I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this important debate.
The NHS is in crisis. Vacancies last September were at over 133,000, and waiting lists for routine treatments had reached over 7 million. The Government will say that this is because of covid, but that is not the case. Vacancies and waiting lists were already unacceptably high before covid; covid has made what was a terrible situation even worse. These problems, together with the fact that nurses and other dedicated NHS staff are severely overstretched without enough colleagues to
work alongside them, are the result of consistent failures by Conservative Governments to plan and provide for safe staffing levels. None of this has happened by accident. It has happened by design, because the Conservatives are intent on undermining the NHS as a comprehensive and universal public service. That has been the case for decades, and it is their drive to put business rather than patients at the heart of the NHS that has led us to where we are now.
The book “NHS for Sale” by Jacky Davis, John Lister and David Wrigley sets out some of the background on what key figures in the Conservative party have thought about the NHS over the years. The book highlights how, in 1998, Oliver Letwin—at the time a future Government Minister—wrote a book called “Privatising the World: A Study of International Privatisation in Theory and Practice”, which talked of increased joint ventures between the NHS and the private sector, ultimately aiming to create a
“national health insurance system separate from the tax system.”
“NHS for Sale” also highlights how, in 2008, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer co-authored a book called “Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party”, in which he said:
“Our ambition should be to break down the barriers between private and public provision, in effect denationalising the provision of healthcare in Britain”.
A few years later, in 2011, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, made a speech in which he said:
“From the Health Secretary, I don’t just want to know about waiting times. I want to know how we drive the NHS to be a fantastic business for Britain.”
It should therefore come as no surprise that Conservative Governments have long been squeezing the supply of NHS provision and driving demand for private healthcare. There is perhaps no better evidence of this than the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which in effect allowed NHS foundation trusts to earn 49% of their income from treating private patients. Before the Bill was amended in the other place during its passage through Parliament, it set no limit on private income, demonstrating that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition Government had initially planned to enable NHS foundation trusts to earn all their income from treating private patients, if they so chose. That is astonishing.
Had the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats been able to go through with their initial plan, the impact on NHS patients could have been catastrophic. In 2011, the majority of NHS foundation trusts had private income caps of between 0.1% and 2%, so for Government legislation to allow 49% really does show a determination and a desire to put business rather than patients at the heart of things in the national health service. It also demonstrates the sheer ruthlessness of the Conservative party’s ambition when it comes to privatising the NHS and undermining it as a comprehensive and universal service.
There have been recent reports that some NHS trusts are promoting expensive private healthcare at their hospitals, offering patients the chance to jump NHS waiting lists. That is a matter of extreme concern and will lead to a two-tier system where people who have the means to pay can get treated more quickly, while NHS patients face longer waits, often in pain and discomfort. That fundamentally undermines the NHS as a compressive
and universal service, and is not in the spirit in which the NHS was created. I have called on the Government to put an end to NHS facilities being used to provide services to private patients, and I do so again. I thank colleagues who signed my early-day motion 805 on that.
In recent months, members of the Royal College of Nursing have taken strike action for the very first time in their 106-year history, as they fight for fair pay and improved patient safety. I have been proud to stand with nurses on picket lines. They have told me how stressed and burnt out they are because of staffing shortages. I know that they do not take strike action lightly. Their dedication to their patients is immense. Some have spoken about the stress they feel at shift handover times when there are not enough staff to take over, and how they end up working additional hours without pay to ensure that patients receive care.
That it is only this week, after months of dispute, that the Government agreed to get round the table with the RCN speaks volumes about how little they value the NHS workforce. Earlier this week, Professor Philip Banfield, chair of the British Medical Association council, said that the Prime Minister and Health Secretary were
“standing on the precipice of an historic mistake”
by failing to stop national NHS strikes. I hope that the Government are listening, because this is in their hands. Professor Jeremy Farrar, the director of Wellcome and soon-to-be chief scientist at the World Health Organisation, warned that healthcare workers are “absolutely shattered”, and that
“morale and resilience is very thin.”
The Government need to put things right and come forward with a solution to the disputes that are fair for hard-working nurses, ambulance staff and other dedicated NHS workers. The Conservatives have left the NHS underfunded and under-resourced. They have pushed staff to the brink and left them thinking that their only option to get their message across is to go on strike.
I believe that the NHS is one of this country’s greatest achievements. We know that if we become ill or have an accident, it is therefore us, free at the point of need. We must do all we can to oppose privatisation and fight for the NHS as a comprehensive, universal, publicly owned and publicly run service, free for each and every one of us whenever we need it.
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