NHS Winter Crisis

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will take that as my second telling off from you today, Mr Speaker. Given your guidance, I will try not to take any more interventions, but on the particular point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), the privatisation of patient transport services to Coperforma in his area of Sussex was an absolute disaster for patients and for the ambulance drivers, who I met—they went for eight weeks, as I recall, without pay. He has been campaigning on the issue, as has the GMB trade union, which I congratulate on the campaign it has run. We now learn that, having ended the contract, money is still going to that firm, which is an absolute scandal. I hope there can be a full inquiry into what has gone on, and I praise my hon. Friend for leading the campaign.

I have talked about the real impact of cancelled operations—for example, on someone waiting for a hip replacement who is forced to stay at home, unable to walk properly, and who, due to the pain, will no doubt at some point need to see a GP again in an emergency, which again adds to the pressures on the service. Perhaps someone in need of a cataract operation has had that operation cancelled and is now at risk of falls because they cannot see. Such a person could well end up in A&E, again needing a hospital bed. These are real people who rely on the NHS and whom the Government are letting down. The domino effect of not providing proper, timely care increases the crisis and pressures on the wider NHS.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

rose—

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will make some progress.

The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) rightly said that we do not want to make this more of a crisis, but the Secretary of State knows that cancelling elective operations as an impact on hospital finances. It means a loss of revenue for trusts that are already struggling to meet their deficit targets. Rather than allowing waiting times—

[Simon Hoare]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am not going to take any more interventions, I am afraid.

Rather than allowing waiting times to escalate further, why will the Secretary of State not commit today to giving hospitals emergency funds, so those cancelled operations can be rescheduled as soon as is reasonably possible and hospitals do not lose revenue and get further into problems with their deficits?

The Secretary of State knows that cancelling electives impacts on training of the next generation of surgeons and junior doctors, who are warning that they could lose out on as much as a sixth of their six-month training because the operations are not there for them to do. Will he tell us, if these cancelled electives continue, what is his plan to ensure that our junior doctors and surgeons can catch up on the training they need? Our patients deserve the best-trained surgeons and junior doctors in the world. Cancelling those electives impacts on their training. Will he tell us his plan for dealing with that?

We all agree that every penny counts in rising to the challenge of the winter crisis caused by Downing Street. I know the Secretary of State will tell us that we have had the—

[Simon Hoare]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I said that I would not take any more interventions.

The Secretary of State will tell us about the winter funding, but we also know that the winter funding came far too late. NHS Providers has warned that it came far too late in December, and I am sure that many hospital trusts will be telling him privately in his morning phone calls that it came too late. Hospital trusts have to turn to expensive private staffing agencies to get through this winter due to the Government’s failure to invest in an adequate workforce to enable the NHS to deliver the care the nation needs. In many places, NHS trusts are effectively held to ransom by staffing agencies.

Last month, NHS Improvement refused a freedom of information request to publish how much these private agencies are costing individual trusts. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is unacceptable and that we should know how much extra money set aside for winter is going to private agencies? Will he undertake to produce a league table naming and shaming every single agency and stating how much they have been getting from each and every trust, so that we can have clarity on this matter?

The Secretary of State will no doubt tell us that the problems we are experiencing have arisen because we have an ageing society. Of course, we see pressures on the service because of the demographics not just in winter, but all year round. Patients with less acuity, often with sometimes three or four comorbidities—in particular, those being treated at this time of year—put huge pressure on the service throughout the year.

However, these demographic changes in society did not just drop out of the blue sky in the last few weeks. We have known about these trends for years and years, which makes it even more criminal that the Government have presided over eight years of underfunding in the NHS—£6 billion of cuts to social care—and have acquiesced in a reduction of 14,000 beds. We will probably see more bed reductions if we pursue the sustainability and transformation plans across the country. We have seen delayed transfers of care increase by 50% these last years.

On social care, the Secretary of State may have those words in his title now, but he has no plan to deal with the severe £6 billion cut we have had to social care in recent years.

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). For what it is worth, I thank her, my hon. Friends the Members for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) and for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and other medical colleagues who have spent time working in our service over this period, looking after constituents. Their public service is second to none. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) for the work that he has done within the Department, and I welcome the new team. I also echo many colleagues from around the Chamber—across parties and from all geographies of the country—in thanking NHS staff, ambulance drivers, paramedics and those who work in our county social services, all of whom are trying to play a part.

I am going to be distracted slightly, because I am going to take strong issue with the peroration of the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), who said with full Momentum fury, “The NHS is a political entity.” I say to the hon. Lady, with the greatest of respect, that it is not. The national health service is a publicly funded service, free at the point of use, which is populated and staffed by publicly motivated and qualified public service medics and others, who look after our constituents and their health needs. They are not politicised; they are motivated by care. [Interruption.] Rather than chuntering from a sedentary position, I urge the hon. Lady to sit and reflect on her words, because her comment was one of the most dispiriting remarks that I have heard during my time in this House. While she is reflecting on her comments, she might also wish to reflect on the fact that, whenever the Treasury writes another cheque for the national health service—I am sure that practitioners will appreciate this—it always has to take into account the £2 billion a year private finance initiative albatross bequeathed by the Labour party.

I want to draw the attention of the House, as I did during the statement on Monday by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, to the importance of bedded community hospitals. Dorset CCG, under the leadership of Tim Goodson, has listened to our community campaign and has saved the beds in Westminster Memorial Hospital in Shaftesbury. In my judgment, the provision of those beds is absolutely pivotal in providing the link between the acute sector and people making their journey to recovery and then being on their way home. The collaborative work between the NHS and Dorset County Council—where there are social care officers with computers that are interlinked with and embedded within Westminster Memorial Hospital, working out the discharge care programmes—is pivotal. I appreciate that what we are doing in Dorset is not unique, but I also appreciate that it is not replicated everywhere; it does merit attention.

We should be focusing on far better advertisements for the use of our pharmacies, and we should ensure that community pharmacies are a much more collegiate network of service provision, taking pressure off GPs and A&E departments. I urge the Minister to ensure that CCGs are better encouraged to make sure that their boards include a representative from the pharmacy community. This siloed approach does not help the provision of care for our constituents.