NHS Efficiency

Debate between Paul Bristow and Gary Streeter

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with current Government and House of Commons Commission guidance.

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered NHS efficiency.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Our NHS is in my DNA. Both of my parents were nurses and worked in the NHS for most of their working lives. It was the NHS that brought my family to Peterborough when I was just five years old, and I have worked in NHS policy for 20 years. My commitment to our NHS and its principles is clear. Few things inspire as much national pride as our national health service, and I want to keep it that way.

The NHS has lost its ranking as the best healthcare system in a study of 11 rich countries by an influential US think tank. Most worryingly of all, it fell to ninth when it came to healthcare outcomes. We must do something about this. We must ensure that the record investment that we are putting into our NHS is spent well. I suggest that that money should come with some very specific key performance indicators that would ensure that it is not wasted.

I feel strongly that the money should be in the gift of Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care, who are accountable to Parliament, rather than NHS England or NHS Improvement. Like the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities would do with a local authority that does not run a balanced budget or provide statutory services, the Department of Health and Social Care should be able to intervene directly, or at least provide incentives. Recipients would not get their share of the extra cash unless they addressed the challenge of access to care and improved outcomes.

I am keen to help Ministers. I almost feel thwarted, because progress on many of the things that I spoke about at the party conference last month have started to be reflected in Government announcements. That is obviously a good thing, but extra money must come with strengthened incentives to do the right thing and, quite honestly, consequences for not doing the right thing.

The first area in which we need to make progress is local NHS management. Local government has had to make a series of savings in recent years. Armies of local government managers all doing the same jobs in neighbouring local authorities have been an easy target for those defending the interests of taxpayers. However, local authorities have done rather a good job of sharing senior officers. For instance, the chief executive of Peterborough City Council is also the chief executive of Cambridgeshire County Council. As a former Hammersmith and Fulham councillor, I also remember the 2011 tri-borough shared services agreement in west London, between Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham, which saved over £33 million in just four years. Labour-controlled Hammersmith and Fulham petulantly took their toys home a couple of years later, but the bi-borough arrangement is still saving the taxpayer millions, and this practice is replicated across the country.

That practice is unheard of in our NHS, but why is that? There are no reasons why NHS trusts and new integrated care systems cannot share officers and back-office functions. Let us do away with every NHS trust having its own specific CEO, finance director, human resources director, estates director or diversity director. It is not controversial to ask our NHS to learn from local government. If certain localities cannot make those management savings, are unwilling to share back-office functions, cannot look to make savings, why would we give them the extra cash? I suggest a KPI on a reduction in management costs and back-office costs. I think it would be warmly welcomed by the taxpayer and those in our NHS who know that money is wasted.