Rural Healthcare

Debate between Tim Farron and Anne Marie Morris

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered rural healthcare provision.

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I have already provided the Minister with a copy of the report by the all-party parliamentary group on rural health and care, which followed a three-year inquiry that we undertook with the National Centre for Rural Health and Care. It contains a lot of detail about the issues and suggested solutions. It looked far and wide across the world, not just across the United Kingdom, and I certainly hope that the Minister will give it more time than I suspect he already has in preparing for this debate.

The number of people living in rural settings is not small—9.7 million people live in rural England—and they have very different needs, so the current one-size-fits-all approach simply does not work. We have a different demographic. Generally, our constituents are older, they have complex comorbidities, they live in isolation, and many are in severe deprivation, but much of that is often hidden because the data collected is at such a high level that the issues are simply not identified. If levelling up, which is a commitment of the Government, is to mean anything, that has to change.

Covering everything in the report would take me more than the time available, so I will limit myself to the Government’s alphabet. Let me go through A, B, C and D. On ambulances—A—I absolutely applaud the Government’s position that the current situation is unacceptable and that we need shorter response times, particularly for category 1 and category 2 emergencies, but I am sure the Minister is well aware that the data shows that rural and coastal areas have some of the worst response times across the country, often because it is simply not possible to reach particular parts. In Devon, there are some areas where it really does not matter how many ambulances there are and how fast the roads might be—they are not—as there comes a point where it is not possible to get further.

We have not looked at a different approach. We have not looked at how we triage this differently so that we improve, rather than reduce, health outcomes. A one-size-fits-all approach means that those in rural areas are at much greater risk than those in urban areas. There is not a specialist centre of excellence for strokes that people can get to very quickly by being popped into an ambulance.

Money is clearly an issue, but if we properly integrated our use of fire services, police, ambulances and first responders, we would get a better outcome. Let us triage the calls as they come in differently, and then let us use those individuals and organisations better. Currently, the barriers are different pay for different forces and the fact that those organisations—fire services, police and ambulances—have different lines of accountability to different Departments, which means that they do not work together.

We could find a much better and more efficient way of doing this. Fire services are vital, because they are often physically located in some of these very rural areas. There is not a lot of point trying to get an ambulance in every rural village; that would be completely inappropriate and unaffordable, and it would not work. Let us look at how we can deal with those blockages and do this differently.

B is for backlogs. The Government’s aim to reduce the backlogs is commendable, and the plan to get waits down to one year by 2025 is fabulous. However, those of us who have rural constituencies know that the resources right now are simply not available, and rural areas have a real challenge to recruit. They are seen as unattractive. Youngsters want to be near the nightlife and the fun when they are off duty. The idea of coming to a rural area is not attractive. That is well known to the Government, because there have been various planned pilots and initiatives to pay individuals more to attract them to rural areas. It simply does not work.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point. When it comes to waiting times for cancer treatment, 41% of cancer patients in south Cumbria and 59% in north Cumbria are waiting more than two months to get their first treatment after diagnosis. We know that is certainly costing lives. Does she agree that tackling the cancer backlog has to be the absolute priority for this Government?

[Anne Marie Morris]

More than that, we need to look at the different pathways in rural communities for heart, cancer and stroke treatment. I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but there is a lot more than just cancer, and the rural pathway to care has to be reviewed to see what is realistic in a rural area.

All of this has been made worse by a funding formula that is not fit for purpose. Although there is provision to uplift for rurality, it is not enough and it has been done without any real understanding of some of the challenges.