John Redwood's speech in the public services debate

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): I have declared my interests in the register.When a governing party decides that it wishes to offer heartfelt advice tothe Opposition, it is usually beginning to lose it in a big way with theBritish public. There was a sign of hubris in the remarks of the hon. Memberfor Reading, West (Mr. Salter). He certainly has a rather different view oflocal services in our part of the world than I do, although I am glad thatthere was a slightly veiled threat towards the end of his remarks about whatmay happen if he does not get the third river crossing, which is muchneeded, and the proper improvements in our health service, for which we havewaited too long. Of course, he did not tell the House that Reading hospitalwas in the queue to follow the very large Milton Keynes project. That wentthrough under the Conservatives and--sure enough and on cue--when it wascompleted, the NHS went on to carry out the Reading project. What hashappened under the Labour Government would have happened under theConservatives.

I give the proposal one rather than three cheers. We need a new hospital,but it is a pity that many other health facilities are being closed at thesame time. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs.Shephard) said, it is a pity that the new hospitals come with a reduction inthe number of beds available and with a scale of development that means thatthere definitely will not be enough beds to meet local demand.

The debate began with the most touching and interesting scenes that we haveseen in the Chamber for a little while. Rather like Tweedledum andTweedledee, the Secretaries of State for Transport, Local Government and theRegions and for Health were together on the Government Front Bench. Theygave the exceedingly good impression that they were great bosom pals--twopeas in the pod--as they used to be in the early days of the so-calledBlairite project. They were meant to be the two white hopes, at the cuttingedge of a technological revolution, rising through the ranks until theydisplaced the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and all the other grandeeswhom the new leader had inherited.

What a difference a year or two has made. If we are to believe the spin inthe press, these senior figures of the Blairite project have come to twototally different judgments about where the project is going and about howmuch support it has from Labour Back Benchers.

In the red corner is the Transport Secretary. He is trying to give theimpression--good spinner that he is--that he is in the process ofrenationalising the railways on the cheap. In fact, he is trying to give theimpression that he is renationalising them for absolutely nothing; he hasreinvented renationalisation without compensation. I seethat the hon. Member for Reading, West hopes that the Transport Secretaryhas done exactly that. The hon. Gentleman looks extremely perky but, if hehas studied the small print--with this Government, we must always study thesmall print--he will know that there is a small snag. Renationalisation isnot on the horizon.

The Transport Secretary is dealing with a private sector company that hadbegun to make good progress in investing and developing a better railway inthe first five years of privatisation, and Ministers acknowledged thatthemselves until a year ago. The message was sent to the pagers of LabourMembers who were meant to say that there had been a big surge in ridershipof the railways, that passenger numbers were up by a third and that freightwas up by 40 per cent. They all knew the figures and they trotted them out.They made good salesmen for privatisation. Then the position changed andtheir pagers told them to write off those achievements.

The Transport Secretary has bankrupted a private sector company by refusingto supply the money that most people reasonably thought would be supplied.He will now discover that it will cost him twice or three times more to tryto pump life into a bankrupt Railtrack than it would if he had done asensible deal at the time of the original negotiations. Railtrack remains aprivate sector company as it is under the control of private sectoraccountants who are earning hearty fees.

The stated policy is that Railtrack will be returned to the private sector.There is some argument about the exact nature of the private company thatwill emerge and interesting troubles will be faced in getting it into theshape that the Transport Secretary would like. However, Labour Members mustunderstand that, on current form and policy, he is not renationalising thecompany in the way that he suggests.

In the blue corner is the Secretary of State for Health. He takes the viewthat the Blairite project is on track. He does not think that he needs tomake a leftward genuflection to Labour Back Benchers. He thinks that hisfuture is best assured by being the very model of a modern Blairite general.In contrast, the Transport Secretary thinks that he needs an awful lot ofsupport from Back Benchers and that, if he has enough support, he willterrify the Whips and the Prime Minister into promoting him. Otherwise, theyfear that he will become a confounded nuisance. The difference in strategyis interesting.

The Secretary of State for Health is no more likely to privatise the healthservice than the Transport Secretary is to renationalise the railways.Again, we have to look through the Health Secretary's excellent spin. He isnot about to say that people will have to pay a fee to go to the doctor orto have an operation and he is not about to sell off all our hospitals asprofit-making operations and to turn them into companies in the privatesector. Nor did Conservative Ministers ever plan or wish to do that. We didnot put that to the electorate or do anything similar during those longyears in power.

I make a confident prediction that my colleagues and I will not fight thenext general election on a ticket of profit-making hospitals that areprivatised out of the NHS; nor will we fight it on the ticket of makingpeople pay to go to the doctor. Given that there is meant to be a betterspirit in the Chamber during debates, it is disgraceful that such stupid ideas are still being retold by Labour Members who say, "Ah ha!Vote Conservative and you will have to pay £10, £20 or £50 to see thedoctor." There is not a shred of truth in that, and I hope that Ministersstop saying it.

Mr. Salter: The right hon. Gentleman, with his political career behind him,is known for his frankness. Will he interpret the contents of the memoissued by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Mr. Flight), theshadow Treasury spokesman, to the shadow Chancellor, which was copied to theshadow Cabinet? It states:

"The reforms, which we will be proposing, will end the NHS monopolyand will entail those who can afford it making some payment for healthcareservices."

The right hon. Gentleman has rejected that concept. What does the memo mean?

Mr. Redwood: I have not rejected that concept. Indeed, it is the policy ofthe Labour party, too. Hon. Members tend to be better off and we allcontribute to our health care costs when we pay for prescriptions, eyetreatment and dentistry. We pay for chiropody and for drugs that arepurchased across the counter in a chemist shop. The hon. Gentleman shouldunderstand that we have a mixed system in this country which has beensupported by parties of both persuasions. He is trying to read somethinginto the memo that is not there. It could cover his interpretation, but I amtelling him that it does not. I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friendshave not been sitting around in smoke-filled rooms in the shadow Cabinetplanning to charge people for visiting the doctor. They have made no suchstatement, there is no such policy and we have received no such instructionon our pagers.

I am going further than I should, but I am sure that members of theConservative Front Bench want to rule nothing in or out because they arehaving a genuine and thorough policy review. They are listening to peopleand studying a wide variety of systems abroad. I am confident inpredicting--I only predict when I am sure of my ground--that theConservative party will not go to the next election with the proposal thatpeople should be charged for going to the doctor.

We think that there is one popular principle in the NHS which has beendefended by all major parties in government since the founding fathers setit up after the war: if someone needs and wants health care of a statedrange it should be free at the point of use. The first limitation on thewonderful promise that it would all be free came from members of the Labourparty, the very founding fathers themselves, who decided to imposeprescription charges. That has become bipartisan. Other changes, such ascharges for checks on eyes and teeth, have also become bipartisan. TheLabour party has had five years to change them, but it has seen the wisdomof keeping them as charges and of the generous exemptions.

There is no great wish in the country to go far beyond those proposals.

Indeed, there is a wish to honour the pledge that if we need and want care,it should be available in reasonable time to a reasonable standard with areasonable amount of choice, to echo the thoughts of my right hon. Friendthe Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), the former Secretary ofState for Social Security, who had good ideas on how choice could beintroduced.

The Secretary of State for Health would be well advised to be a little lesspugilistic in such debates and a little more humble about the problems thatmany constituents face. I receive many letters from people whose GPs and, indue course, consultants at the local hospital have established that theyneed treatment. They have discovered that it will take a year or more to getthe treatment that they need now, not after such a long wait. Quite a few ofthem, although not particularly rich, are busily privatising their healthcare because they are so frustrated and in so much pain. They want to get onwith their lives. Some of them are of working age and want to get back towork, but the pain and the problem are impeding them from working properlyor at all. So they simply cancel the holiday, sell the car, do whatever ittakes, and pay a few thousand pounds for the operation in the privatesector. That is happening on a large scale; for many people, thatfundamental promise, in which I believe and in which I hoped the Governmentbelieved, is not being met.

What do Members of Parliament usually discover when we write and complain orrepresent our constituents' views? I am not going to parade my constituentsproblems in the House as they deserve a little confidentiality. However,some of them are suffering and in pain; they need my support, so I writeconfidentially to a Minister. I do not want to highlight their problems inthe press because that is not terribly helpful. The reply always comes back,"Oh well, everything is now wonderful because we have spent £300 million onthis, £400 million on that, a billion pounds on something else" and so on.Those numbers are meaningless to my constituents. As my right hon. Friendthe Member for South-West Norfolk said, there is a growing gap between theway in which the public want the Government to respond to their problems andthe way in which the Government are responding in practice.

I invite Ministers to imagine going to their local department store to buyred socks. They would not be impressed if the department store said, "Sorry,we haven't got any. You could have some ties; perhaps in a year's time, wemay have some red socks." They would probably not go to the store again orwould kick up a fuss and tell it to get some socks. If they wrote a letterof complaint, would they be impressed if the shop's general manager wroteback, "I am sorry that there weren't any red socks, but you will bedelighted to know that we spent £0.5 million on the sock department lastyear and will spend £1 million on it next year. Of course, for that £1million we cannot guarantee that red socks will be available on theoccasions when you may choose to come here, but please keep trying. Pleasekeep taking the pills because one day we may have spent enough to have redsocks when you come shopping"?

People are paying an average of £1,000 each in taxes every year, or £4,000for the average family, for the NHS. Of course, lots of transfers are goingon; I am glad that the rich subsidise the poor and that the well subsidisethe sick. Sometimes, transfers go the other way; the poor can subsidise therich because it is possible to be rich and ill, although some Labour Membersdo not seem to recognise that, or poor and healthy. The main subsidies,however, go in the direction of which we all approve, from rich to poor andfrom the well to the sick. Ministers should accept that £4,000 for anaverage family of four is still a lot of money; people would like to getsomething more for it than they are currently getting.

An interesting thread has run through the more thoughtful speeches in ourdebate. How can a new Labour Government sweep to power, pick up where theConservatives left off and even, after two or three years, start hurlingmore money at the problem than the Conservatives, despite missing a coupleof years when they first came to power, yet nothing seems to improve?Indeed, as some of my right hon. Friends argued powerfully, in some ways andin some places, things are deteriorating; the money is not getting throughand we are not getting what we want. In my own locality, we are waiting fora new hospital, which will not have nearly enough beds when it finallyopens. Over the years, I have urged both Labour and Conservative Ministersto get on with the scheme and allow more beds in the redevelopment. I amalways told by health experts that more beds are not needed because therewill be more day surgery and hot-bedding. People will zip in and out; theywill have a hip operation, then leap out of bed within three hours so thatsomeone else can come in and do the same. Life is not like that; there willbe considerable, growing demand for beds in which people can stay overnightor for a couple of days.