ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: Thousands of people demonstrated through the streets of London yesterday demanding more money for the NHS with one doctor telling Sky News that the government has a year to save the health service. Joining me from Bristol is the Chair of the Health Select Committee, Dr Sarah Wollaston. Dr Wollaston, a very good morning to you.

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Good morning.

NP: That warning from a doctor, a year to save the NHS, do you recognise that?

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Well I do recognise the financial pressures across the NHS but what I’d say is it is not just the NHS, as your previous report showed, you need to look at this as the wider picture of prevention – what we call public health – social care and the NHS together so the call that I and others across political parties in Westminster have made to the government is to say look at this as a whole system, look at what it needs here and now but also look ten years into the future and do the long term planning for the sheer scale of the increase in demand that we have now for health and social care.

NP: Indeed, I mean social care is a topic that we have previously covered in one of our films on the show. We have now seen the Health Secretary expand his brief somewhat, we have this new Minister for Loneliness, do you see though with these ministerial changes, the government doing anything other than paying lip service.

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Well they are bringing out a Green Paper on Social Care and as you say, it is welcome that they have appointed a Minister for Loneliness. What we now need is for all of this to be tied up together but it is an issue of funding, clearly that’s important but also an issue of workforce and long term planning. What I think we do need to do is actually have those really honest discussions with people about how we bring that funding in, how we make that fair across generations and not just look at that in the context of older adults social care but the whole system and I’m afraid in a hung parliament it is very difficult to get these challenging decisions across the line because whilst everybody agrees that the health service needs more money, the challenge comes in who is actually going to pay for that. My view is that we need to actually build a cross party consensus, to go out and explain these difficult decisions to people because I am absolutely convinced of the case that the health service and social care need more money but what I want to see now is action putting that in place and explaining to people who is going to be making more of a contribution in order for us to do that.

NP: Can we turn to the winter crisis, and it certainly feels as if we are through the worst of that within the NHS, but what’s your assessment of just how bad it got this year?

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Well it did get particularly bad, as I say because of the ongoing financial pressures but also the loss of that flexibility to deal with bumps in the road like for example the flu epidemic that we had and norovirus coming at the same time and that can actually lead to the whole system appearing to grind to a halt. Now the NHS did have a plan that it had put in place to try and relieve those pressures by not carrying out routine surgery but the trouble then is that those people who have been waiting for routine surgery, not only is that a huge inconvenience and really been a major problem for those individuals, but of course it then means that the whole backlog for routine care starts to build up and that’s what we are worrying about as well, whether the NHS over the coming year will be able to keep its commitments to routine surgery, so routine procedures, those will tend to build up. So what we’ll see is not as the doctor speaking to the march said, that the NHS will collapse and not be there, what we will see is that waiting times will increase and the lack of the ability to deal with bumps in the road so effectively because of the sheer scale of the building pressure and the fact that we haven’t sufficiently planned for that over successive governments.

NP: Why has there been this lack of planning for something which we know is going to happen every single year? You wrote this in the Express just a little earlier this year, “There is nothing new about winter pressures in the NHS, what has changed is that those pressures are now year round but in winter the crisis is far deeper.” I mean it’s an abrogation of responsibility of those in charge isn’t it?

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Well what we have called for, along with members of the House of Lords who looked at this, is to have an Office of Health and Care Sustainability, a bit like we have the Office of Budget Responsibility, an office that is specifically looking at the scale of future demand and the workforce that we need to meet that demand. As I say, there’s been a lack of long term planning that is very obvious to those who are looking closely at the system and the lack of determination to look at those systems together so it is very encouraging that they have now renamed Jeremy Hunt’s role as the Health and Social Care minister but that can’t just be a change of brand over the door, that has to translate into real action into the way that they organise and look at funding for the health service. So I think what Theresa May must do is not just go ahead with a single Green Paper looking at older adults social care but broaden that out and bring in the funding that is realistic funding to meet the demand or at least explain to people if they are not prepared to put in the extra money, in honest terms what that means for the level of services and I think if the public clearly had that set out for them, what it would mean if we don’t increase the funding, then I think they would be prepared to see some extra funding and it will have to be all of us contributing to that in some way, in a fair way but unless you set out what those alternatives are it’s very difficult to have those conversations that say this is what it’s going to mean in terms of your national insurance contributions or your taxation contributions. But we have to move forward with that, we can’t keep ducking it.

NP: I just want to change focus slightly for a second, Dr Wollaston. I don't know if you have had chance to get through the Sunday papers today but once again there is a huge amount of speculation about the future, the longevity of Theresa May. What do you make of her leadership?

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Yes, well I think it is very unfortunate for people to be speculating in this way because actually undermining her leadership at such a crucial point in our negotiations I think is deeply unhelpful so I wish those cabinet ministers who are out on manoeuvres would just row back because what we need is to be presenting a united front. Of course there are differences in opinion in the way we should be handling Brexit, everyone knows that, it’s the same in all political parties, that there’s a range of views around things like the single market and the customs union, but to have that translate into people making threats that they will be bringing her down if she doesn’t do what they want I think is deeply unhelpful. What we need to be doing is for ministers to be having those conversations in cabinet and not touting them all over the Sunday newspapers, I think that’s deeply unhelpful.

NP: Dr Sarah Wollaston, lovely to see you this Sunday morning, many thanks for joining us.

DR SARAH WOLLASTON: Thank you.