NHS Winter Crisis

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Let me make a bit of progress.

A lost month will mean that thousands of patients across the country are stuck with their lives on hold. To call this “routine care” misses the fact that these are big issues for the individual patients affected. The young man awaiting heart valve surgery, who will have arranged time off work and for his family to be around to care for him, now has to cancel it all and does not know when his operation will happen. He also runs the risk of a deterioration in his heart function, which could lead to further hospitalisation in an emergency, adding to the pressures on our emergency services.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

rose—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I give way to the hon. Lady, who has been very persistent.

[Vicky Ford]

Will the hon. Gentleman at least recognise that the NHS is doing more operations than ever before? In my area of Mid Essex, an incredible 72,000 operations were carried out last year, which is over 9,000 more than back in 2010. Will he join me in thanking the incredible NHS staff for the many better outcomes they are delivering?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Yes, I will. I of course thank the NHS staff. Of course, if the hon. Lady wanted to thank the NHS staff, she could have supported us when we brought in motions to give them a fair pay rise, but I do not think she did so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I said that I would not take any more interventions.

The Secretary of State will tell us about the winter funding, but we also know that the winter funding came far too late. NHS Providers has warned that it came far too late in December, and I am sure that many hospital trusts will be telling him privately in his morning phone calls that it came too late. Hospital trusts have to turn to expensive private staffing agencies to get through this winter due to the Government’s failure to invest in an adequate workforce to enable the NHS to deliver the care the nation needs. In many places, NHS trusts are effectively held to ransom by staffing agencies.

Last month, NHS Improvement refused a freedom of information request to publish how much these private agencies are costing individual trusts. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is unacceptable and that we should know how much extra money set aside for winter is going to private agencies? Will he undertake to produce a league table naming and shaming every single agency and stating how much they have been getting from each and every trust, so that we can have clarity on this matter?

The Secretary of State will no doubt tell us that the problems we are experiencing have arisen because we have an ageing society. Of course, we see pressures on the service because of the demographics not just in winter, but all year round. Patients with less acuity, often with sometimes three or four comorbidities—in particular, those being treated at this time of year—put huge pressure on the service throughout the year.

However, these demographic changes in society did not just drop out of the blue sky in the last few weeks. We have known about these trends for years and years, which makes it even more criminal that the Government have presided over eight years of underfunding in the NHS—£6 billion of cuts to social care—and have acquiesced in a reduction of 14,000 beds. We will probably see more bed reductions if we pursue the sustainability and transformation plans across the country. We have seen delayed transfers of care increase by 50% these last years.

On social care, the Secretary of State may have those words in his title now, but he has no plan to deal with the severe £6 billion cut we have had to social care in recent years.

[Vicky Ford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am not giving way because we are pressed for time.

The fact that makes this winter crisis even more serious than anything that has gone before is not just the cuts to social care and to the community care sector, nor is it the underfunding of the NHS; it is that the crisis takes place against the backdrop of some of the most serious and far-reaching neglect of health perpetrated on the people of this country for more than century.

Sir Michael Marmot, a recognised authority on public health, has warned that this country has, since 2010, stalled in the task of improving the life expectancy of our population and that differences in life expectancy between the poorest areas in the country and the better- off have widened in recent years. This is what happens with austerity and cuts. This is what happens when the Government fail to invest in housing and the insulation of our housing stock. This is what happens when the Government allow fuel poverty to increase and oversee falling real incomes, benefit cuts for the poorest and rising child poverty. The shocking consequence is that the number of hospital beds in England taken up by patients being treated for malnutrition has doubled since 2010. Is not that a shame? Is not that a disgrace?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

I will certainly revisit the issues in my right hon. Friend’s local authorities because I have looked at them before and know that there are particular pressures there. He alights on something else that the Opposition have not wanted to talk about, but which is very significant: the Prime Minister’s commitment to the integration of health and social care, which eluded the previous Labour Government over 13 years, despite their talking about it a lot. We are starting to see that happen in this country. Monday’s decision means that policy leadership will come back to the Department of Health, which will help us to make even faster progress.

[Vicky Ford]

I would like to take the Secretary of State back to his point about caring for people before they get to hospital and, in particular, issues to do with GPs. My local area has had difficulties recruiting GPs. It is vital that there is investment in increasing medical training for new doctors, so I plead with him to consider seriously the bid from Anglia Ruskin University to become the first medical school in Essex, where there is currently no pathway for our talented young people to train as doctors within the county.

[Mr Hunt]

I note my hon. Friend’s persuasive plea for her local university, Anglia Ruskin, but this is not a decision that I will be taking, because my own local university is also keen to offer more medical places. However, she is absolutely right to say that training the next generation of doctors and nurses is the long-term solution to these pressures.