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Audrey Wise: Yes. For 18 years, the poor have got poorer and more children are living in poverty to the detriment of their health. There is more homelessness and more people live in rotten housing and suffer from respiratory problems. Little children are bearing the brunt of a Government whose priorities were entirely wrong.
The Select Committee report referred to the Court report which was produced 20 years ago. It stated:
Mr. Simon Hughes:
I respect the hon. Lady's knowledge and commitment to the subject. If she agrees with me that we need more children's nurses and more school nurses and generally more staff working in the health service, does she believe that it is possible to achieve that without a significant increase in net resources to the health service and, therefore, an increase in the NHS budget?
Audrey Wise:
It is impossible for us to know what the NHS budget should be until we have examined some of the issues that I have mentioned. I have said clearly that I want a properly resourced national health service and
The United States Government spend a vast amount of their national income on so-called health care. A great deal is spent in the private sector, but about one third of it comes from the American public purse and they get extremely poor value from a huge amount of spending. So it is not just a matter of how much; it is also a matter of how well it is spent. For example, we need more children's nurses. Only one in 33 nurses have a children's nursing qualification yet more than one fifth of the population are children. That is clearly an inappropriate number, to say the least of it. Even worse, many of those one in 33 nurses with a children's qualification are employed not in children's nursing but in all sorts of other areas. That is nonsense.
We need a proper evaluation of how resources are spent and a determination to ensure that they are spent properly. Part of that process will come through giving people more chance of knowing how things are run. That is why I am proud to have been a member of the Select Committee that called for transparency and openness in decision making. That is the sort of thing that we need. Although I am very keen to see a transfer of resources to my particular priorities, I am perfectly sensible of the extra need to look very carefully at how money is spent.
Half the population is not served by a children's community nursing service. As adults, we know that we can be seen and helped by a district nurse if we are ill. For half the children in the country there is no equivalent to the children's nursing service. The new Government have an absolutely enormous task to remedy things that should have started being remedied after the Court report in 1977.
In evidence to the Select Committee, the previous Government said that everything was all right because if no children's nurse was available to go to somebody's home to nurse a sick child, a district nurse could do the job. That showed their lack of sense of the fact that children's health needs are different from those of adults.
Children are not simply miniature adults. We will not have a good NHS until that is recognised and children's needs are given proper priority. That change should be made and it should start in the House. All of us who have been Members of Parliament for some time ought to be ashamed of the fact that there was not an inquiry into children's health until last year. I am ashamed--but I am proud that I proposed one and that when it was carried out it produced four extremely useful reports.
We have to get our priorities right. I and Back Benchers in general, especially the 101 women who sit on the Government Benches, must ensure that we change the priorities of Government and of Parliament for the better. The task is very big, but many people are willing to help. One of the great things about hearing evidence--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Opposition Front Benchers are being far too noisy.
Audrey Wise:
I am not particularly addressing Front Benchers. I am glad that there is quite a healthy attendance of my hon. Friends.
I believe that what I am saying will reverberate among the population. A new Government have been elected on the kind of things that I am saying--to change the country's priorities so that children, along with all those who are vulnerable, including the elderly, are properly treated and their needs are understood.
Mr. Charles Clarke (Norwich, South):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Audrey Wise) on her speech and on the priority she gives to children's health, which is extremely important. I am sure that all Labour Members share her priorities.
I should like to pay tribute to my predecessor, John Garrett, who was first elected in February 1974. Many hon. Members will know him not only for his contribution to the promotion of good management throughout the public services--and, indeed, the private services--but for being a scourge of complacency in the civil service through his membership of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee and, before he entered the House, for the advice he gave to the Fulton committee. He will be warmly remembered, particularly in Norwich, for the consistently tremendous work he did for the constituents of Norwich, South and in promoting the interests of the city of Norwich.
It is a tremendous honour to have been elected to represent Norwich, South--the southern part of the great city of Norwich. It is an historic city; the former second city of England. It has an historic cathedral, a Norman castle, a guildhall, monastic buildings in Blackfriars and a mediaeval city centre. It is an educational centre, with the university of East Anglia being one of this country's outstanding universities. It has a city college, which is entering into tremendous new agreements to give the young people of our city, through partnership with Bull Technology, the information technology qualifications that are needed in the modern world.
Norwich research park has a series of institutions that put Norwich at the forefront of food research in Britain. One of the things about which I am delighted is the commitment in the Queen's Speech to establish an independent food standards agency, which we in Norwich will be urging should be located in our city as a principal researcher into the quality of food.
The headquarters of The Stationery Office, which publishes Hansard, is located in Norwich. Despite the depredation of the sell-off that the previous Government ordered, The Stationery Office intends to provide the Government with the quality of service that it has historically provided.
Norwich is a regional financial centre. The headquarters of Norwich Union and Sedgwicks are located there. There are tremendous resources in the city for all financial services. It is also of course the culture and media capital of the region, producing regional television programmes and being home to the Broads national park authority, which extends within the boundaries of my constituency. There is a theatre and art college, and the city is home to the Canaries, who are hoping to return to the Premier League, although I regret to say not for the coming season.
I am glad that the people of Norwich strongly support the Queen's Speech and the themes of work, welfare, education and health. They know that youth unemployment must be tackled and that only the Labour party's proposals for a windfall tax to provide jobs, education and training for young people can do so. They know that a minimum wage is needed--specifically in Norwich and Norfolk, where low pay is traditional. Indeed, my predecessor referred to the incidence of low pay in that part of the country in his maiden speech in 1974. The people of Norwich will welcome the commitment to a minimum wage.
The people of Norwich will also welcome the commitment to minimum class sizes of 30 pupils for five, six and seven-year-olds. Some primary school classes in my constituency have as many as 39 pupils. The people of Norwich know that the changes will make a substantial difference. Norfolk as a whole has been the subject of the previous Government's guinea-pig approach to nursery vouchers, which caused major problems in Norwich. We are delighted that a proper nursery scheme will be established through the state education system and that the nursery voucher scheme will be abolished.
I should like to focus on a specific, small health measure: the measure to clarify the legal power of national health service trusts to sign private finance initiative contracts. I hope that the Bill to implement that will have a rapid and trouble-free passage through both Houses. It is needed because banks are holding back from signing PFI contracts--public-private partnerships--because they are uncertain about the legal status of NHS trusts. There may be other reasons, but that is one. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, one of the Labour Government's missions is to remove the red tape that has stopped investment in the health service. By clarifying the legal status of hospital trusts, we will enable the acceleration of public-private partnerships and investment in health and the building of new hospitals and health facilities. I strongly support the measure in the Queen's Speech and the accelerated resources for health that it will offer.
The issue is especially relevant to Norwich, because a PFI scheme for the Norfolk and Norwich hospital awaits agreement from the banks, having been signed in November. The scheme faces the obstacles that I mentioned earlier. From our experience in Norwich, we welcome the election of a Government who are committed to developing private-public partnerships more successfully than in the past.
Under the previous arrangements, the people of Norwich were not allowed to know--for reasons of so-called commercial confidentiality--which services, ranging from clinical services to canteen cleaning, would be included in the PFI arrangement. The local people were not permitted to know which specialisms would be
available at the new hospital; the prices that would be charged for services; or what guarantees the previous Government had to give to sustain the deal. They were not permitted to know about any future plans for existing hospital sites, even though hospitals had been closed, thus reducing total bed numbers in Norwich. They were not permitted to know what transportation arrangements had been made to ensure that people could use the new hospital on the outskirts of the city at Colney. It would have been better if the new hospital, like the old, had been planned for the city centre--as originally proposed--instead of outside.
"The Court Report contained over 200 recommendations, and though it is not possible to state in bald terms that the report was or was not 'implemented', . . . it is undeniably the case that some of the Court Report's major recommendations, for instance the proposal that comprehensive community children's nursing services should be provided, have not been implemented. The failure to make progress in providing an adequate number of trained children's nurses, despite recommendations not just by Court but in other official reports dating back to 1959, reinforces our view, which has gained in strength as our inquiry has progressed, that the special needs of children are given insufficient priority by policy-makers, health service professionals and others who in one way or another have a responsibility for children's well-being."
The neglect of children's needs in respect of health services extends to the entire House. I have quoted from the recent inquiry into children's health by the Select Committee. It was the first ever major parliamentary inquiry into children's health. That demonstrates the need for the 101 women who will be on our side and the need for an injection of human values and human priorities into the business of the House.
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