Movers and Shakers: Victoria Atkins

On Saturday we brought you Wes Streeting, the man who wants to be the next health Secretary. Now in a special midweek edition of Movers and Shakers we bring you the woman he wants to replace, the current Secretary of State for Health Victoria Atkins. Due to complicated diaries on both sides we couldn’t meet in the pub and only half of the Movers and Shakers were able to participate in the video call.

Still, they included some of our most forensic interrogators - Gillian Lacey-Solymar, Nick. “the judge”. Mostyn and one Jeremy Paxman, who had already shown in our episode with Wes Streeting that he could still bare his teeth.

Gillian kicked things off by welcoming the fact that Parkinson’s actually gets a mention in the Conservative manifesto, promising - “we will support research into new treatments, including for Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, and secure more commercial clinical trials.” It seems that after our meeting with her about our Parky Charter she has taken some of our messages on board.

But Gillian wasn’t shy about pointing out the elephant in the room - unless the opinion polls have suffered an historic failure there is no chance that Victoria Atkins and her Tory colleagues will have any role in health policy after next Thursday.

“One of the lessons, I think, of polls in the past is that it is not sensible to take the British public for granted.,” the Health Secretary insisted. So we parked that and got down to the nitty gritty of how she would meet the challenges posed by our Parky Charter.

On “speedy specialists” - our key demand for more neurologist appointments - she talked about the NHS Workforce Plan, recruiting more doctors and nurses and funding more places at medical schools. Later, Nick Mostyn suggests that a scheme called QOF (Quality and Outcomes Framework) where GPs are charged with and rewarded for monitoring people with long-term conditions should be applied to Parkinson’s and our guest indicates she is sympathetic to this idea.

On “instant information”, our call for the newly diagnosed to be given an information pack all about Parkinson’s, Victoria Atkins talks of one of her constituents who created a site for people diagnosed with dementia and their families. She envisages something similar for Parkies.

Our call for holistic care is greeted with enthusiastic words about plans for a “major condition strategy” for cancer which could also apply to Parkinson’s and, warming to her theme, the Health Secretary talks of “how we really reform our national health service to make it faster, simpler and fairer.”

At this point, there is a dull explosion and Jeremy, who has been silent until this moment, charges in:

“I've sat and listened to you for the last half hour go on and on about different things that are irrelevant. Can you tell us about the things that are relevant? Why doesn't the NHS stick to its own targets?”

Victoria Atkins protests, reasonably enough, that she has just been responding to our questions, and she paints a picture of the pressures facing the NHS as the population ages: “We are seeing, for example, 4 million more people going to A and E than was the case in 2010 we are delivering some 25 million more outpatient appointments than we were in 2010.”

She forges on, despite a roar of “oh for God’s sake!” from Jeremy, dealing with a question from the judge about the way Parkies are assessed for benefits as if they are likely to recover by pointing out that some people don’t want that kind of support at first: “I'm very mindful and respectful of the fact that there are, nonetheless, people with Parkinson's in the early stages who continue to work, who flourish at work.“

When it comes to our final demand - for more public funding for Parkinson’s research - she rather glides past the question by talking about the £370 million being invested in neurodegenerative research over the next five years. Given that a recent Freedom of Information request found that just £6.7 million went specifically to Parkinson’s research in 2022, even tripling that figure would hardly be noticed by the Treasury.

Still, Victoria Atkins has an upbeat message about the UK’s strengths in this area and mkes a bold prediction:

“Our life sciences industry is the largest in Europe. I genuinely believe we will find a cure here in the UK, thanks to our amazing life sciences industry.”

Whatever you think of our two interviews with Labour and the Conservatives’ health spokespeople before the General Election - and after the Wes Streeting episode one listener wrote to complain of “too much politics” - I would argue that they have served an important purpose.

After we took our Parky Charter to Downing Street in April we wondered how we could keep up the momentum in our. campaign for better care. We did arrange meetings with several leading politicians but just as we were wondering what to do next came the surprise election announcement from Rishi Sunak. Now Parkinson’s was never going to be a major campaign issue but by getting the two most important figures in health policy to give up their time to talk to our podcast we have shown that we can raise the profile of a condition that has been ignored for too long.

We have also come up with a very different way of getting Parkinson’s talked about - look out for that in a couple of months’ time. And in the meantime our series of Parky Profiles continues - on Saturday we have a great interview with master quizzer Paul Sinha.