NHS: Long-term Strategy

Simon Baynes Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I must admit that I was surprised by the audacity and tone that the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) took when introducing such an important debate. Not one Welsh Member of Parliament from the Labour party is present. I think they may share my disappointment in the tone the Labour party is taking over this serious issue, bearing in mind the performance of the Labour party and Government in Wales in failing to deliver on the NHS. Who knows, those Members might be embarrassed or angry; maybe they are angry and embarrassed at the hon. Member for Ilford North. I hope they are certainly disappointed by the performance, waiting times and outcomes for our constituents in Wales.

Tone really does matter. This is a really important debate, and we need to consider it in the way the Secretary of State recognised the issues facing every part of the United Kingdom. The Chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), also recognised that and urged the use of responsible language. This needs to be followed through. When I have highlighted deficiencies in the NHS in Wales in the past, I have been accused of undermining the NHS or attacking NHS staff. I hope I will not be accused of that now, as that is not my objective. I am instead frustrated with the Labour Government in Wales and the outcomes my constituents are experiencing. I make this contribution in support of the NHS staff, clinicians and all the apparatus that delivers an effective and efficient health service.

Much has been said about data and waiting times, and I could go on and on about that. No matter what statistic the hon. Member for Ilford North highlights, I could trump him every time with worse performance in Wales. I am not celebrating that, because my constituents and my family experience that performance. I am disappointed by the political tone the hon. Gentleman is taking in seeking to exploit the challenges facing the NHS and its staff having come out of a global pandemic. That is something we absolutely need to recognise.

I will highlight some statistics to encapsulate the experiences of my constituents and others in Wales. After 25 years of a Labour Administration in Wales, accident and emergency times, primary care delays, cancer treatment times and waiting lists are much longer than they are in England, or than they were previously. In England, 5% of patients are waiting longer than 12 months; in Wales, 23% of patients are waiting longer than 12 months. I will not bore everyone with lots of numbers, but I will take that to the next level of statistics: 7.9% of patients in Wales are waiting longer than two years for treatment. That is why Opposition Members have to accept and recognise that this a serious debate that affects every part of the United Kingdom, Europe and beyond.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree not only that the statistics for Wales are markedly worse than for England, but that in Wales the expenditure per head on health is 15% higher than in England?

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The hon. Member for Ilford North pointed to the lack of funding for the NHS in Wales, but since 2010, only the Labour Government in Wales have ever cut NHS funding—no other Government in the UK have done that. When I was the Secretary of State for Wales, we renegotiated a funding formula that the First Minister, who was the Finance Minister at the time, said was a very fair deal. That formula means that Wales receives £120 for every £100 that is spent in England, and there is a funding floor attached to it. That highlights the generosity and fairness of the settlement, bearing in mind the inequality that the hon. Member for Ilford North highlighted earlier.

In my final minute, I will comment on the strike action. Every point that the Leader of the Opposition has made about the challenges of strikes, and every criticism that has been made of the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, could equally apply to the First Minister and Health Minister in the Welsh Government. That demonstrates the complexity of the situation. The Welsh Government say that they cannot act until they have more money, but they need to remember that they are getting £120 for every £100 that is made available in England, and they have tax-varying powers. Are they saying that they want to tax the English more in order to spend more in Wales? They can vary taxes however they want—[Interruption.] They can vary taxes and that is the choice that they have to make. They decide where they spend their money. In closing—

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[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

I am not particularly surprised by the absence of Labour Welsh MPs from the Opposition Benches, because they have a health service with inferior outcomes compared with England. There has been a lot of talk about 13 years of Conservative Government, but in Wales it is almost double that, at 25 years of Labour Government, yet we have poorer outcomes.

There are many statistics, so I will focus on one. In terms of waiting more than 52 weeks, figures are worse in Wales, at one in four, compared with one in 20 in England. That sums up the problem that we have. If the plan of the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) is so great, why do the Welsh Government not implement it? They are in power and capable of doing so.

The hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), who is no longer in her place, talked at length about the issues of the strikes by healthcare workers in England, but exactly the same situation exists in Wales, and the attitude of the First Minister in Wales is very similar to the attitude of the Government here in dealing with those strikes. Yet again, we have a situation where the Opposition Members are not admitting that the problems in Wales reflect the fact that their Government are ensuring poor performance.

Of course, in my Clwyd South constituency, those are not dry statistics, but the day-to-day problems that people face: problems in getting to see a GP or receiving timely hospital treatment, as well as with often excessively long ambulance waiting times. Mine is a border constituency. We look across the border to see what is going on in England and share healthcare across the border, so the comparison between Wales and England is all the more acute.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) spoke about the fact that the Welsh health service’s level of funding is superior to that of England. He also mentioned the cut of £800 million in 2012 by the Labour Government in Wales—the only Government in Britain to cut NHS spending in modern times—which has meant that, while the increase in health spending in England since 2010-11 has been 29%, it has been inferior in Wales, at only 22.6%. In conclusion, I urge the Labour Opposition to focus on improving their stewardship in Wales.