The National Health Service
Debate between Vicky Ford and Jonathan Ashworth(5 years ago)
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Jonathan Ashworth
I am going to make some progress.
We need clarification from the Secretary of State on whether he will exempt all NHS staff and all care staff from the shortage occupation list in the immigration Bill.
Safe care also depends on safe facilities, but after years of cuts in capital budgets, hospitals are crumbling and equipment is out of date.
Jonathan Ashworth
In a few moments.
The repair bill facing the NHS has now risen to £6.5 billion, more than half of which relates to what is considered to be serious risk. NHS capital investment has fallen by 17% per healthcare worker since 2010. Across the NHS, the estate relies on old, outdated equipment, which is having an effect on, for instance, diagnostics. The number of patients waiting longer than six weeks for diagnostic tests and scans has increased from 3,500 under Labour to more than 43,000 under this Government.
Jonathan Ashworth
I will give way in a few moments.
Even if the Secretary of State replaces all the MRI scanners that are more than 10 years old—he has adopted our policy on that—we will still be struggling with the lowest numbers of MRI and CT scanners per head of population in Europe. Is it not time for a proper strategic health review?
Jonathan Ashworth
In a few moments.
The Secretary of State will say that he has announced plans for six new hospital reconfigurations and seed funding for other acute trusts to prepare bids, but there is no guarantee that that funding is in place and that the Department will give trusts the go- ahead. “Seed funding” is a curious phrase. Can the Secretary of State confirm that there will be no role for private capital in that seed funding? In their 2017 manifesto, the Government promised £3 billion of capital funding from the private sector. Does that still hold? They claim to have abandoned the private finance initiative. We need clarity today.
Jonathan Ashworth
Of course I welcome that £450 million. [Interruption.] It just shows what an effective Member of Parliament for Leicester South I am.
I know that the Secretary of State gets very excitable about this Leicester point, rather like a semi-house-trained pet rabbit. Let me tell him about Leicester. I did not see him on “Question Time” in Oadby the other evening—I do not often watch “Question Time”. I do not want to be disorderly, so I shall be careful about how I read out the transcript. The audience started shouting—well, it is unparliamentary, but essentially they started shouting that the Secretary of State was not being entirely truthful in what he was saying. I do not want to fall out with him, or to be disorderly, but according to the transcript, there were “jeers” from the audience.
One audience member said that hospitals in Leicester were “falling apart”. Another said, “It’s shameful.” A third said,
“It’s not a case of throwing money at it.”
A fourth said that the Secretary of State was
“saying you will invest loads…into Leicester Royal Infirmary, what about…the General?”
What, that audience member continued, about
“the benefit in terms of beds…as a whole?”
The Secretary of State replied:
“We will do all of those things and we’ve guaranteed the money to Leicester and it’s coming in the next couple of years.”
There was then audience “laughter”.
Jonathan Ashworth
Let me deal with this point first.
The people of Leicester can see what is happening. Although the Secretary of State is putting money into Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General Hospital in the constituency next door loses maternity services, loses the hydrotherapy pool, loses renal services, loses—[Interruption.]
NHS Winter Crisis
Debate between Vicky Ford and Jonathan Ashworth(6 years, 10 months ago)
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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.
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.
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.
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?