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Department of Health

I should mention that I have an interest in that my husband is a doctor who is employed by a primary care trust. I want to talk about two things: first, the budget deficit in my PCT, Guildford and Waverley; and secondly, the implications of the deficit. All too often in this place, we end up talking about money and services and slightly lose sight of the people who ultimately suffer as a result. I agree with the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) that the NHS has become a political football. Indeed, that is what took me out of it, having worked for 25 years as a nurse, in the hope that I might change something for all its staff. One of the most striking things that has ever been said to me was during a conversation that I had with a doctor who worked in NHS management when I was making a speech about the NHS. He got very angry with me and said, ““You know, Anne, you’ve got this all wrong. My job isn’t about making people better—it’s about balancing the books.”” It is very sad that doctors now feel that that is their aim. Last year, Guildford and Waverley primary care trust in my constituency launched a document called, ““Modernising your local healthcare””. It is no surprise to me that local people are cynical about that and say, ““Modernising local health care, probably not; balancing the books, probably yes.”” They feel that it is all about chucking in a bit of modernising of local health care to make everything feel better. Guildford and Waverley PCT is facing a budget deficit of £16.3 million. I do not doubt that its desire is to modernise health care and to improve health services for local people, but its aim is to cut its costs and to balance its books. In fact, it now has an imperative to balance its books because we are living in a very competitive climate. In Surrey, five PCTs are to be reconfigured down to one PCT. Many people are competing for many fewer jobs. There have been articles in the press and the health service journals about that. Senior managers in PCTs that are to be reconfigured tend to get the chief executive job at whatever level—strategic health authority or PCT—if they balance the books. Everybody who works in the health service, particularly in PCTs, understands that. In fairness, one cannot blame the staff for looking at it in that way. They have mortgages and bills to pay and families to look after. It is worth considering whether it is really a good thing for the Government to be reconfiguring PCTs given that that will result in an incredible loss of focus for the staff involved. In December 2005, the British Medical Association said in one of its briefing papers that serious questions have to be asked about where increased NHS resources are going, and that it is not a good idea to make kneejerk decisions about the reduction or closure of services in response to short-term funding problems. The Secretary of State recently said:"““Some primary care trusts are planning to close local cottage hospitals . . . But community facilities that are needed for the long term must not be lost in response to short-term budgetary pressures.””"