Debate contribution: Health and Social Care: Three-year Plan

Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on 10 December 2024.

MLA

Mr Mike Nesbitt

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

10 December 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Ministerial Statements

Heading

Health and Social Care: Three-year Plan

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4715468

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Some of the waiting times have improved. I emphasise again that, overall, the picture is not acceptable and needs a lot more work. However, when we talk about specific numbers and we say that the total number of people who are waiting for an appointment is x, that is not necessarily accurate, in that I could be on three different waiting lists. Disaggregating that might make a difference, but it might only be marginal, so I only mention it in passing. Some of the lists are getting better. Our direction of travel includes rapid diagnostic centres, mega-clinics and the separating of elective and emergency care. Those are all going to help. However, we still need to have a laser-like focus on efficiency and productivity. When I go to the trusts, I am very aware that I am asking them to do two things at once: save me a lot of money and be a lot more efficient and productive. In the next financial year, I hope that the focus will be on being efficient and productive. As I said, we are looking at the funding model. If we are doing the equivalent of ordering 10 items online and only seven arrive, we will only pay for seven. Currently, we are paying for 10, so that has to change. Addressing that will help with the waiting lists.

It has certainly been a remarkable year for in-year shifts. We started the year by voting against the Budget because we anticipated the problems that were going to arise. I acknowledge that there have been two major investments through the June and October monitoring rounds, but we are still left with a very challenging position for the rest of the financial year, and that is having an impact on the speed with which we can try to settle the outstanding pay parity issues. Everybody around the Executive table would very much welcome a multi-year Budget, and I believe that we are going to get there, not in the next financial year but in 2026-27. We are, of course, dependent on the UK Government taking a lead in that regard, but I feel confident that that is what is going to happen. With a multi-year — let us say a three-year — Budget, a lot more is possible, not just around stabilisation but in producing the reform that we need. We should bear in mind that, in October, Professor Bengoa warned that if we do not reform, Health will absorb the entire Northern Ireland block grant by 2040, which is not that far away. That would be the opposite of sustainable.

I thank the Member for raising that point, which is an area of some frustration for me. You detailed the long and, to some extent, winding road that we have been on. We should be at the point where we are making ultimate decisions on the reform of where stroke services are delivered and which hospitals will become areas of specialism. I will certainly take that away. If it can be done without consultation, it should be, because speed is now the critical factor.

520 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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