Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Minister on being the great survivor of the Department of Health and Social Care. She must surely be due a carriage clock or the long service medal by now. The only long-term decision for a brighter future seems to be that she is still in her place, although she did not offer much of a brighter future.

More positively, I see far more than one nervous face on the Government Benches—I see lots of nervous faces among those contemplating the next general election—but one is undoubtedly that of the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell). I congratulate him on his election and wish him well for his maiden speech, which I can confidently say will be the best speech we hear from those on the Conservative Benches all day.

At a time when patients cannot get a doctor’s appointment, families are struggling to pay the mortgage and major conflicts are having an impact on our economy and security, the Prime Minister has spent the past five days deciding whether to sack his Home Secretary for publicly disobeying him, undermining the police and inflaming tensions on our streets. Finally, having had the sheer poor judgment to have appointed someone to such high office when she had already been forced to resign for a serious national security leak, he has summoned up the guts to sack the worst Home Secretary in history. Yet, as we see, the merry-go-round of the Conservative clown show continues. After 13 years, the Conservatives have run out of names at the bottom of the barrel, so they are starting all over again. May I offer my sympathies to the Conservative Members who did not get the call from No. 10 today? What kind of message does it send to their constituents that their own party leader cannot find a suitable candidate for Foreign Secretary among the 350 Conservative MPs who sit in this House?

The arsonist has today returned to the fire, because when it comes to the national health service, Lord Cameron has quite a lot to answer for as the architect of austerity and the biggest top-down reorganisation in the history of the NHS—a £3 billion disaster that has led straight to the biggest crisis in the history of the NHS. That is before we even begin to take into account his record of ushering in the “golden” age between Britain and China; taking 20,000 police officers off our streets; and having food bank Britain leave more than 1 million people dependent on charity to feed themselves and their families. That is Lord Cameron’s legacy and as the current Prime Minister admits, “some mistakes were made”. Who is he trying to kid when he tells us that this recycled Conservative Government offer the change our country needs?

I would welcome the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) to her position, but of course she is not here this afternoon, having just been appointed earlier today. She is the fifth Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that I have faced in this job in less than two years, although, to be fair, two of those appointments were the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay). The Government said they would make

“Long-term decisions for a brighter future”,

but they cannot even deliver a long-term Secretary of State for Health.

We know where the Secretary of State is—she will be in the Department being briefed about the challenges of the job and being brought up to speed. No doubt she and new Ministers will want to review the decisions she is inheriting and to start to think afresh about whether she wants to proceed with those decisions as they have been working through the machine. That is why it is so grossly irresponsible to change Ministers every five minutes and constantly churn from one face to another, when it is clear to everyone but the Prime Minister that it is not just a change of faces around the Cabinet table that we need, but a change of Government.

As the Secretary of State sits in the Department being briefed by her civil servants, I will help them out with the induction by offering her a primer on what she inherits: millions of patients a month unable to get a GP appointment when they need one; 24 hours in A&E—not just a television programme, but a reality for far too many; ambulances not arriving on time, if they arrive at all; the 12th month of the worst strikes in the history of the National Health Service; NHS dentistry in managed decline, to the point where people are forced to pull out their own teeth—DIY dentistry in 21st century Britain; a generation of young people who have paid the price for lockdowns with their mental health, forced to wait years for the support they need; the longest waiting lists and the lowest patient satisfaction in history. That is the record of the Secretary of State’s seven predecessors: failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure, upon failure.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that list of failures—it is shocking. I would like to add to the list that over 2,000 autistic people or people with learning disabilities are detained in inappropriate units, when this Government promised over 10 years ago to close them all down.

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. As I make progress through my speech I will come back to the breath-taking complacency about mental health we heard from the Minister a moment ago.

Given the scale of the crisis and given that the Prime Minister has made fixing waiting lists one his five priorities, hon. Members might have expected something in the King’s Speech to deal with it. Instead, we got nothing on the NHS as it heads into its most challenging winter yet and we got nothing on social care, just kicking the can down the road and delaying reforms until after the election. There was nothing on dentistry, despite even Conservative Back Benchers crying out for a rescue plan, and nothing on mental health, despite the Conservative party committing to reform, not just in its last manifesto but in its last two manifestos.

It was the longest King’s Speech in almost a decade, with the fewest Bills. Does that not just sum up the modern Conservative party? Plenty of slogans, but no solutions. What we got was a Bill that will not come into effect until after the general election and a sack-the-nurses Bill. On the tobacco and vapes Bill, the question is not whether Labour will support it, but whether the Conservative party will support it. Government Members will remember that I first proposed that smoking ban back in January. I say they will remember, because they made their feelings known in newspapers at the time. They called it “nanny state” and

“an attack on ordinary people and their culture”.

They accused me of “health fascism”. Well, they can now make their considered and nuanced views known to the new Secretary of State—I am sure she is looking forward to receiving them. It just demonstrates that where Labour leads, the Government follow.

The Prime Minister may be too weak to whip his Back Benchers to vote that crucial measure through, but on the Opposition Benches we will put country first and party second. Labour MPs will go through the voting Lobby and make sure that the legislation is passed, so that young people today are even less likely to smoke than they are to vote Conservative.

I am afraid to disappoint the Government, but we will not be supporting the other Bill in the King’s Speech that relates to health. Most people look at the crisis in the NHS and think it needs more doctors and nurses. The Conservative party looks at the health service and concludes that we need to sack more doctors and nurses. The Government are saying that public servants should be sacked for failing to provide minimum standards on strike days, but the Government have not met the four-hour A&E standard since 2015; they have not met the standard for treatment within 18 weeks since 2016; and they were doing so badly on meeting cancer waiting time standards that they have simply got rid of the standards altogether. If the Conservatives are proposing to sack doctors and nurses for failing to provide minimum service levels, can we now sack Ministers for failing to meet minimum standards on non-strike days?

The new Health and Social Care Secretary has an opportunity to break with the past year. Strikes are crippling the NHS and they are putting patients in harm’s way. Her predecessor may have thought that they were a useful excuse for his failure, but they were, and are, a misery for patients and staff alike. The Government must stop the scapegoating of NHS staff, go into these negotiations with good faith, work at finding a solution, and, finally, bring these strikes to an end. There will be no progress on turning around our national health service until the Government make some progress.

When summing up I hope the Minister will explain why action was not taken on the Mental Health Act 2007, because, I am afraid, the Minister’s opening remarks were entirely unsatisfactory. The Bill has gone through Committee. It has cross-party support. It is ready to go, so where is it? The treatment of people with learning disabilities and autism under the current Act shames our society. The disproportionate impact on black people, who are four times more likely to be sectioned than white people, is appalling. Prisons and police cells are no place for people with mental ill-health. Surely that is not controversial in 2023. It is, as the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), said, “a burning injustice”. I cannot understand why the Government have broken their promise to address that matter finally.

It is long past time that mental health was treated with the same seriousness as physical health. Labour will not only reform the Mental Health Act in our first King’s Speech, but recruit thousands more mental health professionals, provide hubs in every community, and set up mental health support in every school, so that young people can get the help they need when they need it. [Interruption.] The Minister says that they have done that. What planet is she living on? This is the problem with these Ministers. Even when the faces change, the lines remain the same. The Minister has not changed, but she is still reading from the same failed script. This is the problem with the Conservative party. Its message to the country is simple: “You have never had it so good. Everything is going really well. The reason we are churning all the Ministers in our Cabinet is that they are doing such a good job. It is job done and time to give someone else a chance.” I am afraid that that is why these Conservatives are so out of touch and will struggle at the next general election if their message to the country is that it has never had it so good.

Furthermore, unlike this Government, who crashed the economy in the most reckless way, we will pay for our policies, making sure that they are fully costed and fully funded—in this case, by ending tax breaks for private schools and private equity fund managers. Politics is about choices: Labour chooses the wellbeing of the many, not the interests of the few, and we will fight the election on those lines any time. I say call the election tomorrow, because we are ready.

When it comes to dentistry, I should also say farewell to two former Ministers, the hon. Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Harborough (Neil O’Brien). As the hon. Member for Harborough departs Government, I hope that he does not take with him his pledge to bring forward a recovery plan for NHS dental services. It has been seven months since he announced that such a plan would be forthcoming, yet it is now nowhere to be seen. Indeed, last week, integrated care systems were given permission to raid their dentistry budget underspends and to remove the ringfence. That follows a pilot in Cornwall, trialling making NHS dentistry available only to children and the most vulnerable. It is the managed decline of NHS dentistry before our eyes. If people want to know what the future of the NHS would look like with five more years of the Conservative Government, they need only look at the ghost of Christmas past in NHS dentistry. The Conservatives blame the previous Labour Government, but they have been in power for 13 years. In 2010, we stood on a manifesto committed to reforming the NHS dental contract. They have had 13 years to do it, and they have failed again and again, leaving us in the situation that we are in today, with Dickensian stories of desperate people performing DIY dentistry and tooth decay being the most common cause of children aged six to 10 being admitted to hospital. It did not need to be this way.

I say to the new Secretary of State and her team that she may not have a plan, but Labour does, and she is more than welcome to nick it. We will deliver 700,000 more urgent appointments a year, recruit dentists to the areas most in need, introduce supervised toothbrushing in schools to prevent children’s teeth from rotting, and reform the NHS dental contract so that everyone who needs an NHS dentist can get one—

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The shadow Health Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), raised the fact that there have been five Health Secretaries in two years. The Conservatives have also had 12 Culture Secretaries since 2010, so perhaps it should not surprise us that, among the many glaring omissions in the Gracious Speech, there was an absence of any measures to support those who work in Britain’s cultural sector, and particularly musicians. I want to focus on that.

Music industry leaders tell me that their sector feels left behind. Freelancers feel left out in the cold without the financial stability they deserve. In too many communities, cultural provision is now dependent on the good will of talented individuals who are prepared to manage on shoestring budgets with low income levels. We can do so much better in this country. As a music leader recently told me:

“The warning bell has been ringing for years, and this Government seems to have taken for granted the drive, passion and sacrifice which has somehow kept the industry alive.”

I have been told repeatedly that the problems faced by creatives come back to this: a decline in arts education, which is leading to skills shortages; falling funding levels; and the challenges to touring caused by the Government’s failure to get a visa waiver for touring in the Brexit deal. The Government choose to ignore those problems and pretend that they are supporting the sector adequately—even today they are setting ambitious growth targets for the creative sector. I want to begin by looking at the squeeze on arts education, and in particular the decline in music education.

We know that state-funded schools are increasingly unable to provide strong music education—or in some cases any music education. Policies such as the English baccalaureate, combined with the crisis in music teacher recruitment and squeezed school budgets, have led to a reduced provision of music education for young people in state schools. On average, music provision in state-funded schools is only 47 minutes a week. That is significantly below the Government’s target of one hour, which is a bare minimum. Compare that paltry target with parts of Germany, where secondary school students study music for at least two hours a week, or Finland, where music is studied for eight hours a week. Meanwhile, the uptake of music at A-level has fallen by a catastrophic 45% since 2010. There is a similarly worrying picture when it comes to studying music at GCSE.

In this difficult environment for schools and teachers, the role of music education hubs is all the more important, yet those hubs have had their funding reduced by 17% in real terms since 2011, and Government plans to reduce the number of hubs risk a further deterioration of the music offer. The Government’s failed education policies mean that the opportunities to gain the skills necessary to be a musician are becoming increasingly the preserve of those young people whose families who can afford to pay privately, either through attending independent schools or through private music tuition. As a result of those Conservative policies, less than a quarter of the music and performing arts workforce now come from a working-class background.

As well as fewer opportunities in schools, there are now barriers to both budding and established musicians touring beyond the UK’s borders. The failure of the former Culture Secretary to obtain a touring agreement with the European Union for cultural workers resulted in an appalling mess of red tape and extortionate fees for bands and orchestras looking to perform in EU countries. Agents, promoters, record labels and musicians have all told me that this is proving devastating for artists, particularly those trying to break into the industry. The freelance opera singer Paul Carey Jones said:

“As ever, it’s those at the start of their careers, without the backing of an established reputation, who will suffer the most…the consequent long-term damage to the UK’s position as a global force in the performing arts is incalculable.”

In a recent interview on LBC, the Culture Secretary implied that sorting out the mess of visas for touring musicians is not under the control of her Government, but it is up to the Government to renegotiate it and to find a solution for touring musicians.

Then there are the financial challenges that many musicians face. A recent survey by the Musicians’ Union found that musicians earn, on average, just £20,700 a year from music. Nearly a quarter of musicians reported that they did not earn enough to support themselves or their families, even after their lengthy training. There is a direct link between the working conditions of musicians and decisions to cut arts and culture budgets. Local authorities are the biggest funders of culture in the UK, but, as we know, they have suffered a 40% real-terms reduction in central Government spending since 2010. That has meant a £1.4 billion shortfall in spending on culture, heritage and libraries. Meanwhile, Arts Council England had its per capita budget reduced by 13% between 2009-10 and 2021-22. It is therefore no surprise that the number of filled jobs in music is falling.

In the last year alone, the number of filled jobs in music performing and visual arts fell by a tenth—a drop of 35,000 roles. That reduction is even greater in roles relating to instrument manufacture, sound recording and the operating of music venues. How can we expect children and young people to aspire to work in the music industry if there are no jobs for them to go into?

Funding shortfalls may also sadly have an impact on the important work undertaken by music organisations in health and care. For example, the Liverpool philharmonic has just celebrated 15 years of its music and health programme, which works with the NHS to help people access music to support their recovery and their wellbeing. Another brilliant health initiative is the English National Opera’s “Breathe” programme, where ENO chorus members have used singing techniques to aid recovery from covid-19 or long covid. There is also a great deal of work involving musicians bringing joy to people with dementia and those living in care homes.

The failure to support musicians and other creatives is not a peripheral issue, because expression in all its forms is central to the task of recreating a sense of community, identity, pride and hope, and our creative workers are at the heart of that potential. We will never achieve the diversity needed for the arts sector to thrive under the Tory policies I have discussed. The systemic failure to protect creative workers under this Conservative Government has led to working-class representation in the creative industries halving since the 1970s.

Today, the Culture Secretary is in Manchester, praising the creative industries as a driver of economic growth. At the same time, she is presiding over the cutting of the funding streams that feed them, and expects them to run on empty, doing more with less, year after year. It is time for this Government finally to accept that their policies have failed, and that Britain’s culture sector would be better off under a Labour Government.