The Health of the Nation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:48 pm on 22 October 1992.

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Photo of David Blunkett David Blunkett Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Member, Labour Party National Executive Committee 5:48, 22 October 1992

I shall certainly take responsibility from here on in about when we press for debates on health and for ensuring that we vote on motions on health at every opportunity, but the hon. Gentleman cannot divert me so easily from the substance of what is, after all, the health of the nation: equality and provision, the way we distribute our resources, and the prevention of ill health.

The Secretary of State talked about improvements in infant mortality. In five regions of Britain, infant mortality worsened last year. That is a fact. The truth of the matter is that while in the nation as a whole some people have done a great deal better, and have done better out of health promotion clinics, many others have done worse. The health divide has worsened in the thirteen and a half years of Conservative government, and it is still worsening.

There is no strategy for the health of the nation. The word strategy is mentioned on the cover of the White Paper, but there is no co-ordinated approach to the needs of the British people. Here we have a White Paper which purports to deal with the nation's ills but does not mention poverty once; nor does it mention inequality, and nor did the Secretary of State.

The Secretary of State waffled on about trusts and GP fund holding, about how wonderful the new NHS was and how tremendously it has improved. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) rightly asked the Secretary of State why, in that case, we are to receive a statement tomorrow about how badly the health service in London is run and what she intends to do about it.

The White Paper mentions unemployment-but only once, in the section entitled "Healthy homes", which says: Good housing is important to good health, although the interdependence between factors such as occupational class, income, unemployment, housing and lifestyle makes it difficult to assess why health effects are specifically attributable to it. Then—this would be funny if it was not so serious—the White Paper says: The Government's objective is to ensure that decent housing is within the reach of all families. Perhaps someone should tell that to the Secretary of State's husband, the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley), who slept on the steps of Greenwich town hall earlier this week to draw attention to homelessness. Perhaps he should have a word with a Cabinet Minister. Perhaps the new approach could be explained to him. Perhaps he could be told that the Government really do have an intention on this, even though they believe that it is muddled up with other inconveniences such as social class, unemployment and inequality.

The existence of the White Paper should be applauded. It has taken long enough to arrive, and it is at least some recognition that, even if the Secretary of State did not spend all that much time on it, the British people are willing to debate the real health causes and ill health causes in Britain—the integration of economic and social action which she did not mention. There is no real understanding of the targets of the World Health Organisation set out in 1978. In fact, the Secretary of State did not refer to them—equality between nations, regions and socio-economic groups.

The Secretary of State mentioned that there was a Cabinet Committee, where I understand that she has a little local difficulty with one of her predecessors who had a finger in everything and a voice on the radio about everyone else's Department except his own. Whenever she tries to move a policy on, apparently he blocks it. What does that Cabinet Committee do? Did it consider the pit closures? Did it meet to consider the impact of unemployment? What did the Secretary of State have to say at the Cabinet meeting? Perhaps she will tell us whether it met to consider the redundancies at the pits and in the rest of Britain. I will give way to her so that she can tell the House what it had to say. If the Secretary of State is not willing to get up and tell us, perhaps she would just nod if the Cabinet Committee did consider the pit closures. No, she is not nodding—the Secretary of State is comatose. Is there a doctor in the House?