National Health Service — House of Commons, 2015-01-21
Topic: Health
Ian Austin (Labour, Centre-left): It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). I ask Ministers to look at the situation at Russells Hall hospital in my constituency. Like anyone who lives in Dudley, I queue up at Russells Hall when I am ill. I know how hard the doctors, nurses, midwives and all the other staff at the hospital work. Over Christmas, they battled heroically to tackle unprecedented demand in A and E. The chief executive herself pushed trolleys around as they fought off the crisis that has been seen in hospitals elsewhere. I place on the record my appreciation for all their hard work over these difficult weeks Last week, we had the shocking news that 400 of Russells Hall’s 4,200 staff—that is one in 10—will have to go, including 200 over the next couple of months. In common with other NHS trusts, the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust is required to make efficiency savings of 4% a year, which equates to £12 million each year. At the same time, the hospital is facing cost pressures that are caused by increasing demands on emergency services and the need to provide seven-day services. As a result, the hospital is predicted to face a deficit of more than £7 million by the end of March. I want Ministers to see what they can do to address that issue As a first step, the hospital is looking to make voluntary redundancies. Depending on how that goes, it might have to make compulsory redundancies. Like at any hospital, managers at Russells Hall have to ensure that every penny is spent wisely and that every possible efficiency is made before they cut staff and front-line services. People in Dudley agree with me: two-thirds of the hundreds of local people who responded to my survey this week think that front-line staff must be the priority. Community GP practices were their second priority Everyone agrees that savings should first be sought among management and back-office functions. However, even if every manager at Russells Hall was sacked—obviously, that cannot be done—it would not come close to the savings that the hospital needs to make. Instead, the redundancies that the hospital is making might include theatre staff, radiologists and staff who deal with things such as blood tests. Even some midwives will be able to apply for redundancy. The trust says that it will do everything it can to protect the service that patients receive, but no one can pretend that our hospital can lose almost one in 10 of its work force without it having an impact on front-line patient care. We just need to look at the pressures that they have faced over the past few weeks. How will they deal with a situation like that after losing so many staff Local people share my concerns. I asked thousands of them about this issue this week and 98% said that they thought care would get worse if the job cuts went ahead and eight out of 10 said that they were already noticing longer waits for treatment locally I have raised this issue in the House with Ministers before. I warned them last year that more resources were needed to deal with waiting times and with the deficit. I ask Ministers to look at this situation and to ensure that our hospital has the resources it needs to serve my constituents and not lose those members of staff My second point contrasts the current Government’s record with that of the previous Labour Government. The previous Government built a brand new £300 million hospital in Dudley, with more doctors and nurses treating more patients more quickly than ever before. Despite promising no top-down reorganisation, this Government squandered billions that should have been spent on front-line patient care—£20 million in Dudley alone—on a bureaucratic shake up. As a result, local people are facing longer waits at A and E, cancelled operations are at their highest level for decades and waits for vital tests and treatments are increasing. We need a Government who put patients in Dudley first. That is why I welcome our plans to tax homes worth more than £2 million to pay for 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 more GPs, 5,000 more home care workers who have time to look after the elderly and vulnerable people they care for, and 3,000 more midwives My third point—it is a shame the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has left the Chamber—contrasts our proposals with what UKIP has said about our NHS. Nigel Farage said: "I think we are going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare." His deputy, Paul Nuttall, said that he wanted to "congratulate the coalition government for bringing a whiff of privatisation into the beleaguered National Health Service" and that the "very existence of the NHS stifles competition" That is what senior people in UKIP believe Just this week, Nigel Farage suggested that the NHS might have to be replaced by a system of private health insurance within 10 years and that his party will return to that idea after the general election in May. When I challenged the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood about that, he said that his parents met in an NHS hospital, as though that trumps what his leader and deputy leader have said about how the NHS should be organised. Utterly ludicrous. UKIP must be the only political party in history that, when asked about its policies, asks us to discount what the leader and deputy leader have said. It is completely nuts. The serious point is what it says about UKIP’s instincts and values that it wants to replace our NHS with a US-style insurance system in which the treatment and care someone gets depends on the cover they can afford, because that is what Nigel Farage’s plan would mean In the US, insurance can cost families up to £10,000 a year. It can cost almost £20,000 to have a baby privately, and treatment for a knee operation can cost £11,000. Imagine the crippling impact that treatment for life-threatening diseases or emergency treatment could have on the finances of an ordinary family in Dudley. Local people are overwhelmingly against that kind of privatisation, and nine out of 10 people told me in this week’s survey that they are totally against any introduction of a US-style health insurance system When I asked the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood about that, he mentioned my constituency and the forthcoming election. If he were here now, I would tell him that I will be telling people in Dudley what UKIP’s policy for our NHS would mean for them every day between now and polling day. When people in Dudley compare our plans for more doctors, nurses and care workers, quicker GP appointments and faster cancer tests and results with the Government’s plans for increased savings, longer waiting lists and redundancies, or with an insurance-based system and more privatisation from UKIP, I am sure they will know who is on their side.