Austerity: Life Expectancy

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It has particularly hit older women, and I will come on to that disproportionate impact shortly.

Something is adversely affecting the health of our population, and as my hon. Friend has just said, none of it is happening in a vacuum. The observation is unavoidable that these patterns coincide with the era of austerity. It is simply inconceivable that the state of our public realm, welfare system, housing, fuel poverty, child poverty and our NHS have nothing at all to do with it. The number of NHS trusts with budget deficits has increased sharply since 2015, as have waiting periods for elective surgery and waits for urgent care. Hospitals are now warning of an “eternal winter”, as records show the number of patients receiving urgent care within four hours fell to a record low in March 2018. Almost half a million patients waited longer than 18 weeks for planned care.

This week, the Royal College of Physicians raised the alarm, writing to hon. Members to tell us that hospitals are “underfunded, underdoctored, overstretched”. That will not be news to anybody who has been anywhere close to the NHS in recent years. However, the shortage of doctors and consultants revealed by the RCP is systematic and shocking; 43% of advertised consultant posts last year in Yorkshire and the Humber were not appointed to. In acute medicine, only five out of 26 posts were successfully appointed to. The RCP concludes that these workforce shortages have direct implications for patient safety. Although our hospitals still provide expert care, relentlessly drawing on the good will of staff—who cannot possibly provide the best possible care when under such pressure—is unsustainable.

Issues within the NHS are being compounded by problems with the provision of adult social care. According to the King’s Fund, in 2016-17 there were 380,000 cases of a delayed transfer of care due to patients’ awaiting a hospital assessment. A similar number were waiting for a place in a nursing home. It is little surprise that the sorry state of our social care system should be linked to a fall in the life expectancy of older women living in the poorest parts of the UK, because that cohort has seen a disproportionate fall in their life expectancy. For the first time, health inequality is rising because the most deprived are suffering with poorer health.

I have often heard it said that the elderly have been protected from the worst ravages of austerity, but the elderly who live in deprived communities have been hit many times over. Relevant to this debate, they have been hit first by the cut in pension credit for lower-income groups and then through the funding pressures on adult social care. Of course, it is in the local authorities serving the most deprived areas that these effects have been felt the most.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, especially on the impact on the elderly. However, does she agree that more and more children are now being impacted by austerity? Slough Foodbank has noticed an increase in the number of families attending its food bank, saying:

“When we checked the vouchers, we discovered that there had been an increase of 16% in the number of children we helped in 2017 compared to 2016.”

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that child poverty is addressed now? There are lifelong implications for those who grow up in poverty, such as poorer academic results, employment prospects and life expectancy.

[Louise Haigh]

I am glad that my hon. Friend raises that important point, because I am not able to address all the factors behind declining life expectancy. The British Medical Association raised that point this week, saying it is very concerned about the 5 million children growing up in poverty and the implications that that will have in the future on life expectancy.