Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Paul Bristow Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, I rise to support the Bill and to argue that the money raised by this levy be spent well. I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) on his chairmanship of the Committee, in which we are conducting those lessons-learnt inquiries to ensure that our money is spent well. I want to mention three areas; if we focused on them, we could ensure that this money is spent well and get the desired outcomes.

The first is capacity in the acute sector. It is clear that the NHS needs to strike a long-term deal with the independent sector to try to power through the backlog of elective procedures. We are talking about hips and knees, hernias and cataract operations. I read and hear reports, with alarm, that the independent sector capacity that the NHS has bought is being underused—or, if it is not being underused yet, there is a fear that it may well be—because of ideological reasons that the independent sector should not be used and we should be funnelling all these procedures into the NHS. If we do not use the independent sector, we will not have the desired outcomes. We cannot let ideology dictate, as this will ensure that people are left in pain for longer and do not have the right quality of life. We need to ensure that the independent sector is used to its full capacity, so that we can get through this elective backlog.

Similarly, we need to ensure that initiatives such as “Getting It Right First Time”, or GIRFT, are used properly. The NHS has spent money, resources and experts’ time on understanding which procedures work at high volume and low risk. We should use the lessons learnt from GIRFT to deal with the elective backlog. Let us not reinvent the wheel, but let us ensure that we do learn those lessons. Ultimately, these are usually minimally invasive techniques and technologies for procedures that can be done as day surgery, and this will ensure that we power through the backlog and get the elective procedure waiting list under control.

The second issue that the Health and Social Care Committee has heard about is the importance of the diagnostic sector. In the past, I think the NHS has been guilty of focusing on the treatment of conditions, rather than on prevention. If we get the early diagnosis correct and invest in diagnostics technology, we can find out who is at risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease and other long-term conditions before they present at an acute level. It is really important that we invest in that sort of technology, so that we can save money in the long term.

Finally, let me turn to innovation in our NHS in general. I have worked in health politics, if you like, for 20 years. As I said last week, there is a cultural aversion to the private sector, technology and innovation in our NHS. That aversion may be at the margins, but it is at least having an impact, and it needs to be dealt with straight away. If we do not adopt innovation—new technologies, pathways and ways of doing things—we are not going to ensure that this money is spent well.

I would challenge that something that should come out of the health service reforms that we are looking to introduce is the appointment of an innovation officer, or someone who is responsible for innovation in every NHS trust. Let us make it their job. I welcome the fact that we are at last beginning to ensure that the NHS will have a degree of accountability again, and that politicians will have the ability to challenge NHS trust managers to ensure that this money is spent well. One way to do that is by having an innovation officer who is responsible for reform and innovation, ensuring that new pathways are adopted and this money is spent well. If we do not, we could be here again in three or four years’ time, and the money that we want to transfer to social care in due course could have been gobbled up by the NHS, which my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey said was a real risk.

As far as I am concerned, those are the three real challenges: acute capacity; investment in diagnostic capability; and ensuring that innovation is properly recognised in our NHS.