NHS (Contracts and Conditions)

Paul Flynn Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

I will speak briefly, because unfortunately I cannot stay until the end of the debate. First, I thank those who signed the petition. It is a genuine vox pop, not something that any party brought to the House. A large number of people signed the petition because there was genuinely an explosion of anger. It is absolutely right that we listen to those voices and ensure that they are heard in the House, and that this debate should take place. It is the first debate of its kind—the first debate from the Petitions Committee. There is another one in a fortnight’s time, on a subject that terrifies MPs. We hide our heads under the pillow to avoid talking about it, but the public are very happy to talk about it in great numbers. That subject is the idea of legalising cannabis so that people here can enjoy the benefits enjoyed in many other countries that do not have a neurotic policy that is self-defeating and actually increases cannabis harm. But that is the second debate, which is coming up. This is a great innovation by the House.

The two previous speakers in this debate made very illuminating speeches. I agree with almost every word that has been said. Of course, we genuflect before the expertise and good sense of the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). She is someone else who has come to the House as a candidate elected not so much by a party as by a popular vote. Let us hope that politics is changing.

The issue that I worry about greatly is how we behave as political parties. We seem to be indifferent to, or unconscious of, the effect of our words. The use of soundbites, scares and fearmongering is extremely damaging, and it happens so often with the health service. The Daily Mail, about a year ago, had three page 1 headlines all about the health service in Wales. There was no way in which news values, or the problems that arose, which were hugely exaggerated, justified those headlines, but they were there for a political purpose: to denigrate the health service in Wales, under Labour, and to boost the chances of the Conservative party getting votes in the election.

I believe that there is an element of that in this case. Many speeches by the Secretary of State contain valuable, intelligent thoughts about how to improve the health service. If there is some statistical blip that shows there is a problem somewhere—something that is unexpected— of course it should be followed up, but not by an hysterical headline that has one effect, which is to add greatly to the anxiety of patients who are about to go into hospital. As the hon. Lady said, that is a terrifying experience, and people suffer greatly from anxiety beforehand. If they are told that there is a 16% greater chance of dying at the weekend, that anxiety and fear is greatly multiplied.

The Government should not be out to win favour and get votes in—to win popularity—by the sensationalist way in which they introduce this subject. It has rebounded on them with this petition and the reaction from those involved. It is right that we in this House should be aware of what is written in tweets and blogs. The reaction was there, and it is right that this should be brought to the House. One doctor put his payslip online. Karan Kapoor posted a letter alongside the payslip on Facebook, and it has now received hundreds of comments of support and thousands of shares on the social network. He wrote:

“My on calls per month add approximately 120 hours of work in addition to my normal working week. This is made up of being on call one day per week and one weekend in 5—5pm on Friday to 8am on Monday. Simple maths says that works out as £2.61 per hour—significantly less than the minimum wage let alone the living wage.”

The evidence was there—and came out in great abundance—of anger at what the Secretary of State was saying, and the misguided and inaccurate picture that he was giving of life in the health service at weekends.

Another tabloid story suggested that we MPs get privileged treatment when we go to hospital. I was rather astonished by that, so I searched the story to find out which hospital gives us privileged treatment, and I discovered that it is St Thomas’s. Well, the only hospital that I have ever been in during the 80 years of my life is St Thomas’s, and I went there as an MP and there was certainly no privileged treatment. I was, quite rightly, treated the same as anyone else. I was stuck in a cubicle and waited there for hours and then stayed overnight in a ward, and rightly so. But the press will believe only negative stories about MPs. That goes on.

I would like to ask the Minister this. A long time ago there was, I recall, another gimmick that a Health Secretary used: he force-fed a beefburger to his young child, when we were all terrified of catching Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from eating beef. That seemed a very unwise thing to do. It is not new for people to use fearmongering and gimmicks to advance political causes. The one question is a simple one. If we are to increase the services at weekends, where will the staff come from? Are we suddenly going to magic up special weekend surgeons? If we improve the service at weekends, we have to reduce the service in the week. Perhaps the Minister can explain that to us.