Leaving the EU: NHS Funding

Debate between Stella Creasy and David Mowat

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (David Mowat)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) on securing the debate, and on the points that he made. Like him, I voted and campaigned for the remain side, and, like him, I accept the result. I am now part of a Government who are responsible for delivering what was democratically decided by the British people. I should say at the outset, however, that I am speaking today for the Government and not for the leave campaign. If the hon. Gentleman feels that he is taking part in the wrong debate, I apologise for that in advance.

I will, however, address some of the points that have been made about the impact of Brexit on the NHS, because valid points were made about staff morale, the level of funding and the exchange rate. All those are variables, and I think it is good for us to spend a bit of time talking about them this evening. I will also talk about what stage I think we have reached on the pledge and the amount of money that we will no longer be giving to the European Union when we leave—although, as the hon. Gentleman knows, that depends on how we leave, and on the nature of the agreement that we eventually reach.

Let us begin by agreeing on one point. The single most important thing that the NHS needs to be properly funded is a strong economy. To the extent that Brexit may have positives and negatives, that fact is relevant, but the NHS is properly funded at the moment. We have heard some stuff about budgets and all the rest of it, but let me tell the hon. Gentleman that the OECD’s analysis of health and social care spending in every OECD country shows that we are now above average, although that has not always been the case. We are possibly 1% lower than the best of class, including France and Germany. That figure was for 2014, and the gap is likely to have been filled because this year we gave an increase to NHS spending of three times the rate of inflation and we have pledged that NHS England’s budget will increase in real terms by £10 billion between now and 2021. I do not believe Brexit will make any difference to that; indeed it is a commitment and priority of this Government that it will not.

We do know, however, that there are issues in how that money is allocated within the NHS. We are broadly at the average point of the OECD, and we do and could spend that money more efficiently and effectively. We could spend more on primary care, cancer and mental health than we do, and those are Government priorities, and we hope the sustainability and transformation plan process will help to deliver that because at the moment we spend too much on acute care.

Of course we can find efficiencies, too. Agency staffing is too high and we need to address that. There is a lot we can do on procurement—Carter and new care models and all that go with that.

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister could also work to renegotiate the private finance initiative loans that are crippling our NHS, and not use PF2 to do that. In order to do that, we need money in the NHS to be able to renegotiate. Surely the £350 million would help get us to that place; it would help us to renegotiate our debt, get our constituents back into work and get our NHS fit for purpose in the 21st century?

[David Mowat]

Nobody in this House would be more pleased than me if we did not have the PFI millstone around our neck. The hon. Lady talks of renegotiation; this is real money, and these are real contracts that were signed more or less entirely by the last Labour Government. There is no magic wand that enables us just to set those PFI contracts aside, although I wish there was; that is not how the commercial world works.