Health

Ronnie Campbell Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Interestingly, health is not even covered in the Queen’s Speech, but we are debating it so I will say a few words about it. The good news is that my granddaughter has just been accepted by Liverpool university to study midwifery, so that is some compassion coming back into the health service. The bad news is that on Friday I had a meeting with GP commissioners who came to see me because they are teetering on the edge. I am talking about the Northumberland commissioners who are running the doctors consortium. They had a budget, worked to it and were doing all right until the Government came along and clawed money back. I would not mind if the Minister tried to say why the Government clawed money back from them; I would be interested to know that.

We know what is happening in the health service and we know why there is no Bill. Since this Government came to power we have seen creeping privatisation; no corner of the health service is untouchable as far as privatisation is concerned. Sometimes I just wonder what is going to happen in the next few years—God forbid if the Tories get elected again, with this lot here in charge. Are we going to be paying for our health service? Are charges going to be put on the health service? That is a good question to ask to see whether we can get a denial from the Government—

[David T. C. Davies]

rose—

[Mr Campbell]

Sit down, you will have your Welsh question in a minute. It would be good if the Minister could deny that he has any intention of charging for any services in the health service in the future, because they are creeping in little by little. As for the nurses—the people who run the health service and do all the work—their miserable wage rises are absolutely disgraceful and this Government should be ashamed of taking even that 1% away from them; they should get more but the Government are not even going to give them the 1%.

Let us get back to the reality. This Queen’s Speech was the dullest one I have seen in my 27 years in this place, and I think everyone would agree on that. I sat down and I said to myself, “How can I liven it up? What if it was my Queen’s Speech? What if I jumped on the bike of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner)—although it has been pinched—and got into Buckingham palace to ask them to take my speech to the House of the Commons instead of the one they were going to read out?” My first Bill would be on the national minimum wage—I would put a Bill through to increase it to £10 an hour. My second Bill would be on a shorter working week—32 hours without loss of pay. My third Bill would call for full employment with no redundancies. There would be a repeal of all anti-union laws, and the reintroduction of collective bargaining. My next Bill would restore health and safety for workers. The health and safety budget has been cut by 35%, so we need a Bill to put that right for working people.

My fifth Bill would bring an end to privatisation. There would be no more privatisation of the trains or the buses—[Interruption.] Never mind about the increases and the costs; this is my Queen’s Speech, not Labour’s. There would be no more asset stripping of public facilities. Bill No. 6 would be to get rid of Trident, which would make me popular, especially with the Scottish nationalists.

My seventh Bill would put the buses and trains back into public ownership. It would try to stop the privatisation of the east coast main line, but I very much doubt that we can stop it now, as this Government are hell bent on getting rid of it before they go out of power. But we will restore it to public ownership—at least I hope we will; I hope that our Ministers are listening, and that we will restore it.

My eighth Bill would bring education back under local democratic control. We have heard in the statement today how out of control things are. Local authorities are wavering. Their spending has been cut, and they have very little say over the academies or the free schools. Anything could happen in the education service now, because we no longer have that local watch, so we need to bring it back.

My ninth Bill would be about the national health service. I want free public health care for all. That would be a big Bill and it would cost a lot of money, but we need to stop this creeping privatisation. I would get that money from one place: I would go to the City and tell all those spivs and bankers, “Your bonuses are stopped, because of all the money you have spivved off the working people of this country.” It is the working people who have had to pay for the austerity measures. I would tax those people and get the money for the Bills in my Queen’s Speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate. It has been a wide-ranging debate stretching well beyond the NHS, as the shadow Minister said. I think that we all enjoyed the alternative Queen’s Speech from the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell). His Front-Bench colleagues looked horrified, but it was the authentic voice of Labour.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

There were some good policies in there.

[Norman Lamb]

Well, let us just make sure that Opposition Front Benchers listen to the hon. Gentleman.

We can be justifiably proud, it seems to me, of the action we have taken in health and care over the course of this Parliament. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) made a speech that faded away from agreement, but at the very start he made the point that we should all pay tribute to a really remarkable work force in the NHS—1.3 million people doing incredible work. We want to free those people up as much as possible to do the very best they can.