When it comes to health, Reading Labour would always rather play politics

Last night at full Council Cllr Bet Tickner, Labour Lead Councillor Health tabled the following motion:

“This Council notes that:

• Through the Health and Social Care Bill, the Government is currently pushing through the biggest and most disruptive reorganisation in the history of the NHS, at a cost of £2bn.
• The Bill removes the fundamental responsibility of the Secretary of State for Health to provide a health service free at the point of need. 
•  Despite the “listening exercise” over this last summer the bill will still put decisions about the future of the NHS in the hands of EU competition lawyers and allow private healthcare companies to make major inroads into NHS provision.
• The Bill is designed to produce a postcode lottery of care, with potentially two commissioning consortia operating within Reading Borough, and would allow NHS trusts to treat as many private patients as they wish, so long waiting times would be back for very many Reading patients.
• The messy reorganisation set out in the bill is not only costly, but will cause massive anxiety among all dedicated NHS staff over a prolonged period, in addition to the job losses, cuts in pay and projected costs in pensions which are being implemented at the Royal Berkshire Hospital and elsewhere in the NHS locally.
• The Bill creates more quangos with unclear roles, meaning more money spent on bureaucracy, not less.
• The NHS was cut in real terms by £800m in 2010-11, despite the Government’s promise to give the NHS a real rise in funding every year of this Parliament, and to stop top-down reorganisations of the NHS.

In view of the detrimental affect of the above on Reading residents, this Council resolves:

• To write directly to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary urging them to scrap the Health and Social Care Bill.
• To urge Members of the House of Lords who oppose this Bill to seek to amend radically those provisions which directly threaten the very foundations of the NHS.

We voted against this motion. Below is the speech I gave in response.

'It is with dismay that once again Labour councillors are using valuable time in the Council Chamber to make a party political broadcast.



How does this debate help the people of Reading we are supposed to represent?


If we are to believe Labour genuinely care about our NHS


Where were the motions attacking the previous Labour government’s marketization of the health service – which enabled private providers to be paid more than those from the public sector,


Where were the motions attacking the target-driven culture which grew up under Labour and which led to failings in basic care such Mid Staffordshire?


Where were the motions attacking the £20 billion-pound of taxpayers money Labour wasted on a failed NHS IT system ?


Where were the motions attacking the 66% rise in the number of NHS managers – six times as fast as the number of Nurses – under a Labour Government?


There are no shortage of health issues where it would be helpful if the Labour councillors supposedly running this Council took a lead


Reading is a town with massive health inequalities


Children from poorer backgrounds have worse health than those in other areas


And people in poorer areas die younger


People in Reading suffer more early deaths from heart disease and Stroke


There are more teenage pregnancies


These should be the issues occupying us as councillors


And yet we have a lead member for health who spends more time politicking then getting down to work to improve health outcomes for all our residents


This motion says more about Labour’s political priorities than it does the real issues facing residents


 It was a liberal, working in a Coalition, who first imagined the NHS and its values of healthcare available to all, free at point of delivery, based on clinical need, not ability to pay.

 And so we on this have more faith in Dame Shirley Williams and her colleagues in the House of Lords doing whatever is necessary to safeguard the NHS both and in the future than we do in Reading Labour Party. '

We must keep fighting to support Reading's Carers

Last night the Council agreed two important motions calling for justice and action to support two vulnerable groups in our community: Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender people and Reading Gurkhas and their families.

I was delighted to support both.

In the same meeting I spoke up for another group of unsung heroes: carers.

Over the past couple of years I have actively campaigned to raise the profile of issues facing carers and improve the lives of carers in Reading.

The carers I have met here have been some of the most selfless people I have ever encountered. I am grateful to them for sharing their struggles with me so I can better understand the challenges they face.

My Grandfather cared for my Grandmother in the last years of her life and I honour his memory in part by standing up for others who give up their time to care for their loved ones.

We are lucky that in Government we have a Liberal Democrat Minister in Paul Burstow standing up for carers. When he visited Reading in April I took him to meet a couple who had benefited from direct payments for carers - something he is pushing to extend to more people.

Last night I tabled a question asking for an estimate of the total number of carers in Reading and to outline the steps the administration is taking to identify carers and ensure they get access to services  of the total population.

I did this because I want to ensure that carers in Reading remain at the top of the political agenda regardless of which political party or parties are running the Council.

The answer I got confirmed that at the last count (2011 Census) 10,854 people in Reading were carers - 7.6% of the total population. Reading's total population has grown since 2001 and currently estimated to be around 154,000. This suggests there are between 11,873 and 16,972 carers in Reading.

We await the results of the 2011 Census but it is highly likely that the actual number of carers in Reading is even higher.

• In 2010, nearly 1,599 carers benefited from receiving an assessment or review of their needs through Adult Social Care. This puts Reading in the top 25 % per cent of similar local authorities.
• RBC has 307 identified young carers in Reading receiving support from our youth team - a 46% increase on the number identified in 2010.
• The number of carers benefiting from a Direct Payment to meet their own support needs has quadrupled in the three years to 2010/11 through the Council's Carers' Breaks and Opportunities Fund.

In my supplementary question I pointed out that last year in response to demand I agreed an increase of £50,000 over above the agreed budget of the Carer's Breaks and Opportunities Fund to ensure that carers got the breaks they need in response to increases and in many cases previously unmet need.

A survey of Reading carers in 2010 found that the number one priority for local carers is supporting carers to get breaks.

When I was Lead Member or Adult Social Care I placed support for carers at the heart of our policies. I asked the Lead Member if he would undertake to do the same when he sets next year's budget.

I was pleased to hear the current Labour lead councillor Cllr Orton confirm that I did indeed increase the budget and that he would seek to maintain spending carers breaks at current levels.

Stop Labour's Stealthy Cuts to Reading's Sheltered Housing

This week without a fanfare - no press release - Reading Council's Labour administration launched a consultation on sheltered housing.

It is available here on the Council's website.

The Sheltered Housing Services Consultation asks for views on the current service and the proposed changes at 10 of the Council's sheltered housing schemes.

The proposals include:

• changes to the amount of support time provided.
• changes to the Sheltered Housing Officer's working week
• the promotion of activities across all the schemes
• opening up some of the schemes to people under the retirement age who need specialist housing support
• views on the current night service

This may sound like a consultation about how to improve the service.

It isn't.

It's a precursor to planned cuts in services.

However, perusal of the documentation reveals the main driver: saving money:

"We have taken into account that we spend a large amount of money on support for older people in sheltered housing.  Currently £721,860 is spent on support for 635 tenants in 21 sheltered housing schemes across Reading.  However, sheltered housing tenants represent only 3.5% of the total population of older people in Reading."

People who live in sheletered housing tend to be 60 or over.

Many of them are on low incomes.

In short these are some of Reading's most vulnerable citizens.

Labour made no mention of this in their election literature or their manifesto.

Four months into running the Council they are planning to slash services to Council tenants and in particular older Council tenants.

Were the Greens aware this is what they signed up to when they let Labour back in?

People often say you can judge a society by the way it treats its elderly..

This cut is wrong and not one Liberal Democrat councillors would have made.

Only we have pledged to protect the most vulnerable children and adults in Reading.

We got the Council to agree to this at the last meeting.

How quickly Labour councillors have forgotten.

I have launched this petition - please sign it here.