire, more biddable, and, above all, cheaper.”

The introduction to the NHS constitution states:

“The NHS belongs to the people.”

It is an important principle, and one that the Government’s Bill threatens to tear apart. Big business will be able to sit on ICB decision-making boards and provide services, embedding conflicts of interest in the system and opening the door to widespread cronyism. The Bill will also remove the procurement of health services from the scope of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, so we will see a regulated market become an unregulated market, with contracts handed out without the stringent arrangements that one would expect in the awarding of public money. Instead of respecting the fact that the NHS belongs to the people, the Government are handing it gift-wrapped to big business. The vision of a comprehensive, universal national health service that is valued so highly is torn apart by the Health and Care Bill.

I pay tribute to the many NHS campaigners around the country who are working so hard to defend our NHS and to keep our NHS public. I hope that hon. Members who voted for the Bill on Second Reading will have time to read the analysis of its impact beyond this place and reflect on just how damaging the changes will be for their constituents, themselves and the future of the national health service.