Delivery of Public Services

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Anna Firth

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is, of course, a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali). He talked a great deal about the need for free prescriptions; I think it must have escaped his notice that the Government have now vaccinated 150 million people with free covid prescriptions.

Listening to the Opposition, one would think that this was a Government who were failing at everything. We have heard nothing but doom and gloom. There has been no recognition that when the whole world was hit by the worst global pandemic for a century, this Government delivered the first approved vaccine roll-out anywhere on the globe. We have heard nothing about the fact that that was followed by the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe—and at the same time the Government delivered £400 billion of support for businesses, which preserved 14.5 million jobs: that is why unemployment is now at its lowest since 1974.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Will the hon. Lady not acknowledge that it was actually the national health service that delivered the vaccine roll-out?

[Anna Firth]

The national health service was funded and run by those on the Government side of the House. Perhaps the hon. Lady has not noticed that. If the Opposition had been in charge, she would of course be saying that it was they who had rolled out the vaccine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Firth]

I think the hon. Gentleman is missing the entire point that I am making. I am acknowledging that our health service has quite rightly been treating covid patients. Now that the pandemic is over, we are of course looking towards dealing with the backlog.

In Southend West, I, like many Members in other constituencies, receive complaints every week from constituents who are experiencing delays in getting appointments with their GPs. One constituent who wrote to me had suffered a minor head injury and ended up having to call an ambulance and go to the local A&E because they could not get a GP appointment. I have raised the issue of ambulances in the House before. However, we have a Secretary of State who is focusing on the issue and is already making progress. That is why we were able to announce this week that we are set to eliminate two-year waiting lists by July, and that is why, because of our management of the economy, the NHS budget is set to grow by an average of 3.8% every year up to 2024-25. As we have heard, by the end of this Parliament we will be spending £188 billion on the NHS, up from £133 billion. That is an increase of £54 billion—over 40%. That is possible despite the poor financial circumstances that we inherited. This Government have increased investment in the NHS every year since we came into office in 2010.

In Southend West, which I represent, we are leading the way in improving people’s healthcare. Due to the actions of myself and other Essex MPs, we will have an increase of 111 ambulance staff over the coming months and 11 new ambulances will be on our roads by the end of July. Earlier this month, Southend Hospital began an innovative enhanced discharge service. This is a collaboration between the council, the clinical commissioning group and the hospital, and it is helping people to get home when they have been in hospital, and to stay there. It is a brilliant therapy-led assessment service that really puts people at the heart of ongoing care, and I am delighted that the Government are supporting the scheme.

[Margaret Greenwood]

The hon. Lady is talking about the discharge from hospital process that was brought into law through the Health and Care Act 2022. Is she aware that the Government do not even know the clinical outcomes of these people? I have submitted written questions on a number of occasions to ask how many patients who were discharged under the discharge to assess process were readmitted to hospital within 30 days, but the Government do not know. Does she agree that the Government should really have done the work and found that out before going ahead with a process that puts very vulnerable patients at risk?

[Anna Firth]

I suggest that the hon. Lady should be congratulating this Government on delivering a £36 billion package to reform the NHS and social care and on tackling issues that Labour Members have ducked for years.

I want to return to the improvements at my own hospital. Patients are now being welcomed through the doors of a new two-storey outpatients building that is creating space for an extra 200 people every week. This state-of-the-art £1.2 million building includes 14 new consulting rooms, seven offices and a large waiting area. It is initiatives such as these that are leading the fightback against delays and waiting lists at the hospital, as opposed to just talking about them. There are also exciting new plans to build a brand-new £8.6 million entrance at the hospital, improving clinical provision, accessibility and the whole experience of patients, staff and visitors. This building will attract private capital funding. There will be no extra cost to the hospital trust or to the taxpayer. It is exactly this sort of innovation that we are looking for.

I am also pleased that our local GPs are looking at ways to improve their waiting lists. As I have mentioned, waiting lists are a huge problem. Having people waiting in a queue on the phone at 8 o’clock in the morning and being unable to book an appointment is something that none of us wants to see continue. The Pall Mall surgery in my constituency, which I had the pleasure of visiting earlier this week, has introduced a new e-consult scheme. Patients can enter their details online, which are then triaged by a clinician. This allows the surgery to triage 100 patients in the same time that traditional appointments would have taken to triage 15. The point of this is not to deny people who need to see a GP a face-to-face appointment but to ensure that our resources are used to their maximum effect so that the GPs can see as many patients as possible face to face.