National Health Service

David T C Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I would like to tell the House what I think is an absolute disgrace. Not once during the speech made by the Secretary of State for Health, not once in any of the speeches made by Opposition Members and not once in Welsh questions earlier today did any Opposition Member raise the issue of what is happening in the national health service in Wales. Labour has been responsible for the health service in that part of the United Kingdom for the past 16 years, and Labour Members are running scared of making any mention of it or drawing any comparisons involving it. According to a House of Commons Library document—and they don’t come much more neutral than that—the NHS in Wales, run by Labour, is doing far worse than the NHS in England on almost every measure.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was present for Welsh questions earlier; I certainly was. Perhaps he was asleep, because the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), used three of his questions to the Secretary of State to ask specifically about the NHS in Wales.

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[David T. C. Davies]

I checked the Order Paper this morning, and no one had tabled a question about the NHS in Wales.

The shadow Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), said earlier that he was not responsible for Wales, but the reality is that there are 20,000 patients in England who are registered with Welsh GPs and who have their health care provided in Wales. The right hon. Gentleman is, to some extent, responsible for the poor level of service that those people are currently receiving.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

I am happy to give way, but I have to say that Opposition Members have used up rather more of their allocation than Members on this side.

[Clive Efford]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be talking about records. This Government came in with no mandate whatever and planned to close nine of the 31 accident and emergency departments across London. What state does he think the A and E service in London would be in if his Government had been successful in every case? They were prevented from achieving their aim by public campaigns, including the one in Lewisham, in my part of London.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am absolutely certain that the A and E situation in England would be far better under this Government than it is in Wales, where, according to the House of Commons Library report, 13% of patients in major departments wait more than four hours in A and E. That is approximately double the percentage recorded by major departments in England. The question of ambulances has been raised several times today. Wales has the worst ambulance response rate in the United Kingdom, with around 55% arriving within eight minutes, compared with more than 70% in England.

The shadow Secretary of State talked about privatisation, but it was the Labour Government who, quite rightly, started using the private sector to improve the national health service. I have here a quote from the Labour Secretary of State in 2002; I will not mention his name. He said of the private sector that

“we intend to use it when it can bring expertise or resources to help improve services.”—[Official Report, 26 February 2002; Vol. 380, c. 547.]

We have carried on doing the same thing. A few years later, a different Health Secretary said:

“The NHS has always made use of the private sector and will continue to do so”.—[Official Report, 25 October 2005; Vol. 438, c. 163.]

She also promised that, the following year, patients would be able to choose from any health care provider—NHS or independent sector—that met NHS standards.

It was Labour’s policy in government to use the private sector. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is totally ridiculous for Labour Members now to pretend that the Conservatives are trying to privatise the NHS. That is a big lie: we will never, ever privatise the NHS, but we are quite happy to use the private sector when it can provide a better service, just as the Labour Government did. The last word on this came in 2005, when Professor Allyson Pollock wrote a damning book about the privatisation of the national health service. She was criticising the Labour Government.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour took things a bit too far? The shadow Secretary of State tendered out the Hinchingbrooke hospital, which ended up in the private sector. That has not been a success, and I think it is better if a trust runs the hospital—

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Oh yes he did!

[David T. C. Davies]

I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald). The reality is that Labour Secretaries of State said over and over again that they were quite happy to use the private sector, and they did. They were probably right to do so in many instances, and we have continued to do so. There has been no departure from that policy.

[Andy Burnham]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have always to correct the record when these statements are made. I apologise for delaying the House, but I am going to carry on doing it. I did not put it out to tender; it was a process I inherited, and in the middle of that process I changed the policy from “any willing provider” to “NHS preferred provider”. Contrary to what the Secretary of State said at the Dispatch Box, NHS Peterborough and Stamford was still in the race.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. No—I said straight away that it was not a point of order, but a point of correction. The point is that it is all on the record for people to read tomorrow, to continue a debate on who is right and who is wrong. Both parties, quite rightly, have stated what their belief is. Mr David T.C. Davies has not much time to go and I am very worried that he will not get to the end of his speech. He has only eight minutes in total.

[David T. C. Davies]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful, because I want to talk about quite a few other things. We did not hear very much about waiting time comparisons, but of course the waiting times in England and Wales are very different. In Wales, people wait at least 26 weeks, with 14,745 having been waiting for more than nine months for treatment; in England, people wait about 18 weeks. One hundred and fifty people have died in Wales waiting for cardiac surgery.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

My hon. Friend mentioned Professor Allyson Pollock. Is he aware that she particularly highlighted the extraordinary amount of money spent under the previous Government on the private finance initiative, mortgaging the future of the NHS to the tune of more than £80 billion? In the course of the next Parliament, that will cost more than £11 billion.

[David T. C. Davies]

I commend the professor’s book, and I hope Labour Members read it, as well as looking at the NHS comparators between England and Wales, which they obviously have not done so far. I would like Labour Members to tell us whether—if they ever are in government; I hope they will not be—they will guarantee to continue with the cancer drugs fund, which has allowed thousands of people in England to live longer and more productive lives than they otherwise would have.

The situation is not the same in Wales, where these cancer drugs are routinely denied to people. I am talking about people such as my constituent Ann Wilkinson, who is also trying to care for a very ill husband but who has been denied Avastin. She has had to find other means to get it, and other seriously ill people in Wales have had to move to England or find people’s spare rooms to sleep in.

We heard something about cuts, but the reality is that we have guaranteed the NHS budget in England while it has been cut by about 8% in Wales. Thousands of people are members of Action for our Health, a group comprising people campaigning in Wales to be treated in England. Some people say that the NHS is the envy of the world, and perhaps it is, but the NHS in England is very much the envy of Wales. To see that we need only ask the thousands of people—ordinary patients—in a campaign group who want to be treated by the NHS that is run by this coalition Government and not by the NHS that is run by Labour.

I wish to finish by saying to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I congratulate him on the better ambulance response times he is delivering in England than Labour is delivering in Wales; on the better accident and emergency turnaround times he is delivering in England than Labour is delivering in Wales; on the shorter waiting lists in England than people face in Wales; and on the cancer drugs fund, allowing people to live longer in England than they otherwise would in Wales. Most of all, I congratulate him on protecting that NHS budget—on standing up for the NHS instead of cutting the budget, as the Labour party has done in Wales. I very much hope that he is able to continue with that good work in years to come.