House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Jun 1997 (pt 43)

9.28 pm

Mr. David Lock (Wyre Forest): I am grateful for the chance to make my maiden speech on the important issue of health. Bearing in mind the time, I shall be shorter than I might otherwise have been, but I hope that brevity will assist in the quality of the speech.

It is a privilege to be sent to the House to represent the people of Wyre Forest. The constituency covers north-west Worcestershire, including the towns of Kidderminster, Stourport, Bewdley and many surrounding villages. Bewdley is a delightful mediaeval town nestling in the Severn with a well-deserved reputation as a tourist venue. It has an excellent festival. Kidderminster and Stourport have long traditions in the carpet industry. The factories may not be as numerous as in earlier years, but people in Kidderminster know the difference between a woven and a tufted carpet like no one else in Britain.

The industry has suffered in recent years, but we have some fine companies that are investing in a confident future. They include Brintons--a predecessor of mine in the constituency, Sir Talton Brinton, was the second member of the Brinton family to represent Kidderminster--and Tomkinsons and Victoria, which are investing in the future to provide secure jobs for the highly skilled work force in the area.

I thank and pay tribute to my predecessor, Anthony Coombs, who held the seat for 10 years. He was a diligent constituency Member: he became someone on whom his

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constituents could count, and he was always most courteous in his dealings with me. His concern for his constituents has risen above his disappointment at losing his seat. He was gracious at the count, and has been very co-operative in handing over constituency case files. I am grateful for his assistance in breaking me in to this most unusual but privileged of jobs.

This debate, however, is about the NHS. In Worcestershire, we have a health authority that is in deficit--one of 59 such authorities. The trust that runs Wyre Forest's only hospital, Kidderminster general, is carefully managed; but it is in deficit, and the fact that it is an agreed deficit, anticipated in the budget, does not remove that deficit. For years the trust has been spending in the hope of rises in future years, but its hopes were dashed each time by the previous Government. A review is in progress at the moment, but I am confident that it will uphold the position of smaller hospitals such as Kidderminster. It is an impressive hospital with an excellent accident and emergency department, and I am sure that the strong arguments in support of it will be maintained.

In the short time available to me, let me say that we shall need--among other things--a serious national debate on priorities for the health service. For too long, doctors have been asked to make all the choices, and service provision is patchy across the country. The market beloved of Adam Smith and the Conservative party is an amoral device, and many issues in health care require moral decisions.

I wish to raise four specific matters. First, what will be the weighting between new drugs and established treatments? The former may offer the possibility of better results for the few, while the latter may benefit larger numbers at lower cost. What of social factors, such as bad housing--and smoking, which kills 1,600 a year in my constituency and adds half a million pounds to the costs at Kidderminster general hospital? The better a person's circumstances, the more treatment may help that person from an objective point of view; but it cannot be right to refuse treatment to the poor while allowing it to those in better circumstances.

What of the elderly? The fact that so many people are living longer is a tribute to the success of medicine, but is there to be a cut-off date? What of specialist treatments, which are vital to the few but ignored by the many? As a parent, I know the joys of children, but what level of funding should we give fertility treatment?

Those are difficult issues. We have a national health service now, but there is a lottery of care across the country. In each of the examples that I have given, different policies are pursued by different health authorities in different parts of the country. We need a national debate on priorities in health care--a debate way outside the confines of the narrow motion that we are discussing--and I am confident that the new Government are prepared to embrace such a debate. We also need a debate that goes beyond the medical profession and the Government, so that the people can have a say in decisions about the people's choices for the people's NHS.

This debate on charges is a tiny part of a much larger debate. I have every confidence that Ministers have the ability, the wisdom and the courage to face those difficult issues in the months and years ahead.

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9.34 pm

Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde): I congratulate the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mr. Lock) on his splendid maiden speech. He will be a great asset to the Opposition Whips because he did exactly what they told him to do by cutting his speech to leave time for the winding-up speeches. I thank him for that.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) on his comeback speech. He made a telling contribution; during his absence from the House he lost nothing of his incisive ability to get to the heart of the matter. He exposed the Secretary of State for what he is--the purveyor of large amounts of smoke, a screen and waffle. He did not respond to any of the Opposition's substantive points.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) on his speech and thank him for his kind words about his predecessor, Bob Dunn. Mr. Dunn will be grateful for the hon. Gentleman's comments and I am pleased to know that we have another doctor in the House.

In a telling contribution, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter) showed that he will be a real handful for the Labour Whips because within seconds of rising he asked for money. That is dangerous, and not only the Minister without Portfolio but the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have a word with him.

The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Mr. Best) made kind comments about Keith Hampson and I was delighted to hear what he said about Leeds. I know the city well and he spoke of it with passion and conviction. The hon. Member for Wyre Forest mentioned Anthony Coombs and it would be remiss of me not to thank him for those kind words. He also made some interesting comments about challenges for the national health service.

There were some useful and thoughtful Opposition speeches. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) spoke from his great experience and properly drew the House's attention to the challenges that will face the NHS in the 21st century. He was right to speak about the long term. The theme of the debate was to try to prise from the Government their short-term thinking, never mind their long-term thinking, and that proved extremely difficult. The Secretary of State, a senior Minister, failed lamentably to rise to the challenge of answering straightforward questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) delivered another of her well-crafted and perceptive speeches in which she listed some of the Government's pledge formulations. I shall add to her list the third formulation of the amendment. Already the ground continues to shift and I shall speak later about that.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Mr. Loughton) put his finger on the important issue of charging and, in a way, he associated himself with the speech by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) because they both got to the heart of the matter. If the Government's endless wish list of possibilities is to be anything more than that, and if they hope to satisfy the ever-louder cries of their Back Benchers, they will have to find more money. The platitudinous approach to health care policy will not do.

In his reply to allegations about charging, the Secretary of State said that the Government were going back to the basics of the health service. It is interesting to do that.

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I commend to the Secretary of State, who is a good socialist, Aneurin Bevan's biography. When Gaitskell got into the Treasury he had the then Secretary of State for Health for breakfast, lunch and tea. It was a typical Treasury pressure job. The Secretary of State was told, "You are spending too much. Where is more money to come from?" We know what happened. Bevan eventually capitulated and charges came in.

That was the response then, and if the Government intend to go back to basics in the health service, we are entitled to conclude that that is exactly what they will do now. Indeed, the Secretary of State had better be warned that, even if he is bold enough to go down the route of charges under pressure from the Treasury--and we believe that he is, as he has offered no evidence to the contrary this evening--he will have his just desserts. He has said nothing to convince us that money raised through charges would do other than go straight into the Treasury's coffers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon put his finger on the truth when he pointed outthat Mr. Nicholas Timmins, an experienced and knowledgeable journalist, had flushed out the Government's objectives on charges. His article makes it absolutely clear that the Department of Health is examining hotel costs and general practitioner visits. Those are not new; they were there in 1947 and in 1948. It has just taken the Labour party a little time to return to its original agenda of the founding fathers of the NHS.