Conference,
Six months ago the party gave me the very small portfolio of Health. It has been an extremely busy journey. I am grateful for the ongoing support and contribution of colleagues Alan Robinson in the assembly, and Jim Shannon at Westminster.
The remit is enormous, the challenges even more so.
Since the restoration of devolution one Health Minister, who professed their love and commitment to the job, promptly upped and left it. His successor, only a few months in has landed another job. The depth and breadth of the challenges, if they are to be addressed, first and foremost requires commitment and focus.
The recall of smear tests for 17,500 women in the Southern Trust and the lack of any services for ADHD are some of the early issues.
As party spokesperson on Health I am currently preparing a response on the proposed new Public Health Legislation, from the Department of Health. This has caused much controversy because of its potential impact on personal liberties and freedoms.
George Orwell said: “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it”. And we recognise, and share, the growing concerns around some of the powers and controls in what is proposed, fears around personal liberty, and the checks and balances needed to ensure that Government does not abuse its power with unnecessary infringements on people’s lives. On this, we will stand strong.
This week Alan and I brought a motion in the assembly on an issue that negatively affects every family across Northern Ireland…..
Waiting lists!
Thousands of people waiting for years on hip and knee replacements with little quality of life.
Just imagine the terror and fear of any woman in this room who finds a lump on their breast. Only one in three women in Northern Ireland will be seen within the recommended time.
The Department of Health has not achieved a waiting list target since 2014
As I recently said in the Assembly this is obscene!!
I think the Department has become so ground down by ever-growing waiting times that they have actually lost the belief that things can be better.
It’s not enough to keep your fingers crossed, and hope things might work out. Their response needs to go beyond ‘Give us more money and we’ll do a bit extra’.
We need a new approach, not tinkering at the edges, an approach that has a realistic chance to succeed.
We need to look beyond Northern Ireland in the short term for partners who can assist us.
There are national and international providers working in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland we should seek to establish relationships with.
Lord Darzi’s report last week, although primarily about England echoes many of the problems we find in Northern Ireland.
Darzi found there to be 2.8 million people in England who are unable to be part of the workforce because of long term sickness. That’s up 40% on pre-pandemic levels, with most of the rise accounted for by mental health.
Half of the current waiting list for inpatient treatment is thought to comprise working age adults. Improving better access to care is crucial for wealth creation and prosperity.
Too many people are ending up in hospital because not enough is invested in the community care. Properly funding GPs and Mental Health Services are two vital measures.
Fixing a broken social care system should also be a priority.
Patients can’t flow through our hospitals properly, because there is no care for them in their own homes.
When I asked the Minister back in March how many patients medically fit to leave, were having to remain in hospital taking up vital beds, he confirmed the figure to be more than 600 per day.
600 beds completely out of use, is like locking the doors on the Royal Victoria Hospital or two of our medium-sized acute hospitals and then expecting the service to function effectively. Yet, it should not require rocket science to improve this.
I had been pressing the Minister over the amount of time surgeons are spending in theatre. The figures are shocking.
In Belfast and Northern Trusts, a surgeon will spend 30% of his time in theatre.
In the Southern and South Eastern Trust that falls to 20%.
The Western Trust couldn’t even answer the question.
But how can that be? How can there be such a difference from one Trust to another? And why is this being tolerated?
Whilst our staff are hardworking and almost broken by the burden of care it is evident our system is inefficient and in clear need of reform.
Conference, while it is important to lay out a vision for a world class health service, it is also important to confront the policy decisions that would devastate our health service and undermine the sanctity of life that we as a uphold party.
In other parts of the UK, some are again attempting to legalise assisted suicide. This is simply wrong and we as a party must speak up for the vulnerable in our society, who deserve fully funded care.
Assisted suicide is not compassion; it is simply a manifestation of a health service, of a society, that has lost sight of the real dignity of human life.
Canada stands as a stark lesson to those who seek to implement assisted suicide in the UK. What started as a tightly defined piece of legislation limited in scope, has rapidly expanded. Today, in Canada, people with non-terminal conditions, mental health issues, and disabilities are presented with assisted suicide as a therapeutic option, DEATH sold as treatment. How far is too far?
Conference, the DUP is a pro-life party. From the first breath, to the last.
We need to show how good palliative care works and point towards medical pathways that lead to life and better outcomes. We need to be ready to defend the inherent dignity of human life.
Mr Chairman, the challenges in health are vast, but as a Party we don’t just state the difficulties, but we have a plan to do things differently.
- first, by accepting that our waiting times are well beyond acceptable, utterly appalling, and that more of the same from the Department just won’t do.
- Increase our capacity by looking nationally and internationally for providers, to help in the short-term to reduce the backlog in waits.
-Organise our waiting lists and the services to tackle them on a Northern Ireland-wide basis, with an entitlement at the same time to access care regardless of where you live.
-Establish a small dedicated team, accountable for resolving the delayed discharge debacle, and freeing up hundreds of acute beds.
-Revise how funding flows through our system to ensure certainty and consistency.
-Get on with actually implementing Professor Bengoa’s report, through clinically-driven change
-Resurrect and reinvigorate the Transformation Fund, initially supported through the DUP Confidence and Supply Agreement.
-Properly fund and staff GPs
-And finally, allow clinicians to get on with caring for their patients, not having to battle against a debilitating system.
Conference, to start making a real difference rather than simply treading water, we need to look at solutions in a fundamentally different way.
That will require the Department and wider Executive to be much bolder and more imaginative than ever before to this point. The DUP is up to the task. We hope others are too.
Thank you for your support.