Health

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

It is great to address the packed Benches on the Government side of the Chamber. This Queen’s Speech ought to be remembered as the last Queen’s Speech of the first coalition Government since 1945. I confess I am one of those who thought that it might never happen, but to their credit the coalition Government have put aside their differences and come up with a plan for a Bill to levy a 5p charge on poly bags. That would normally earn them a place in history, but this Queen’s Speech has been overshadowed, as we saw again today, by the row between the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary. Since the theme of today’s debate is health, let me say to the Education Secretary that trying to humiliate that lady could be very bad for his health—ask the Police Federation! Perhaps he should try to recruit a retired counter-terrorism officer to mind his back.

This has always been a Government built on hype. It has been there from the beginning, when they claimed that trebling tuition fees and slashing public spending were all for our benefit and would eliminate the deficit within five years. That much heralded and rebranded long-term economic plan aims to cut the deficit by the same amount as my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) would have achieved. What has become long term is the prospect of continuing cuts and a deficit stretching years into the future.

We were led to expect a Bill to regulate health and social care professionals, but that is absent, despite Winterbourne, the Francis report and the latest Anglia Retirement Homes scandal. I regret that, because there is little doubt that we need to regulate those professions and provide greater assurance and security to patients, residents and relatives. I want to be able to tell my constituent whose elderly relative was induced to give a loan of several thousand pounds to her carer to buy a car that something will be done and that such crooks will not get away with it. I want to be able to tell the family of Ms Jones that, if they see the call button by the bedside disabled or find their elderly relative naked from the waist down and covered in excrement, something will be done. I want to know that the people who are doing the caring have been properly vetted and have suitable qualifications and training, are supervised and will be given the time to provide the care that their patients need.

Of course I would have liked an admission that section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 was a disaster. Far from putting GPs at the heart of decision making, it has reduced clinical commissioning staff to second-rate auctioneers. At a time when Simon Stevens is calling for more local and community services to provide care for the elderly, section 75 requires doctors to act like second-hand car salesmen. The way forward is to construct models that bring together statutory and voluntary services. We need the local state working alongside bodies like churches, community groups and even neighbours. Clinical commissioning groups should be creative and imaginative; instead they are stymied by the Government’s market dogma.

As this is carers week, I would have welcomed a law that recognised the rights and needs of the users of health and care services, that empowered them so that joint commissioning bodies were not allowed to close respite care facilities because accountants advised them it was an easy saving. I am battling to protect the Kingswood bungalows in my constituency, a purpose-built facility less than 15 years old, but targeted by those whose priority is to manage the books, not the interests of patients; and my constituent with severe autism who has lived in a specialist autism community for over 17 years. It is his home, but just as we have seen the crass contempt for people’s needs with the bedroom tax, we are seeing people like him threatened with eviction because the accountants and the joint commissioning administrators think they have found a way to save a few quid. I would have liked some legislation to regulate and enforce action against those who look after their own interests while wrecking the lives of others.

I welcome the promise to raise the number of apprenticeships, because if there is one issue that threatens the health and well-being of a generation, it is the spectre of unemployment and the denial of a future for our young people, but how many will be real apprenticeships targeted on the 16-to-19 age range? As with every other bit of hype, too many of the current apprenticeships go to those over 25 and are often just an existing job that has been redesignated. This is, after all, the Government who think they can send a young graduate already engaged in productive voluntary work to Poundland to learn how to stack shelves.

A Bill promising proper training, relevant qualifications, a chance to build a portfolio of skills, real employment opportunities and the full engagement of employers: that is what young people need. If we are living in the age of micro-businesses, and self and portfolio employment, then let us give young people the training that allows them to make a go of these things, rather than leaving them to be ripped off and exploited.

Sadly, this is a Queen’s Speech with none of those relevant interests served.