Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

Thirteen years of Tory rule has delivered a broken country, where the majority of people know that times are harder now than they were before. Whether it is accessing a GP, trying to get on the housing ladder or meeting the ever-rising costs of food, childcare, energy and public services, people are working harder and paying more taxes for less in return. Our morale is being tested to the limit.

The climate change emergency has been downgraded, the Government are going backwards on their commitments. Our rivers have been turned into open sewers. Schools are struggling to cover their costs. Public buildings are collapsing. Food bank use continues to soar, and more and more children are falling into poverty. All this zombie Government could offer in their last stand before the general election was this pathetic agenda. Instead of genuine attempts to fix the problems they have created, the Government have opted for more division and yet more authoritarian anti-strike measures; they do not believe that public service workers have a right to stand up for fair pay, conditions and better services for the patients they care about.

I will focus my King’s Speech response on health and social care, because more than 7 million people are waiting, on record waiting lists. I am so disappointed on behalf of my constituents that the King’s Speech offered little hope to get the NHS back on its feet—in other words, to how it was the last time Labour was in power. Many of my constituents are waiting for care, and the struggle to get a GP appointment is the norm. Access to dental care is not possible for many, and some of my constituents are struggling to access vital medications because of ongoing drug shortages, particularly epilepsy drugs, HRT and ADHD medication. There was nothing in the King’s Speech to address those problems, and mental health reform has again been kicked into the long grass.

Parts of the Mental Health Act are 40 years old, and we now know so much more about mental health conditions and how to treat them, so why are the Government failing patients and children, and continuing to ignore the mental health emergency? My constituents have been waiting nearly seven years for the in-patient mental health beds they lost to be returned. This Government enabled blatant profiteering during the national health emergency, and the covid inquiry has confirmed what we already suspected: that the Government response to covid was slow, chaotic and deadly. They went from clapping the NHS to calling for their sacking for having the temerity to demand a wage they could live on. The Government say they want minimum service levels on strike days, but what is the Conservative plan to provide a minimum level of service on non-strike days? The Government have finally relented to Labour’s calls to publish a long-term workforce plan for the NHS to ensure that the service can meet demand.

The Health Foundation forecasts that waiting lists will go up to 8 million by next year—not down, as the Prime Minister promised—and these proposals have come far too late. The health service is now short of 125,000 staff, and the announcement will take years to have an impact. There is no plan on retention measures, but I offer the Government one piece of advice: stop blaming hard-working, burned-out NHS staff for the Government’s decade of neglect of our NHS. There is still no long-term social care workforce plan to overcome the severe staff shortages in the care sector. We cannot fix health unless we fix social care. It will be left to the next Labour Government to rescue the NHS from the biggest crisis in its history, to get it back on its feet and to make it fit for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Kendall]

I have spoken to many doctors who come to work in the hospitals in my constituency—

[Mohammad Yasin]

And Bedford.

[Liz Kendall]

—and in many other parts of the country, and they want to come, work and support the work that we do. We have looked at all those issues and taken them into account, and made a small-c conservative estimate of the impact that it would have. We are confident that that will provide the resources we need to get the backlog down and get Britain working again.

We will overhaul skills with new technical excellence colleges and by reforming apprenticeships, so that no one is ever written off again, whatever their age. We will devolve employment support to local areas to better meet local needs, because the man—or even woman—in Whitehall can never know what is really needed in Leicester, Liverpool or Leeds. We will grow our economy in every part of the country by getting Britain building, through our plans to make Britain a clean energy superpower, and by ensuring that we are the best place to start up and grow a business.

Those are the long-term changes that our country needs. In contrast, the King’s Speech just tinkered at the edges or ignored those problems all together. And what have we seen today? The latest round of chaos, confusion and division in the Conservative party—a party so concerned about its own future that it cannot focus on the future of the country, proving once more than it can never be the change from 13 years of its own failure—and a weak Prime Minister, finally forced to sack his Home Secretary, and to bring back a former Prime Minister he accused only weeks ago of being part of a failed status quo, in a desperate attempt to save his own neck. The people of this country deserve better. They want change. It is time for an election so Labour can give Britain its future back.