Philippa Whitford
Main Page: Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party - Central Ayrshire)Department Debates - View all Philippa Whitford's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
NHS Spending
Philippa Whitford Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hunt
The point that many of us made in the referendum campaign is that even the net figure—the more like £100 million net contribution that we make to the EU—is not a figure that we can bank on with any certainty because, even if it did materialise after an exit from the EU, it would be negated by the very smallest of contractions in the economy, which would itself reduce the tax base and the amount of public spending available. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that that £100 million a week would be negated by a contraction in the economy as small as 0.6%. I do not think any of the economic forecasts said that the contraction would be as small as that; all of them said that it would be much bigger than that.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
God, the pressure.
We recognise that this figure of £350 million a week chimed with people in the country, because people are concerned about the funding of the NHS. The Secretary of State for Health talks about an extra £8 billion going forward, plus the additional £2 billion that was added to that, which was for bailing out massive debts. However, that is a change of description. Normally, funding is described as being for the Department of Health, but that is just NHS England. Public Health England and Health Education England were facing cuts of £3.5 billion. Therefore, the extra money going forward is only £4.5 billion. We have heard Members talk about their local trusts being in deficit. This is now so widespread, it cannot be blamed on management.
Despite the fact that the NHS somehow always managed to come out just in the black up to April 2013 and has been careering into the red ever since, the Secretary of State never seems to accept that this is to do with the Health and Social Care Act 2012 changes and the huge administration costs of outsourcing and fragmentation. The Secretary of State lays the blame for all this with agency staff.
Given the debate that we have just had on EU nationals working in this country, particularly in our public services, I have to say that we could be facing an absolute meltdown. We have 50,000 nurses and doctors from the EU in the NHS, and almost 80,000 careworkers. The Minister for Immigration hinted that those who have been here for over five years can stay, but that their benefits and rights may not be quite the same. So my husband, who is from Germany, can stay, but is his pension going to disappear? He has worked here for 30 years, but what protections will he no longer have? What about the people who have been here for less than five years—the high-flying researchers, academics or medics —who could go somewhere else? Do the Government really think that these people are just going to sit at home with their families until the last possible minute? No, we are going to lose them, and agency costs for nurses and doctors will go through the roof. For social careworkers, it will not matter: they do not earn over £35,000, so they are unlikely to get to stay, and we are unlikely to be able to replace to them.
As well as the fact that the £8 billion we always hear about is not actually £8 billion, we know that local government has faced huge cuts and, as was referred to earlier, that social care is where the real problem lies. The NHS money is just going to haemorrhage out the back door.
The £350 million a week figure that was painted on that bus was a disgrace. The shadow Health Secretary, the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), talked about it being an Eton game, but I think that it was an Eton mess. People were just playing with the facts. The rebate was not included. Public service payments, such as the common agricultural policy and regional funds, were not included. However, as the Secretary of State says, when we get down to the £110 million or so a week, that does not include all the other benefits that support the NHS and our economy. How much will it cost us to take part in Horizon 2020? How much does Switzerland have to pay to be part of this?
This is going to cost a lot of money. The Secretary of State said that it would take a 0.06% fall in GDP to negate the £100 million, but economists estimate that the fall will be between 1% and 3%. We do not want that to happen, but all the experts agreed that that was the likely outcome.
Like most people in Scotland, I absolutely believed in the remain campaign, but to me there was a poverty to the debate. Why are we having these two debates today instead of before 23 June? We had very little open discussion of the issues in this place. One of the problems is that we have never talked about anything good that we have got from the EU in the past 40 years. Of course, I have been lucky—I got my other half from the EU—but, to be honest, most of us have had many gains. We have cleaner air and cleaner water, and we have tackled acid rain. We have cleaner beaches. We have a single European medicines agency, so new drugs get to patients quicker. That agency is located here in London, but it is unlikely to remain here.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I always listen very carefully to what the hon. Lady says, but is she not being a little unfair on the United Kingdom? I seem to remember that the Clean Air Act 1956 set the bar for the European Union in the regulation of one of the areas that she has identified—namely, the cleanliness of the air that we breathe.
Dr Whitford
I was not on the planet in 1956, so I do not quite remember. We know from the recent cheating that there is a lot more work to be done on the control of car emissions, which cause a lot of ill health, but some of the progress in that area has come from EU regulation. Problems such as poor air quality and climate change cannot be dealt with by one country alone; we need to work together. In a health sense, we have had massive gains in the past 40 years, but politicians have never talked about that.
The EU has been a great whipping boy. All that the public have heard about the EU in the last 40 years is, “It wasnae my fault; the EU made me do it,” or stories about straight bananas. That is the responsibility of everyone who has had access to a microphone or spoken in this place about the EU. We should not be surprised that when people had the £350 million figure drummed into them by it being on that bus and on the news every night, they would fall for it. The mainstream media have a lot to answer for in not challenging these figures and not asking, “Exactly what is your plan? Exactly where is that money going to come from?” We should not blame people who want extra money for the NHS for wishfully accepting those claims, even when the cracks appeared around the edges.
Part of the problem has been the quality of the debate. Several of my colleagues warned people who believed in remain not just to go for a “Project Fear” type campaign, and I think that running such a campaign was a mistake. People think that “Project Fear” worked in Scotland, but in actual fact Better Together support started, as a percentage, in the mid-60s and fell to 55%. We started at 27%, and we ended up at 45%. “Project Armageddon” clawed back a little bit in the last two weeks, when we were told that the supermarkets would go and the banks would go, and that we would have no money and no food to buy, but a negative campaign of saying that the sky will fall does not lead to success.
Dr Whitford
I thank my hon. Friend for that remark. If we had spent more time reminding people honestly of what the EU has brought us, which includes all the people who have been working in our health and social care services, we might have helped them to realise that we have been gainers, not losers.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is absolutely right in the case that she is setting out. Is not part of the reason why people voted the way they did because they actually wanted to give additional money and resources to an NHS and social care system that has been badly starved of cash? That is particularly true of social care. People have seen their elderly relatives being unable to get the help, the aids and the adaptations that they need in the home, which piles pressure on to the NHS. They wanted the NHS to have that cash.
Dr Whitford
I totally agree. Of course, we all want the NHS to have more money. It is the United Kingdom’s single most prized possession and creation. The problem is that we did not counter the argument that it was struggling because people from the EU were taking up the appointments and the beds. EU nationals are much more likely to be looking after us than to be standing in front of us in the queue. There is an absolute responsibility on us all, particularly on the missing members of the leave campaign. This is very much a case of a big boy doing it and running away—very, very quickly.
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)
As somebody who was in the leave campaign, I think it is important that we remember that we worked across parties on it, whichever side we were on. In Yorkshire, I worked with colleagues from the Green party, the Labour party and UKIP, although I did not work with the SNP, obviously. It is the responsibility of both camps. I have seen “Project Fear” in both camps.
We need to move on from this now. It is pure economics. If we are pulling out of the EU, as the public have voted to do and as I am personally happy that we are doing, we must make sure that we start talking Britain up; otherwise we will talk ourselves into a recession. Members on both sides of the House need to pull together and talk Britain up. At the end of the day, both sides could have handled this better.
Dr Whitford
I totally agree. It is just that the paucity of the debate has allowed such an inaccurate figure to endure.
We are where we are. Going forward, we need to look at the realities and what the economy will allow. But there are challenges. I ask the Secretary of State to speak to his colleague in the Home Office and try to deal with the issue of EU nationals working in the NHS. The cost of replacing them with agency staff will be absolutely crippling.