I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. The problems for our children further down the line are worrying, but of course, they are preventable if the right action is taken.
The Conservatives blame everything else—the weather, the pandemic and even NHS staff—but their 13 years of failure have left the health service in crisis. At Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, the Prime Minister boasted about
“record sums into the NHS…and…a clear path to getting people the treatment they need in the time they need it.”—[Official Report, 22 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 222.]
He is not living in the real world. Every briefing and communication that we have received has cited delays in treatment and the devastating impact that they have, as well as the decade of underfunding. It is hard not to agree with the British Medical Association, which called the Prime Minister “delusional”.
The last Labour Governments allocated, on average, a 6% rise in the NHS budget every year. Successive Conservative and coalition Governments have since allocated a rise of only 1% a year. The Prime Minister can talk about “record sums” all he wants, but he is fooling no one. In reality, the settlement is not enough, and it is nowhere near what previous Labour Governments invested. This crisis can be laid firmly at the Government’s door.
There are so many awful headlines and statistics, and I will delve into some of them, but let me say from the outset that we must all remember, when we talk about the 7 million people on waiting lists, or the 500 avoidable deaths every week, that we are talking about people. There are faces behind those statistics: the faces of women who cannot get urgent gynaecological treatment, the faces of children who cannot access mental health support, the faces of families whose loved ones have died—lives that could, should and would have been saved if this Government cared about communities and invested in our NHS.
When we talk about 133,000 NHS vacancies, we are talking about people who have left their work in the NHS because they cannot cope financially or emotionally, we are talking about the rest of the workforce working harder to pick up the slack, we are talking about the NHS being unable to recruit because of poor wages and conditions, and we are talking about the impact that that has on patients.
The only way to solve the NHS staffing crisis is by sorting out pay. The Government agreed yesterday to negotiate with the Royal College of Nursing, and nursing strikes have been paused for those negotiations to happen. The Government could have agreed to negotiations months ago, but they chose not to. Negotiations with the RCN alone will not solve the staffing crisis. Junior doctors have voted by 98% to strike, but the Health Secretary has not even offered a meeting. Negotiations with one section of the NHS workforce are not sufficient; all unions representing NHS staff need to be negotiated with. The Government must make a pay offer that is not linked to efficiency savings and productivity, because NHS staff are already working unacceptably long shifts.
An offer—such as the one we saw on Tuesday—of 3.5%, when inflation is at least triple that and NHS workers’ pay is worth less than it was a decade ago, is, as Sharon Graham of Unite the Union said, a “sick joke”. Christina McAnea of Unison announced further strike days next month. The Government are failing to resolve this dispute; instead, they are attempting to blame workers for putting patients in danger. Patients will never forgive the Conservatives for refusing to negotiate and using patients as bargaining chips.
The staffing crisis must be urgently addressed. The impact of waiting times on individuals can be severe and the consequences irreversible. Two hundred people in my Jarrow constituency have Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s UK is concerned about people waiting longer than two years for a diagnosis. Similarly, the MS Society has said that more than 13,000 people have been waiting more than a year for a neurology appointment. Those delayed diagnoses and treatments have a hugely detrimental impact on the individuals concerned.
Delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment are life-threatening. For years, the Government have missed cancer targets because of a lack of concerted action on matched funding. In South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, only 73% of people were treated within the target of two months following a cancer referral, and only 61% of people are treated within that target nationally. The UK is being left behind, and people are dying avoidable and preventable deaths. That is why we need a workforce strategy—yes, to pay people properly, but also to enable the NHS to save people’s lives.
Labour has a workforce strategy, while the Government have not even committed to fully funding their promised workforce plan. The Chancellor praised Labour’s plan, so why does he not put his money where his mouth is by implementing it? Labour will deliver a new 10-year plan for the NHS, including one of the biggest ever expansions of its workforce.