A Plan for the NHS and Social Care — House of Commons, 2021-05-19
Topic: Health
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is spot-on. I will come on to cancer in a few moments. He is a great champion for improving cancer care, and I thank him for reminding the House that Leicester City won the FA cup on Saturday. It is a reminder that even when the odds are stacked against them, a small team can still beat a well-funded, complacent opposition I will now move on to elective waiting lists. Where is the plan in this Queen’s Speech to bring down the rocketing waiting lists for treatment and surgery? Where is the plan to roll out technology such as in ophthalmology, for the thousands in our constituencies awaiting cataract operations? There are already 81,762 of our constituents waiting over 12 months for orthopaedic surgery. Where is the plan to get on with the hip replacements and knee replacements that many of our constituents will be raising with us in our surgeries, and how much longer will they have to wait? Where is the plan for the 24,407 of our constituents who are now waiting over 12 months for gynaecological surgery? How much longer will they have to wait Everyone understands that there has been a pandemic and that that has meant a disruption in care pathways, but the NHS was forced into this unprecedented position because we went into the crisis on the back of 10 years of Tory underfunding and cutbacks. We went into this crisis on the back of a 6% reduction in bed numbers between 2010 and 2019. That is why, at the beginning of 2020 when we debated the last Gracious Speech, 4.5 million people were on the waiting list for treatment. The target of 92% of patients beginning treatment within 18 weeks of referral from their GP had not been met for five years. We need a resourced plan now because the queues are set to lengthen further, as those who may have delayed seeking treatment for fear of covid infection will begin to emerge once again. Even though the NHS is dealing with significantly fewer covid patients, it is still operating at a much-reduced capacity and is unable to treat everyone in need of care. Infection control measures meant that the number of beds fell by 9% in the first quarter of last year. It has only partially recovered in the past three months, but the number is still 6% lower than the previous year. What that means when we look at the most recent figures is that, on average, there are almost 4,000 fewer patients in NHS general and acute beds than the equivalent pre-covid period The Prime Minister has delayed the review of social distancing for entirely understandable reasons, but we must have a plan to drive up this capacity in the NHS. The solution to these capacity issues in the NHS cannot be a multi-billion pound deal with the private sector. The loss of capacity in terms of beds in the NHS is actually far larger than the whole capacity offered by the private sector. In order to reopen those closed and empty general and acute beds in the NHS, we need more capital investment. This investment needs to be built up now, so that the NHS can get on with the routine surgery that it will clearly have to confront in the coming years. I am afraid that, both the Queen’s Speech and, indeed, the Budget from a few weeks ago, failed to deliver that.