Covid-19: Deteriorating Long-Term Health Conditions

Steven Bonnar Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Cummins. I, too, am grateful to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) for leading this important debate for us today.

I will start with a quote from a doctor in my constituency of Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, who was working throughout the pandemic in University Hospital Monklands’ accident and emergency department. He told me:

“People are presenting with conditions that are unfortunately too severe for us to treat. Covid has caused appointments to be missed and regular health checks to be postponed. The simple loss in social contact with healthcare professionals has created a lasting impact that we are only just beginning to realise.”

Sadly, due to the pressures on our hard-working healthcare professionals and the measures required to prioritise resources towards those contracting covid-19, many of our regular NHS services have been paused or delayed. That disruption and continued backlog will indeed take time to be addressed fully—we know that—but our foremost thoughts must be on how we support our constituents whose long-term conditions continue to deteriorate.

Undoubtedly, the reality is that the greatest support package that any Government can give the sector is direct investment. I am proud to say that, once again, Scotland is showing the way, with the Scottish Government in Holyrood making the Scottish NHS the best-funded health service in the United Kingdom.

In February 2021, the former Health Secretary in Scotland, Jeane Freeman, announced a new community living change fund of £20 million to deliver and redesign a service for people living with long-term illness and complex needs, including intellectual disabilities and autism, and those enduring mental health problems. We know that there are many conditions that we could highlight, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) did in his opening remarks, and that there will be a legacy of mental health implications for us all to tackle in the wake of the pandemic.

That £20 million funding is the beginning of the Scottish Government’s implementation of the Feeley review—the independent review into social care in Scotland, which delivered many recommendations for the reform of social care in Scotland. The Scottish Government understands that we need not only to make up for what has been lost over the pandemic but to make healthcare provision even better than it ever has been before. We must ensure that nobody who is ill or suffering feels it best that they do not ever go to a hospital; we can never have a repeat of that.

The new Scottish Budget 2022-23 delivers record funding of £18 billion for the health and social care portfolio, which will be used to support the remobilisation of services, as well as delivery on the priorities relating to prevention and early intervention. This is a 20% increase in NHS frontline spending, which equates to £183 per person in Scotland and is 12% higher than the £163 of investment per person planned for England in the coming year. On top of that, the Scottish Government will of course abolish all dentistry charges, eye examination costs and non-residential social care charges for those in need of our support.

My question to the Minister is this: these are simple changes being made through targeted investment decisions, so where is the difficulty in applying such a scheme in England and Wales? The only answer that I can determine is that there is no such difficulty, and that there is simply a complete lack in prioritisation of the NHS and a lack of political will to safeguard the most precious resource that these four nations have to offer.

I had the privilege recently of witnessing another of the Scottish Government’s new schemes and strategies to achieve early diagnosis when I visited Mackie Pharmacy in my constituency. They are one of many pharmacies across Scotland that are taking part in a campaign to promote local pharmacies as the heart of first-contact healthcare services and provision. The development of this “pharmacy first” scheme will relieve the pressures on GP practices and on our accident and emergency departments, by allowing for the diagnosis and treatment of common ailments on a more localised basis.

In addition, the constant contact that our pharmacies have with our communities allows them to identify issues even before people themselves are aware of them. During my visit to Mackie Pharmacy, one assistant told me how she noticed that an elderly lady who regularly comes into the store was not her usual self. After a few exploratory questions about how the woman was feeling and then noticing some changes in her over the course of a few days, the pharmacist recommended an admission to hospital and it was found that she had a serious heart condition. That visit to the pharmacy that day saved that lady’s life. That is how prevention post-pandemic can and should happen. Schemes such as “pharmacy first” will play a vital role in helping us to better support those with long-term conditions.

The Scottish Government are caring for our elderly population in other ways as well, by delivering a new deal for our care sector. The independent Feeley review into social care in Scotland delivered many recommendations for reform. The review estimated that implementing its recommendations, including a national care service, would cost £660 million. The Scottish Government are going further, increasing social care investment by over 25% during this Parliament, which is equivalent to over £840 million.

Among the recommendations of the Feeley review are the creation of a national care service and the scrapping of non-residential social care charges, and we are going to deliver those things. While the UK Government delay, the SNP are taking action right now in Scotland to deliver a modern social care service that is fit for the 21st century. Why not match our ambition or our approach?

I believe that the crux of the matter is that the Government here in Westminster cannot be trusted with the protection of the NHS. How do we protect those who are deteriorating with long-term health conditions after the severest pandemic that this country has witnessed in recent history, when the Tories are geared towards creeping privatisation in England while forcing hard-working families to pay more in national insurance and income tax to access what healthcare remains public?

It must also be noted that even when England’s healthcare provision is so reliant on immigrant workers, the Tories create a “hostile environment” in attempting to drive away the workers they rely on so much. Some workers in England have even left the NHS to work for multinational companies such as Amazon that pay their staff better than the NHS does and have better conditions. These facts speak for themselves.

While Scotland pushes forward with new ideas to deliver a health and social care service fit for the 21st century, the UK Government continue merely to paper over the cracks of their own mismanagement and continue to pursue policies in other areas that actively harm healthcare provision in these countries.

The pandemic is an opportunity for Governments all over the world to look again at the way that things have always been done. I sincerely hope that this UK Government will regard the pandemic as an opportunity finally to look after our NHS and all those in desperate need of its support.