Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Jon Ashworth MP Shadow Health Secretary

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

NIALL PATERSON: I am joined now by Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Jon Ashworth, Mr Ashworth good morning.

JON ASHWORTH: Good morning.

NP: I should say at this point, the Department of Health have given us a line on this, “We are investing more in mental health than ever before, spending at a record £11.6 billion this year. The benefits of record funding can already be seen in areas such as mental health support in A&E, 24/7 crisis services and support for pregnant women and new mothers.” The situation in Liverpool is but a snapshot and it’s not reflected across the board but the idea that there would be parity of esteem, an aspiration of parity of esteem between physical and mental wellbeing, we’re some distance from that aren’t we?

JON ASHWORTH: A considerable distance as we’ve just seen in that very moving package. The problem is the government over the first five years of their time in office actually reduced the proportion going on mental health spend, it’s why for example we’ve got 4000 less beds, we’ve got something like five and a half thousand less nurses working in mental health and although the government now says they are increasing the mental health budgets, they are not doing what we call ring fencing it. They are not saying to local health boards, the CCGs as we call them these days, they are not saying to them you have to spend this money on mental health so because of the wider pressures on the NHS, many of these local health areas, the CCGs, are raiding those budgets and transferring the money into the wider running of the NHS because of the overall under-funding of the National Health Service. So we’re saying ring fence that money, actually put a ring fence around the mental health budget so that rather than it being cut at a local level as we’ve just seen in Liverpool, it actually goes to those who need it.

NP: Still, I can’t remember a time when the party of opposition didn’t say that the NHS was in crisis in some form or another so what makes the situation affecting the NHS at the moment in your mind as acute as it’s ever been?

JON ASHWORTH: Oh I think we’re in a very serious situation. New figures that we’ve seen in the last few days show the waiting times are now at four million and could hit five million according to Simon Stephens, the NHS boss, if they don’t get more money. The number of people who are designated as a trolley wait, that is people who can’t even get a bed in A&E, in the last year has been 565,000. Under a Labour government it was 60,000, that’s the scale of the difference. Just today I’ve released new figures that show nearly 27,000 people are not getting an urgent referral for cancer treatment within two months and of course we all saw the very serious winter last year in the NHS with ambulances backed up, people in corridors. It’s incredibly serious and if I may say so, I’ve seen Philip Hammond doing interviews today and he is being kind of dismissive of the calls for more money for the NHS saying, well you know it is going to be Armageddon. This is happening now, today, in the NHS and if he doesn’t realise that he is completely out of touch.

NP: But isn’t part of the problem that we never seem to be able to have an adult discussion about the funding of the health service or whether it should be providing free treatment in every instance without someone somewhere suggesting that you are proposing privatising the entire thing? A number of your colleagues have made the point that perhaps now is the point at which we should move the health service and attendant services out of the world of party politics and have some non-partisan approach to it all, what do you make of that?

JON ASHWORTH: Well I am always happy to talk to anyone about the future of NHS financing. We in the Labour party are calling on the Chancellor to put aside an extra £6 billion this budget coming up but over the next five, ten, fifteen years I’m up for a discussion in this country about long term funding of the NHS. All the think tanks suggest that we need something like an extra 20 billion by 2022/23 and so on.

NP: None of that removes the fact that the health service is a political football that gets punted from one side of the chamber to the other.

JON ASHWORTH: I wouldn’t say it is a political football but politicians have to make choices about funding and this is a government which over seven years has chosen to underfund the NHS, has chosen to cut the public health budgets which are the budgets which deliver things like sexual health services support and smoking cessation support, health visitors and things like that in the communities, all those budgets have been cut and of course social care budgets have been cut by billions which is putting huge pressure on the NHS because there are so many elderly and vulnerable people going without a care package. So I don’t want to use it as a political football but I think it’s right and proper that we highlight decisions that the government has made which is having a consequence for patient care today.

NP: Now that we have you in the studio, and we’ve been looking forward to this, I’ve lost count over the weeks that I’ve been doing this show of the number of times that you or your colleagues have said that Labour is a government in waiting. What does that mean given that technically every opposition is a government in waiting and some of them wait quite a long time?

JON ASHWORTH: Well I think it actually means that we are preparing to take over when this government falls. I mean this government is looking increasingly hapless and we’ve now got David Davis in the newspapers saying he may well walk out. Philip Hammond today has also said that there are no unemployed people in this country, I mean how out of touch is this Chancellor? Theresa May looks completely bewildered all the time, I mean this government could collapse at any moment and we’re making the point that we have got a programme for government and we are ready to step in.

NP: Given your contention that this government could collapse at any moment it is therefore fair for us to ask for specific answers to specific questions.

JON ASHWORTH: Yes, of course.

NP: How much should the UK be giving the European Union as its bill for leaving the EU?

JON ASHWORTH: Well that’s part of the negotiations isn’t it?

NP: You have got to have an idea. £20 billion, £30 billion, £40 billion?

JON ASHWORTH: Well that’s part of … that’s why you go into, we go into a negotiation clearly don’t we but clearly we want to have the best access to the single market and the customs union to safeguard British jobs and prosperity and the NHS, because the NHS is impacted by our relationship with the European Union but these are matters for negotiation.

NP: In terms of the project of nationalisation which of course is central to Labour’s claim to being a government in waiting – rail, electricity, water and Royal Mail. How much would it cost, how would it be funded?

JON ASHWORTH: John McDonnell has said that these are matters that he will bring forward, he will bring forward these calculations in due course but what I can tell you is in the NHS, the privatisation in the NHS means that we’re now spending £8 billion on the private sector and that is destabilising the NHS. I’ll give you a quick example, in Sussex a contract for patient transport was given to a private company who didn’t even own any vehicles, who subcontracted out to 20 other companies two of whom went bust and the workers had to go without wages so we are saying on things like that they need to be brought in-house.

NP: Okay but on that point we heard from the Shadow Chancellor this morning, his ideas is that you would swap shares in these entities for government bonds, it is in essence borrowing by another name, it would be almost certainly in excess of £100 billion but let’s contrast that with your offer on public sector pay. What are you proposing in terms of a rise for NHS staff specifically?

JON ASHWORTH: Well we have said we want a real terms rise but that would be decided through collective bargaining, through the pay review bodies, through a proper process. What we don’t think is fair is this pay freeze which has been in place for seven years. Now the Chancellor and Jeremy Hunt are saying we’re going to get rid of this pay freeze but they’ll pay for it by productivity gains. No, we don’t want productivity gains, we want a proper fully-funded pay rise for NHS staff.

NP: So my point is you are willing to spend in excess of £100 billion on money we don’t have, on stuff that we do not need but you are not willing to borrow to give a proper pay rise to nurses.

JON ASHWORTH: No, because we can fund a pay rise with different decisions on taxation. We can make different decisions on corporation tax, on income taxes for the very wealthiest in society and we have been very upfront about that. The top 5% will pay more tax in this country but that will allow us to fund public services like schools, like hospitals and indeed give NHS staff a fair pay rise.

NP: With the announcement on housing, it does appear that the government is parking its tanks very firmly on your lawn doesn’t it?

JON ASHWORTH: Well we’ll see. We’ve had umpteen announcements from the government from this Chancellor and the previous Chancellor on housing and you know what, the houses never seem to get built. So we’ll have to look at the detail but the record so far doesn’t leave us with much confidence.

NP: But certainly the one thing the Chancellor doesn’t want to do is borrow any more money for obvious reasons.

JON ASHWORTH: But we’ve had Sajid Javid going around saying that he should borrow more money to build houses so we’re going to see who is going to be successful in the budget, will it be the Chancellor or will it be Sajid Javid? I suspect that the number of houses that we need in this country won’t actually get built because we have loads of big announcements, we have loads of targets from this Tory government and yet they never actually follow through.

NP: Whilst we have you here, what do you make of the former Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale’s decision to go into the jungle on I’m A Celebrity and should she be suspended from the party?

JON ASHWORTH: I think Jeremy has said she shouldn’t be suspended.

NP: Yes, Richard Leonard said something slightly different.

JON ASHWORTH: Well these are matters for the Scottish party. Look, I like Kezia, I got on with her well. I don’t know her particularly well but when I did meet her I got on very well with her but I think there are better ways to further the cause of the Labour party than eating kangaroo’s whatsits in the jungle!

NP: A conversation I never thought I’d be having on a Sunday morning before I’ve had my porridge but would you ever do it, would you ever appear on reality TV? I don't know, I perhaps see an appearance on Love Island maybe? Celebrity Love Island?

JON ASHWORTH: [Laughter] You’ve got to be kidding haven’t you? No, not me, no.

NP: But there is a real point here isn’t there, that politicians do sometimes seem a little bit distant from the people they are supposed to represent, there is nothing wrong with this, it’s a bit of fun isn’t it?

JON ASHWORTH: Yes, but I think the difference, Ed Balls for example when he went on Strictly and become a huge superstar, everyone loved him but that was after he was a politician. I think it’s difficult when you have got a full-time job as a politician, when you are a parliamentarian but look, it is a matter for the Scottish party and they’ll come to a decision I’m sure.

NP: We will wait and see. Jon Ashworth, many thanks for being with us.