Income Tax (Charge)

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I welcome the measures that the Chancellor has announced to support our NHS as we begin the enormous ask of repairing the damage caused by 14 years of neglect. I absolutely commend this imaginative and transformative Budget to the House. As the first ever Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and a consultant ear, nose and throat surgeon, I welcome the specific commitment to replace the RAAC-infested West Suffolk hospital. My ears certainly pricked up when I heard that.

We will see great investment too in medical research, and I welcome that. This country continues to be very proud of our amazing and historic contribution to discoveries and innovation, which are certainly the best way to ensure that we find cures for many mysterious afflictions. The Government have rightly emphasized the need for investment in the NHS to be accompanied by reform. With reform must come value for money.

I would like to bring a serious matter to attention of the House: an example of a reform which, while at first sight appears to be of benefit, is neither value for money nor the right thing to have done. I am sorry that so few of the previous team are here to listen. NHS eye surgery services are in difficulty, and I am informed that we are in danger of creating ophthalmic deserts, just like the dental deserts familiar to us in the east of England.

The last Government took their eye off the ball as cataract services were outsourced to private providers, taking with them the very same NHS surgeons and staff who were providing the service in the hospitals. The generous tariffs for the provision of cataract surgery means that private cataract clinics, often owned and run by the same surgeons, are springing up everywhere. The number of cataract operations has shot up, and a relatively minor cataract, which is a cause of correctable visual difficulties, can be operated on within a few weeks by a choice of private clinics, generating annual profits of well over £100 million. Meanwhile, NHS eye surgery departments which are treating serious causes of irreversible blindness such as glaucoma and macular degeneration are in trouble, with long waiting lists. They cannot recruit surgeons and are struggling to survive.

This is the next dentistry crisis. Just as in dentistry, a reform of the contracting system is now urgent, and I urge the Government to do that. It will save millions of pounds and preserve NHS eye surgery services. As my ophthalmic colleague informed me, we can treat dental problems with false teeth, but false eyes do not work very well.