The National Health Service

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is right to identify the delays that are inevitable in a massive state-led system. Would he agree that there is a huge opportunity for individuals to get treatment in other ways? I have the privilege to represent a couple who have taken themselves to a hospital in Portugal, where they live half the year, and got care there. Their care has been refunded by the NHS at a rate significantly cheaper than that available in the UK. Should we not welcome individuals who are able to do this? Of course it is not for everybody, but should we not welcome it as a possibility?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am genuinely pleased for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, but there are 4.4 million people on the waiting list. There used to be around 2 million. Every day, another 330 people wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment, and when people wait longer than 18 weeks, not only do they wait longer in pain, distress and anxiety, but they run the serious risk that their health will deteriorate further. That is what is going on in the NHS today under this Government.

The Queen’s Speech was heavily spun as being about—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State will get his chance in a moment. The Queen’s Speech was heavily spun as being about the NHS. [Interruption.] He says I am talking nonsense. These are the official figures. He wants to run away from his own failure, from the fact that so many more people are waiting beyond 18 weeks for treatment and from the A&E crisis that he is doing nothing about. He thinks an app will solve it all. That is not a serious approach to the NHS. [Interruption.] And he is not as good as George Osborne used to be.

The Queen’s Speech was heavily spun as being about the NHS, but in fact it was a missed opportunity to rebuild confidence in the NHS and provide the health services we want. We will scrutinise carefully the Bills in the Queen’s Speech and engage constructively. We are pleased that the Health Service Safety Investigations Bill has not been abandoned and is back. We will engage on it and explore with Ministers how to strengthen the independence and effectiveness of medical examiners.

If the Secretary of State wants to deliver safe care, however, we need safe staffing legislation and a fully funded workforce plan. Pressures on staff are immense. He will know that suicide rates for nurses are higher than the national average and that among doctors the rate is rising. I congratulate Clare Gerada on her leadership on mental health support, but yesterday the Secretary of State suggested on Twitter that all NHS staff would be eligible for this new mental health support, when it is actually just doctors and dentists. I hope he will clarify his remarks at the Dispatch Box and tell us when 24-hour support for all NHS staff will be available.

I also hope the Secretary of State will tell us how he will resolve the staffing crisis. As he knows, we have 100,000 vacancies across the NHS. We are short of over 40,000 nurses. Under this Government, we have seen cuts to community and district nurses, learning disability nurses, mental health nurses, health visitors and school nurses. On current trends, we will be short of 108,000 nurses in 10 years, according to the King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Hold on, I have not even answered the previous intervention. The truth is that the NHS has proposed measures that will make it easier to run the NHS, to reduce bureaucracy and to change the procurement rules that we discussed. Ultimately, these responses—there have been nearly 190,000 responses to the consultation—have the support of the royal colleges, the Local Government Association and the unions. They have all supported these legislative proposals, and we are working on the detailed plans. They do change some of the measures put forward in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. We will make sure we cut out that red tape and bureaucracy, streamline the procurement, support integration and make sure that the record investment we are putting in gets as much as possible to the frontline. They also help us with recruitment, and I can announce to the House the latest figures for GP recruitment, a matter that I know is of interest to lots of colleagues. Building on the record numbers in training last year, this year we have 3,530 GPs in training, which is the highest number in history. That is all part of our long-term plan.

The measures in the long-term plan Bill would also strengthen our approach to capital. We have discussed the 40 new hospitals in the health infrastructure plan, but I can also tell the House that the plan will not contain a single penny of funding by PFI—we have cancelled that. I have been doing a little research into the history and I want to let the House into a little secret that I have discovered. Who was working in Downing Street driving through Gordon Brown’s doomed PFI schemes, which have hampered hospitals for decades? I am talking about the PFI schemes that led to a £300 cost to change a lightbulb and that have meant millions being spent on debt, not on the frontline. Who was it, tucked away at the Treasury, hamstringing the hospitals? It was the hon. Member for Leicester South. So when we hear about privatisation in the NHS, we have culprit No. 1 sitting opposite us, who wasted all that money. We are cancelling PFI, and we are funding the new hospitals properly.

[Tom Tugendhat]

May I welcome the investment that my right hon. Friend is making in Kent, not just in hospitals, but in healthcare centres? We have a GP surgery that is no longer fit for purpose and, working alongside the county council, another wonderful Conservative institution, he is providing healthcare to people closer to home and nearer to where they want it. I welcome that enormously and urge him to do exactly the same for the hospital in Tonbridge, which he knows, because I keep nobbling him on this one, we need much more investment in, so that we can have those community beds close to home.

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about getting community beds closer to home. I wish to mention four other measures in the Queen’s Speech—