Patient Choice

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I also join him in paying tribute to the late Karen Lumley and, even more important, extending condolences to her family and her many friends on both sides of the House —but particularly on the Conservative Benches—for their loss. I know that the sadness is felt very deeply throughout the Chamber.

Let me now turn to the first of today’s two statements from the Health Secretary. It seems that quantity is not matched by quality. In a week in which the Leader of the Opposition announced Labour’s plans to give patients more choice, with regional waiting lists for care and more power through the NHS App, the Conservatives’ big idea to cut waiting times is to give patients a choice that they already have. It is thanks to the last Labour Government that patients waiting for planned treatment already have a right to choose an alternative provider if they have been waiting too long.

Beneath the spin, the Health Secretary’s announcement is actually a watering down of the measures that are already in place. He says that patients will have the right to choose an alternative provider if they have been waiting longer than 40 weeks, but in 2019 the Conservatives said that they should have that right after 26 weeks—which, even then, was worse than the 18-week standard to which patients were already entitled thanks to the last Labour Government. Is it not the case that he is once again shifting the goalposts because he cannot even meet his own standards, let alone those that patients expect?

The Health Secretary concluded his statement by talking about his Government’s record. That was a bold move, because 7.3 million people— the highest number on record—are currently waiting for planned treatment in England. As usual, the Health Secretary said that that was because of the pandemic, but the figure was already at a record high before the pandemic. Behind this shocking statistic are real people, waiting, waiting, waiting in agony. It does not matter how often the Health Secretary says that the Government are committed to reducing the waiting lists; people can see with their own eyes the numbers that do not lie, which show that waiting lists are getting higher and things are getting worse, not better.

The Health Secretary’s total incompetence when it comes to preventing strike action in the NHS has inflicted untold misery on patients. So far the total number of appointments affected by NHS strikes in recent months is more than half a million, a figure that the Health Secretary called “deeply disappointing”. Well, that is something on which he and I can agree, for once, but with another round of strike action planned by junior doctors, he must surely see the risk to patient choice and waiting lists. What is his plan? Ministers blame strikes as if they were mere bystanders, but it was their refusal to speak to nurses, paramedics and junior doctors that forced them out on strike in the first place. I am afraid the Health Secretary’s warm words today are not going to cut it, when all he is doing is giving more patients more choice over where their next appointment or operation is to be cancelled because of the strikes that he and the Prime Minister have failed to prevent.

Finally, let me turn to the supermassive black hole that is at the heart of today’s announcement. I will keep on reminding the Health Secretary of this until the penny drops. It does not matter which hospital patients choose; they can only receive care on time if there are enough staff to treat them—so why are we still waiting for the NHS workforce plan that the system is crying out for? Why do we have net migration at the highest level ever, with the Government over-reliant on recruiting staff from overseas because they cannot be bothered to train home-grown talent? Where is the plan to train the doctors and nurses whom the NHS is so desperately short of? Labour has set out our plan to double medical school places and train 7,500 more doctors and 10,000 more nurses a year, which we would pay for by abolishing non-dom tax status. [Interruption.] I am afraid that Conservative Members like non-doms more than they like nurses, but the public are not with them on that. Let me once again, in the spirit of generosity, before we break for the recess, offer the Secretary of State our fully costed, fully funded plan. It is available to him—[Interruption.] Conservative Members should not laugh too much now. I wager that, before we break for the summer, the Government will finally swallow their pride and announce the doubling of medical school places. We will wait and see.

After 13 years of Conservative Government, people can see for themselves where it has landed this country and compare it with 13 years of Labour Government, which delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. We will offer real choice and cut waiting times, so that the NHS is there when people need it. We did it before; we will do it again. We have the ideas and we have the plan. That is why only Labour can build an NHS that is fit for the future.

[Steve Barclay]

Not since the famous 1p on income tax from the Lib Dems, which was to be spent on every issue going past like a passing bus, have we heard of money being spent in as many different ways as the non-dom money. No wonder the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said it with a smile; the whole House could see how credible that proposal is.

The theme of the hon. Gentleman’s response was comparison, so I think we should compare the substance of the announcement on patient choice with the situation where Labour is in office. In Wales, patients do not have the ability to choose where they receive treatment; that right is not offered to patients. In NHS Wales, patients registered with a GP in Wales do not have a statutory right to choose at which hospital they receive treatment. We can compare what a Government in England are doing—empowering patients, giving them that choice as well as the information and technology they need to make it—with NHS Wales, run by the Labour party, which deprives patients of their choice.

I hesitate to draw the comparison with Wales, however, because another Labour Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), says that he does not want Labour to be judged on its record in Wales. That is slightly confusing because the leader of the Labour party, no less, says that he wants Labour in Wales to be

“a blueprint for what Labour can do across the UK”.

So they cannot even compare among themselves, never mind compare between England and Wales.

The hon. Member for Ilford North talked about strike action but seemed to skirt around the fact that the Government have reached a deal with the NHS Staff Council in relation to Agenda for Change staff—a deal that his own union, Unison, voted 74% in favour of. His own union—the union that gives him money—supported the deal. He chides us about junior doctors, but those of us who were present in the Chamber the last time heard him say that he did not support the junior doctors’ demand for 35%. When we did negotiate with them, they even increased their demand to 49%, when next year is added in, further confusing the position.

It will come as no surprise to the House to discover that people in Wales are almost twice as likely to be waiting for treatment as people in England. That is the true comparison that we are addressing. We can see that situation play through to people waiting more than 18 months. In England, we have virtually eliminated 78-week waits—at the end of March, it was under 11,000—but in Wales, it will come as no surprise to Members, the number was closer to 75,000, and of course Wales has a smaller population. So we can compare waiting times, which we in England are bringing down. We have an electives plan, we cleared virtually all the two-year waits in the summer and over 90% of the 18-month waits at the end of March, which contrasts with the situation in Wales. We are giving patients choice, enabling them to move if they want to in order to get quicker treatment elsewhere. We are on the side of patients. We can see what the Labour party is doing by its disastrous performance in Wales.