Manx Radio's Phil Gawne speaks to Lawrie Hooper, who has today resigned from his post as Health and Social Care Minister.
The Ramsey MHK made the announcement in the first Tynwald session back after the summer recess.
Manx Newscast
Manx Newscast: First interview with former health minister
Talking to the former health and social care minister Laurie Hooper, there was me predicting it was going to be a fairly innocuous tin world with very little to report. Yes, well like I said, this isn't something I'm doing lightly if I'm honest. We've been going back and forth over these issues for quite some time and it's become apparent. I mean, it's even apparent to Mr Thomas and he's made this from these maps a few times that my views on the future of Health Care on the island are very different to the views of the Chief Minister and ultimately something has to give. And some of the things you had to say were quite, well, quite extraordinary. I mean, basically you seem to think that the Chief Minister's ambition is to privatise the National Health Service. That's kind of where I've got to, if I'm honest. The everything that's been going on the last few weeks, the last few months around funding, around costs, it has become more and more apparent to me that every time we've gone in and said, look, this is the reality. Listen to the experts. That's just been disregarded and the inevitable consequence of that is, well, you have to cut services and we're not touching our tax system. So, you know, if you want more money, we're going to have to stop paying for it. And that's kind of where everyone's at. And it was, for that reason, I took a paper to council last week asking them, do you believe in free the point of use? Yes or no, it's not that difficult a concept to understand. And they didn't want to make that commitment. They didn't want to say, yes, actually, that's quite important. We'll stick with that. It was very non-committal and that itself was quite worrying. But the biggest worry actually is what came next was we were talking about potential cuts. You've heard it all this morning. The government's position is very clear. You know, Mike's game must come in on budget and the reality of that means cuts to services and the cuts that have been proposed so far are minuscule in comparison to the things that will need to be done in order to do what the chief minister is asking. And that was laid out to council ministers. And there wasn't a moment's pause. There wasn't a, let's take a breath on this and actually think, is this really the right direction? There was just an instruction to come back with a more detailed paper with the list of cuts. And I think that's the wrong thing to do. It is, though, possible that council ministers chose not to support what you were putting forward, because they genuinely felt that the paper wasn't good enough and they needed more information. It's absolutely possible that they decided that. But ultimately you're asking someone about a core principle, something that you believe in. Do you think that we should have a system like they have in, say, Ireland where you pay €80 a night to spend a night in hospital, or whether heaven burns you, where it's formed, repairs to get an ambulance call out? Is that what you want? Or do you think, no, fundamentally, healthcare is a right? It should be provided by the state. And if we have to fund it through taxation, so be it. That's fundamental. I don't think there's any, you could write that on the back of an appkin and say, what do you think? Ultimately, that's quite an important principle. And if you're not willing to stand up for your principles, then actually, I don't think you've got any business being in government, quite frankly. One of the things that ministers have to do occasionally is bite their towel and just get on with it and work for the greater good of the people of the Isle of Man. Is that not something that you felt that you could continue to do for the next two years to try and work with colleagues to find solutions? I think it's fair to say I've been doing that for some time, actually. I haven't been speaking out publicly about my views. I have been fighting the corner inside the Council of Ministers. I've been fighting it in the room because that is the right thing to do. But the moment you want to speak publicly, you can't stay in, you have to resign. That's just the right and proper thing to do. But like I said, just an editor, I'm convinced that over the last couple of weeks, having brought in the Mags' care chair and actually really experienced professionals to come and talk to Council about what this means and what the reality is and the fact that they weren't listened to. For me, if I can't, if I'm not being listened to in the room, if I can't convince people of the right thing to do when I'm in the room, then there is no point me being in that room. I'm not going to sit back and sacrifice my principles just to sit around that table. I'm sorry, but whoever comes in to do the job that I've just vacated, they're going to be given very clear instructions to go away and cut services. I think I'm going to fight that with every fiber of my being because I do not think it is acceptable. I know Mags' care's view on this. They don't want to be doing this. Their view is these things will put people at risk. I don't think that's an acceptable position for the government to take. Is this though not a similar picture across all the departments of government? Having all the departments of government got similar pressures and similar difficulties where services are going to have to be or are being caught, let alone being have to be caught. You got this extra £40 million. We all are paying 2% extra on the higher rate of income tax for the privilege of that better health service. What on earth has gone wrong? Ultimately, the way that the funding has been allocated, and this came up a lot this morning, was never going to be sufficient. We were always asking Mags' care to do a lot in terms of savings delivery and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with pushing them on that and that's what we've been doing and I've been doing a lot of. But the reality is where we are is we're asking them to do too much too quickly and that's the same across all of government actually and I think you're right Phil. This is the tip of the iceberg. You're seeing it in health because we're quite open, quite transparent about the way these budgets are forecast, the way things are going. I would not be surprised to see other departments coming forward over the next couple of months talking about cuts and savings and I don't just mean efficiencies. I mean actually we're going to stop doing things or we're going to be slowing budgets down or we're not going to spend money. It would not be a surprise to me if that starts happening now because I think you're right. All the governments in this boat and the fundamental, the core issue behind all of this is actually as a government we've never looked at the income side of the scale. We're always looking at spending. Always looking at spending more money doing more things. All that's great but actually you have to pay the piper and the reality is government has steadfastly refused to look at our tax system. We still have a tax cap for high net worths. People that are over 65 that work don't pay national insurance. The national insurance system itself is a little bit anachronistic and outdated. There are so many issues with the way we raise money and so many ways it could be done better and fairer and if we don't look at that ultimately the end result is going to be well we've set an artificial cap on the money we can raise. That means we're going to have to cap public services and in some areas and ranks care have been absolutely clear with us on this. They are at the stage where if you want to make big savings you have to stop doing things that you can't salami slice anymore as one of the board members put it to me and that's the reality of where we're at and if government isn't going to hear that message from within they're not going to hear it from me they're not going to hear that from the max care board then ultimately the only thing I can do is say this is serious you need to listen please wake up and resigning is the last thing I've got left in my arm ready to help me try and get that message across. Presumably though you would have known this back in February when the budget was announced if you are correct and this is an under fund and not an overspend. So what's been happening over the last six months have you been having these conversations? Has Treasury been interceding and assisting a max care to try and help get a better grip on the finances? What sort of things have been happening? So the short answer is yes we knew this when we put our budget submission in last year. Just like this year's budget submission highlights a significant risk for next year we have been completely open with Treasury and Council on this and like you said before a minister job is to fight the fight and then hold their tongue and ultimately I had some hope that the budget whilst it wasn't going to be sufficient would at least be enough to enable us to to make some changes to demonstrate the change could be made even if I I'm lying I thought we're probably still not going to quite get there but actually at least we're showing max care that we're serious and and they can show that they're serious and where we get to might be a a six million pound overspend not a 20 million pound overspend. So yes we have had some of these conversations in terms of financial support and extra resources. I mean I wrote to the Treasury Minister a year ago last month asking for additional support in terms of finance governance, finance director strategic planning and I was told no you can't have that you've got access to shared services and a year later when this stuff starts hitting that the pan around about Maytime Treasury have been now forthcoming and they've tried to help us with we've put in some financial had a governance review we've got people doing work for us but it's a year too late I asked for that help a year ago and was turned down and now when the proverbial hits the fan now they're willing to step in and help but by this point it's too late you've already spent the money you're already halfway through the year you've already got a budget that's been set and is being spent and that's kind of the problem here is it comes back to the core point that I've been saying this stuff for the whole three years I've been in council and I've been fighting this corner for three years not alone I might hasten to add but ultimately we're in a position where the system isn't listening and there is no other way of making people listen other than to say this is serious either you listen to me or you find someone else to do this job and that's kind of the stage I've reached and and like I said this was not an easy decision you know even up until half an hour ago I was thinking am I really going to push the button on this because there is so much good work going on across government there's so much good work going on in health and banks care and education in Defer there is there's a phenomenal amount of good being done but I don't think all of that outweighs the significant risk that I can see not just to the health service but also to our nation's finances if we proceed down this road you don't seem to have an awful lot of confidence in the chief minister in leading us out of this issue is that the fair assessment that is an absolutely fair assessment part of the problem is we're in this mess because of some of the things that the chief has pushed for is publicly said I mean by way of an example it was the 26th of September where manks cares chair and CEO and the chair of their finance committee came and briefed council on the seriousness of these measures and the seriousness of the impacts and where they clearly stated you know if you want to do this there will be significant service cuts three days later the chief minister goes on the radio and says manks have to come in on budget irrespective of demand and that that's the problem we're dealing with here is you know you can hear it from everybody from medical society have said this is a bad idea manks care have said this is a bad idea the department of health was saying this is a bad idea well ultimately he's cracked on and made public statements and public commitments irrespective of all of that weight of advice well if he's not going to listen to the people that should know what's going on I really don't know who he's listening to perhaps he's listening to the the people from across business across across all aspects of of manks life who following the manks budget said what has happened to the island man government public finances public finances appear to be completely out of control somebody needs to get a grip of this and surely that's all the chief minister's trying to do I think if that were true he would commit to the economic strategy which talks about broadening the tax base he would commit to the island plan that talks about investing in our infrastructure and our core service core services I mean if you look at it just think logically if we want an extra 5,000 workers maybe an extra 15,000 people we probably need a health service and an education service that are going to function well we're telling you what the cost is today to deliver those services right now and if you're not willing to spend the money today how on earth are you going to be willing to spend the money tomorrow when all these other residents start turning up and that's the core problem here all this stuff was set out publicly in the in the michael report it tells you exactly what the future looks like and actually max care of doing better than the michael report forecast they would do but that's where it's set it out and actually we paid a lot of money for that report it was commissioned by the chief minister I believe when he was in treasury so the reality is we know what the future looks like we know we have to meet these costs or we have to start cutting services because we know it's a long-term journey where things will get better and will get fixed but you need to commit to that long-term and you can't get jittery every time something doesn't quite go the way you were hoping it would go that there's even been a report last month in the uk there their obr office of budget responsibility has published a report that says categorically the growth in health term demand is three percent in real terms that's their view that actually you need to fund this at three percent just to stand still and we're not doing that and so we're not helping the system stand still we're not investing like we would we said we would when we set up the michael report and that's where you get all of these debates about well it's not working well actually we we did one half of the coin we set up manks care we gave them efficiency targets which they've delivered on and we've told them crack on and deliver on these services and they've done all that what we were supposed to do was fix a long-term funding model for the health service and that's never been done we don't have one we have a budget that luckily in last year pop taxes up by two percent because that was the best on offer and i don't know what treasury's long-term plan is i don't know what's going to happen in february when the treasury minister brings another budget back he says you're not going to raise taxes but you know that's today he might change his mind in five minutes because what other options does he have unless he wants to say actually we are going to start hammering service cuts a slash and burn austerity approach which you know personally i think is absolutely the wrong thing to do thank you for making it to the end of the manks radian newscast you are obviously someone with exquisite taste may i politely suggest you might want to subscribe to this and a wide range of manks radio podcasts at your favorite podcast provider so our best bits will magically appear on your smartphone thank you (gentle music)