NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

We entered into that negotiation in good faith, and I gently remind Labour Members of Parliament who were here before the last election that again and again I asked the right hon. Gentleman and Labour MPs to condemn the strike actions and they refused to do so, because we know of their links to their union paymasters—[Interruption.] I will just say “train drivers” and leave that hanging in the air.

When I asked the right hon. Gentleman during Health and Social Care questions in July whether he was going to cut services or whether the Chancellor was going to raise taxes for the junior doctors pay rise, he assured the House that any pay rise would be affordable. How affordable does his deal look now? He has given resident doctors an inflation-busting pay rise for being on strike, and he is paying them for the days they were on strike. He did that with no reform and no productivity improvements attached to it, and with more strikes threatened for next spring. Completely foreseeably, that has led to nurses and midwives asking why they should accept less. Simply telling nurses, “We’re on your side” will not heat their homes this winter. The report does not deal with the here and now; it looks only at the past. Indeed, the Darzi report talks about the importance of capital investment, so if the right hon. Gentleman intends to use the report to inform his policy decisions, as he says he does, why is he stopping new hospitals from being built?

There are now 24 hospitals whose futures are at risk, despite commitments from the right hon. Gentleman and Labour candidates during the election campaign. Labour candidates in Watford, Hillingdon, Milton Keynes, Leeds and Basingstoke made promises to their voters that are now at risk under this Labour Government. Patients in Chelsea and Fulham, Truro, Harlow, Plymouth and Kettering will not get the investment and upgrades that they deserve, despite the promises of their Labour candidates. [Interruption.] Do not believe a word when this Secretary of State says, as he is saying now, that it is because of the economy. The truth is that he had been planning to pause those hospitals since May 2023. For those who are wondering, the details are in his health mission paper, which was published to great fanfare in May 2023—page 6, if that helps. He was planning this since May last year, which is exactly why the promises made at the election were so cynical and now need to be revealed.

Take a perhaps unhealthy dose of salt with the right hon. Gentleman’s claim that the money runs only until March next year. Let me help this very inexperienced Secretary of State understand basic Treasury rules. The comprehensive spending review period finishes in March. I wish I could have bound this Labour Government to committing to those hospitals in the next CSR period, but I could not. It is his responsibility and his role to fight for funding from the Chancellor to ensure that the hospitals are built. We promised that we would allocate the money needed, and would prioritise the new hospitals in the next CSR period. It is now the job of this Secretary of State to secure the money from his Labour Chancellor.

Through our plans to invest in more capital projects, we also sought to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment. While outcomes have improved since 2010, there is much more to do. That is why we opened 160 community diagnostic centres, rolled out new lung cancer screening programmes, and expanded the use of artificial intelligence to speed up diagnoses. Again, we note the lack of any mention of those centres or hubs, which would reduce waiting lists and speed up diagnoses, in this supposedly independent review by the former Labour Health Minister.

I want a straight answer from the Minister in their winding-up speech on an issue that is worrying families up and down the country. Cancer is the single biggest killer of children under the age of 14. I launched the children and young people’s cancer taskforce, which brought together top clinicians, leading cancer charities and the Government to combat childhood cancer, and improve diagnosis and access to new treatments. Its launch was warmly welcomed by parents and charities, and experts were lending their time to the taskforce for free, yet this Secretary of State has chosen to pause it. Parents and charities including the Teenage Cancer Trust, Young Lives vs Cancer, and Solving Kids’ Cancer UK cannot understand why the Health Secretary has chosen to stop that work. That is his choice, and the Minister must please explain in the wind-ups why the decision was taken to pause it.

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady makes the point that cancer is the biggest killer of people under 40, but glioblastoma brain tumours are the biggest killer of people under the age of 40. What progress has there been in the last 30 years in the treatment and diagnosis of glioblastoma brain tumours?

[Victoria Atkins]

I think the hon. Lady did not hear me; I said that cancer is the biggest killer of children under the age of 14, not 40. I know only too well how that terrible brain cancer has hurt her family, and the great loss that she has suffered. I know that she has ambitions for the work that we were doing to get cancer treatments, particularly new cancer treatments, as quickly as possible to patients who are getting towards the end of their life. We will of course support anything that the Government do to help people such as the hon. Lady’s sister; again, I come back to the fact that we all want this to work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Members from across the House will have their own experience of the NHS, but in my case, after caring for my late sister Margaret, who was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumour in 2021, I can say with regret that the NHS failed her, forcing us to travel to Germany when she was at her sickest in order to find some treatment that might extend her life.

In his summary letter published before the report, Lord Darzi told us that he was “shocked” by what he had found, but the 3,200 people who are diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumour every year are not shocked. They know just how bad things are. The report has told us that the UK has higher cancer death rates than our European neighbours. For patients with a glioblastoma brain tumour, that is news to no one. In comparison to 33 similar countries, the UK ranks 25th for five-year survival rates. Life expectancy for somebody diagnosed with a glioblastoma is just nine months. There has not been a new treatment in the NHS for more than 30 years, and the diagnosis is still a death sentence.

In 2018, after Tessa Jowell sadly passed away with a glioblastoma, £40 million of ringfenced Government funding was promised for brain tumour research. Of that £40 million, just £11.3 million has been spent. Six years on, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research cannot even get the money out of the door. That is a real failure of Government. In June 2024, just before the election, a roundtable discussed how to spend £15 million of this money, and I have been trying to find out what it decided. Last week, I received a letter from Professor Lucy Chappell, the NIHR’s chief scientific adviser. Disturbingly, she told me that the NIHR largely funds research based on the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality, but it does not

“allocate funding for specific disease areas.”

The pharmaceutical industry does not work on glioblastoma. If the NHS also does not, who will? Do we keep on baking cakes?