Andrew Stunell on Health...

Andrew Stunell takes NHS cash plea to No 10

Health is always one of the main issues that people have concerns about, and I'm no different. The NHS treats most people very well, but too many mistakes are still made, and the standard of care is patchy. Too much money is being wasted on bureaucrats and failed IT schemes, such as "Choose and Book", which is something I have campaigned to improve (or scrap!) for a considerable period of time. Doctors and nurses spend too much time trying to meet government targets rather than caring for patients.

The gap between rich and poor - in both life expectancy and infant mortality - has widened under Labour, productivity in the NHS has fallen year on year, government targets have been prioritised over patient safety, and increasingly, hospitals have to take out state-funded loans to cover budgetary shortfalls.

I believe that patients must come first, and that services would improve if local people had a say in how the NHS is run.

Below, you can find more information about the areas I've been speaking out on in Health, and the party's policies on health matters. You can also see the questions I have asked in parliament about health matters, which can be accessed at the following link:

Health Questions.

Cash Back For Christie!

Andrew Stunell with fellow Manchester Lib Dem MPs Mark Hunter & John Leech backing the Christie Campaign in Parliament

The Christie hospital in Manchester is one of the best known, and much loved hospitals in the country. It is one of Europe's leading cancer centres, and has saved a great many lives, including many Stopfordians.

However, due to the collapse of the Icelandic Bank (Kaupthing, Singer and Friedlander) The Christie stood to lose £6.5 million of donations and investments that would have helped pay for research into cancer and treatment of cancer patients.

Alongside my fellow Greater Manchester Lib Dem colleagues, John Leech MP, Mark Hunter MP and Paul Rowen MP, we teamed up with the hospital, the Manchester Evening News and other local health campaigners to try and get the money back. More than 100,000 people signed the MEN's "Cash Back for Christie" petition, which we delivered to Downing Street in May 2009.

Thankfully, in June we heard the good news that the Christie would be recouping its lost money. I am delighted that the Christie is getting its money back and that Caroline Shaw (pictured above outside No 10) and her colleagues can now look forward to pressing on with their vital research, free from the black financial cloud that was hanging over them until this announcement.

Read More:

Local MPs Present Christie Petition to 10 Downing Street.

Mental Health

Andrew Stunell opening the new Mental Health ward at Stepping Hill Hospital

I have been campaigning for improved mental health services in the town for many years now. Mental illness has been estimated to cost the UK economy £48 billion every year in loss of output and cost of treatment. Mental health provision has long been the forgotten service in our health system, and Stockport suffers particularly badly.

NHS Stockport is one of the lowest spending Primary Care Trusts in the North West when it comes to mental health services. The Trust spends £7.3 million a year less than the North West average on mental health services, and spends only 21p per head of population on commissioning mental health services, the lowest in the North West and barely a third of the North West average.

With the current economic climate putting such a huge strain on the wellbeing of families across the North West, investing in mental health services has never been more important. Whilst there is no doubt that some real improvements have been put in place by Penning Health, who provide the services on behalf of the Primary Care Trust, there is still a long way to go to bring care of those suffering mental health problems up to the national average.

I am pleased to report that after a lot of pushing and shoving improvements are happening. The dilapidated facilities at Stepping Hill have been transformed, and I was pleased to be asked by Pennine Health to officially open Bevan Place, their new Mental Health Wing at Stepping Hill Hospital in June 2009. And there are gradual improvements, too, in helping out-patients and those who need sheltered accommodation.

Having been chronically underfunded in the past, I am pleased that Stockport NHS is taking some steps in the right direction to improve these services. However, they shouldn't let up, and I will continue to campaign for greater funding, so that mental health problems receive the attention, and the support they deserve.

Choose and Book or Confuse and Book?

Choose and Book Logo

The NHS Choose and Book IT scheme has been a thorn in the side of many patients in the North West. I have faced a steady stream of frustrated constituents who find the electronic booking system too complicated to use, and discover that it often builds in long delays in getting appointments. The system has proved so frustrating for so many people, that I've renamed it "Confuse and Book".

Choose and Book is the NHS's version of Air Traffic Control. When you've got too many patients you stack them up and send them round and round. It looks like something good is happening, but you're just burning up fuel. Even the Department of Health has admitted that it has been used to cover up their failure to meet the 18 week treatment deadline.

Most patients and every GP knows where treatment can best be provided, and often by which particular consultant. Instead they get offered a so-called choice which often doesn't even include the option that would suit them best.

Actually, they are the lucky ones! Government figures confirm what my constituents tell me. One in sixteen calls to Choose and Book don't get answered at all, and callers who get through often get given a standard message to say there are no appointments available.

In February 2009 I secured a debate on the Choose and Book System in the House of Commons so that I could set out its deficiencies to the Health Minister, and challenge him to reform it - or better still scrap it. It was interesting that once I got started there were plenty of other MPs ready to join me and to press the Government to sort out the problems with this confusing and unpopular system.

NHS Dentists

As many Stockport residents have found to their cost, NHS Dentist provision in Stockport is in very short supply. It got suddenly a lot worse when many dentists opted out of NHS work four years ago, leaving many patients with little choice but to go private. But many cannot afford that, and when I questioned Department of Health Ministers they admitted that 30,252 fewer people now visit an NHS dentist in the Borough than when Labour came to power in 1997. Only 9 of the 44 dental practices in Stockport that I surveyed back in December 2008 would accept new NHS patients, with the shortest waiting time for an appointment nine days, and the longest six weeks.

As a result, regular tooth inspections are much lower, and recent figures have shown that the number of tooth extractions carried out in Stockport have shot up by 60% since 2003 to 1,247 people, one in three of which were children.

This isn't good enough. There is a clear link between the shortage of NHS dentists in the area and the extraordinary rise in the number of people needing their teeth extracted under general anaesthetic. Many people are unable to afford to go private and are simply missing out on regular treatment that would save these extractions. The government's dental contract was supposedly designed to improve the situation, but the staggering rise in tooth extractions underlines the failure of this botched initiative.

Now we need Whitehall action to end the neglect of Stockport residents hit by the crisis in NHS dentistry. Meanwhile I have made myself very unpopular with Stockport NHS, pressing at every meeting for them to engage and employ more NHS dentists locally. I held a recent meeting with the BDA to alert them to my concerns, too. One way or another we have to get better dental health locally.

NHS Loans

My Liberal Democrat colleague, Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb MP, discovered back in March that hospitals across the country were paying back millions of pounds in interest payments on loans they had taken out from the government.

Stockport NHS Trust had to pay back almost £3 million in interest - the highest in the whole of the North West, at a rate of interest ten times higher than the Bank of England base rate. I spoke out at the time against this practice, which sees millions of pounds that could be spent by the local hospital on healthcare instead swallowed up by the bureaucratic Whitehall machine.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs. The government are charging loan shark rates, and are taking millions of pounds away from hospitals, whilst at the same time cutting their central grant allocation (in Stockport's case by £1.5 million over the next two years). How are our hospitals meant to continue to provide excellent healthcare and balance their books in this situation? I have raised this issue in the House of Commons with the Health Minister, and will continue to campaign for the money to remain in the hands of the local health professionals, rather than the Whitehall paper-pushers.

Our Priorities for Health:

We will scrap targets and we will guarantee patient rights (Patient's Contract)

Too many people find themselves victims of the target culture in the NHS. You might be left to wait in an ambulance outside the hospital gates so that you don't jeopardise the A&E target, or you might have been forced to see a different doctor to the you want, or you might have been told you couldn't book an appointment with your GP more than two days in advance. The Liberal Democrats believe that targets distort how the NHS should work and we believe that real progress is best achieved when patients have rights they can exercise. We will scrap targets and introduce a Patient's Bill of Rights, we will make sure that you can get your treatment on time or the NHS will pay for you to go private.

We will give local people control over their NHS (elections to local health boards)

Lots of people feel that nobody listens to them when they try to get involved in the future of the NHS. Too often public consultations over the closure of clinics, wards or entire hospitals are complete shams. The Liberal Democrats believe that people are best able to determine the priorities of the NHS in their area - not Whitehall and unelected officials. So we'll put people in charge of their local NHS by holding elections to health boards.

We will end the pernicious means-test for social care (the universal care guarantee)

People fear having to sell their home to pay for care as they get older and find it difficult to cope without help. Everyone who knows anything about the current social care system knows it to be complex, irrational and unjust. The Liberal Democrats believe care should be based on need not ability to pay, so we'll introduce care payments for the elderly to ensure everyone in need gets an adequate level of support.

We will end the postcode lottery in NHS funding

One of the most inexplicable and infuriating things about the NHS today is the postcode lottery. A patient with cancer is denied life-prolonging drugs in one area but hear that they might have got them if they moved a few miles down the road. Staff in some areas struggle to keep up with the demand for their services, wards fill up, operations are cancelled at short notice; but in other areas staff rarely face these spiralling problems. A woman in one area gets a midwife all the way through her labour; in another area a woman is left alone with only her partner to help. At the heart of this problem is the unfair distribution of NHS funds between areas and the decision by Labour Ministers to let the problem worsen over the coming years with some areas left under-funded by hundreds of millions of pounds. The Liberal Democrats believe that each part of the country should get its fair share of NHS money. We will set up a new independent body to allocate money where the NHS needs it, not where politicians want to channel it.

We will improve access to treatment for people with depression and anxiety

Most people with depression get no help from the NHS; their suffering is a waste of their talent and potential, and a terrible burden for them and their families. Too many families with the burden of depression feel written off by society. Too many doctors find they have little alternative but to issue prescriptions for antidepressants because there are too few counsellors and psychologists. Liberal Democrats believe that this level of neglect is inhuman. We will increase capacity in the NHS so that people with depression and anxiety can get access to treatment that works.

We will make mental health units safer

Many women who've been admitted onto mental health wards say they have feared for their safety at times. Every year, a hundred or so women suffer actual physical or sexual abuse while under the care of the NHS. Most of us are lucky enough never to have to be admitted to hospital with mental health problems. We hope that the dark ages of institutional care are over. But we also know that more must be done to improve the safety of patients when they are most vulnerable. Liberal Democrats believe that patients have a right to be protected from abuse or attack, so we'll double the investment in safety improvements on mental health units.

We will help people navigate the health and social care systems (patient advocates)

Trying to navigate the health and social care systems can be a complete nightmare. So many different rules about entitlements, so much confusing jargon, not enough information about the options available to people. Liberal Democrats believe that independent advice can help empower patients to make the best decisions about their care, so we'll offer independent help to 500,000 people by piloting a network of patient advocates dedicated to providing information, guidance and support.

We will take tough action on the big public health challenges

We are facing huge public health challenges: an obesity timebomb, an epidemic of alcohol abuse, and smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable deaths. Liberal Democrats believe that government needs to give clear messages before it lectures and blames individuals. So, we'll promote transport schemes that encourage walking and cycling, we'll make sure all food labelling uses the traffic light system, and we'll set a minimum price for alcohol.