That was before the Crisis in the Winter of 1946–47 in this country; the coal crisis and the further development of the dollar crisis in the spring and summer of 1947, which made the rulers in Moscow think that the hour had now come and that it was possible to throw over all conciliation and to adopt a more drastic line.
I said that the Government had always taken the line that the acute Crisis of the Winter would be in February and March, and I pointed out it was naturally desirable to get the maximum amount of American coal to meet the crisis this winter.
I always believed that this coal should be brought in for the Winter Crisis, and I argued that in coming in April, it would not help that crisis much.
We had the next Crisis in the Winter of 1957.
It should have been attained in 1965, and would have been attained in that year were it not for the economic Crisis in the Winter of 1964 into which the new Administration plunged this country, causing such chaos and confusion in the building industry.
The Budget does that by a bludgeon which is used in many ways against industry, which is already reeling under the effects of the three-day working week and bad profits and which will be hard pressed as a result of the Crisis of the Winter.
There is a Winter Crisis in Scotland's health service every year, but this year it has been much worse.
We should not have had a Winter Crisis, because hospitals are usually especially quiet at that time.
During the Winter Crisis of early 1996, Scottish hospitals managed to cope with difficult circumstances because staff worked flexibly and beyond their contracts.
expresses its dismay at the changes effected by Her Majesty's Government, which are undermining these principles; is alarmed at the way in which the competitive internal market in the NHS is distorting decisions on patient care, creating a two-tier inequitable service, and has led to an explosion of unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy; expresses grave concern about the Impending Winter Crisis in the NHS in many parts of the country, about which Her Majesty's Government appears wholly unconcerned; resolves to take wasteful expenditure out of the bureaucratic procedures of the internal market and devote it instead to improving patient care; and seeks to restore the ethos of the NHS to that of a public service, not of a commercial competitive business.
I beg to move,That this House reasserts its belief in the fundamental principles of the National Health Service, established fifty years ago, that health care should be available to all, based on need and not on ability to pay; expresses its dismay at the changes effected by Her Majesty's Government, which are undermining these principles; is alarmed at the way in which the competitive internal market in the NHS is distorting decisions on patient care, creating a two-tier inequitable service, and has led to an explosion of unnecessary and expensive bureaucracy; expresses grave concern about the Impending Winter Crisis in the NHS in many parts of the country, about which Her Majesty's Government appears wholly unconcerned; resolves to take wasteful expenditure out of the bureaucratic procedures of the internal market and devote it instead to improving patient care; and seeks to restore the ethos of the NHS to that of a public service, not of a commercial competitive business.
What is the Secretary of State doing about the Winter Crisis that is affecting east London and hospitals elsewhere in the country?
Indeed, it is precisely that competitive internal market that is worsening the Current Winter Crisis.
Year on year, the Government creates a Winter Crisis.
It amounts to something when the chief executive of the national health service executive sends a letter to trusts about handling the Winter Crisis, stating emphatically that it is not a new set of instructions or requirements.
There is no mention of patients in the letters sent to trusts and health authorities about the Winter Crisis.
When will the Government face the fact that there is a Winter Crisis in the national health service?
The Liberal Democrat candidate says:St. Helier hospital is facing a Winter Crisis due to a lack of money.
On two occasions, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) sought an emergency statement on the Winter Crisis, but the Secretary of State declined to make one.
The British Medical Association, in its recent review of the Winter Crisis, confirmed that the shortage of intensive care beds was a national, not a localised, problem.
I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House have noted the growing concern about what is described as the "Winter Crisis" in the health service, which has appeared to increase daily.
On the situation in London, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mrs. Prentice) told us that, because of the Current Winter Crisis, all non-urgent surgery has been cancelled in the Lewisham hospital.
We have heard how the chief executive of the NHS has dispatched a memo to hospitals on "managing the Winter Crisis".
If the Prime Minister is in any doubt about the state of the national health service, let him cast his eye over the "Winter Crisis Update" issued by the British Medical Association last week.
First, does he accept that, even after the £100 million efficiency savings that have been announced, more funding will be required in the NHS generally to avoid a Winter Crisis?
if this Government were able to save £500 million on private consultants, would it then be their policy not to transfer that money in order to save teachers' jobs and prevent a Winter Crisis in our hospital wards?
Does the Prime Minister accept that there remains, I fear, some confusion as to whether the Government will permit the transfer of funds from one Department to another to solve the coming Winter Crisis in health and education?
Might I change the subject and ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that I recently visited Southern Derbyshire health authority to discuss preparations for the Winter Crisis in health and the appalling state of the health service in my area?
Will it not translate into more beds to help us meet the Winter Crisis?
This is the first time in our memory that there has been proper planning for a Winter Crisis before it happens instead of everyone running around like headless chickens after the event".
I am delighted to see that they are following the example of my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) who, as Secretary of State for Health this time last year, and in February of this year, also provided extra money to help overcome problems with the Winter Crisis and bed blocking.
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if the extra funding for social services for the current financial year under the recently announced extra funding proposal to avoid a Winter Crisis will be available only if it is authorised by individual health authorities.
A great deal of that will go towards helping overcome the Winter Crisis and, of course, improving our cancer services.
My right hon. Friend made it clear when he was first appointed that the Government's most immediate priority was to prevent a Winter Crisis such as we had last year.
Money announced in July last year is allocated in November last year to be spent by April this year on avoiding a Winter Crisis.
I made it clear that the first priority for the NHS was to ensure that the health service avoided a Winter Crisis.
My right hon. Friend correctly alluded to Gloucestershire, where, last winter, health and social services teams worked closely together to avoid a Winter Crisis and to prevent patients from having to lie on trolleys in pain, waiting for treatment.
First, he deliberately put waiting list surgery on hold to cope with a Winter Crisis that did not, in fact, materialise.
The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) said that the £300 million for the Winter Crisis was wasted, but it did exactly what it was planned to do.
Since we have been in government, we have spent an extra £19 million on the South Cheshire health authority and an extra £9 million on North Cheshire to improve care in cancer treatment, to reduce waiting lists, to improve intensive care treatment for young people and to attack the Winter Crisis.
Even more important was a later report that showed that 350 operations were postponed because of the Winter Crisis in 1996.
36 million to help with the Winter Crisis.
I particularly commend to him the experience in my constituency, where the unitary council worked closely with the health authority with regard to the Winter Crisis money and, between them, effectively reduced the problems in the area and helped a number of elderly people to obtain more appropriate treatment with support in the community.
Does my right hon. Friend understand the joy and relief that will greet his statement today at the further £250 million to avert a Winter Crisis in our hospitals?
Staff and managers had worked up proposals for all sorts of local schemes to help avoid a Winter Crisis.
Given that he is putting in less money this year, what is his assessment of the impact of Any Winter Crisis on the lists?
Although the Opposition welcome any measures to reduce the impact of the Winter Crisis, I should be grateful if the Secretary of State would provide clarification on a number of points.
I made it clear last year - I have never tried to shuffle out of responsibility for anything that I have done in my life - that there would be money available only to avoid a Winter Crisis, and that no extra money would be available to help reduce waiting lists, because the feckless ruinous Government who had preceded us had not provided that money.
I decided that the most urgent need was to avoid a Winter Crisis, so I asked the national health service to concentrate on winter pressures, which it did.
As anybody who has worked or been involved at ministerial level in the health service knows, the Winter Crisis period is the most worrying time for the Government of the day and the NHS.
expresses its dismay at the comments of the Right honourable Member for Dulwich and West Norwood denying the obvious fact that rationing exists in the Health Service; expresses grave concern at the proposed changes to be effected by Her Majesty's Government, which through bureaucratic bodies such as a National Institute for Clinical Excellence and a Commission for Health Improvement will force clinicians to carry the burden on rationing decisions; recognises that the availability of modern drugs for conditions such as schizophrenia and MS makes clear the reality of rationing in today's Health Service; recognises the fact that waiting lists are a hidden form of rationing; notes that excessive political concentration upon waiting lists has been largely responsible for the continuing Winter Crisis in the Health Service, over which Her Majesty's Government appears wholly complacent and unconcerned; and urges Her Majesty's Government to acknowledge the concerns of professional bodies such as the BMA over rationing and embark upon a mature debate on the future of the Health Service.
I beg to move,That this House recognises that rationing has always been a part of how the Health Service manages health care resources; expresses its dismay at the comments of the Right honourable Member for Dulwich and West Norwood denying the obvious fact that rationing exists in the Health Service; expresses grave concern at the proposed changes to be effected by Her Majesty's Government, which through bureaucratic bodies such as a National Institute for Clinical Excellence and a Commission for Health Improvement will force clinicians to carry the burden on rationing decisions; recognises that the availability of modern drugs for conditions such as schizophrenia and Ms makes clear the reality of rationing in today's Health Service; recognises the fact that waiting lists are a hidden form of rationing; notes that excessive political concentration upon waiting lists has been largely responsible for the continuing Winter Crisis in the Health Service, over which Her Majesty's Government appears wholly complacent and unconcerned; and urges Her Majesty's Government to acknowledge the concerns of professional bodies such as the BMA over rationing and embark upon a mature debate on the future of the Health Service.
I seem to recall that that hospital's imaginative solution to the Winter Crisis was freezer vans in which to stack the dead.
The Royal College of Nursing estimates that there are between 12,000 and 13,000 nurse vacancies and believes that nurse shortages rather than flu epidemics created the Winter Crisis.
However, what will happen if there is a Winter Crisis when many elderly people fall and break hips, legs and arms?
I also welcome the long-overdue, but much-needed investment in our A and E department, so that it is able to address the issues, especially at Winter Crisis time, that seem to have become an element of the way in which the health service operates.
The Government have cut eye test charges for pensioners and - this is not always recognised as a pensioners' issue - provided a huge amount of extra money to deal with the Winter Crisis.
I most fear a Winter Crisis after our experience of last winter.
No doubt they will be joined by the gastroenterology tsar, the respiratory tsar, the cardiology tsar, the over-spending patient care group tsar and, when winter arrives, the Winter Crisis tsar.
That was during a so-called Winter Crisis.
The evidence for that - as the Secretary of State will know - is to be found in the re-emergence of extensive bed blocking by elderly people awaiting social services placements across the south-east of England, before the onset of the - now routine - Winter Crisis.
Now the woman has been told that, because of the Winter Crisis, the wait might be extended again.
Today's debate gives us an opportunity to focus on the future, not simply on the Current Winter Crisis.
The trusts face two substantial pressures, the first of which is the additional costs that they have incurred in dealing with flu and the Winter Crisis.
The Winter Crisis gave people their first real opportunity to judge this Government's stewardship of the NHS--they could judge both word and deed.
Whether or not there has been a flu epidemic, let us hope that we have seen the Winter Crisis peak in terms of the stories that people have been able to write about patients lying on trolleys and similar sad stories.
The fact that there is a Crisis in Winter is not new.
During a Winter Crisis such as we have just had, the strains are all too clear to see.
There was no adequate consultation to avert the Winter Crisis.
It is all very well the Secretary of State making a gibe at our proposals by saying about the Winter Crisis, "We wouldn't be guilty of turning people away because of the wrong sort of illness".
The elimination of cold homes and fuel poverty would save lives, ease the Winter Crisis in the health service and, incidentally, improve the environment.
the lack of authority for ward sisters; the lack of vaccine for patients; the return of TB to our cities; and a Winter Crisis that now goes on all year—all of it under a Prime Minister who says that Labour never understood the size of the problem?
Is not that compounded by the lack of morale generated by the Government's endless political interference; the lack of authority for ward sisters; the lack of vaccine for patients; the return of TB to our cities; and a Winter Crisis that now goes on all year - all of it under a Prime Minister who says that Labour never understood the size of the problem?
We know there will be a Winter Crisis this year.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not fall into the same trap as the official Opposition - they are looking for, and are determined to foment, a Winter Crisis.
Does my hon. Friend recognise that, whereas some Opposition Members might savour the idea of a Winter Crisis, Labour Members very much support the joint bid by Kent county council and the health service in Kent for extra funds for domiciliary care?
Indeed, several hundred million pounds are going into the NHS and social services to deal with the Winter Crisis.
That suggests a meltdown and, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam said, it leads directly to the bed-blocking problems that will undermine the Government's careful preparations for this year's Winter Crisis.
They have no intelligence, no insight into what is going on … The Prime Minister is already trying to escape responsibility for a Winter Crisis.
They have no intelligence, no insight into what is going on …The Prime Minister is already trying to escape responsibility for a Winter Crisis.
At the end of last month, not in a Winter Crisis, but at the beginning of Labour's fourth winter in charge of the NHS, a 62-year-old lady with chest pain spent 17 hours on a trolley at the Darent Valley hospital in Dartford.
The Winter Crisis in Wycombe and many hospitals up and down the country is no longer confined to the winter months.
Under the headline "Making a difference this winter", it describes the extra money that has been put in to get the service through the Winter Crisis.
The result was that, through the Winter Crisis, the hospitals were jammed full of people who should not have been in a hospital at all, but who had nowhere else to go.
Certainly on this side of the House they will find tremendous support for a genuine partnership, but one which recognises that we cannot use the private sector simply to be dumped on when there is a Winter Crisis.
Does the Prime Minister agree with his Secretary of State for Health when he says that the Winter Crisis in the NHS now "begins in July and ends in June"?
The right hon. and learned Gentleman will know that in the last years of the Conservative Government - even, indeed, in the first years of this Government - every single winter there was a Winter Crisis.
Isay rhetorically - I stress the adverb "rhetorically", because I do not want any misunderstanding - that the Conservative Government did not want people going out to the local hospital, because every year there was a Winter Crisis, such as we have not had for several years, and they did not want them going out and voting Labour, either, so they told them to stay at home.
Moreover, there has been no Winter Crisis on her watch.
They are just two examples from among the 5 million households in Britain living in fuel poverty, for whom energy security is a day by day, week by week, winter by Winter Crisis that they have to get through.
Can we have an urgent debate on the energy industry and price rises, and can it be held in the autumn before this issue becomes a Winter Crisis?
of people were seen within four hours; under him, over 1 million people in the last year waited more than four hours in A and E - not only a Winter Crisis, but the first summer A and E crisis in living memory.
There will not be a Winter Crisis in the NHS in Wales, where Labour is in control, because there is a crisis every day of the week in Wales, where Labour is in control.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister think it is right to divert NHS funding from areas with higher levels of need to areas with lower levels of need, and how does he think that will impact on the Winter Crisis?
It is not just a Winter Crisis, but a spring, summer and autumn crisis.
We know what is happening with Hammersmith hospital because it has been announced that the A and E department there is going to close after the Winter Crisis - as if the crisis is not a continuing one.
Indeed, we are now seeing A and Es not just in London but across the country facing a Winter Crisis after an unprecedented summer A and E crisis.
If he looks back to our time in government, as he invited me to do, the Winter Crisis was a regular feature at the turn of the millennium and the early years of the last decade, although it got progressively better and better and we did not see the annual winter crisis.
For months now, he has been predicting a Winter Crisis in A and E, but as ever, when we look at the facts, they simply do not stack up.
It does not mention the word “crisis” at all, because the Winter Crisis that the right hon. Gentleman has been predicting for over six months now has simply not materialised.
His attempts to talk up a Winter Crisis have been disproved time and again.
It is intriguing that the shadow Secretary of State has chosen not to talk about a Winter Crisis, because it has not happened, despite the fact that he predicted it time after time.
He predicted a Winter Crisis, and he sat there day after day, dying for it to happen.
For the last four weeks, the NHS overall has missed the Government's target, suggesting that the Winter Crisis has now been followed by a summer crisis.
That is fine, but what will happen if and when we have a Winter Crisis or simply during the additional winter pressures?
We are already reading about a Winter Crisis in A and E - there was a major one last weekend - and what is the Government's answer?
This is exactly the same pattern that we saw under the previous Tory Government: Winter Crisis followed by emergency bail-outs.
He has told the House that he has been having meetings on This Winter Crisis since March.
The NHS is a system, which is why cuts to social care and other parts of the system affect A and E. With that in mind, and with 14 hospitals in a state of emergency, will the Secretary of State review the plans that are in place should a Winter Crisis of cold weather come along at this very vulnerable point?
Colleagues who have been in the House for some time will recall that there was a Winter Crisis in A and E in most, if not all, winters in the 1990s.
I remember, as a former Minister in the Department dealing with the Winter Crisis, that those funds are very important.
I note that the Prime Minister has not offered any comment whatsoever about the Winter Crisis of last year or about what will happen this year.
If the hon. Gentleman wants to know who is heading for a Winter Crisis, I would predict that it is the Labour party.
When the NHS is facing a Winter Crisis, why have the Government decided to pick a fight with the very people who will get it through that crisis?
All the signs are that we are facing a Massive Winter Crisis in our NHS, and that, yet again, we will have to rely on the professional dedication of its staff.