NHS: Long-term Strategy

I inform the House that amendment (a), tabled in the name of the Prime Minister, has been selected.

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the Government for failing to recognise the current crisis in the National Health Service; regrets that, as a result of Government mismanagement, hundreds of lives may be being lost every week due to the collapse of emergency care while patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment, ambulance or operation when they need one; calls on the Prime Minister to acknowledge the crisis and act with the necessary urgency to mitigate the impact on patients; and further calls on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ensure the NHS is never in this situation again by bringing forward a long-term strategy which will end delayed hospital discharges, provide the NHS with the necessary staff to treat every patient in good time, and reform primary and community care to reduce the number of people needing hospital treatment.

I rise to support the national health service, which is going through the biggest crisis in its history, and most importantly, to defend the patients who are suffering as a direct result of 13 years of Conservative mismanagement of the NHS. This winter has shown just how high a price patients are paying: NHS staff are walking out on strike—in the case of nurses, for the first time in their history—patients are waiting entire days for an ambulance to arrive, and then days on end in A&E before they are admitted; there were 50,000 needless, preventable deaths last year, which experts have blamed on unacceptably long waiting times; and there have been hundreds of avoidable deaths every week this winter, because emergency care has collapsed.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care says that he disputes those figures from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and the Office for National Statistics, but I invite him to listen to some of the stories behind the numbers. An 89-year-old fell in the bathroom and waited nine hours for an ambulance. The sepsis that caused him to fall killed him. His consultant said:

Will the hon. Member give way?

The Government do not have a plan, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will surprise me by telling me, against all hope and expectation, that they do.

Clearly, some of the statistics and cases that the hon. Member highlights are distressing and no doubt need to be investigated. The Prime Minister has rightly prioritised waiting times as one of his key commitments this year. How does the hon. Member account for the performance in Wales, which is worse than in England on all the statistics that we highlight, in spite of the Labour party having been in charge of the NHS there for more than 20 years?

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because it brings me directly to the Government’s amendment to the motion, which is not a plan but a litany of excuses for the situation across the United Kingdom, including in Wales. I will run through them. By way of excuse, they say that the situation is challenging across the United Kingdom, and they are right: in Wales, the NHS is struggling; in Scotland, the NHS is struggling; and in Northern Ireland, the NHS is struggling. What do all parts of the United Kingdom have in common? Thirteen years of Conservative underfunding.

I will tell the right hon. Gentleman that, as he knows perfectly well as a Welsh Member, the reason why the Welsh NHS struggles more than England overall is the age profile of the population, the number of disabled people in Wales and the level of deprivation. The same disparities between Wales and England overall also explain the enormous health inequalities within England, which is why health outcomes in my city—in London—are so much better than in so many parts of the north or south-west of England. And you know the way to deal with that? It is genuine levelling up. But if people want a Government who tackle health inequalities so that every person in every part of the United Kingdom gets good-quality healthcare, they need to elect a Labour Government here in Westminster. That is the truth that the right hon. Gentleman does not want to admit.

I know that SNP Members will not be here today, because we are talking about England, but here is another truth that Nicola Sturgeon does not want to admit either: people in Scotland will be better off under a Labour Government too. She knows that just as well as anyone else.

When Conservative Members are not talking about other parts of the United Kingdom, they say that health pressures exist right across the world, but international pressures do not explain why the average wait for an ambulance is 14 minutes in France, while heart attack victims and stroke victims routinely wait an hour for an ambulance here in England. International pressures do not explain why it is that, over the past year, one in six UK adults had a pressing need for medical examination or treatment but could not get access. They do not explain why this is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average. Their excuses about international pressures do not explain why cancer outcomes in England are behind other comparable countries. None of that explains why the state of the NHS is as bad as it is today, but perhaps the hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans), who was trying to intervene, wants to stand up and justify why it is that, after 13 years of Conservative Government, his constituents are waiting an average of an hour for a heart attack or stroke case.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, and there are two points that I would like to pick up, seeing as he has come back to me on the second one. The first one, about comparable data, is really important. Does Labour have a position on sharing data between Wales, for example, and England, because the data is not comparable, which makes it very difficult to work out what is going on? Secondly, a plan was brought forward by the Government. It is called the NHS White Paper, which was brought forward by the NHS to transform the NHS with the integrated care boards, which are now in place. The people on those boards—42 of them—are the best people to make that change.

I find it astonishing. The hon. Gentleman’s position seems to be this: the Government have a plan, after 13 years, and apparently that plan is in progress. So why is it that so many Conservative Members just this week have stood up to talk about the fact that their constituents cannot see a GP, they cannot get an ambulance when they dial 999, and they are waiting hours on end in A&E departments? I know they like three-word slogans, but is the latest Conservative slogan on the NHS really “Crisis, what crisis?”?

I have received several emails from Labour party members in Ashfield asking me to back the Labour party’s fully costed NHS plan. Could the hon. Member please send me a copy?

I would be delighted. I can barely believe it. Honestly, I can barely believe it. This is the second time this week that Conservative MPs have said, “We need to see Labour’s plan, because we haven’t got one.” I would be absolutely delighted. The hon. Member can even sign it and put it in one of his party’s fundraisers—God knows he is going to need it at the next general election. I will tell him what the plan is: it is a fully funded, fully costed plan to deliver the biggest expansion of NHS staff in history—doubling the number of medical school places; 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical training places; 5,000 more health visitors; and doubling the number of district nurses. That is my plan. Where is their plan?

The Government amendment refers to funding and states that they are putting in an extra £14.1 billion. I wonder how much of that will be swallowed up by the inflation caused by their catastrophic mismanagement of the economy. People are not just paying the Truss and Kwarteng premium; this is the price of 13 years of low growth, low productivity, high taxes and stagnation. Every penny will be swallowed up by higher inflation. That is the truth. Why do people talk about 13 years of underfunding? It is because they know it did not need to be like this, and because they saw what the last Labour Government did. With Labour, per capita spending on health increased by 5% each year, and we were able to do that because we grew the economy. Under the Conservatives, spending per capita fell during the coalition years, fell in the following two Parliaments, and even the increases that the Government promise today will not match the investment that Labour put in. That is the price of Tory economic failure.

My hon. Friend is making an outstanding opening speech. My constituent told me last week about his relative who has multiple myeloma and had a stem cell transplant last year. She had a bad viral infection for three weeks, which is a serious issue after chemotherapy and a transplant. My constituent was asked by her consultant to take his relative to another hospital, because no beds were available at the hospital where she was being treated. She was treated in the corridor and waited 24 hours for a bed. Does my hon. Friend agree with my constituent that that hospital and its staff were not to blame and that, with underfunding and no strategy for the NHS now or in the future, the fault lies squarely with this Government?

I wholeheartedly agree. We hear this time and again. When patients are struggling to get access, and experiencing appalling delays in accident and emergency, they do not blame the staff. They know that the staff of the NHS are busting a gut, but those staff are suffering in the same way as patients because of 13 years of Conservative mismanagement. The only part of the Government’s amendment that I agree with is the part that praises NHS staff. Why is the Secretary of State’s Prime Minister bringing in his “sack the nurses” Bill next week? How many nurses will he sack? How many paramedics or junior doctors will he sack? The only people who need the sack are this Government—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) agrees.

When the last Labour Government left power, they were spending 8% of GDP on the NHS. Last year that figure was 10.6%, which is average for the EU nations. Why did the last Labour Government so chronically underfund the NHS?

The hon. Gentleman has got some brass neck. I have already given him figures showing that per capita funding increased by 5% under the last Labour Government—[Interruption.] And as for GDP, perhaps he should look at growth figures and ask why the economy is so much smaller than it would have been if we had had a Labour Government managing the economy well. That is the truth; it is a simple fact. If not, perhaps he wants to explain how his Government will put more money into the NHS, but I did not hear that commitment.

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent speech. I do not quite know why I have intervened, because I am very much enjoying watching him flay the bowling to the boundary when he gets questions from Conservative Members. He is absolutely on to something in relation to the money that has been wasted in our NHS by the failure to plan for NHS staffing. Is not the reality that far too much money is being spent on agency workers because there is no long-term strategic plan for NHS staffing?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are spending £3 billion on agency costs that would surely be better spent on ensuring that we have a serious workforce plan, and on hospital departments that are staffed by regulars who get to know their shift, get to know their colleagues, and get to know their patients and communities.

Let me turn to what the Secretary of State for Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said about ambulance staff, because I think he irresponsibly suggested that ambulance staff have not committed to minimum service levels for category 2 calls today, which is just not true. I think he ought to apologise to ambulance workers.