There has been a lot of scaremongering about the Health and Social Care Bill by those who care more about politics than people. I am known for speaking my mind, often in plain language, so I can you tell that ...
• There is no privatisation: The NHS will continue to provide treatment free when people need it, regardless of ability to pay.
• More money is going into the NHS: Even though the Government is having to take very tough spending decisions, we are increasing spending on the NHS in real terms. By 2015 there will be an extra £12.5 billion for the NHS.
The NHS is one of the things that makes this country great: healthcare for all, free at the point of use, unrelated to the ability to pay. And that’s the way it should stay. Like so many in this country, I have family and friends who would not be with us today if it had not been for the quality of the medical and nursing care they received and the dedication of the doctors and staff. So my commitment to the NHS is personal and deep-seated.
But we cannot look at the NHS through rose-tinted glasses. Although the NHS has been brilliant at so many things, it could still improve. If the NHS was performing at world class levels we could save an extra 5,000 lives from cancer every year.
It is no use claiming to stand up for the values that underpin the NHS unless they can be made a reality. As former Labour Minister Lord Darzi, himself an eminent surgeon, said: “to believe in the NHS is to believe in its reform.” I agree.
The NHS needs reform because people are living longer; there is more complex new treatment available and people deserve choice about where to receive it; and the cost of medicines has been rising by £600 million per year. Continuing as we are will put at risk the chances of our children inheriting an NHS which has in so many ways stood us in good stead. Despite the abysmal economic situation the Government inherited from Labour, we are investing £12.5 billion in the NHS over the next four years – that’s the equivalent of one in every seven pounds of public money. BUT, just putting in more money without reform won’t meet the healthcare needs of this and subsequent generations.
So what are we doing to ensure the NHS survives?
Removing red tape
The Bill abolishes two layers of bureaucracy (PCTs and Strategic Health Authorities) and half the statutory health quangos. Already we have over 15,000 fewer administrators and managers in the NHS than under the last Labour Government. On the other side of the scales, we have over 4,000 more doctors and the highest ever number of midwives.
Cutting waste
We will save some £5 billion being wasted in current administration budgets in this parliament. Under the previous Government the private sector was paid £250 million for operations that never happened. Between 2008 and 2009 the number of NHS managers increased six times as fast as the number of nurses. £6.4 billion was wasted on the NHS supercomputer. And in a parody of a bad joke, under a Labour PFI contract it cost £333 to change a light switch.
Giving power to GPs so they can get the best health care for their patients
We’re taking power away from bureaucrats and putting it in the hands of the people best placed to use it – GPs. Money will go directly to groups of GPs and other health professionals like nurses in what are called Clinical Commissioning Groups. These Groups will be able to get health treatment from the NHS and other not-for-profit organisations and charities offering health care. For example, if you have a stiff shoulder you could go to an NHS hospital for physiotherapy or to your more local group of self employed physiotherapists. Your GP can give you the choice.
In Eastbourne some nurses left the NHS to set up a specialist wound healing clinic. It has a fantastic record of healing people who have suffered from serious problems like leg ulcers for years. GPs will be able to get treatments like this for their patients from other not-for-profit organisations and charities offering health care.
In Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire, people in need of help to control pain used to travel to specialist clinics at hospitals in Nottingham. Now their GPs have set up their own award-winning local service - so no more trips to hospital as the service is now nearer to home.
Requiring GPs to get the best treatments, not the cheapest
Let’s not be frightened of using competition to help achieve all this. It’s not a race to the bottom over price. It’s a race to the top on quality. It’s a means of giving greater choice to patients to get the high quality care they require.
Let’s not pretend either that the private sector and the NHS have to date simply passed each other by on opposite sides of the street. Private companies and the NHS have worked hand-in-hand since 1948. The last Government discriminated in favour of private health companies doing work like knee operations. The Health Bill, however, outlaws, for the first time ever, favouring the private sector over existing state health providers.
Introducing a statutory duty on the NHS to reduce health inequalities
In 2005 the British Medical Journal commented. “The difference between the life expectancy of the richest and poorest in our country is now greater than at any time since Queen Victoria’s reign’ and under Labour the gap grew. The Bill makes it law that the NHS must work together to make sure people everywhere get the same great level of health care.
So we are undertaking these reforms to make the NHS better and more sustainable in the years ahead. We are doing it so that patients will have the best possible treatment and care for the long-term benefit of their health. These reforms have my full support so that our NHS exists not just for you and me, but for our children and the future.
