Jon Ashworth: ‘Labour will end the heartbreaking IVF postcode lottery on the NHS’ Labour’s shadow Health Secretary has promised to end the heartbreaking IVF postcode lottery which has resulted in just over 1 […]

Labour’s shadow Health Secretary has promised to end the heartbreaking IVF postcode lottery which has resulted in just over 1 in 10 areas in England offering the recommended three cycles of treatment on the NHS for women struggling to conceive.

Jonathan Ashworth told i in an interview to mark this week’s 70th anniversary of the NHS that Labour’s planned tax rises will reverse the drastic reduction of fertility treatment as IVF falls down health officials’ list of priorities. Only 11.5 per cent of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) now offer three cycles of IVF – compared with 16 per cent last year.

“IVF provision is being reduced, partly because of the financial squeeze. It’s certainly one of the most emotive issues [in the NHS today],” Mr Ashworth said. “We would hope that once we start funding the NHS properly again we will be able to stamp out postcode lotteries such as IVF, because that is related to the financial squeeze that CCGs are under.”

The i politics newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

“How can it be right that a child born in the poorest, most deprived part of the country have a life expectancy nine years less than the child born in the wealthiest parts of the country?” Jon Ashworth

Mr Ashworth said Labour had “not remotely” been caught out by Theresa May’s recent announcement that the NHS would receive an extra £20bn a year – a 3.4 per cent rise – by 2023-24, partly through a “Brexit dividend”. He credited public and political pressure for the sudden end to years of austerity forced upon the health service.

“The Tories have reset their spending plans because they’ve been under relentless pressure from patients demanding quality of service, staff saying they can’t carry on doing more and more on less and less. There are more people coming through the front door of the hospital which they can’t get out the back door because of the social care cuts – and they’ve been under huge pressure from the Labour party, so I don’t think we’ve been caught out.

“Theresa May was trying to take people for fools saying this new funding settlement will be delivered by a Brexit dividend. That fell apart pretty quickly. The truth is it’s a Brexit deceit – what the Tories are going to be doing is putting up tax and the question now for every Tory MP is: which tax is going up? Is it VAT? Is it basic rate of income tax?”

Labour’s plan for a “properly resourced” NHS, as outlined in their last general election manifesto, is that they would raise corporation tax and increase the top rate of tax from 45 to 50 per cent to fund its long list of health policies. Mr Ashwolrth is adamant that the 3.4 per cent rise is not enough, pointing to the Institute for Financial Studies’ conclusion that the extra money will result in a “standstill NHS”.

“A 3.4 per cent rise is essentially the status quo. And the status quo is an NHS with 4.1 million on the waiting list (for surgery), 2.5 million people waiting four or more hours in A&E, a winter crisis so bad that the Red Cross called it a ‘humanitarian disaster’. Status quo is not good enough. We need to be so much more ambitious for our NHS than just delivering that.”

If Labour was in power today its tax commitments would result in the NHS receiving an extra £7.7bn over the next 12 months, equating to around a 5 per cent rise in the health budget, Mr Ashworth said. The extra money would come mainly by increasing income tax to 50 per cent for the highest 5 per cent of earners and by increasing tax on private medical insurance.

He sidesteps i‘s “enticing invitation” to redraw Laboour’s tax policy when asked why the party will not ask middle-income earners to pay more tax if, as he said, the narrative over how the NHS should be funded has changed. However, he does appear to leave the door slightly ajar for a manifesto change come the next election.

“I think you can make an argument about taxation if people can be reassured that it is going to the NHS… that was the decision Gordon Brown [as Chancellor] made when National Insurance contributions were raised and we won the subsequent general election. Yet with the economic circumstances what they are today, with people’s incomes flatlining or falling, we thought the fairest taxation proposals were to ask the top 5 per cent to pay more tax.”

Waiting lists

The changes he wants to see “won’t happen overnight” although he won’t commit to a time frame of when a Labour government will make substantial inroads into reducing waiting list times, for example. “We don’t know when a general election is going to be. This government is very precarious so it could could collapse anytime or it might not be until 2022 – God knows what the waiting lists will be like then. They could be up to 5 million.”

Mr Ashworth revealed he has been “very quietly” shadowing NHS staff at various hospitals around England over the last 10 months to see for himself what life is like on the frontline.

“I’ve been with a junior doctor, GP, catering staff, psychiatric nurses, anesthetists, health visitor, it has been fascinating. It only got a bit hairy when I was walking through one of the hospitals in my scrubs and someone went up to me shouting ‘surgeon, surgeon, where’s the surgeon?!’ and I said ‘don’t ask me!’ he laughs.

“What have I learned? They’re all under intense pressure, which is the obvious thing to say, but they really are. The split second decisions junior doctors have to make about who gets a bed when everything is full is intense and extraordinary. I wouldn’t be able to do it. The extraordinary dedication and professionalism of staff, at all levels, coming together as a team I really do think is what makes our NHS such a wonderful institution.

“I hope I’ll be the Health Secretary who is listening with staff, works with staff and isn’t picking fights with staff – as has happened in the last couple of years – but is working with the staff. Because I would consider myself as part of the [NHS] team as well.”

Mr Ashworth was in Tredegar, the hometown of NHS founder Aneurin Bevan, with Jeremy Corbyn on Sunday as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations. Speaking to i in his Westminster office ahead of the event, he said: “We are immensely proud of the NHS in the Labour party – it’s probably the greatest creation of any Labour government. A socialist creation, Bevan called it ‘socialism in action’, although he also called it ‘Christianity in action’, which nobody seems to quote anymore!”

Is he a Christian? “Er, yeah I suppose so,” he replied, slightly taken aback by the question. Practising? “Well, I go to church… now and again. No, I would describe myself as a Christian, but I don’t go to church every Sunday.”

The future

Although this week will be full of celebrations about the health service, Mr Ashworth said it is important that it is “not just nostalgia about the NHS… It’s important that the Labour party is both exposing the problems of the NHS under the Tories but talking about the future.”

What is a “properly resourced” NHS that Labour has promised? “Well, Bevan famously said in 1948 that there will always be demands for more because we’re socialists and we’re never satisified anyway and we’ll always want to be improving things, which I’m sure if you had the chance to interview him he’d point it out again in your series of [NHS at 70] interviews.”

If Mr Ashworth does become Health Secretary in the next Labour government, reducing health inequalities across the UK will be among his main priorities. “How can it be right that a child born in the poorest, most deprived part of the country have a life expectancy nine years less than the child born in the wealthiest parts of the country? How can it be right that a child born now in the poorest parts of the country is more likely to leave school obese, less likely to get the immunisations they are supposed to get, more likely to be admitted to hospital for tooth decay, probably more likely to turn to child and adolescent mental health services as they get older?

“I’ve spoken about having the healthiest children in the world – obviously an immensely ambitious target, but we should be ambitious for our children. Because when you look at our child health outcomes, and you compare them to other Western economies, we are way down the league tables for obesity, tooth decay and indeed mortality rates we fare badly… My driving goal and focus will be on improving children’s health and wellbeing. That’s why I want to do the job.”