Baby Loss and Safe Staffing in Maternity Care

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) on securing the debate, and on the candour and bravery with which she spoke from personal experience. I will use the limited time available to me to share the experience of my constituents, Hayley Storrs and Reece Watson, who wrote to me as follows:

“My name is Hayley Storrs & my partners name is Reece Watson. I’m 33 years old & live in Leeds. I work for NHS England as a Care Manager & my partner as an Electrical Engineer.

In October 2021, after a low risk pregnancy our first baby Ollie James Watson, passed away following a placenta abruption at 40 weeks & 5 days gestation. After suffering a haemorrhage at home, we were kept waiting at Calderdale Hospital in an understaffed Maternity Assessment unit, with bleeding & in active labour for over 1 hour before being seen by a midwife.

My son had already passed away inside my tummy & I wasn’t aware. Following his death & traumatic labour where I suffered a post partum haemorrhage, we received no bereavement support from the trust aside from a postcard on his 1st birthday.

The labour ward was short staffed when Ollie was born & I was left alone on numerous occasions with internal bleeding & no pain relief due to staff shortages. We have since learned that had a simple doppler scan been undertaken at any time during my pregnancy Ollie could have been saved. As a result of our experience, I suffered from PTSD, Birth Trauma, depression & severe anxiety, which still impact my day to day life.

Sands were an incredible support to me during the darkest days of my grief, when I wasn’t sure I would survive without Ollie. They provided information, comfort, support & a listening ear when I needed it the most. I attended a local support group which helped me connect with other women in similar situations to ours & made me feel less alone.

What people fail to understand when someone loses a child, it is that you have lost a lifetime. First days at school, first steps, graduations, what their favourite story would have been, birthdays, Christmases. Instead we walk out of a hospital with empty arms & into a world of grief & loss we are not equipped to navigate. My son deserved better than a memory box of scan photos, he deserved to live.

Please listen to us when we say that enough is enough, ask yourselves the question what will it take for change to happen? How many more babies like ours will die before something is done? How many more bereaved parents will it take to campaign for better, safer maternity care for you to take notice? How many more government enquiries will it take for someone to stand up & say ‘we see you, we hear you & we stand with you’?

In loving memory of Ollie James Watson, and all of the babies who never made it home. You will never be forgotten.”

Those are the words of Hayley Storrs, Ollie’s mum, from the constituency of Leeds East. I share them because to put on record Hayley’s and Rhys’s experience. Although I have not experienced baby loss myself, I think it is important that hon. Members who have personal experience share their experiences, that other Members share our constituents’ experiences, as I have done, and that we all come together on a cross-party basis really to address the issue.

This incredibly important debate has shown what can be done when we come together. I congratulate every Member who has spoken bravely about their personal experience, particularly the hon. Member for Hartlepool, who secured the debate and opened it in such an illuminating, informative and brave way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and some good suggestions. West Midlands ambulance service is my local ambulance service too, and I recently met its chief executive officer and chairwoman. As he knows, the NHS has published and is executing a 10-point plan for emergency service recovery, but I shall certainly take what he says into account.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

T5.   Increasingly, hospitals have food banks to help NHS staff to cope with the cost of living crisis. Is it any wonder that the number of nurses leaving the NHS is at its highest for years? After a decade of pay cuts, will not yet another below-inflation pay award mean that even more nurses leave, which will have a hugely detrimental impact on patient care?

[Sajid Javid]

I am pleased to say that we have more nurses working for the NHS than at any point in its history, and last year we recruited an additional 10,900.

Childhood Cancer Outcomes

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on securing the debate. I have been receiving emails during the debate from constituents who are delighted that this important subject is being discussed.

I want to pay tribute to a family in my constituency—to John and Hayley McGee and their incredible, inspirational daughter Elsa, who sadly passed away from childhood cancer. This is how they explained their journey:

“We sailed through the initial treatment and naively believed we were the fortunate ones. Elsa hated everything about chemotherapy, hair loss, lack of taste but most of all the lack of control. Her strong, sassy and sometimes aggressive attitude is what kept us all from falling. She was determined not to let this get her down. Our beautiful girl had no desire to be a girly girl but just to be accepted, hair or no hair. With a personality that always left a huge Elsa sized impression on the hearts she touched, she will be missed by many.”

When John and Hayley were asked what changes they would like to see, they said they would like:

“More involvement from the government with better funding for children’s cancer research. New, less aggressive treatments and most importantly, a cure.”

They also pointed out the fact that only 3% of cancer spend is going into researching childhood cancers.

Another constituent has been in touch with me as well. Natalie has talked to me about the experience of a child close to her, Jack, and she has three demands that she wants me to register in this debate. First, there is a need for biobanking all childhood tumours for genomic sequencing. Secondly, we need dedicated funding for childhood cancer research and treatments. Thirdly, she asked me to register a point that we have already heard today, namely that childhood cancer should be treated differently from adult cancer in diagnosis, in treatment pathways and in support services.

In the debate today, we have heard the unimaginable—for those who have not been through them—difficulties that families have gone through when their child has been diagnosed with cancer, treated for cancer, and all too often died from cancer. This debate is incredibly important as we look forward to giving people hope. The hon. Member for Gosport deserves real congratulations, as does everyone who has worked to bring this crucial issue to the House today, and we have seen the unity for a better future for all those diagnosed with childhood cancer and for their families.

Future of the NHS

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray, and it is wonderful to hear all these passionate speeches today. We need to be clear that whether they admit it or not, the Conservatives have always had a problem with the national health service. They might try to rewrite the history books, but the truth is recorded: they voted against the creation of our national health service on more than 20 occasions, and the reason is purely ideological. They see it as an unwelcome intervention into the market, a point I will return to in a second.

Some of the more vocal supporters of that neoliberal agenda see the NHS as a last bastion of socialism in our society. I am proud that our national health service was created by socialists, and I think it is the greatest example in this country’s history of socialist principles put into practice. What does that mean? It means that there are some things in life more important than the pursuit of profit. However, what we now see—what we have seen since 2010—is an increased drive for the Americanisation of our national health service. The Conservatives want to turn it into a system where they feel for a patient’s wallet before they feel for their pulse. The truth is that however the history books are rewritten, it was a struggle to create the NHS in the first place, and it is now a great struggle to maintain it in accordance with its founding principles.

There are two key issues for our health service—deep underfunding and greater use of the private sector—and they go hand in hand, with the national health service being underfunded so that people can supposedly be persuaded to stomach greater and greater private sector involvement. First, the Conservatives defund things so that people get frustrated, and then they say that there is no choice but to hand them over to the private sector—that is the plan. We hear from the Conservatives that the staffing crisis in our national health service was caused by omicron or by covid, but the truth is that the huge vacancies and understaffing in the NHS did not start with omicron or with covid: the vacancies have been there for a long time, and now there are nearly 100,000 of them. An unbelievable £100 billion has gone to non-NHS providers of healthcare over the past decade alone. Every pound spent bolstering the private companies means less spent on people’s healthcare, as the profits are creamed off.

People out there are right to be worried about what the Conservatives want to do with the NHS. I mentioned earlier the Conservatives’ historical and ongoing objection to interventions in the market, but the truth is they believe in free markets for the 99%—with all the harm it brings them in their lives, their pay packets and their health service—but believe in intervention in the market for the benefit of those at the top. That is what we saw during the covid crisis, with all those corrupt contracts, the VIP fast-track lane, and billions of pounds going to Serco for the failed test and trace system. What the Tories did with the corrupt covid contracts, they want to do right across our national health service. That is why the Health and Care Bill would be better renamed the corporate takeover Bill. We cannot allow that to happen. The Conservatives want to create a race to the bottom, and we know that cuts and privatisation go hand in hand.

Before I finish, I will say a word about our NHS staff. We saw the Prime Minister—who no one trusts anymore, and quite rightly so—standing outside Downing Street clapping for the NHS heroes, but claps do not pay the bills. If we have a Government that values NHS staff in the way they say they do, they need to pay those staff properly. I put on the record my support for the 15% pay increase for NHS staff, who have suffered a decade of real-terms pay cuts. We need to be clear about what that means: that 15% increase would bring their pay back in line with where it was a decade ago.

What is the way forward? It is for us to realise that no Prime Minister or Government will say to the public, “Do you know what? We’re going to privatise the NHS. Do you know what? We’re going to turn it into an American-style healthcare system.” Of course they will not do that. They will manufacture consent for those changes through underfunding and through creeping privatisation carrying on at ever greater pace. It was a struggle to create our NHS, and it will be a struggle to save it from this final Americanisation. Regardless of which party we are in, history will judge us poorly if we betray those who went before us and created our national health service—the greatest achievement in our country’s history, and the greatest example of socialist principles put into practice, which may be why this Government dislike it so much.

Public Health

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

What I can tell my right hon. Friend is that there are approximately 6,000 people in English hospitals who have tested positive for covid, and of those—I have shared information like this with the House before, because I was determined to obtain it when I first became Health Secretary—approximately 80% are there because of covid symptoms, while about a fifth are there for other reasons, but were tested for covid and happened to have it. I hope that that is helpful to my right hon. Friend.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I really must press the Secretary of State on this issue, on behalf of workers in my constituency and across the country, particularly low-paid workers. Why are the Government not offering us a vote today on whether to increase sick pay to real living wage levels? We cannot have a situation in which the Government are making the case that this matter is so serious—which it is—while forcing low-paid workers to choose between food on the table and self-isolating to protect the rest of the community.

[Sajid Javid]

Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is on the importance of using measures to support people. Support is already there, but I recognise from the way in which he phrased his question that he thinks there should be more support. I understand that we have a difference of view on that, but it is something we keep under review.

When I announced our autumn and winter plan to the House in September, I explained that we would hold measures in reserve in case the NHS was likely to come under unsustainable pressure and stop being able to provide the treatment that we want all our constituents to receive. Yesterday NHS England announced that it would return to its highest level of emergency preparedness, incident level 4, and unfortunately there is now a real risk that the exponential rise in omicron cases will translate into a spike in hospital admissions and threaten to overwhelm the NHS.

We have done so much to boost the capacity of the NHS. Over the past year we have increased the number of doctors by 5,000 and the number of nurses by almost 10,000, and we have expanded the number of beds available, but we have also had to put in place measures for infection control which have limited that capacity, and there are already more than 6,000 covid-19 patients in hospital beds in England.

Despite the progress that we have made, the NHS will never have an unlimited number of beds, or an unlimited number of people to look after people in those beds. If we think that capacity risks being breached, we simply have to step in, because we know what that would mean in practice for both covid and non-covid care. It would mean one of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, maybe a child, is in a car crash and is in need of emergency care, and the NHS has to make difficult decisions about who deserves treatment and who does not. Now, I know that some hon. Members think that this is merely hypothetical, but it is not. We have seen health services around the world become overwhelmed by covid-19 and we cannot allow that to happen here.

Health and Care Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The Health and Care Bill is deeply problematic. I want to focus on two issues that, when combined, mean that it is a complete disaster. It not only makes it easier for private health giants to profit from the national health service; it also makes a charter for corruption because it opens the door to even greater private sector involvement in our NHS. That is why this Bill should really be called the NHS corporate takeover Bill. For example, it allows private corporations to sit on health boards, which make critical decisions about NHS budgets and services, and the Government’s amendment 25 does not go nearly far enough.

Even before this Bill, an unbelievable £100 billion has gone to non-NHS providers of healthcare over the past decade alone, and earlier this year half a million patients have had their GP services quietly passed into the hands of a US health insurance giant. This Bill would lock in yet more privatisation in future, with even less scrutiny, because it means less transparency. It means private health giants getting an even bigger slice of the action with less scrutiny.

[Dr Poulter]

I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a practising NHS doctor. On the issue of private healthcare provision, the hon. Gentleman will recognise that GPs are in fact small businesses in their own right, and some of them quite large businesses. How does he equate the role of the GP as a small business in the context of his concerns about private healthcare?

[Richard Burgon]

We are not seeking to wage war on GPs; we want to support GPs and properly resource them. We see so many GPs retiring and not being replaced. It is this Government who are waging war on our NHS with this further Americanisation of our NHS. It is a dangerous cocktail where the dodgy contracts we have seen throughout covid risk becoming the norm. The billions squandered on test and trace should serve as a warning of what the Government could do to the whole of our NHS.

There is a sleight of hand going on with this Bill. It is true that under the Bill NHS bodies will no longer have to put services out to competitive tender to the private sector. Such tendering to the private sector was made a requirement under section 75 of the coalition Government’s Health and Social Care Act 2012. It was a shameful Act and its scrapping has long been demanded by those opposed to privatisation of our national health service. However, the change in this Bill does not reverse privatisation, because without making the NHS the default provider, that simply means that contracts can not only still go to private healthcare corporations but can do so without other bids having to have been considered.

To prevent all this, I tabled amendment 9, which I want to put to a vote—unless of course the Government accept it—because it establishes the NHS as the default option. [Interruption.] Conservative Members groan, but the only reason for people not to support my amendment is if they do not believe in the NHS not moving to a privatised insurance model. Why else would people object to the NHS being the default provider of healthcare? The British Medical Association supports it, so the Tory groans are groans against the position of the British Medical Association. Unison supports it, so the Tory groans are groans against the voices of those who work in the NHS—for most of whom, if they need to have more than one job, it is because they do not get paid enough, not because they are trying to get their own snouts in the trough. I will be voting against the whole Bill, but if the Government refuse to accept amendment 9 to make the NHS the default provider, that shows what the Government of the party that objected to the foundation of the NHS in the first place are really up to, despite all the warm words.

[Mel Stride]

I rise to speak to new clause 49. In doing so, and whatever its merits or otherwise, it is worth reflecting on the comments made by the Minister that we are at least here this evening looking at a part of a process that will lead to some progress in meeting social care costs going forward and removing the catastrophic risk that has hung above the heads of all our constituents up and down the country: that their healthcare costs may end up costing them all of their assets. We are also here having taken the tough decisions around having raised taxes to fund those arrangements.

I have problems with new clause 49. It seems to me that to make good law in this place, first, we need time to consider the matters put before us and secondly, we need the appropriate information upon which to take those decisions. On both those points, I have real concerns about how new clause 49 has been brought forward. The first we heard of it was not in Committee or in September when the general measures were put forward, including the taxation measures on which we all divided and voted, but on Wednesday evening, when the amendment was tabled.

It was fortuitous that the Treasury Committee happened to have Sir Andrew Dilnot before us the very next day. We were able to discuss many of the issues inherent in new clause 49. A number of issues were raised, to which only the Government have the answers. One of them has been put forward powerfully by speaker after speaker tonight, which is: what are the impact assessments associated with these measures? I wrote to the Chancellor immediately after that session and asked him for some impact assessments, including geographical impact assessments, of which we have had none.

It seems that the only information we have had was released by the Department of Health and Social Care on Friday night, in a document called “Adult social care charging reform: analysis”. I am very short of time, which is a shame, but there is, for example, a chart of a 10-year care journey that looks at individuals with different asset levels. While it is true, as my hon. Friend the Minister said, that these arrangements, even with new clause 49, are better for almost every level of wealth than under the status quo, it is not the case that everybody is better off compared with the measures brought forward in September.

Covid-19: Government Response

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

The Government have a range of measures. We have vaccines; we are world leading on antivirals; and we have lots of other measures. As I go about my constituency, I see many people blipping into venues, wearing their face coverings when they are shopping and lots of different things. It is important that people have that choice and make decisions based on the current circumstances.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Low-paid frontline workers without access to decent sick pay have been most likely to lose their lives during the crisis. Is it not those workers who will pay the price for this complacency?

[Maggie Throup]

The Government have been extremely generous in their support throughout this pandemic and will continue to be so.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions) (No. 3)

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

We need to have a frank and honest discussion about where we are on covid. It is now clear that the Government’s covid strategy is again going badly wrong with fatal consequences.

We need to be clear that our country currently has the world’s second highest number of new cases and the world’s second highest number of hospitalisations. At the start of this month, more than 200,000 pupils were off school due to covid. Even on the vaccines roll-out, we are falling behind: we have slipped to around 12th best in Europe. Over the past month, there have been double the number of deaths compared with the same time last year. Most worryingly, the current rate of daily deaths would amount to 40,000 deaths per year.

We should be in no doubt that many of those deaths are avoidable. People are dying as a direct result of the Government’s refusal to implement basic public health measures. I am talking about not lockdowns, but the kind of measures that are normal in many other countries. We are not doing them because the Government want to pretend that they can draw a line under covid, but we cannot just wish it away.

Where is the plan to require masks on public transport and in shops? Where is the plan for sick pay at real living wage levels? Where is the plan to tackle high infection rates in schools with the simple measures being asked for by the teaching unions and parents? Where is the plan, more than 20 months on from the start of the pandemic, to give people proper sick pay, as I said, so they are not forced into work when they are ill? Getting those basics right now could still save thousands of lives. We know that because the Government’s own scientists have said so. The Government have a moral duty to act, but instead they are sleepwalking into another deadly winter.

Some of the measures being debated today for the renewal of the powers of the Coronavirus Act are needed, but most of what we are discussing is irrelevant to the debate we need to have to tackle high cases as we go into winter. The Government are not giving MPs the opportunity to debate the wider public health measures that we urgently need. For that reason, I will not be supporting the Government in any vote today.

Time and again during the pandemic, the Government have acted late, and have cost lives by doing so. I urge them to act now and bring in the simple measures that we know can make a difference and save lives, which are masks on public transport and in shops, better ventilation in workplaces, a strategy for tackling high infection rates in schools, and sick pay at real living wage levels for all who need it.

Future of the National Health Service

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Hannah Bardell (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, which is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of the National Health Service.

Against the backdrop of the deepest health crisis in decades, the Tories have launched a dangerous NHS Bill. The Bill is not an attempt to address the deep failings of the past decade, driven by austerity, cuts, privatisation and the disastrous 2012 reforms that marketised our NHS. It is about entrenching an even greater role for private companies in our NHS.

The new Health and Care Bill should really be called the NHS Americanisation Bill, because it is the latest stage in the corporate takeover of our NHS, one where private companies not only profit from people’s ill health but increasingly get to decide who gets what treatments and when. Those who believe, as we do, in the real principles of our NHS—free treatment, based on need, guaranteed as a right in a comprehensive system—should be deeply alarmed. Others will address their concerns about the Government’s latest plans. Here are just a few of my concerns.

The Bill will not end or reverse privatisation but will open the door to greater private involvement. It is a charter for corruption, with the dodgy allocation of contracts we have seen throughout covid becoming the norm. It will mean even more politically compliant cronies, as it gives the Secretary of State powers to decide the heads of the new local health boards—expect more Dido Hardings, and accountability to local communities to be reduced.

It will introduce strict caps on budgets, which could lead to serious rationing, with services cut to match funding, rather than funding matching health needs. We will have a postcode lottery for treatments. A new payment system would give providers, including private providers, a say in how much they should be paid for contracts won. It has the potential for staff to be paid according to local rates and conditions, creating a race to the bottom with the deregulation of the medical professions, potentially undermining the quality and the safety of care.

These reforms are part of a wider plan. That plan depends first on deliberately underfunding the NHS. Under the previous Labour Government, NHS funding increased by 7% a year; under the Tories, it increased by just 1.2% a year between 2009-10 and 2018-19, and by even less when the growing and ageing population is factored in. Although some new funding is planned through regressive taxes on working people, funding under this Government will still be well below the historic average that is needed. As Matthew Taylor of the NHS Confederation said:

“Extra funding is welcome. But the Government promised to give the NHS whatever it needed to deal with the pandemic, and while it makes a start on tackling backlogs, this announcement unfortunately hasn’t gone nearly far enough. Health and care leaders are now faced with an impossible set of choices about where and how to prioritise care for patients.”

That deliberate underfunding always goes hand in hand with greater privatisation. Waiting lists grow and people start to seek health provision elsewhere. As budgets are cut, that is used as the cover to bring the private sector into the NHS under the false arguments of efficiencies and savings, when the reality is that every pound spent bolstering the private companies is a pound less spent on people’s healthcare. Instead of more privatisation, the public overwhelmingly back the NHS being returned fully to being a public service.

The Bill is being spun as a way to address the huge failings of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which placed markets at the heart of the NHS, but, in reality, it is simply a way to entrench privatisation in a different way. The Bill does not address the deepest failings of the 2012 reforms. For instance, while dropping the absurd competitive tendering process, the new Bill does not make it a requirement that the NHS is the default option for providing healthcare services.

The legal structure for the market remains. The profit-hungry vultures will still be circling and trying to pick a profit from human suffering. Foundation trusts will still be able to make from 49% of their income by treating private patients, and key outsourced services, including those provided by porters and cleaners, will not be brought back in-house.

As well as allowing private companies still to pocket public money, the Government’s plans also give private companies a chance to shape health policy directly. The Bill opens the door for private corporations to sit on the 42 local health boards—the so-called integrated care boards—that will make critical decisions about NHS spending. In a sign of what might be to come across the country, Virgin Care already has such a seat in Somerset. The Government are under political pressure on the issue, as we know, so we have seen some limited concessions, but they are not enough. The real solution must be that private companies have no role at all on these boards or in the running of our national health service.

The Bill also allows NHS local boards to award contracts to private healthcare providers with even less transparency than they do now. Contracts will be exempted from the public contracts regulations, which opens the door to yet more dodgy handouts to the Tories’ corporate mates, something that has become all too common during the pandemic—and the public know it.

What we have seen with test and trace over the past year is what the Tories want to do with the whole of our NHS. But this stealth privatisation does not end with test and trace. An unbelievable £100 billion has gone to non-NHS providers of healthcare over the last decade alone. Earlier this year, 500,000 patients had their GP services passed over to a US health insurance company, Centene, which is one of the biggest companies in the United States. Its UK subsidiary, Operose Health, now runs 58 GP practices and is thought to be the largest private supplier of GP services in the UK. It is no coincidence that Operose Health’s former chief executive officer, Samantha Jones, was appointed as an adviser to the Prime Minister. An adviser on what? An adviser on NHS transformation. Nothing to see here, of course.

The public have not consented to any of this. In fact, the Government have gone to great lengths to ensure that the public are not even aware that the process is happening, because a new poll by EveryDoctor showed that just one in four people know that up to 11% of the NHS budget goes to private companies.

Finally, when we consider the future of our NHS, we must tackle its staffing crisis. There are many tens of thousands of vacancies, including nearly 40,000 nursing vacancies alone. Yet NHS staff are set to get just a 3% pay increase this year, with most or even all of that increase being eroded by inflation. That will not only fail to tackle the shortages; it is a kick in the teeth, after everything—everything—that our NHS heroes have done over the past 18 months and after a decade of real-terms pay cuts. Nurses’ pay has fallen by around 12% since 2010, so the 15% pay increase that nurses are demanding would address that fall, even if it will not make up for the thousands of pounds in lost pay over the past decade. NHS staff have been balloted and they reject the current pay offer. I wish to place on the record that NHS staff have my full support in their campaign for 15%.

To conclude, instead of addressing the immediate crisis of 5 million people—and rising—on waiting lists, or the tens of thousands of staff vacancies, we are getting yet another top-down reorganisation, the aim of which is to accelerate the stealth Americanisation of our national health service. Of course, the Tories deny that their latest Bill is about privatisation and Americanisation, but I would argue that their response to the pandemic reveals their real ambitions.

[Hannah Bardell (in the Chair)]

Members will be aware that there will be a Division very shortly and the debate will be suspended. I would like to call winding-up speeches by 3.28 pm and I appeal to Members to speak for around five minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon]

Thank you for presiding over this debate, Ms Bardell, and thank you to all hon. Members for taking part. I do agree with the Minister on one thing: he said that we should not omit public servants’ past records from our discussion, so it was very remiss of me not to mention—as I always do—the Minister’s career as a Serco spin doctor before he became a Member of Parliament. He is, in fact, an expert on public money going to failed private companies—which is what we have been warning against.

Colleagues have made some excellent speeches. In particular, I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for all the detailed work that she has been doing on this issue. She vividly outlined the reality of the eye-watering costs for medical assistance in the United States of America. We do not want, in any way, to go towards the US healthcare model, where they feel for a wallet before they feel for a pulse. That is what motivates Opposition Members.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) had a progressive past—it is a pity that he does not have a progressive present or future. In his recollections of the demonstration that he attended in 2011, he falls foul of unfairly characterising NHS staff by saying that they were conservatives with a small c, wanting to keep things frozen in time. However, when we listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) and others, talking about the real dedication of NHS staff, we hear that they want things to work and want the best possible outcomes for patients. Before my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) became a Member of Parliament, she had an honourable history working for the NHS and representing its staff; she talked about the dedication, care and love that people give, day in, day out. That is the reality of NHS staff.

I welcome the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), in which he said that the NHS was about people. That is, indeed, what it is about. It has got to be about people, not about profits or profiteering companies. He made some very important points about the dangers of delayed diagnosis and treatment. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for raising the issue of Centene and its UK subsidiary. I thank the Front-Bench spokespeople, the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) who is prolific and, to his credit, seems to speak in every debate, for talking about the passing of his mother-in-law due to covid, and his recollections of the great service that the NHS staff gave at an incredibly difficult time.

I want to end by reading five facts that we should be mindful of. First, £100 billion has gone to non-NHS healthcare providers over the last decade. In 2019-20, the NHS spent £9.7 billion on private services, an increase of 14% on 2014-2015. Earlier this year, half a million patients had their GP service transferred into the hands of Centene, the US health insurance giant. Five point six million people are waiting to start routine NHS hospital treatment—the highest number since records began in August 2007. Since the NHS was established, the average budget rise has been 3.7%, but between 2010 and 2019, on this Government’s watch, budgets rose by less than half of that—1.4% when adjusted for inflation. That is the reality that our NHS faces. The future of our NHS cannot be governed by the direction set by this Government, but the alternative as laid out by the Opposition.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

This pandemic has been a time of extreme hardship and suffering for millions of people. In my constituency in east Leeds, many have lost loved ones, and others, who were struggling to make ends meet even before this crisis, have fallen into deeper poverty. But it has been a very good crisis for some—for British billionaires, who increased their wealth by £100 billion in the last year; for outsourcing giants such as Serco, pocketing money that should have gone to our public services; and for those with friends in high places in the Conservative party who have got their hands on huge covid contracts.

The one sure-fire way to make money over the past 18 months has been to be a mate of a Tory Minister. Access to the so-called VIP lane made someone 10 times more likely to win public contracts. Ministers have been found to have broken the law with contracts. A world-leading anti-corruption body says that one in five Government covid contracts has corruption red flags. Over £800 million in covid contracts went to donors who had given the Tories £8 million in total—a very good return for those in the know, with the inside track. Those super-rich donors hand over huge funds and expect public contracts and favours to come their way in return. The Conservative party, I am afraid, is up to its neck in it.

Because the Tory party is using the system to help super-rich donors with covid contracts, it thinks that that is what other people are up to, too. We have seen a Tory MP this week implying that the British Medical Association’s medical advice to wear masks is because of lobbying from mask manufacturers, and Ministers have admitted that they are refusing proper sick pay because they think that people out there would abuse the system. Is that not telling? It is a telling insight into Ministers’ thinking: the assumption that everyone else is as dodgy and corrupt as they are—that is why Ministers think that.

Polls show that huge swathes of the population believe that the Conservative party is corrupt, and the stench of corruption has grown ever stronger through this crisis. They have been using a crisis where tens of thousands have died needlessly as a money-making scheme for their mates and their super-rich donors. The link between big money and our politics has been exposed more than ever during this crisis. Of course, many will hope to get their reward with directorships and comfortable jobs when they leave this place, but this is rotten to the core. It is undermining confidence in our democratic system and we need to put an end to it.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

To resume his seat no later than 3.59 pm, I call Neale Hanvey.