Future of the NHS

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend raises a valuable point. I am passionate about mental health, but at the moment we have no plan. The 10-year plan for mental health services and the way forward was abolished and nothing has been put in its place. Does my hon. Friend feel that that has contributed to the fact that we are seeing so many issues in our young people and elderly, and anxiety in our teenagers?

[Liz Twist]

I most certainly agree that there is a need for a mental health strategy. I have spoken to voluntary organisations that work in the field such as YoungMinds, which is concerned that young people put a huge amount of effort into commenting on the proposed mental health strategy, but that has now been subsumed in the wider health strategy that the Government talked about just a few weeks ago. There are real concerns from not just YoungMinds but many quarters that the mental health strategy will be lost in a wider mix. I hope that the Government will listen to that. YoungMinds engaged a huge number of young people to talk about this issue, and those people feel that their views are not being considered.

There are so many things that I could talk about but I will not, you will be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to confirm that our NHS is hugely valued by my constituents and everyone in the country. We need to ensure that it works well and effectively and that we have the staff that we need. I hope the Government will look at the workforce plan, because that is key to many of the issues we face. My constituents need the NHS, and we need it to work properly. I am glad that Labour has plans to do that in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this debate.

I worked in the NHS as a nurse for 25 years. I know at first hand how soul destroying it can be to work long hours with inadequate staffing and funding. I am also a mom, a sister, a wife and a grandmother. I know how worrying it can be when someone is ill and how helpless long waiting times can make families feel. I have also experienced that at first hand with the NHS in the last year. That worry is felt right at the heart of our communities, time and again. My constituents tell me they cannot get a GP appointment. In Erdington, Kingstanding and Castle Vale, and across the country, every morning at 8 am, thousands of people call their local GP surgery to get an appointment. One of my constituents rang up her local practice to get an appointment and was fifth in the queue. By the time she got to the front, there were no appointments left. She told me, “If you ring at one minute past eight, you’ll be on the phone for at least 40 minutes. You won’t get an appointment, because they’ve already gone.”

That is not a unique example. If one of my constituents cannot wait to see a GP and calls an ambulance because they think a loved one has had a heart attack or stroke, they can expect to wait 27 agonising minutes. In December, many waited for over an hour. In November, my husband had a stroke. The ambulance never came. In January, across the UK, more than 40,000 people waited over 12 hours for treatment once they had managed to get to an A&E department.

With healthcare staff reporting stress, poor mental health and that they are still living with the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, it is no wonder that 40,000 nurses and 20,000 doctors left their jobs last year. Only 7,000 actually retired from their profession, so where did the other 53,000 go?

Let us be very clear: the NHS is on its knees. People in my community and across the UK are tired of empty promises from the Government when they know things are not improving. They know as well as I do that the NHS deserves better. People want to be heard. They want to feel like the people responsible for the services are listening to what they are saying and not just leaving the room. From GP practices in Erdington to hospitals and social care settings across the country, one thing is clear: only a Labour Government can fix this mess.

[Rob Roberts]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the House for interrupting the debate. At the end of my speech, I may have used a little bit of intemperate language, which was not necessarily in best keeping with the traditions of the House. I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House.

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I was a nurse for 25 years and I returned to the frontline during the pandemic. I know at first hand that after 13 years of Tory mismanagement, our NHS is in crisis. Many health workers who have dedicated their lives to caring for others day in, day out are still living with the after effects of having worked flat out during and before the pandemic, all while trying to do the work of three or four people due to staff shortages. It is soul destroying for people to go on duty knowing that there will be inadequate staffing levels for nine or 12-hour shifts. Tory cuts have reduced A&E departments to shells of what they were under the last Labour Government—they are now so busy that staff feel that they can seem, at times, like a zoo.

Social care needs fundamental reform that truly brings together health and social care. People in Erdington, Kingstanding, Castle Vale and across the UK are finding it almost impossible to get a GP appointment, an ambulance or an operation when they need one, but the implications of stress on the health of staff can be tragic. The ongoing failure of the Government to address staffing levels can be a matter of life or death for patients. It breaks my heart to say that I just could not face the prospect of working in nursing right now.

In November, 140,000 people had to wait more than four hours to be admitted to A&E, and unfortunately my husband was one of them. If we add all that time together, collectively, the British public waited almost 65 years for emergency treatment, but the real question is: how much longer will they have to wait for a competent Government—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I know this is difficult, but we have to keep to the time. We will now not get everybody in.

NHS Industrial Action: Government Preparations

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

My right hon. Friend is right. We have an independent pay review body mechanism for a reason, and it has worked for a number of years. That is why I made reference to the First Minister in Scotland. Is this a procedure we are going to go through every single year when a pay review body recommendation is made and unions do not like it, and politicians have to get involved? The point of the independent pay review body is that it depoliticises the issue, and Ministers do not negotiate directly with unions. The independent pay review body looks at the issue in the round, along with the wider economy and a number of other factors, then forms a recommendation which the Government can choose to accept or refuse. It is important to stress that in this case the Government accepted the recommendations in full.

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I was a nurse for 25 years. Nurses work long hours, day in, day out, to support people all over the country, often on very low pay. I know from experience how tough it can be, and it is shameful that many hospitals have opened food banks specially to feed their staff. Let us be absolutely clear: the power to stop these strikes, which nurses themselves do not really want, lies squarely with the Government. How can Ministers justify refusing to talk to the unions?

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for her service as a nurse. We value hugely and appreciate all our NHS staff. We have given them a pay rise this year, on top of 3% last year, when pay was frozen in the wider public sector. As I have said a handful of times, we accepted in full the recommendations from the independent pay review body. Of course, I do not want to see anybody needing to use a food bank, let alone a member of our NHS. That is exactly why the Government have a broader package of support in place.

I have to take issue with one of the hon. Lady’s comments. She asked who held the power to call off these strikes. There is only one answer: the unions.

NHS Staffing Levels

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on bringing forward this important and timely debate. In all areas of healthcare, it is incredibly important that our NHS is able to cope with the growing demand for its services.

Across the board, staffing shortages in the health service, let down by 12 years of Tory chaos, are endemic. In nursing, 40,000 registered nurses in England have left the NHS in the past year. We have lost 4,700 GPs in the last decade, and hundreds of practices have closed since the last election. That has resulted in GP surgeries being massively overstretched, such as the one in my constituency that has 3,200 people on its books.

The cuts are not just numbers; they have a real impact on people’s lives. One of my constituents is a PE teacher with a chronic knee injury. She was unable to book a GP appointment and could not get an MRI scan. So that she could continue to work safely, she felt that she had no option but to book it privately, costing her £300.

In mental health services, local trusts are seriously struggling with a lack of capacity. Last year, around 2.8 million people had contact with NHS mental health, learning disability and autism services in England. That is around 5% of the population, and my city of Birmingham had the third highest percentage of adults in contact with those services. Despite the obvious problems in this area, the Royal College of Physicians has reported that, nationally, we can expect an increase of just 4,000 more mental health nurses by 2024, when more than 12,000 are required to meet demand. We know that the pressures that hospitals face lead them to rely on NHS staff banks and agency workers to cover for the lack of capacity. This year, 83% of nursing staff said that staffing levels on their last shift were not sufficient to meet patient needs safely and effectively.

The new Chancellor of the Exchequer said in 2015:

“For too long staffing agencies have been able to rip off the NHS by charging extortionate hourly rates which cost billions of pounds a year and undermine staff working hard to deliver high-quality care.”

However, this autumn’s Budget pledge to increase NHS spending by £3.3 billion next year is not enough to plug the £7 billion shortfall that the NHS could experience.

I was a nurse for 25 years. I understand how important it is for the NHS to have sufficient levels of staff, and the disastrous effect that staffing shortages have. Nurses work long hours day in, day out, to support people all across the UK. They often do this on very low pay, and we know that many hospitals across the country have opened food banks specifically to feed their staff. After 12 years of mismanagement by the Tory Government, it is no wonder that our nurses have been driven to take industrial action for the first time. As I said earlier, nurses are leaving the profession in droves; some 40,000 quit last year. I for one do not blame them. I cannot say, hand on heart and with 25 years of nursing experience, that I could do the job now. The blame for the mess lies squarely with the Conservatives.

Ambulance Pressures

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that warm welcome. I was Minister of State when he was Secretary of State, and hugely valued the expertise, diligence and insight that he brought in that role, which provide useful context as I take on my new duties. He is absolutely right; indeed, he will recall, in 2018, looking in detail at delayed discharge, and work on that key issue continues. For example, on 1 July the NHS launched a 100-day sprint looking at all the known interventions. One issue that he and I have discussed in the past is how to socialise best practice and industrialise innovation at scale, and we are looking specifically at that. There is also a call for expressions of interest in pioneer science to better use tech and innovation on delayed discharge, and of course there is £2.6 billion of investment in the better care fund to support that integration work through the integrated care boards.

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Although I welcome the additional resource in response to the heatwave, it is simply not enough. Does the Secretary of State agree that until the Government address the systematic problems in social care to ensure that it is properly funded and people can be discharged quickly into the community, and we no longer see the revolving door service that is proving so damaging in the sector, we will not truly be able to reduce the pressures on the ambulance service?

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady brings great practical insight on these issues from her profession as a nurse. The point she raises, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), is absolutely right—delayed discharge has long been a key issue. That is why we have made the tough decisions we have on national insurance and why we brought forward the changes on integrated care boards. It is an area of common ground across the House that we need to work better to address delayed discharge, which blocks the pipe and, in turn, delays ambulance handovers and causes problems at an earlier stage. It is a key issue. I have set out a number of practical measures that we are taking, and further work is ongoing.

Draft Mental Health Bill

Paulette Hamilton Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Sadly, we have instances around the country where certain trusts have failed local people when it comes to mental health. He mentions Norfolk and Suffolk. We need to do better. This Bill and the resources behind it will make the difference.

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Through my role as a lay manager for Birmingham and Solihull mental health trust, I know that a major problem in the west midlands is the availability of beds for individuals detained by the police under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. This is having a huge impact on A&E services in our area, because that is where the police take patients if there are no mental health beds available. How does the Secretary of State plan to improve bed availability for mental health patients?

[Sajid Javid]

I know that the hon. Lady speaks with experience, and I listen carefully to her when she speaks on these important issues. She may have seen the announcement earlier today that the additional support of around £150 million will go towards addressing her exact point about more provision, including crisis houses and sanctuaries—I also mentioned mental health ambulances earlier—and I think that will help.