National Health Service (Mandate Requirements) Regulations 2017 — House of Lords, 2017-09-06
Topic: Health
John Reid (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I join with this regret Motion, not as a matter of formality but because of deep and genuine regret at the position that the Government have now, by hook or by crook, engineered, which is the effective abandonment of the 18-week target I will briefly recall to the House where we were before that target was introduced. With respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, we do not have to go back to the 1950s. We can go back less than 15 years, when my predecessor, Alan Milburn, became Secretary of State for Health. The maximum waiting time then was not 18, 24 or 52 weeks for elective operations but three years. Due to his sterling efforts and, I have to say, his adviser, who also advised me—Mr Simon Stevens—we reduced that, but not nearly as much as I thought was necessary in a civilised society Therefore I admit a conflict of interest in this debate: I introduced the 18-week target, against some considerable opposition—not in principle but because, I was constantly told, "it couldn’t be done". But we did it. I remind the House that at that time the number on the waiting list, waiting for as long as three years, was the horrific figure of 1.2 million. It is now 2.7 million and it is estimated that it may rise to 5 million. Therefore there are more and more people, and undoubtedly, once this target has been effectively removed, those pressures will immediately start a process whereby it will go well beyond 18 weeks and we will go back to where we were some 15 years ago I will make a couple of points about this situation; the first has already been alluded to. These targets were also to reduce MRSA—hospital-acquired disease —in hospitals by 50% over four years, which we did, despite the fact that we were told that we could not do it. It was also to take hundreds of thousands of people off the waiting list. This was an effective way, not of making a political point but to remove people from pain, distress, discomfort and, above all, the insecurity of not knowing when and if they might have the condition treated. I recall that at the formation of the National Health Service one of Labour’s greatest heroes, Nye Bevan, produced his framework in a pamphlet that was not called "In Place of Pain" but In Place of Fear. The fear that people had for their families, their senior citizens, their children, of the prospect of waiting several years, even with what might appear to others to be relatively small difficulties and medical conditions, is inestimable. Therefore this was, more than anything else, about the relief of human discomfort and insecurity Secondly, having been there, I know that this is not easy. It is never easy. I have a great respect for Simon Stevens as a person and an administrator. However, he is caught between all sorts of conflicting demands—an increasing population, people living longer and, I have to say, a relative reduction in resources as well as a shambolic reorganisation which was the worst use of money I can think of in the health service in the past several decades. So I do not blame him, but it is the Government’s job to face up to difficult tasks, and it will take political will.