Future of the NHS

Matt Vickers Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 598732, relating to the future of the NHS.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Today I have the privilege of bringing the petition to the House for debate. I congratulate Marcus Hynes, the writer of the petition and a proud Unite member, on achieving over 135,00 signatures. Marcus and other esteemed members of Unite shared their views ahead of the debate.

The NHS is a truly British innovation. It is there to help us in our hour of need, supporting us from cradle to grave. The NHS has an enormous role in the lives, health and welfare of British people. As a result, it is rightly at the centre of much debate in this place, as we constantly look at how it can be expanded, improved and made more efficient. I thank the NHS and all its amazing doctors, nurses, staff and volunteers for what they do. Throughout the past two years, they have been the crutch that has kept this country upright. No words will ever be able to articulate how thankful people across the UK are for the work that they do for us every day.

The NHS is a great British institution, founded in the wake of the war by a society that wanted better for everyone. It is, and always shall be, free at the point of use. The NHS carries the weight of our country’s health problems on its shoulders, which is why I am delighted to support the Government’s ongoing commitment to it.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

The hon. Member referred to the NHS being free at the point of delivery, but NHS dentistry is on its knees. In my constituency, Rachel Elizabeth has been waiting over two years to see a dentist. It is the same in Runcorn, Frodsham and so forth. There is a similar situation in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), in Ellesmere Port and right across the country. Does the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) agree that NHS dentistry is in crisis?

[Matt Vickers]

I have shared concerns about NHS dentistry from my own part of the world, and I am fairly confident that the Minister will fill us in and give a more extensive response.

The NHS carries the weight of our country’s health problems on its shoulders, which is why I am delighted to support the Government’s ongoing commitment to it. The biggest cash boost in the history of the NHS is allowing us to put thousands more doctors and nurses into our hospitals, coupled with major capital investment programmes that have already benefited my local hospitals. I know that the Minister is only too aware of my ongoing campaign to secure more sizeable improvements at the University Hospital of North Tees. That said, I know from my constituency that there remain huge challenges for the NHS and its role in improving the health of the nation.

In 2018, Stockton was labelled England’s “most unequal town” by the BBC. It is a town where people born in one area can be expected to live 18 years fewer than those living just a few miles up the road. Such health inequalities are not acceptable in modern Britain. The NHS rightly looks to prevention as well as cures, and furthering this cause requires not just more resources and improved efficiency, but joined-up co-operation with other agencies, which lies at the heart of the reform agenda.

Putting my experiences and observations aside, the lead petitioner, Mr Hynes, and those from Unite wanted to let me know that they are fundamentally opposed to the Health and Care Bill. As part of their reasoning, petitioners cited concerns about the staffing crisis, overwhelmed human resource departments and the backlog as core reasons for their belief that the Bill should not be brought on to our statute book. Petitioners shared their concerns about staff shortages and worker fatigue in an NHS that already stretches itself to meet the needs of the UK’s ageing population and the exponential growth in the public’s health needs. They talked of how the pandemic has compounded this problem.

Moreover, the pandemic paused elective surgery, leaving the NHS to deal with backlogs and extended waiting lists. The view of the petitioners was that the NHS should be given time to stabilise and respond to those challenges before taking on the challenges of reform. On a more institutional level, Unite said that it fears that this Bill would open the NHS up to deregulation, worsening staff shortages, and create a pay-for-use system akin to America’s.

The petition states that

“The Government has no democratic mandate to privatise the NHS”.

I agree: the Government have no democratic mandate to privatise the NHS, which is why they are doing no such thing. Access to NHS services will continue to be based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having secured this debate. I put to him—this is perhaps a challenge to the Minister and the Government—that we need to be careful with the NHS as it is today. We all love the NHS—we love the workers and we love what it does—but if we are not careful, it could come to a point where if a person does not have the money, they cannot pay for their care. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if that were to happen, the whole principle of the NHS would be knocked on the head?

[Matt Vickers]

This is a debate that we have in every election campaign, and other than the issues around dentistry, which I am sure we will come to, the NHS remains free at the point of use. I will fight the corner to keep it that way, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will do so as well.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I think everybody in this room would agree with the principle that the NHS was founded on—care that is free at the point of use—but the NHS has had many structural forms since its inception immediately after the second world war. My concern is that its current form and the proposals that the Government are bringing forward further centralise the NHS, and waste further money on bureaucracy, mimicking the private sector and creating an artificial market. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is a waste of money, and that the NHS should be decentralised in order to provide better services to local communities?

[Matt Vickers]

I am sure we are going to hear about the ways in which these structural reforms will take place with that very aim in mind. I am going to try to get through my speech, because I am sure that Members would prefer for everybody to get in and to hear from the Minister, who is wiser on this issue than I am.

In my view, the Health and Care Bill does not represent an attempt to create a “pay for play” system—quite the opposite. While I am sure the Minister will go into detail about this point in his response, my understanding is that the Bill is largely the work of the NHS itself, inspired by NHS England’s own desire to restructure its organisational system to be more efficient and effective. It builds on the NHS’s own long-term plan, as set out in 2019, and the NHS people plan, which was published in 2020. Many of my conversations with leaders from my local NHS trust suggest that the answers to improving health outcomes require multi-agency working and empowerment of local health agencies, and my understanding is that the reforms and structural changes in the Bill set out to do exactly that.

One point on which I strongly agree with the petitioners is the need to drive value for money within our NHS, reducing management costs and excessive use of consultants, so that the huge increases in funding for the NHS can actually reach the frontline, not just fund more fruitless layers of bureaucracy. I am hopeful that the Minister will update us on what is being done to drive efficiency in that regard. Another point that I fundamentally agree with is the petitioners’ view that private finance initiative contracts have no place in our NHS. I know all too well the debilitating effect they have on the ability of the NHS to administer care across our country. Nationally, PFI contracts cost our NHS £1 billion a year and restrict numerous hospitals across the breadth of Great Britain.

I have seen at first hand how PFIs have damaged our local services in the Tees Valley. South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, in particular, has been plagued by a dodgy new Labour PFI contract. The James Cook University Hospital was completed in 2003, but its PFI contract does not run out until 2034, and will cost over £1.5 billion. The trust currently has to meet annual payments of £57 million a year—more than £1 million every week. Of course, hospital upgrades and rebuilds are expensive, but that trust is paying £17.5 million over and above what an equivalent Treasury-funded hospital would cost annually. Shockingly, that is enough to pay for more than 530 nurses. It is ludicrous.

Even if there were not an extra 530 nurses at South Tees, there is so much the hospital could do with this money, such as investing in its building, equipment and staff to help improve health outcomes and inequalities. Excessive costs from historic PFI contracts are listed as the largest single contributory factor to the hospital’s troublesome financial position. At time when retention is a huge issue for our NHS, this money would be crucial to making a substantial difference to the working lives of our NHS heroes. I am glad that in 2018 a Conservative Government decided that PFI contracts would be phased out. However, hospitals up and down the country are now stuck dealing with a Labour legacy that has damaged our NHS, our people and our ability to tackle health inequalities across this country.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Matt Vickers]

I will carry on; I am sure that there will be a chance for the hon. Member to contribute. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate and to listening to the input of Members from across the House.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Members will see from a glance around the room how many people intend to speak. I do not intend to impose a formal limit, which seems to sacrifice quality in favour of quantity, but I do suggest that, as a courtesy to one another, speeches are limited to around three minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

I thank the 135,000 petitioners for triggering this important debate on our most essential and treasured service. I thank Members for their valuable, emotional and passionate contributions, and I thank the Minister for what was a comprehensive response. The NHS is a great British institution, and we should be proud of it. From Borough to Burnley, our NHS staff are rightly celebrated as heroes. Their dedication got us through the pandemic and will help us reach the 6 million people on our waiting lists. We owe them a gratitude that cannot be expressed in words.

Dentistry remains an issue for constituents across the UK, and I look forward to the debate on NHS dentistry, which I understand is to take place in the near future. I am delighted that the NHS has the biggest cash boost in its history, and I am delighted to see thousands more doctors and nurses working in our amazing hospitals. I look forward to more debates on the NHS, so that we can continue to appreciate, extend and improve our great British NHS.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 598732, relating to the future of the NHS.