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Registration of Immigration Advice Practitioners
Mr. David Shaw (Dover): On a point of order,Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would it be in order to suspend the House for 10 minutes so that Opposition Members can have a cup of tea, because they have been banned from the Tea Room?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): No suspension is called for for anything at the moment.
Mr. Charles Hendry (High Peak): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am extremely concerned--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The House will listen to an hon. Member who has an important point of order.
Mr. Hendry: I am extremely concerned that, on an Opposition Supply day, some 220 Labour Members are missing. Will you check, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the annunciator screens are working, so that all the Labour Members who might want to support their health spokesman know that the debate has started? [Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I had hoped that thehon. Gentleman had a genuine point of order.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) rose--
Mr. Graham Riddick (Colne Valley) rose--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Cummings) will stay behind the red lines.
I hope that the hon. Member for Colne Valley(Mr. Riddick) has a genuine and honourable point of order I know that he wants to speak in this afternoon's debate.
In that case, we shall move on.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
I have to announce that Madam Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
4.47 pm
Ms Harriet Harman (Peckham): I beg to move,
- That this House views with alarm the mounting evidence of inadequate patient care and of overstretched staff and facilities in the NHS; deplores the relentless cuts in NHS beds; condemns the increased amount of money spent on internal market bureaucracy rather than on front line services and staff; and calls on the Government to announce an immediate moratorium on bed closures; nominate someone in each health authority to identify bed shortages and take appropriate action locally; monitor and publish a weekly report on the number of beds and staff available; and issue clear national guidelines to end the uncertainty about who pays for continuing care.
The debate is about the crisis in our national health service. It is about the hundreds of patients who wait on trolleys for emergency treatment. It is about the thousands who are denied the treatment that they need. It is about the millions of people throughout the country who no longer feel that they and their families can rely on our NHS.
The people of Britain want to know the answer to some very simple questions. Why is our great national health service being torn limb from limb by the Tory Government? Why is the NHS, which the Conservatives claimed would be safe in their hands, being savaged in their hands? Why have one in six NHS acute hospital beds been cut since 1990? Why are there 20,000 more managers and accountants in the NHS, but 50,000 fewer front-line staff on the wards?
The British people have a clear decision to make and that is what today's debate is about. It is a decision between a unified national health service with Labour and an NHS that is simply being frittered away under the Tories; a decision between more money on doctors and nurses with Labour and wasted money on accountants, form filling and bureaucracy under the Tories; and a decision between a strong public service for the next century with Labour and an NHS that is privatised, broken up and sold off to the highest bidder under the Tories.
Mr. Robert Atkins (South Ribble):
I would just like to ask the hon. Lady one question. Is it still Labour party policy to abolish fundholding?
Ms Harman:
We have said that we are absolutely concerned that access to hospitals should be on the basis of clinical need, that everyone in primary care should work towards a local health strategy, agreed locally, and that there should be the minimum of duplication and bureaucracy. The right hon. Gentleman will understand from that that there are many problems with GP fundholding. We are concerned to ensure that there is fair treatment for every patient and a fair say for every GP in our renewed national health service.
Mr. John Sykes (Scarborough):
How much extra money would the hon. Lady pour into the hospitals? Is
Ms Harman:
I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not rise to complain to the Secretary of State about the fact that, in his health region, 7,546 hospital beds have been closed. That is what his constituents want him to be speaking up about in the House rather than making cheap points. [Interruption.]
Today's debate is important because the NHS is at a crossroads. The importance of the NHS cannot be overstated. [Interruption.]
Ms Harman:
The NHS is the public institution that the British people cherish more than any other. It remains, despite the Tories, one of the few public services that bind the nation together. People want to have the confidence that the NHS will be there for them and their families. But today, under the Tories, they cannot have that confidence.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)
rose--
Mr. Quentin Davies (Stamford and Spalding)
rose--
Ms Harman:
I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman:
Sexist.
Mr. Davies:
Is not it extraordinary that a party that has the pretension to be an alternative Government simply does not know the answer to the question whether it wants to abolish GP fundholding?
Ms Harman:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not listening or he cannot understand. We have set out our concerns and how we shall address them.
Whatever the Secretary of State says, people know what is really happening. They know that each and every day seriously ill people are being turned away from casualty. They know that treatments that used to be available on the NHS are simply no longer available in some areas. They can see from their own daily lives the growing reality of privatisation of our health services.
The Tories' strategy for the NHS is clear. They are allowing the NHS to fail and that is privatisation by the back door. Up and down the country, they are withdrawing many services so that people have to go to the private sector for treatment. They are changing what is left of the NHS so that it becomes less and less a public service and more and more a private business run on the basis of cost, not on the basis of need.
Mr. David Tredinnick (Bosworth):
Given thehon. Lady's commitment to the Conservative principle of choice in education--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Is the hon. Gentleman deaf? [Interruption.] Order. There will be freedom of speech on both sides of the House.
Mr. Tredinnick:
Has the hon. Lady ever taken advantage of private health care?
Ms Harman:
No. But let me make something clear to the hon. Gentleman, who has spoken of choice in relation to private health care. For many people, it is no longer a question of choice; they feel that they are refugees, driven out of the national health service because it is no longer available to them. We want the national health service to be available, so that people do not feel that they must pay again to obtain private treatment.
Nowhere is the rundown more devastatingly clear than in casualty departments. A fundamental principle of the NHS is that it will always be there for people in an emergency; at least, that used to be a fundamental principle, but it does not apply any more. Casualty departments have been closed, and critically ill patients are being turned away. It is happening throughout the country, as every hon. Member will know.
In London, at the St. Helier hospital, Carshalton,the casualty department was closed for 22 hours on 27 November. All ambulances were turned away. On another occasion, in the same hospital, patients had to be treated in the ambulances outside the casualty department because there were not even enough trolleys in the department; they were all full. On 14 January, at the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, patients waited for 19 hours on trolleys in casualty. Many personal tragedies are occurring throughout the country.
Nine-year-old Nicholas Geldard was playing at his Stockport home just before Christmas when he fell ill. The emergency services searched hospital after hospital for an intensive care bed, but none could be found. Eventually, an ambulance had to take him across the Pennines in the small hours of the morning, in freezing fog, with his parents following by car. When they finally arrived at Leeds general hospital, they were told that their son had died on the way. No one can say whether he would have lived, but we know that he never had the chance of life that an intensive care bed in the NHS could have given him.
Consultant physician Professor J. D. Ward of the Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield warns:
It is not that the Government have not been warned; they will not listen. They have ignored the advice of the British Medical Association, which has told them that hospital emergency services are at breaking point because of a
"For God's sake, do not get ill . . . to be taken as an ill patient into an acute casualty or admissions ward is now a major danger in life."
"severe and prolonged crisis in the acute sector".
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