It has been another busy week in the Westminster hot house with a lot of Parliamentary time being taken up with discussing the finer detail of the Queen’s Speech.
On Monday it was the turn of health, with another round between Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health and his shadow Andy Burnham MP tussling over the direction of health policy.
Hunt was keen to stress his government’s achievements since 2010. Every day 1,000 people with suspected cancers are being referred to specialists, 2,000 more operations are performed and 3,000 more patients are seen in A and E departments.
Hunt, never a man to miss an opportunity, took one of his now predictable swipes at the state of the health service in Wales. Hunt said Wales has had a budget cut of 8% with disastrous consequences such as 42% of patients having to wait longer than six weeks for diagnostic treatment, compared with 2% in England.
You won’t be surprised that Burnham questioned Hunt’s achievements. Burnham claims the NHS is now for the first time missing its standard of treating cancer patients within 62 days; almost 3 million people are now on the waiting list for treatment, up by half a million since 2010; and 30% fewer patients can get a GP appointment within 48 hours.
Much of the debate was taken up with discussion about the impact of the Francis Report. Hunt quoted some shocking and surprising statistics. Around 5% of hospital deaths are avoidable. That equates to 12,000 avoidable deaths in our NHS every year. On top of that, every two weeks, the wrong prosthesis is put on to a patient somewhere in the NHS. Every week, there is an operation on the wrong part of someone’s body. Twice a week, a foreign object is left in someone’s body. Last spring, at one hospital, a woman’s fallopian tube was removed instead of her appendix. Last summer, the wrong toes were amputated from a patient. This spring, a vasectomy was given to the wrong man.
Hunt was keen to stress several key policies he has announced over the last year to improve healthcare. The new GP contract brings back named GPs for the over-75s and an ambitious £3.8 billion merger between the health and social care systems to reduce the silo working.
However, Hunt and Burnham did manage to agree on one thing: the great work that the NHS’s staff are doing.
You can expect more of the same over the next 11 months with the NHS likely to be central to each party’s manifesto.
The next big question will be the pending reshuffle. Will any of the Health Ministers or their shadows change position? Who will be the next Chairman of the Health Select Committee? No doubt everyone in the health sector will be waiting with baited breath.
Mark Hill
Account Director, HJCL