Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Jon Ashworth, Shadow Health Secretary, 2.04.17

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: Now to the NHS, after months of headlines about missed targets, this week one was dropped entirely.  It’s yet another sign of the health service creaking under the pressure of an ageing population and it raises more funding questions for the government.  Well joining me now in the studio is the Shadow Health Secretary, Jon Ashworth.  Hello, thanks for coming in this Sunday morning.  Now we are always hearing about the NHS being in crisis but it does seem as if something’s a bit different this time and waiting times targets being missed almost constantly as a matter of routine, people dying in corridors.  This week of course we saw the Head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, setting out his plan for the NHS, do you support him?

JON ASHWORTH: Well the plan that he’s set out has some very good ideas in there, good ambitions around cancer treatment, good ideas around improving our mental health provision in this country but I really don’t think dropping this 18 week target is the correct thing to do.

SR: And this is the 18 week target for non-emergency operations.  

JON ASHWORTH: Yes, we call non-emergency but that doesn’t mean that it’s non-pain, that doesn’t mean this is non-stress for patients and their loved ones and effectively what you are seeing now is bit by bit, step by step is the NHS being pushed back to the bad old days and it is I’m afraid a direct consequence of the very severe Tory under-funding that has been imposed on the NHS by Theresa May’s government.  Now my worry about the dropping of this 18 week target is this isn’t a promise by politicians or a promise from NHS bosses, it’s actually enshrined in the NHS Constitution.  Parliament legislated for that, it is an absolute right of patients to be seen within 18 weeks so I’m very worried that this could be challenged in the courts, that the constitution is being breached so today I am writing to Jeremy Hunt asking him to publish what legal advice he may have on this, asking him whether he is going to come to parliament and legislate to change the NHS Constitution because if he’s not, he’s breaking that Constitution, he’s breaking the rules and then he has to go to the Chancellor and ask for the funding so we can get an NHS that we expect.  

SR: Just to be clear then, you’re saying that if that 18 week target is dropped, that could be illegal?

JON ASHWORTH: Well it’s in the rules of the NHS, if you like, it’s in the constitution.  Now we don’t know what happens when the constitution is breached, that is about to be tested so we’re asking Jeremy Hunt today to give us his legal advice, to give us his judgement on this and to tell us whether he intends to legislate to change the constitution because the constitution outlines the rights that patients can expect, including treatment within 18 weeks in something called the NHS Handbook.  We have regulations in Parliament that we’ve debated, we’ve discussed and Parliament has voted for them.  You cannot just – or Simon Stevens and Jeremy Hunt cannot just sort of say well we’re changing this now, we’re dropping this now.  Parliament has had its say on these matters so we need to know whether he intends to bring legislation into Parliament but more generally, it’s absolutely disgraceful that pensioners, elderly people are going to be waiting longer for their hip replacement, their knee replacement, cataract replacements, operations of that order.  What is going on in the NHS really is a crisis and Theresa May has got to get a grip.

SR: You see it’s very clear that Labour are very keen to talk about the admittedly very serious problems in the NHS, what I wonder is whether it’s slightly less clear is what you are actually planning on doing about it.  I spent quite a long time trying to find out exactly what Labour’s plan is for the NHS and I’ll be honest, I actually struggled so exactly how much more money are you …

JON ASHWORTH: Well it’s a good job you invited me on your show today.  Look, there’s a few things we need to do.  We definitely need a long-term plan for the NHS, that is going to need …

SR: Well that’s obvious.

JON ASHWORTH: Well you say it’s obvious, the government aren’t doing it but that is definitely going to need more funding.   

SR: So how much more money are you going to spend?  

JON ASHWORTH: Well at the moment our hospitals are in deficit of about a billion, our Commissioners  - that’s the local health authorities if you like – are in deficit of probably about half a billion as well and the NHS money is flatlining, in fact head for head it is actually going to be going down.  Now I would say this year at least you probably need four to five billion extra but of course the general election is probably now going to come in a few years’ time and when we go to the country in a few years’ time we want to put forward a long term plan for the NHS, explaining where the money will come from and how much we think is needed, that’s the first thing.  The second thing though is that we have a staffing crisis in the NHS as well so I’m also calling today for an NHS guarantee for the 140,000 EU nationals who work in our NHS and the companion service, the social care sector, caring for our sick and elderly.  If they walk away from our NHS we’re really going to have problems because we already have huge vacancies in staffing in the NHS.  It also means we have got to do more training of people as well, so bring back for example student nurse bursaries.  They got rid of student nurse bursaries and the numbers applying to train as a nurse has plummeted.

SR: So let’s go back to the specifics, four to five billion pounds you’re saying this year, how does Labour want to pay for that?  John McDonnell suggested an NHS tax for example, is that something that you would … ?

JON ASHWORTH: Look, government is about making choices and you’ve got to remember that this government has chosen to cut Corporation Tax by a substantial amount, it’s given away big tax cuts in changes to the Capital Gains tax regime, it has [inaudible] one billion pounds Inheritance Tax coming in this year.  Does the government really need to go along with those decisions, could it not make some different choices and put some extra money into the NHS?  You mentioned the Shadow Chancellor, he produced an analysis that showed if you accumulate the loss to the Exchequer over about six years by adding up all the different tax changes to Corporation Tax and so on that have been implemented, it is a loss to the Exchequer of something like £70 billion.  So let’s not have any sort of nonsense telling us we cannot afford the NHS, we can afford the NHS if the government is prepared to put the money in and make different decisions on tax.

SR: That figure has been disputed to be fair, some people say it would be substantially less than £70 billion but what is clear is that the NHS needs a lot more money and we need to have a grown up conservation about the future of the NHS.  Is it right to just be throwing money at the problem?  Shouldn’t we be talking in a more grown up way about the serious long term problems in the NHS – ageing population, rising costs of drugs?

JON ASHWORTH: Absolutely and I’m up for that debate.  I think we now need a national conversation about how we fund health and social care in this country given that we have big demographic changes going on in society, given that we have an ageing population.  In the past Labour governments led that debate and did indeed increase national insurance so …

SR: [Inaudible question] .. about taxes?

JON ASHWORTH: I’m not the Shadow Chancellor so I’m not going to make tax decisions but I think we should have a debate about … I am ready to engage in that debate about how we fund the NHS and let’s …

SR: But you are ready to potentially talk about increasing taxes?  

JON ASHWORTH: I am ready to have that discussion with people about how we fund the NHS but there’s a couple of other things we have got to bear in mind.  We are wasting money in the NHS with all the fragmentation, outsourcing, commercialisation.  Even Simon Steven’s plan complains about the fragmentation that’s been introduced by David Cameron’s NHS reorganisation.  A Labour government would sweep all that aside.  How can it be sensible that Virgin could be taking Surrey local NHS bosses to court because they weren’t awarded a contract?  Or that you see big firms being given multi-million pound contracts and be forced to hand them back in?  It’s a waste of money, so that’s the first thing we’ll end, that privatisation agenda will come to a stop with a Labour government.  And the second thing, if I may just quickly say so, is that we have a public health problem in this country.  I’ve revealed today figures which show we’ve got half a million more people going into hospital because of obesity and things like that.  70% of the NHS budget is spent on dealing with these conditions, let’s improve the health of society, let’s deal with obesity, let’s deal with diabetes, smoking, alcoholism, that will save us money as well.

SR: Now we’ve had months of NHS in crisis headlines, you might expect it to be starting to feed through into the government’s poll ratings but it’s not exactly happening is it?  Let’s have a look at a poll that was out this week that shows an 18 point lead for the Conservatives.  Usually if you had these sorts of headlines about the NHS the government would be forced to do something but with those polls why would it need to?

JON ASHWORTH: Well that’s a pretty depression opinion poll to look at on a Sunday morning so thanks for that!  

SR: Sorry about that.

JON ASHWORTH: Look, I know that the opinion polls are very challenging for the Labour party …

SR: That’s one way of putting it.

JON ASHWORTH: But I’m doing this job because I want the Labour party to get back into government.  We are one of the great social democratic parties of government, we have achieved great things. In fact if you look at Twitter people are celebrating that it is something like 15 years since the Labour government introduced a national minimum wage.  

SR: You say you are keen to get back into government, that’s why you are doing this job but you did make the decision to go into the shadow cabinet, unlike many of your other colleagues who said that they wouldn’t support Jeremy Corbyn, didn’t want to serve under him. You are not exactly a Corbynista, do you ever look in the mirror and wonder if that was the right thing to do?

JON ASHWORTH: [Laughs] I’m just somebody who wants a Labour government and I want the Labour party to succeed because if you look at the history of the Labour party, we’re the party that created the NHS, which introduced various race relations legislation, the Open University, the minimum wage, Sure Start centres, tax credits and an assault on child poverty so …

SR: But to do all of that you need to be in government.

JON ASHWORTH: Absolutely and that’s why my work will go on trying to get us back into government because the Labour party is bigger than any one individual and we have to win, we have got to win elections in these various county council elections coming up, in the mayoral elections and so on and we’ve got to show we are winning the trust of the British people. That is our big challenge and I’m not going to give up on that, other colleagues are not giving up on that, they’re making decisions in different ways and a lot of our colleagues may not be in the Shadow Cabinet but they are doing great stuff holding this government to account from the back benches but I was offered a chance to take the government on on what they are doing to the NHS and to plot out a plan for the NHS for the future and that’s what I’m doing.

SR: Okay, Jonathan Ashworth, thank you.