My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath for introducing this debate. Few are more qualified to discuss the significance of the 75th anniversary of the NHS than he is.
It was a sometime Conservative Chancellor who once described the NHS as a “national religion”. It must pain some of my colleagues on the Government Benches to see the extent to which the Government appear to have lost faith in that service and that religion. Anyone who read the recent Autumn Statement could reach no other conclusion. What is the old lyric? “They are only putting in a nickel, but they want a dollar song”.
Let us deal with the realities. As we have heard from noble friends and others in this debate, according to the BMA, some 7.8 million people are currently on NHS waiting lists. Over 3 million of these patients are waiting over 18 weeks. People who can ill afford it are pursuing private health provision instead of risking the long wait, as we saw last weeks in the figures that came out from the eye care sector. There are millions of people living in constant pain and worry, with no immediate alleviation to hand, including older people and their families waiting in bewilderment for dementia diagnosis and support. As a Dementia Friends ambassador, I know that support is so ad hoc and threadbare across different health authorities that the national infrastructure is just not there to implement any future medical advances in Alzheimer’s and dementia. Young people who cannot find peace of mind wait far, far too long for mental health services.
What does the Chancellor say to all this in the Autumn Statement? He says:
“That is why I want the public sector to increase productivity growth by at least half a percent a year—the level at which the size of our state starts to reduce as a proportion of GDP”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/11/23; col. 328.]
What is he saying? “Let’s not worry about the industrial action of recent times. Let’s not be troubled by the healthcare buildings infected by crumbling RAAC. Let’s not be dismayed about the Government’s vanishing new hospital-building commitments. Let’s not fret about the stresses on beleaguered staff. Let’s just make nurses and doctors work so much harder in order to achieve our ideological goals”. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, you could not make it up.
I invite the Minister to share this pledge: that nobody, in any part of this country, should ever be treated in a hospital corridor. If that is not a government objective by now, we certainly need a new Government. Meanwhile, I have to agree with Professor Ranger of the Royal College of Nursing when she commented on the Autumn Statement, saying:
“The NHS faces a multi-billion pound deficit—giving away at least £5 billion in tax cuts in place of health spending confirms the NHS is no longer a priority for the government”.
Let those words sink in: “no longer a priority”. A fit for purpose NHS seemingly does not fit with the Government’s ideological scheme of things. Even the NHS Confederation, hardly His Majesty’s Government’s greatest critic, had this to say about the Statement:
“There were no new major funding announcements for healthcare and existing settlements will stay the same in cash terms”.
This is despite the Nuffield Trust estimating that the NHS faces £1.7 billion deficit. Let us face it, a Conservative Secretary of State for Health—and there have been a few—is about as welcome to health professionals at the moment as James Cleverly would be today in Stockton North.
It is, we are told, the Chancellor’s stated goal to boost productivity in the UK—and so say all of us. Can one think of a faster route to increase productivity, as noble Lords have said, than a healthy workforce with few anxieties about seeing a consultant or getting treatment for a loved one?
The NHS is now 75 years old and remains probably our most stirring national achievement, the envy of the free world. This septuagenarian should invite both respect and support—and it does not appear to be getting either from this Government at the moment.
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