Ben Spencer MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State to his post. Could he explain what the pathway of local accountability is for ICBs?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I am glad that we are having this important debate on accountability. Is there not a danger that the centralisation of this direction power in the Secretary of State effectively signals to MPs, “Don’t engage with ICBs, as they will not have accountability to local MPs. If you want changes to happen, go through the Secretary of State rather than engaging locally, because that is where the power is going to lie”?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed). I did not agree with everything in his speech, but I know of his passion for NHS services and I am grateful for the work that he did as a Minister, particularly in helping me to advocate for my constituents, which I will come to in the main part of my speech. I should start with the standard declarations: I am a former NHS doctor and my wife is a current NHS doctor. There is a lot of good and very reasonable stuff in this Bill. I very much support the abolition of NHS England and I am glad that is being taken forward. The single care record makes complete sense. It is pretty crazy that we do not already have a national system in place. I think there will be some speed bumps in terms of administration, and the question I have is this: how is it going to encode sex data? What data is the record going to use as sex data, given the problems and the discussion that we had just before this debate? For me, the problem is about accountability. I have a local integrated care board. I also have NHS trusts, one of which is Surrey and Borders, which has been failing to deliver rapid, timely autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder assessments for children. Frankly, that failure to provide a speedy assessment for ASD or ADHD locally is a disgrace. I have been putting pressure on my local trust to try to change that. My constituents expect me to do that. Some of my constituents expect me, as an MP, to be able to click my fingers to make this happen, but of course I cannot do that because this is the NHS trust, the chief executive and the ICB. I raised this issue in Parliament with the then Secretary of State, asking him to investigate my local mental health trust and look at the failings, and I am grateful that the then Minister, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West, responded to me and wrote to my ICB. The response I got was that this was within the ICB’s framework, and that what ICBs do is essentially up to them. My ability to go about changing this is therefore very limited. I get the point about clause 11 and the Secretary of State taking a few more powers to direct ICBs, but that is a very blunt tool. In reality, it will not be accountability. I cannot quite believe that it will work in such a way that, if I raise something in Parliament, a directive will force my ICB to deliver better for my patients. I cannot quite see that that will happen in reality—or perhaps I am wrong and it will. In that case, Parliament will essentially become a forum for MPs—all of whose constituents will expect them to be able to give directives to our NHS trusts and ICBs—to raise these issues so that the Secretary of State can take forward a directive. It would be far better if ICBs were directly accountable to local politicians. I heard the response that the plan is for ICBs to be accountable to mayors, but we do not have a mayor in Surrey and, even though many of us have been calling for a mayor, there is no timescale for getting one. ICBs need to be directly accountable to locally elected representatives in some way, shape or form, and the logical group is Members of Parliament, because that is what the public believe and expect. I hope that, as the Bill goes through, we will investigate the local accountability of ICBs in the NHS and that perception. One of the biggest dangers is the sense that we, as MPs, can deliver direct changes in day-to-day clinical commissioning, from which, of course, we have a degree of distance. I reiterate that, at the moment, the public perspective and public belief is that that is what we are empowered to do. We therefore have to be empowered to do that, or we have to have mechanisms to make it clear to people that local NHS care is not in the direct control of myself or anyone else here, apart from Ministers on the Front Bench. Patient groups are an important mechanism, but they are also important in terms of consultation. I worry about what will happen when ICBs consult on plans. What is the number? What is the survey? What is the metric? Who is appointing the ICB chair? Who is appointing the NHS foundation trust chair? Who is appointing the members of all these quangos? Where do democratically elected representatives sit in these appointment decisions? Given the time limit, I will finish on this point. Accountability is critical in getting this right. Care models need accountability. I have raised this matter in Parliament for many years now. I hope that we can use the Bill as an opportunity to give our constituents the accountability they need and deserve in the delivery of local health care.

• 21 May 2026 · Women’s Health and Wellbeing: Online Censorship · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. As we are discussing health, I should declare that I am a former NHS doctor and my wife is an NHS doctor. I thank the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) for her detailed and highly researched speech, as well as all other Members who have spoken. This has been a most concerning debate in relation to the systemic impact of health promotion, and it has thrown up bigger, more fundamental challenges that we, as a society, must start to grapple with. I will come to that later in my remarks. My first job in the psychiatric training scheme—and my first consultant job—was on a women’s ward in south-east London. That was one of the most amazing jobs I have ever done: looking after very poorly women and doing my bit to deal with complex physical health issues and to promote women’s health. I totally appreciate and agree about the importance of reducing what is—let us face it—ridiculous stigma and social taboo around women’s health issues, but I come at this as a doctor, so I have a particular perspective. Equally, I am mindful that my perspective—how I look at society—has changed during my 44 years. If someone had asked the Ben of 20 years ago, “Do you think we live in a society that is equal for men and women?” he would have said, “Yes, of course we do.” In the past 15 years, I have come to know that that is completely wrong, things are nowhere near where they should be and we still have a huge amount of work to do. Sadly, what we have heard in this debate, and the list of de-promoted words that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central handed to me, are further evidence of the challenges that we must tackle. She is 100% right to raise this topic, among others, and to call out what has been happening. But—and there is a “but”—this issue is not simply about access to information. This is not just a question of whether the information should or should not be accessible—in my view, it absolutely should be—or of how to determine the threshold between adult content and factual material. The debate also relates to decisions made by private companies to impose limits on what they permit or promote on their sites. That is the nub of the issue: should companies be allowed to make those decisions, or should it be the role of Government to regulate those choices or actions? To be clear, I do not believe that this debate is about the scope of the Online Safety Act, which does not restrict companies in the publication of factual health information. At no point does that Act says that information on breasts, vaginas, fertility, menstruation or menopause, or on any other body part, condition or medical term, should be restricted or classified as adult material. The way that that information or imagery is presented may indeed come within the scope of the Act, but its existence does not. Inappropriate adult content should not be accessible to children—that is right—but factual and educational material should not meet that criterion. It is also worth bearing in mind that, in some ways, this is not a new issue. I am sure that, just as people looked at information in anatomy textbooks for educational purposes before the internet, plenty of people looked at it for other purposes—but, again, that is not a matter for Parliament or the Online Safety Act. Under our current legal framework, private companies have the right to choose what information they permit on their websites. That is a commercial decision, and if we are not happy with such a decision—my very strong view is that we should not support the restriction of information relating to women’s health—we should call them out and persuade them to change their position. Algorithmic transparency is important, but it is also critical, given the evidence that we have heard in this debate, that companies are not able to hide behind the Online Safety Act. A bigger problem that we will have to tackle or process at some point is the status of social media in our society. Is it private or is it something bigger? Should it be regulated, like news outlets? That would be a huge change in our position, creating such regulatory burdens as to make the UK wholly uncompetitive in the market and having an extreme impact on people’s access to information. It would also be counterproductive, because it is nigh-on impossible to do. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, whom I welcome to his place. This is the first time I have had the pleasure of being opposite him at the Dispatch Box. I reiterate the Opposition’s strong support for what Members from both sides of the House have said about the importance of destigmatising these matters. I hate even using the word “destigmatise” because I worry that that is stigmatising in itself—it is ridiculous, in some ways, that we have to have this debate in the modern age, but we are where we are. We must ensure that everyone has access to sensible and appropriate information, without the biases that have been mentioned in the debate. Finally, as a former NHS mental health doctor, I point out that social media is not the only online source of health information. I signpost people who have questions to the NHS website, where there is plenty of stuff on all health areas—I looked it up on my phone during the debate. We do not have to rely on big-tech social media; we have plenty of services in which other information is available.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Financial Assistance to Industry · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. His Majesty’s Opposition welcome this motion, which will allow the Secretary of State to make individual payments above £30 million to successful applicants to the life sciences large investment portfolio. The LSLIP has been developed and designed to support large-scale manufacturing and R&D investments in medicine, medtech and diagnostics, with a total budget of up to £570 million, and scope for individual awards of up to £130 million per project. It very much builds on the life sciences innovative manufacturing fund set up by the last Conservative Government to provide substantial capital grants for manufacturing innovation to strengthen the UK’s health supply chain. Together, the life sciences large investment portfolio and the life sciences innovative manufacturing fund provide a pipeline of support in the UK for both resilience-building manufacturing and global-scale industrial capability. The year 2025 was a challenging one for the UK life sciences sector, with AstraZeneca first scrapping plans to invest £450 million in expanding a vaccine manufacturing plant in Merseyside, blaming a reduction in Government support, and then announcing in September that it was pausing its £200 million research investment in Cambridge. That same month, Merck announced that it was scrapping a planned £1 billion expansion of its UK operations. However, that was not the full extent of the problems, with Eli Lilly and Sanofi also pausing investment in their UK operations. Several life sciences investments secured under the previous Conversative Administration were culled or put on hold after this Government took office. The life sciences large investment portfolio may go some way to recovering that lost ground and signalling to the life sciences sector that the UK remains serious about attracting, retaining and growing a world-leading life sciences R&D and manufacturing sector. Sadly, it will not be sufficient in isolation. The Government intervened late last year to stabilise the rebate rate applied to newer medicines under the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth for 2026. However, UK rates remain significantly higher and more volatile than those in many of our peer countries, which is a deterrent to significant investment in UK life science industries. My first question therefore is, what further action are the Government taking to secure longer-term stability and predictability in this area? Last year, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry made a pre-Budget submission calling on the Government to take action to restore the UK’s position as a global leader in life sciences. Among the ABPI’s recommendations was ensuring that VAT is not applied to free-of-charge medicines under early-access schemes, to preserve access for UK patients and maintain the UK’s attractiveness for clinical trials. However, The Sunday Times reported yesterday that one multinational drug company has stopped patients receiving early-access medicines, with another considering similar action after His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs issued VAT bills to pharma companies providing medicines under the scheme. That fiscal folly has real-world effects on not only the economy, but the lives of patients with debilitating and life-threatening conditions who are taking part in those trials. Therefore, my second question to the Minister is, what discussions has he had with Treasury colleagues about the urgent need to reform the tax system to make the UK a more attractive and stable jurisdiction for investment in life sciences?

• 3 Mar 2026 · SEND Provision: Local Authorities · Hansard source

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  The Minister is being generous with her time and I thank her for giving way. I want to reiterate the point about the families who have already gone through the system and who have fought for EHCPs, many of whom have had to go through tribunals and feel like they are having to do everything on their own. I come from a mental health background, and I am surprised that the system does not have what I would call a care co-ordinator to support families who are going through this difficult process. Families are genuinely scared that the Government’s proposed reforms will lead to a stripping away of support. In my constituency, where we are served by Surrey and Borders partnership NHS foundation trust, it takes a year and a half to get an autism diagnosis, and even longer if people need medication for ADHD. I have raised that in this place with Ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care, but can the Minister reassure me that as part of the approach to SEND, she and her Department are looking at the interface between education and health? I understand what she says about the absence of a diagnosis not meaning that a child should not be supported—we could have another debate about that—but for many children a diagnosis is very important, and it needs to be timely and treatment needs to be quick and effective. Finally, before I test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I invite the Minister to come to Meath school, a special educational needs school in Ottershaw in my constituency? It is an amazing place and every time I go there I learn so much, so it would be great if she could come along and meet the fantastic kids and teachers there.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  For the sake of clarity on the legal status of the codes, I entirely agree with the Minister that it is important to get this right, and my understanding of codes of practice in a different area—statutory codes of practice relating to the Mental Health Act—is that case law says that deviation from the code of practice should be done only for cogent reasons. That is a pretty high bar to pass in terms of deviations. I should declare an interest as a former consultant psychiatrist and someone who operated subject to that particular code of practice. For absolute certainty, will the Minister write to the Committee and make the status very clear, along with reference to relevant case law in terms of other codes of practice? Does the clause override that jurisprudence or not? That would settle the question as the Bill goes through Parliament.

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This clause is one of the provisions that has given rise to widespread industry concern regarding its scope and implications. Business supply chains, particularly for large operators of essential services and multinational companies, are becoming ever more complex. The increased digitisation of service provision across the board means that the delivery of essential services can be vulnerable to severe disruption when the systems of critical supply chain entities are interrupted by cyber-attacks. The Government have pointed to the 2024 cyber-attack on Synnovis, a pathology lab provider serving several London hospitals, as an example of the severe consequences that can flow from a cyber-attack on a key supply chain provider. In that case, the suspension of Synnovis services caused disruption to more than 11,000 appointments and operations. The attack caused at least two cases of serious harm to patients and, tragically, one patient’s death was attributed to the long wait for blood test results. Estimated financial losses from the attack exceeded £30 million. The previous Government were conscious of intensifying supply chain risk, and consulted on measures to enable regulators to designate individual suppliers as critical if they provided an IT service on which an OES or RDSP was dependent for the provision of its essential service. The response to that consultation showed overwhelming support for the proposal, but stakeholders argued that the designation process would need to be transparent and based on engagement with industry. It is those vital elements of transparency and engagement, or rather the current lack of them, that are causing high levels of concern among supply chain entities that stand to be brought within scope of regulation when these provisions come into effect. To break that down, preserving agility for the Secretary of State and regulators to respond to emerging risks has been recognised as both a strength and a weakness of the Bill. However, lack of certainty is a particular concern in a context of critical supplier designation, especially as this part of the Bill has the potential to bring in large numbers of small and even microbusinesses within the scope of regulation, potentially by multiple regulators. That is a daunting prospect for smaller companies, even taking into account the caveated duty on competent authorities to co-ordinate in the approach to regulation of critical suppliers in the proposed new paragraph 14L of the NIS regulations. Several witnesses in oral evidence, including techUK and ISC2, made strong arguments that SMEs often lack the financial and human resources to develop cyber-security expertise and comply with regulation. Those organisations will need additional time to prepare, and a better indication of the criteria that might be used by regulators to determine which supply chain providers are critical. Industry bodies have called on the Government to ensure meaningful consultation on secondary legislation and guidance, to ensure that the measures are fit for purpose and capable of practical implementation. As part of the planned consultation, will the Minister commit to considering whether there are alternative approaches to regulation for increasing cyber-resilience in companies below a certain size?

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has figured out what I am going to say in a moment, when it comes to the scoping of the regulator and that communication process. Such is the depth of the rabbit hole that the provision creates that, even though my hon. Friend’s intervention did not go where I thought she was going, another problem has just come to mind. What happens in the circumstance where a critical supplier that acts as a proxy for multiple critical suppliers? How does designation operate in that fashion? There are suppliers that essentially operate as a marketplace to a certain provision of services. Is it the marketplace that is regulated, or is it each supplier within the marketplace? A locum agency could hypothetically be an umbrella company for multiple different smaller locum agencies, each of which would share the corporate risk as part of that. Going back to my first point, the idea that access to the IT network or system will somehow be discriminatory, or dichotomise between people who are in scope of this measure and people who are not, seems to me complete nonsense. It is difficult to see what organisations, if they provide a service to a modern OES, will be in scope of it. Secondly, there is systemic or significant disruption. I often say that, if someone wanted to cripple a hospital, the best way to do that would be to stop the cleaners cleaning rooms, and to stop the porters pushing people around the hospital to get them to their appointments and moving beds. There is often a focus on doctors and on the rest of the core medical and nursing staff— I myself often focus perhaps a bit too much on doctors—but it really is a whole-team effort. In fact, the most critical people are often the people who might not be the subject of the most focus, such as the cleaners and porters. If the cleaners stop work or do not turn up to work, the hospital grinds to a halt. If taxis are not taking people to and from hospital out of hours, or if the patient transport is not taking people to hospital, out-patient departments grind to a halt. If the locum companies that fill gaps in staff rotas are not available to do that, and there are substantial rota gaps that make the provision of services unsafe, the hospital also grinds to a halt. If it is not possible to get access to critical medicines, if staff cannot maintain the blood gas machine or the blood pressure machine, or if the boiler breaks down, the hospital grinds to a halt. It is not just something as obvious as the tragic situation with blood and pathology testing that causes a hospital to grind to a halt. Indeed, I cannot think of many private sector provisions that would not have a substantial impact on a hospital if they were to be removed; if any other Member can, I will be very happy to stand corrected. However, just skimming through them, I can see that the removal of most of them would cause the hospital to grind to a halt. The idea that the significant impact definition will be a discriminatory factor regarding suppliers just does not work. Someone might say: “Ben, you’re completely wrong. We found some providers.”, but, if that situation arises, how will the arbitration occur in terms of the threshold?

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member so much for that intervention about the time it would take to find an alternative supplier, because it will bring me on nicely to my point about alternative suppliers. However, before I move on to that point, the hon. Gentleman made a very good point in his intervention, which I will address. To be subject to these provisions will create a regulatory burden, and therefore a cost burden, for an organisation that is designated to be a national critical supplier. If I was a supplier of services, I would want to have the best provision possible. I would want to be cyber-secure; I would want to have a gold-standard service. However, I might also be nervous of being designated as a critical supplier because of the regulatory burden that would impose on me, which would make me potentially less competitive in getting contracts because of the costs that would ensue. There would need to be an arbitration system where a company that is under threat of being designated a critical supplier could have a discussion or debate about whether that designation was relevant or not. I will now move on to the point that the hon. Gentleman made about alternative services. I really have no idea at all how we can expect a regulator to delve into the complexities and the minutiae of what is available in a local economy to provide these services that the OES is receiving. Do we expect the relevant regulator to check what taxi services are available—actually available, rather than some sort of fantasy availability where they are available on paper, but not in reality—in the local ecosystem that could supply to that hospital, which is the operator of essential services? What is the scope of research that the regulator would have to do? What considerations would they need to take regarding how much the taxis cost and how effective they are? What about the procurement decisions and processes that have already been gone through? Most public sector organisations have complex procurement rules when setting up their contracts—and that is before we even begin to consider health and safety concerns that are subject to regulatory provisions. For example, if the regulator decided that taxi services are under threat of becoming a critical supplier, then does the taxi service have the ability to deal with someone who has a cardiac arrest, needs oxygen or has a behavioural disturbance? Can it manage people with physical or mental disabilities? What is the scope of that particular service provision? The experts will be the people who commissioned it in the first place; yet on the face of the Bill there is no objective requirement for the regulator to speak to the OES in the first place about how this provision and service was procured. In terms of the service being available—as per the point made by the hon. Member for Harlow about the time to shift through—how will that be evidenced and investigated? What resource is going into this? That is just for a taxi company. What about when we expand it—and this is just for the NHS—to cleaners, porters, locum agencies or medicines provision? Is the provision of services geographically circumscribed or will this be across the country? I am sure that one can find alternative services to provide taxis to St Thomas’ in Birkenhead, but that does not necessarily mean that it is available in a reasonable timeframe or sense, in terms of the designation of supplier.

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for pointing out that discrepancy in the costings. It goes back to the key principle that business and business modelling are best left to businesspeople, not to Government. The Government have a facilitatory role, but fundamentally their role is to get out of the way of business so that it can succeed and our economy can thrive. We need to ensure, for the good of our economy as a whole, that the critical elements of it are regulated in that way. Given the interconnected operation of MSPs in our digital sector, any burden that we put on business will limit the growth that we all need and will limit competitiveness. In this footloose market especially, that could result in organisations and companies operating in other sectors, notwithstanding the fact that they will have to comply with UK jurisdictional rules. As a general point, regulations will cause footloose industries to move and operate in different sectors, which will mean less taxation revenue and more costs for clients, making it more difficult to do business. We need to make sure that our economy is as nimble and free as possible, both for those trading as an MSP and more generally. I cannot labour the point enough: the costs that we impose on businesses under the Bill, in particular in the cyber-security and tech sector, will be felt by our economy as a whole. We will have to pay for that through increased inflation in food, energy or anything else that our critical suppliers provide. Even our NHS provision costs will increase as a consequence of the regulatory burden on businesses as disparate and distant from the NHS as those that we see in the Bill.

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I really appreciate my hon. Friend’s intervention. It goes incisively to the heart of the concern about how these provisions are currently drafted. I really struggle to see how an OES that is providing a service to another OES could effectively argue that it is not within the full scope of these regulations. We have a lot of OESs in this country. It may be the Minister’s and the Government’s intention to essentially have a proxy regulatory framework for suppliers to OESs going forward—it is being kept very loose, because there is some flexibility in that, but that in itself will be a problem. I worry that a lot of providers are going to think to themselves, “Why should we provide to an OES when we might be at risk of being designated as a national critical supplier?” Surely that is a concern that will have a chilling effect on organisations supplying to OESs, because of the risk of being found within the scope of this additional regulatory burden. Don’t get me wrong; as I have said, companies should be taking cyber-security seriously, as should everyone. However, not everyone should be subject to the various regulations and data-sharing requirements that this Bill provides for. I suspect that many organisations will be very concerned. If there is a risk of designation as a critical supplier, companies will already be instructing lawyers and other organisations to manage that corporate risk. If an organisation starts supplying to a hospital trust, or to whoever it may be, it might think, “Actually, we’re likely at risk of being designated, so we need to start doing some work and investment, either to challenge that designation or begin doing the preparatory work.” Maybe that is the intention: to effectively regulate the entire sector providing to OESs without actually lifting a finger in terms of regulation through this Bill. If that is the case, I am sort of sad, because I think it is better to be clear-cut about it. I would be grateful if the Minister answered that point directly. Finally, in terms of OESs, we have already mentioned the fact that Government and local authority IT infrastructure and services are among the biggest risks in our system. I was really struck by the evidence from the NHS on Tuesday, in which our witnesses described data-sharing operations with adult social care, which is of course provided by local authorities. It seems quite perverse, if I may say so, that a GP surgery, which is a private organisation, could be deemed a critical supplier to a hospital in terms of patient information sharing. Quite frankly, I would like the Minister to answer the question specifically: does he envisage primary care GPs being in scope because of data sharing of hospital records with NHS trusts? GPs could fall within scope as critical suppliers, while social care records, which are provided by local authorities, would not. There are all these weird situations that could emerge because of the scope and the looseness of these provisions, with all the consequent harms and problems. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses to my points.

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for the “get out of jail free” card that he gave me at the end of his question; indeed, I pass that question on to the Minister. The point is well made in terms of trying to dissect the interacting and relevant duties in the Bill. The Bill tries to chop up different actors in the digital ecosystem, as well as public an non-public organisations, although a commercial threshold is being used. The Bill also introduces confusion: it rightly tries to make a carve-out for Crown data centres, but what exactly is a Crown data centre? One could argue that a Crown service is something provided by the state. Is a data centre serving a hospital therefore a Crown data centre? There are so many different components within the Bill. Not only are there 14 regulators, or however many are operating—earlier this week, Amazon told us in evidence that it is regulated by four regulators—there is also confidential information going through, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne pointed out. It gets even worse in the clause on critical supply networks. It is just incredibly confusing. The Committee—and, dare I say, the Government—should not ignore the evidence we have received from managed service providers time and again saying that although MSPs should be in scope and these regulations help, we need clarity on what exactly that means.

• 5 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member for Lichfield may be aware that my background is in medicine; I used to be a doctor before I came to this place. One of the skills and challenges in medicine is that any medical intervention—apart from a small handful—always has a risk of harm or side effects to the patient. It is always a balancing act between the harm and the benefit. My bread and butter before I came to this place was balancing harms and risks in the best interests of the person in front of me. Although I have never been a businessperson, and I have certainly never owned or run a data centre, my approach to business burdens is to see the extra things that the Government make businesses do—which are not necessarily what businesses would normally do or see as in their direct interests—as a prima facie harm. I will expand my words a bit if that helps in explaining the logic. The starting point is that it is an extra burden and a harm, but then benefits from other angles can outweigh that harm. It is getting businesses to do something more; if they were doing it anyway, we would not need regulations. It is an additional thing that business is being asked to do. It might be that we have decided that overall it is in the best interests of the sector. Individual businesses cannot regulate and change the sector themselves, so we have decided, “For the good of society, we think businesses should do this.” I am always a little careful when we politicians say that we know what is better for business in terms of what they are doing. I take the point about how regulatory certainty can be helpful in itself. I also take the point about the overall benefit to society and the business network of having confidence that there are secure and working data centres and that the large load controllers—which we will talk about presently—have control. This Bill is a full-fat compendium of cross-regulations and links. I feel for any business looking through the later chapters and finding themselves subject to those requirements. We have to keep that in mind: all of us in this Committee want our businesses to succeed and do well, and we also want stable and flourishing infrastructure. Going back to my medical roots, the starting point should be, “Primum non nocere”. That is often misinterpreted as, “First, do no harm”; actually, not doing harm is the main thing that we should do. As a legislator, you should have quite a high threshold before you start saying, “The solution is putting in another law. Let’s create another regulation,” or, “Let’s put another burden on business.” One of the challenges I had when looking at the Bill when it was first published was understanding why we need it in the first place. What is its starting point? That is something that I have been exploring and thinking about as we have been preparing for this Committee stage. Why is our industry not doing it itself and sorting this out? Why is the Minister here today bringing forward these regulations on business and why is that necessary in the first place as opposed to business sorting it out? I am sure that this is something that the Committee are going to come back to and explore in more detail when we discuss some of the more high-profile cyber-security impacts, particularly on Jaguar Land Rover and M&S. The hon. Member for Lichfield makes a very good point, and I do not think that this debate is settled in some ways—and I am sure we are going to come back to it quite a few times during the passing of this Bill.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for giving evidence to us. I want your help to get my head around what could fall under the Bill’s discretionary power on the designation of critical supply chain entities. Synnovis is used as the exemplar of why such a power is needed. From your perspective in the NHS, what do you think would come into scope? For example, would patient transport or taxis come under scope as critical for the delivery of your services? Would a hospital cleaner come under the scope of a critical supplier if the service was outsourced to a private sector organisation? Would food provision in your hospital come under scope? Would the provision of materials, medicines or medical devices provided by private companies come under scope? Would the provision of IT services—physical computers, not cloud services—come under scope? Would locum agencies come under scope? In fact, would any private provider not come under the scope as critical for the provision of services linked to your organisation’s IT system? Brian Miller: That is a good question. Some of our colleagues mentioned the follow-up secondary legislation that will help us to identify those kinds of things. I suppose there is no difference from where we are at now. We would look at any provision of services from a risk management perspective and say what security controls apply. For example, would they be critical suppliers in terms of infrastructure and cyber-security? Does a cleaning service hold identifiable data? What are the links? Is it intrinsically linked from a technological perspective? I mentioned looking at this through a “defenders win” lens. Yes, some of these technologies are covered. I saw some of the conversations earlier about local authorities not being in scope, but services are so intrinsically linked that they can well come into scope. It might well be that some of the suppliers you mentioned fall under the category of critical suppliers, but that might be the case just now. There might be provision of a new service for medical devices, which are a good example because they are unique and different compliance standards apply to them. For anything like that, where we stand just now—outside the Bill—we risk assess it. There is such an intrinsic link. A colleague on another panel mentioned data across the services; that is why Stewart is here alongside me. I look after the IT security element and Stewart looks after the data protection element.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you have integration with your local primary care IT systems? For example, GPs have the old EMIS system and so on; is that integrated into your network? From your perspective, would that be a critical supplier that would need to be regulated? Stewart Whyte: Yes. There is a lot of information sharing between acute services and primary care via integrated systems. We send discharge letters and information directly to GP practices that then goes straight into the patient record with the GP. There is a lot of integration there, yes.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Presumably, all suppliers are in some way linked to your IT systems to some degree. I know the NHS sometimes uses faxes still, but we do not live in a world where things are done by paper and pen—it is all integrated into IT systems. Brian Miller: Sometimes, but sometimes not. I do not think we had any physical links with Synnovis, but it did work on our behalf. Emails might have been going back and forward, so although there were no physical connections, it was still important in terms of business email compromise and stuff like that—there was a kind of ancillary risk. Again, when things like that come up, we would look at it: do we have connections with a third party, a trusted partner or a local authority? If we do, what information do we send them and what information do we receive?

• 3 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Does that also exist for local government? Does adult social care and so on have that integration too? Stewart Whyte: Yes, there is integration between ourselves and the local authorities.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Your evidence is really helpful. To help with my understanding, if you look across all the suppliers in your service, are there any that you would not consider to be critical, such that if you clicked your fingers now and one of them disappeared, it would not have a material impact on your ability to maintain patient safety and deliver healthcare? Irrespective of the debate about size, what suppliers do you not determine to be critical? Stewart Whyte: For me, it would be a slightly different assessment from Brian’s. We would be looking at anything where there is no processing of personal data. For me, that would not be a critical supplier from a data protection perspective. But there might be some other integration with NHS board systems that Brian might have concerns about. There is a crossover in terms of what we do, but my role is to look at how we manage data within the NHS. If there are suppliers where there is no involvement with identifiable data of either staff or patients, I would not see them as a critical supplier under this piece of legislation.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill · Hansard source

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  As always, Mrs Cummins, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I rise to speak to new clause 2, which stands in my name and is supported by many other Conservative Members. I declare again that I am now a non-practising doctor and my wife is a doctor. I believe that ambition should be encouraged, and success should be dependent on the talent and hard work of the individual. However, in a vocation where we really want to encourage and support the brightest and the best, the signal being beamed out by the NHS and its various arms and quangos is unfortunately quite different. We have already seen this over the years in how the NHS treats competence and excellence among doctors—someone could be the best doctor in the world and be treated exactly the same as someone who is just about competent. No other operation would approach employment, and celebrating and supporting success, in that way. I do not think, though, that I have ever seen as egregious and extreme an example of completely ignoring talent and merit as the preference informed allocation system. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), has laid out some of the details behind that system, but I encourage Members across the Committee to read about how preference informed allocation works—about the soulless, computerised, algorithmic method by which it allocates human beings a random number. That random number is then the sum total of those people’s dreams, hopes and ambitions when it comes to placements as they take their first steps into their medical career. To me, PIA looks better suited to the dystopian sci-fi programmes that I enjoy watching—better suited to “Logan’s Run” or “The Prisoner”, in which people are allocated numbers. It is not the way that we should be treating people in this country, and it is outrageous that such a system has been brought into force. We in this House should stand up for merit, and I really hope the Minister will affirm from the Dispatch Box today that the Government will dismantle this awful scheme.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will start with what is now a traditional declaration: I am a non-practising doctor and my wife is a doctor. I thank the Secretary of State for his comments, and for thinking through the content and merits of my new clause 2, on allocation based on merit. I hope that, as the Bill proceeds through this place and the other place, he continues to focus on that, because it is a very important point. For my Second Reading speech, I am not going to focus on the details of new clause 2—I will hold that back for Committee. Instead, I want to make some general comments. In a sense, the Bill treats the symptoms of what has been happening in the medical workforce. I do not think it is a cure for the fundamental disease or the problems we have had over the years, which are in part down to a creeping de-professionalisation of the medical profession. I also think they are down to the way we have approached doctors’ appointments to placements, and how we assess their skills and CVs, and how that then leads to different appointments and places. Doctors are thrown from pillar to post, subject to the whims of a computer or a training programme. It has been shown time and again that one of the most important things in people’s eyes, or at least what gives most work satisfaction, is autonomy. Unfortunately, we have sleepwalked into a situation, in pursuit of a weird type of fairness in the allocation of jobs, that works towards equality of outcome as opposed to equality of opportunity. Doctors have found themselves unable to compete or have control over their lives. Where they are allocated to their foundation school or their specialty training has a real, material impact. Crucially, within allocations, the geographical regions are huge. That means uprooting: moving your family and your social network. In the training scheme there really is no power that a doctor can exert in terms of choice or preference. My understanding—I am a creature of the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Medical Training Application Service, when I was coming through and applying for posts—is that we just used to let doctors competitively apply for different posts and put together a sort of portfolio CV. That has all changed. There is now the allocation to training programme schemes and national contracts, which is something I have been campaigning about for quite some time. Do not get me wrong: I think the way the BMA has behaved is absolutely appalling. I categorically and unreservedly condemn the approach that it has taken, and not just under this Government but under previous Governments over various disputes concerning junior doctors. But the fact that doctors have found themselves in a situation where they need to have a militant trade union is a consequence of the training schemes, programmes and national contracts not treating doctors as professionals when it comes to applying for jobs. It also means that the training providers, the trusts and the integrated care systems, cannot provide options that doctors might want to compete for. They cannot say, “Well, we’re a really good research unit, so we’re going to have an offering that pursues a certain type of doctor who wants to go down the academic pathway.” We do not have trusts or regions that can say, “Actually, this is an area where there is quite a lot of social and economic deprivation, so we want doctors who are interested in certain specialties.” For all sorts of different reasons, there are parts of the country that are oversubscribed and parts that are undersubscribed. We cannot use what we use in every other walk of life, which is changing remuneration to encourage people to go to other places. We cannot say, “You know what? Let’s look at flexible working arrangements.” As part of my medical school rotations, I was in Barnstaple. I can only imagine that if the trust for Barnstaple had recruitment challenges—I do not know if it does or does not—then it could look at whether people are into surfing or ensuring they could get involved in other activities outside of medicine. Dare I say, as a former doctor, that medicine is important but there are more important things than people’s careers, in particular their work-life balance. We have a system that does not enable that to happen. The behaviour of the BMA is, in a sense, a consequence of dismantling the normal human experience in the approach to the selection and allocation of jobs. That has real consequences locally. Ashford and St Peter’s, my local trust, struggles to recruit because of the proximity to London, which has London weighting. Since we are on the border of London, to look at it purely financially—if that is the main priority—it makes more sense to pop into London and work than it does being employed in my area. Runnymede and Weybridge, by the way, has house prices and a cost of living that are equal to a big chunk of London, but there is no approach to regionalisation. I am really glad that the Secretary of State is in his place to hear my contribution. I will say to him something that I have said to many previous Secretaries of State. When he is in those difficult negotiations with the BMA and hears from doctors about the workforce experience challenges that they have, would it not be better if we trusted doctors—and, for that matter, anyone who is subject to a national contract—to make decisions for their own lives, and that we devolve decision around pay and terms and conditions to some form of regional unit? For medicine, the obvious solution would be the integrated care systems, but there could be different solutions and ways of approaching it. I think ICS devolution would make the most sense, but there are other opportunities to do it. That way, it moves from the Government essentially getting stuck in the middle of doctors, who are making difficult decisions about their careers and having to balance and judge different T&Cs of work, and the employers, which are different NHS trusts, being unable to use the normal mechanism that any other employer would use to recruit and incentivise people. If we do not do that, unfortunately the consequence is a Bill like the one we are debating: ever-increasing state intervention to try, in the absence of a market system, to impose a command economy. The Secretary will have seen the issues dealing with local doctor prices. The fact that we have struggled with high locum payments for so long is because we do not allow the doctor employment market to resolve itself for adjustments in contracts. The system would save a huge amount of money overall if, rather than having a huge amount of money going to locums and a national contract system for doctors, we let the market sort it out. I will support the Bill, but I see it more as palliation than the definitive treatment that we need to solve the workforce problems for the NHS going forward.

• 18 Nov 2025 · Draft Online Safety Act 2023 (Priority Offences) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. This statutory instrument represents an important development in the obligations on platforms regulated under the Online Safety Act to protect people from encountering illegal content online. The OSA was enacted by the last Government with the primary aim of safeguarding children and removing serious illegal material from the internet. Tackling the most harmful content, such as that which is the subject of today’s discussion, goes to the heart of the Online Safety Act’s aims. His Majesty’s Opposition therefore welcome and support the draft regulations. The experiences and opportunities offered by the online world change rapidly. It is right that legislators are responsive when new risks emerge or when certain types of unlawful content proliferate on the internet. Under the last Government, the OSA amended the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to criminalise several forms of sexual misconduct and abusive behaviour online. The new offences included cyber-flashing and the sharing of or threatening to share intimate images without consent. The amendments were made to keep pace with novel threats and forms of abuse, the victims of which are too often women and girls. Baroness Bertin’s independent review of pornography, which was published in February this year, highlighted the damaging impact on victims of intimate image abuse, ranging from physical illness to mental health effects such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal thoughts. The effects of cyber-flashing and intimate image abuse on victims is severe. It is therefore right that this statutory instrument brings cyber-flashing within the scope of the priority offences in schedule 7 to the Online Safety Act, while retaining as a priority offence the sharing of or threatening to share intimate images. We also strongly support the addition as a priority offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm, which is the other important component of this statutory instrument. Desperate people who contemplate self-harm need early intervention and support, not encouragement to self-harm. Under this SI, regulated services will be obliged to proactively remove the material when they become aware of it on their platforms and take measures to prevent it from appearing in the first place. One can only wonder why it has taken so long to get to this position. I am sure we will have a unanimous view not only in the House but in society of the importance of removing such material. The regulations will work only if they are adopted by the industry and subject to rigorous oversight, coupled with enforcement when platforms fail in their obligations. That is a necessity, and why we had to introduce the Online Safety Act in the first place. It is right that Government regulators should look to identify obstacles to the implementation of the OSA and take action where necessary. Since the introduction of Ofcom’s protection of children codes in the summer, important questions have arisen around the use of virtual private networks to circumvent age verification, as well as data security and privacy in the age-verification process.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  The Minister just said at the Dispatch Box that national insurance contributions for employers were raised “to support the NHS”. Was that hypothecated or not?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Children in Runnymede and Weybridge are waiting on average two years to get a diagnosis of autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder from Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS foundation trust. The trust is deviating from national guidance on new developmental pathways, and waiting times are even greater if children need medication. Does the Secretary of State share my concerns, and will he investigate the trust and make sure that children and families get the support that they need?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Mandatory Digital ID · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for securing this timely and important debate, as well as his characteristically forceful and measured speech. It has been a fun debate with lots of contributions. I am sure there will be plenty more opportunities going forward, but I want to draw out a few particularly powerful contributions. First, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) pointed out the issues around the prevalence of digital exclusion and the use of the veteran card. Secondly, my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) rightly pointed out the issues that the gov.uk One Login has had. Thirdly, my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) pointed out the problem of the prevalence of digital poverty among the elderly. Finally, the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed), who always speaks with great wisdom in these debates, spoke about the issue of multiple NHS logins. This plan will make Government-issued digital ID compulsory to access work. Ignore the piffle—this is de facto mandatory. Given the contentious history of mandatory ID schemes in this country, one might have expected a policy of such weighty constitutional importance to appear in the Government’s manifesto, but it was conspicuously absent—like most current Government policy. Earlier this year, I stood across the Dispatch Box from the previous Minister, debating the digital verification system brought in by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. That scheme created a trust framework for a register of approved providers of digital identity verification services. Building on the competitive ecosystem established by the last Government, private sector companies are already providing right to rent, right to work and many other identity checks.