NHS Backlog

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I had expected to tell the House that I had come straight to Parliament from my operating theatre in Norfolk, where I had been dealing with ear, nose and throat surgery backlogs this morning, but late last night I received a call telling me that my operating list was cancelled because there are no beds in the day unit that was purpose-built to avoid that issue, and which opened only a few years ago. Every surgeon in the country will be familiar with that situation, and in every hospital, surgical teams are sitting idle waiting for beds. It is like a fog-bound airport where nothing can take off.

There are enormous backlogs across almost all of surgery, especially in gynaecology and orthopaedics. We are short of theatres, short of anaesthetists and short of scanners. Our patients are suffering and deteriorating in front of our eyes. Some of them are dying. We are short of all manner of specialists, including crucial diagnostic radiologists and pathologists. Delays in diagnostic imaging and reporting are very problematic—there are more than 1.5 million people on the waiting list to receive a diagnosis—but the Labour Government will deal with the massive NHS backlogs because we did it before. Between’97 and 2010, we abolished the waiting list, but in the period from 2010 to 2023, waiting lists reached record levels. Now we see access to GPs, dentistry and all routine surgery as the political emergencies that they are.

We all hear terrible accounts of the consequences of such delays from our constituents. We know of them first hand from our own families. My son, who is an A&E doctor, describes trollies of elderly, incontinent patients two abreast in corridors, and in car parks. He is unable to admit his patients, and that is right here in London. We know that we must rebuild our hospitals, and we will start with those that are actually falling down. My constituents were so pleased to hear both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor promise here in Parliament to replace West Suffolk hospital in Bury St Edmunds.

[Gregory Stafford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Prinsley]

May I carry on, as I have very little time?

I am glad that the Prime Minister has made general practice and care in the community a central part of his plan. General practice is the front door to the NHS. Patients who have a genuine connection with one or two GPs are less ill and live longer.

There is an illuminating article entitled “Closer to home” in this month’s Fabian Review by my Suffolk GP colleagues Drs Reed and Havard, who reimagine GP as a comprehensive community health service close to the patient, with multiprofessional teams of health workers and with mental health services and district nursing all in one place. Patients know who their doctors are and know that the community health centre is the place to go. Let us call them Bevan community health centres. We really can manage most clinical problems in the community, and investing in our brilliant GPs is truly the key to the crisis. Community hubs with diagnostic capabilities for larger populations would send to hospital only people who need to go to hospital.

We must do something about productivity. I started my career with four workers in the theatre operating on eight children, only to reach a situation today of operating on four children with eight workers. As we reform and rebuild our NHS, let us bring the 1.5 million staff members with us on this great journey, for it is on them that we and the NHS depend. The measures announced today will surely help, but only if we find enough staff and invest in training. Let us look after those who look after us, with fair pay, fair conditions and a great deal of respect. That must be our mission.

Health and Adult Social Care Reform

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The previous Labour Government delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history.

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

There are very worrying reports of cash-strapped universities reducing the numbers of clinical academics; indeed, some are being made redundant at a time when there is increased demand for doctors. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is an extremely concerning development?

[Wes Streeting]

Clinical academics have an important role to play in the national health service and in innovation in medicine. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education is focused on university finances, and I think universities should ensure that they prioritise efficiently and effectively, making best use of the resources available to them. I would gently say that universities have not struggled as much as other parts of the public sector over the past 14 years.

Dental Healthcare: East Anglia

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am shocked to hear that. An example of that in my constituency was reported to me, but that was in the height of the covid lockdowns; I have not heard an example since then. However, irrespective of the headline-grabbing anecdote, it is almost impossible for new applicants to register to an NHS dentist, and I have the figures to back that up. Office for National Statistics data for November indicates that 98.4% of those who were not registered to a dentist but who wanted to access NHS dental care in the east of England were unable to do so. That is the worst rate of all English regions, yet over that period there was a £58 million underspend in the east of England’s NHS dental budget. That is not because the Government do not want to spend the money, and it is not because the money is not available; it is simply because we do not have enough dentists to satisfy the huge need.

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

Does the hon. Member agree that the absolute early priority must be to sort out emergency dentistry? Everybody must be able to contact an NHS emergency dentist for terrible toothache or dental emergencies, and that will prevent so many children from being admitted to hospital for their abscesses to be drained, which I have had to do as an ear, nose and throat surgeon.

[Jerome Mayhew]

My answer is yes and no. Over the past 18 months to two years in Norfolk and Waveney, a lot of money has been spent on increasing access to emergency dentistry. Although I welcomed that and it has helped to deal with some acute issues, there is a much more fundamental problem. We must fix the system rather than decide on the least worst form of emergency care once the problem has become acute.

The big question is why the east of England is in this position. The wrong analysis of how we got here will lead to our imposing the wrong solution. Some people say, “Well, it’s because Norfolk is a remote, rural area with lots of coastline, and that brings problems. If you’re a newly qualified dentist, it’s probably a rather unfashionable place to go to make your new career if you’re not from that neck of the woods. It has a more elderly demographic, which may put off young dentists. It’s not where they want to go to set up their new home.”

Yet compare Norfolk with similar counties, such as Devon. I often use Devon as an example because it shares many characteristics with Norfolk: a slightly older population, a large rural coastline and a pretty similar population size. Look at the number of dentists in Devon: they have 49.6 per 100,000 people, which is far more than we have in the east of England. What is the difference? The answer is obvious. Since 2005, Devon has had a dental training school at Plymouth, which was the last one to be set up. The east of England made a bid for that contract and lost out to the Peninsula bid, and we can see the consequences of that in the teeth of Norfolk residents.

If someone wants to train as a dentist in Norfolk, Suffolk or elsewhere in East Anglia, the nearest place they can go to train is either Birmingham or London. That means that our home-grown talent has to go off somewhere else, several hours away, to train and qualify. The usual things happen: they develop their professional relationships in that region; they meet someone, fall in love and settle down; they put down roots in the community and they stay there and do not come back. The exact opposite is the case for people not from our region who qualify elsewhere. What is the incentive for them to come and set up home in a part of the world that they do not know and that is perhaps not attractive to newly qualified people in their mid-20s?

We also know that about 40% of graduates tend to stay where they train. We have that data from the University of East Anglia and its medical school, because each year it surveys graduates to see where they get their first job and each year about 40% of them take a job locally. This is the really important question for the Minister: do he and his Department accept that analysis? If they do not accept it, what is his explanation for the dearth of NHS dentists and even private dentists in East Anglia?

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The right hon. Member is right to make that distinction. As a stop-smoking tool, vaping has a part to play. For smokers, vaping is a better alternative—a route away from smoking. We do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What we are interested in tackling is the scourge of youth vaping and the extent to which young people have been cynically addicted. It is important to say that we do not yet know the full extent of the harms caused by vaping, but we do know two things: first, it is better to vape than to smoke—that is why we are striking the balance in this legislation—and secondly, vapes are harmful. Ask any teacher in the country; they will talk about the signs of nicotine addiction that they see in their pupils, and about having to monitor school toilets to stop children congregating to vape. It is urgent and necessary to act today to protect this generation of kids from a new addiction, and that is exactly what we will do.

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

As an ear, nose and throat surgeon, I can attest to the absolutely desperate trouble that cigarettes have caused over many generations. Implementing this measure is one of the best things that this Parliament could possibly do, and I expect that the measure will be widely supported all over the House. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for introducing it.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, not least because of the expertise that he brings to the House as a clinician. We are well served by his expertise in debates on the health of the nation.

Opposite me sit many opponents of the Bill and of the Government’s prevention agenda. I acknowledge that their opposition is based on genuine, sincere beliefs about the limits of government and the size of the state, but I appeal to them by saying that the Bill is in the national interest and, ironically, in their ideological interest.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Will the Secretary of State explain what plans he has—if any—to limit the scope of practice of anaesthetic associates and physician associates, about whom there has been such publicity lately?

[Wes Streeting]

Indeed there has. Medical associate roles can and do play a valuable role in freeing up other clinicians’ time to do the things that only they can do, but there are legitimate concerns within the professions about scope of practice, doctor substitution and transparency for patients. We need to grip that and address it. We will have a further announcement to make about that shortly.

National Insurance Contributions: Healthcare

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point. As I have said, we will continue our conversations with all affected providers in the normal way.

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

Does the Minister agree that the support that we will put in place for general practice and, in particular, the community health hubs that were recently announced, will be crucial to the improvement in the health service that we urgently need?

[Karin Smyth]

I respect my hon. Friend’s expertise and service to the national health service. He will understand the need to make the shift into neighbourhood health services. We have been clear that we will ensure the NHS spends all its allocations in the most effective way to enable that shift, as part of our 10-year plan.

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.

Access to Primary Healthcare

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

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

First, I must declare, as the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), reminded me last week, that I am a surgeon. I have, therefore, an interest in this matter, but so do we all. The last Government should be truly ashamed of themselves. I see but one remaining Member—a colleague of mine—sitting on the Conservative Benches. General practice has been badly neglected. The public could see that. Surely the Government must have known it. Certainly patients could see it, given their scramble on the phone at 8 o’clock, hoping not to be at the end of the queue for one of the very few appointments with one of the very few doctors.

During my career, I have seen the number of hospital doctors and consultants increase many times, but we have seen very little increase in GP numbers, and now we live with the consequences: too many exhausted GPs, many leaving the profession altogether or retiring much too soon, and now the spectre of a two-tier GP system, as private GP services expand rapidly all over the place. We can, and will, do better than this. We already are doing better, with plans to recruit many qualified GPs without jobs into practices without doctors.

Today, we must look after our GPs as never before. We will move much of our care out of our hospitals and into the community, but it is on GPs that we will depend to achieve that. GP services will expand to provide community investigations, facilities, specialist and surgical services, and much more, as we rightly adopt the new Government’s agenda of moving care out of hospitals. We must ensure that GPs have the very best IT and technology. We must connect the GP IT with the hospital IT, so that I can see the same record as the GP; the nonsense of typed letters and fax machines should end completely.

I am, however, optimistic. Scientific advances continue to astonish us. We know what we have to do, and we have the determination to do it. Doctors and patients will support this. Let us get to work. General practice is the best of the NHS, and we must support it.

NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Evans]

rose—

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

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will give way to the doctor behind me, and then I will give way again.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend, who brings his clinical experience and expertise to this debate. I say frankly to the Secretary of State that I wish he had taken the approach of the Defence Secretary, who has set up a cross-party commission on defence spending. Indeed, he has invited my former colleagues to sit on that review, because he understands that we bring an enormous amount of knowledge, experience, and—dare I say it?—some hard knocks from working in those massively complex Departments.

The right hon. Gentleman knows me. We have done good-humoured battle over the Dispatch Boxes for a long time now, and had he come to me and asked me to help him, I genuinely would have. [Interruption.] The public are hearing this. They want politicians to cut all the flim-flam and the bluster and work together, and had the right hon. Gentleman been serious about the Darzi report, he would have done exactly as his colleague around the Cabinet table has done and conducted a cross-party review of the NHS to ensure that we can make real progress. It is interesting that the Health Secretary does not appear to agree with the approach that his Cabinet colleague has taken.

[Peter Prinsley]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will listen to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] I am very generous with interventions, and I know that he brings expertise and experience to the House as well.

[Peter Prinsley]

I am grateful that you have given way, and thank you for that. I have been sitting listening to you—[Hon. Members: “Shadow Secretary of State.”] I am sorry, I am getting the hang of this. To be honest, I am struggling to recognise what the right hon. Lady is talking about. The state of the health service is a disgrace; the Opposition, who I believe were the Government until quite recently, have totally messed the situation up over a period of 14 years. What Lord Darzi has had to say is a pretty accurate diagnosis of the situation we are in, so it is quite surprising to listen to the shadow Secretary of State talk as if everything was perfect over the last 14 years. That is simply not the case.

[Victoria Atkins]

I will help the hon. Gentleman, because I appreciate that he is new to this place. If he had been listening carefully to me, he would have heard that I am and have always been—in fairness, I hope the Health Secretary would acknowledge this as well—very open about the fact that the NHS needs reform. In fact, I said as Secretary of State that I wanted to reform our NHS to make it faster, simpler and fairer.

By the way, I speak with personal experience. I know there are some Members on the Back Benches who are new to this place and perhaps have not quite moved on from the natural competitiveness of a general election campaign, but I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of three. I have seen the very best of the NHS, but I have also seen some of its darkest corners. The NHS is genuinely one of the reasons why I came into politics, and one of the most damaging things about political discourse and the healthcare system in this country is when people seek to attribute to others a lack of care or commitment to our healthcare system, just because we have different ways of tackling these challenges and different solutions.

This is why—I will say this again, because I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman is listening—I will work constructively with him to improve the health service, but we have to do this on the facts. Some of the suggestions he made in the debate today and in his discourse during the general election campaign and so on are not accurate, and this is where I will pull him up. For example, he has not mentioned the introduction of Pharmacy First or the 160 community diagnostic centres. Just to help him, those were backed by the largest central cash investment in MRI and CT scanning capacity in the history of the NHS. Those, as well as the new surgical hubs that we introduced, are not only putting healthcare into the community but, critically, helping to improve the numbers of chest checks and scans going through the system, which means speedier diagnosis.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Fixing the NHS is our great task and our solemn promise, for there is much to fix after 14 years of managed chaos and decline under the neglectful eyes of our mostly absent predecessors. The candid assessment of the state of the NHS from Lord Darzi is truly alarming, and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, it presents an accurate diagnosis of our difficulties. The report makes clear many of the problems of resources, management and structure, but today I would like to speak up for medical research, of which this country has such a proud record.

We all know of the catastrophic potential of infection, witnessed so very recently during the covid pandemic. Indeed, like many of us new Members, I too caught covid right here in this House in the crush to hear the King’s Speech. I do hope that hon. Members of a certain age, such as myself, will remember to get vaccinated. However, let us remember Jenner, who devised vaccination, Lister, who pioneered antisepsis, and Fleming, who discovered penicillin. These British scientists leading the fight against infection were probably responsible for saving more lives than any other people in the long history of medicine.

Last week, we learned of the first successful trials from Oxford of vaccines for ovarian cancer, and we will see many amazing advances in the year to come. Today, we can be excited about molecular genetics, artificial intelligence and the huge power of our people’s NHS data to unravel so many of the mysteries of modern medicine. I know that our Government will develop bold plans to repair the embattled NHS, but on this day I urge our brilliant new Government to pledge to do their utmost to support vital NHS medical research, which carries such promise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Thank you so much, but you must not continue speaking when I am standing. I call the shadow Minister.

NHS: Independent Investigation

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

How refreshing to have constructive opposition in the Chamber. It was clear throughout the election campaign that my party and the Liberal Democrats have much in common, both in the commitments we made, which in some cases were identical, and in our shared areas of emphasis: the link between health and wealth, the importance of prevention and the importance of social care.

As the Prime Minister reiterated again this morning, we are absolutely determined to address both the short-term crisis and the long-term needs of the century in our social care system. We want to work on a cross-party basis wherever possible, so I would be delighted to meet the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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

Hundreds of thousands of operations, including dozens of my own lists, were cancelled because of the strikes in the NHS over the past two years. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Conservatives’ refusal to negotiate with the doctors contributed to the terrible state of the health service, and that ending the strikes is the first step towards fixing the NHS?

[Wes Streeting]

It sticks in the craw to hear the carping and criticism from the Conservatives, and their obvious bitter resentment that we were able to do in three weeks what they failed to do in over a year. All the while they complain about the costs of solving the strikes, they say nothing about the costs they racked up—the direct financial costs of covering the strikes, as well as the untold costs of misery to patients whose operations, procedures and appointments were cancelled, even as the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and her Ministers had not even bothered to meet the junior doctors since March this year. The Conservatives have no grounds to complain.