Health

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I am delighted to be called tonight. As a by-election winner just 16 weeks ago, I felt the pressure of being 650th in the order of seniority, but, following the Newark by-election, I am now 649th.

This was my first Gracious Speech, and I am prompted to echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). I was born and raised in Manchester, 95 of whose 96 councillors are now Labour, while the 96th is Independent Labour. That reflects people’s serious concerns about health, the establishment of Healthier Together in Greater Manchester, and what has happened to Wythenshawe hospital’s accident and emergency services over the past few years.

I pay tribute to the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister for their kind words about Paul Goggins. He was an extraordinarily dedicated public servant, and the Prime Minister was very gracious in dedicating the legislation on child neglect to his memory. My constituents and I are grateful for that, and I know that Paul’s family will be as well.

It often occurs to me that the NHS will really be 90 years old next year. Aneurin Bevan’s father died in his arms, of pneumoconiosis, without the benefit of any health care provision. Bevan felt that the pain of one was the pain of millions, and he decided on that day that he would build the extraordinarily fantastic service that became the NHS, which he created years later in 1948.

I thought about why the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition partners did not want health to feature in this year’s Queen’s Speech in terms of electoral strategy, which was probably wrong. The key to any electoral strategy is not about two competing answers to the question, but about who gets to frame the question in the first place. The coalition partners want to ignore the health service because they know from Aneurin Bevan’s legacy, from the fact that we are leading in the polls, and from the way in which my right hon. Friend Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) pounds the Government on these issues day in, day out in every part of the country that it is ground that Lynton Crosby wants them to avoid.

The top-down reorganisation cost £3 billion, and what has it done for my constituency? The Government downgraded the A and E centre at Trafford general hospital, the first NHS hospital to be opened by Bevan in 1948. They shut the Wythenshawe walk-in centre, and there was then a crisis of pressure in Wythenshawe hospital’s A and E department. Fourteen weeks ago, I asked the Secretary of State to meet me to talk about that. I later sent him a personal note, but he has still not contacted me about such a meeting. His own MPs want to be involved in that meeting. MPs on all sides of the political divide want to sort that out. I am demanding that the Government meet local MPs to discuss the continuing pressures at the hospital. Those pressures are expounded day in, day out by surgery work.

Last year, my constituent Emma Latham lost her husband Steven, aged 43. They had to wait 40 minutes for an ambulance. In February this year, she experienced breathing difficulties. The call was categorised as a red 2, but she still had to wait 40 minutes for the ambulance service to arrive. Tony Gunning, another constituent of mine, who has liver and heart failure, waited over an hour for his ambulance and for dialysis. He is often bundled into a taxi home by Arriva, the private sector provider, when it can organise one for him. John Ireland, another constituent of mine, has a heart condition. He has been told it will be two weeks before he can see his local GP.

That is not good enough. The Government might not want this to be the agenda in the next 12 months but Labour Members will highlight every case, every hospital, every downgrade and every closure, and we will make the case clear to the British public next May. The NHS will last as long as there are folk to fight for it. We on the Labour Benches will fight for it.