Health and Social Care

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and to speak in the debate on the Gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament.

I do not know about you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I sense some confusion or dysfunction in the air—it started with the weather: first, we thought it was spring, and then found that it was not—which seems to have got down to the Government. Let me provide some examples. The Government want us to build more conservatories, but at the same time they are asking people to downsize to other properties. Over lunches, they are giving the benefit of the doubt to some companies minimising their tax bills, yet are not giving the benefit of the doubt to those who have to turn up to Atos assessments—even though they are in a wheelchair or have other long-term conditions. That is very dysfunctional.

Mr Qatada has been given £500,000 in legal aid, when he could have fought his appeal from abroad, but, with the cuts in legal aid, my constituent, Mrs Pressdee, cannot find a legal aid lawyer to help her from losing her home. What about the statement that Eton produces people who dominate Government because of their commitment to public service? I always thought there was a link between Eton and the Labour party, the Woodcraft Folk, the girl guides and the boy scouts, which are all committed to public service. Curiously, however, the number of public sector workers, who have a commitment to public service, has been decreasing over the last 13 quarters.

Let us deal with the commitment in the Gracious Speech to the reform of long-term care. This can be achieved only on the back of moving money from the health budget to social care, which the previous Secretary of State for Health had already started to do. This commitment in the Gracious Speech has been made against the backdrop of nurses and junior doctors saying they need more staff and that they are overstretched, but there is no commitment to staffing ratios.

About £10 million was spent on the Francis report, but its recommendations on the health service they have been practically discarded by this Government. Instead, the Secretary of State for Health is suggesting what can be described only as a vanity policy—he wants a chief inspector of hospitals. He was unable to tell me how much the chief inspector would earn, where the budget was coming from, whether this counted as committed spending, whether the Treasury knew about it, or whether it was to be taken out of the Care Quality Commission budget. This was not a recommendation that either Robert Francis or the Health Select Committee made. The Health Service Journal surveyed senior people in the hospital sector, 73% of whom said they did not believe hospital inspectors would be effective. This is a headline vanity policy.

The Francis report was not about sticks or the smack of firm government, but about a change in culture. Francis said that there should be one organisation undertaking the monitoring of organisations’ ability to deliver compliance of fundamental standards. At the moment, we have the CQC, Monitor and now the chief inspector who will apparently have the power to close hospitals. The Secretary of State made a comparison with Ofsted earlier, so let us remember Helen Mann, a head teacher who was so terrified of an Ofsted inspection downgrading her school from outstanding that she hanged herself. Is this what we want our public servants to do? In any case, it was not Ofsted, but the hard work of teachers and pupils that drove up standards. Here is the chaotic part: for a top-performing hospital, there will be lower regulation. How can that be fair? The Secretary of State was unable to tell the Select Committee how long these top-performing hospitals would be able to keep their top rating. That is a recipe for chaos. And what will be monitored? Again, the Secretary of State was unable to say. Will it be mortality rates, success in surgery or what?

I would like draw hon. Members’ attention to an article by Professor Nick Black in The Lancet in March 2012, in which he discusses the myth that grew up—that productivity in the NHS was falling—and warned of the dangers of using one set of indicators. That is exactly what happened at the Leeds hospital. The Secretary of State has conceded that the data were not verified when Sir Bruce Keogh made the decision to close children’s heart surgery, leaving parents and professionals confused and anxious. Whoever has the ear of the chief inspector and has their own data could therefore damage a hospital.

Let me deal now with the Gracious Speech’s reference to improving the water industry. Members may like to know that Thames Water, which is controlled by an Australian bank, now proposes to recycle sewage water for drinking, yet fails to mention investment in infrastructure or the leaking pipes that caused the shortage in the first place. All that was despite the fact that the company had made £552 million in profit by the end of March 2013. I ask the Government to look further into that.

This Gracious Speech should be based on justice, tolerance and the rule of law, yet all that is being undermined. The gracious people of this country, on whose behalf the Gracious Speech was made, deserve better.