Caroline Johnson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 29 Jun 2026 · Prisoner Early Release · Hansard source

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  During the passage of the Sentencing Act, we were told that the perpetrators of the “most serious, heinous crimes” would not be included in these measures, so can the Minister explain why the Government do not think that the rape of children is one of the most serious and heinous crimes, and how many individuals who committed it will be coming out early?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that when somebody—particularly a vulnerable person—receives a call asking them whether they would be prepared to see a consultant to see whether they still need treatment, they are aware of all the noise in the media? They are aware that other people are waiting. People do not want to waste NHS resources. The first time, they may think it is a routine process but, when they receive the second or third call, they may start to think to themselves, “They are trying to tell me that they want to do something else. Maybe I don’t need it as much as other people.” They feel obliged and pressurised into saying they do not need the procedure when they do.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Government’s explanatory notes state that the clause is intended to give ICBs the ability to provide a broad range of support to those involved in providing or administering the health service. The flexibility there aligns with the Government’s stated vision for more autonomy across the system. I have a couple of questions. If the ICB were to provide support in a way that was out of line with good practice or what is expected by the Department, what would be the recourse? Where will it be possible for right hon. and hon. Members to see the financial expenditure that ICBs make in any such circumstance?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The clause imposes a duty on ICBs to have regard to the likely impact of their commissioning decisions on areas of Wales and Scotland close to the border. In some respects, this is like other parts of the Bill—a statement of the obvious regarding a person’s job. Are we suggesting that the Secretary of State, and in particular ICBs, would not consider the effect of their decisions? I hope that they would, but, given that the clause is there, what teeth does it have? What if they do not? Is there any consequence in the Bill if they do not? As others have said, will the Minister confirm whether there is a reciprocal agreement with Wales and Scotland? If there is not, what negotiations has she entered into and what progress are they making?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon have covered my points so effectively that I will be very brief indeed. How do we ensure that the consultation is not just well meaning and ticking the legal boxes, but actually listened to, so that people’s voices are incorporated into the plans? Also, I appreciate that amendment 28 is a well-meaning intervention, but how do we ensure that all voices are heard in a co-production, not just those who are the most articulate or the most able to engage with a process that they see online?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I have one question for the Minister. Which ICBs does she envisage being abolished, or is this just a precaution for the future?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  If a person has been waiting more than 18 weeks, the trust calls them and asks them to see a consultant to check whether they still need the appointment or whether they need a different treatment. If, after having that appointment, they are told that they still need the treatment, that same day they go back on the waiting list as if it were day one. Therefore, they have not waited less than 18 weeks, even though the Minister’s statistics might suggest they have. Does she accept that?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Government say they are firmly committed to cutting waiting times and meeting the NHS’ 18-week target. It seems odd that, despite that, it is necessary for me to table an amendment to prevent systems from forcing patients to wait artificially longer for their care through the imposition of minimum waiting times. Last year, The Times reported that at least eight local ICBs had introduced policies to pay healthcare providers for treatments only once patients have waited 12 weeks or more. I cannot think of any clinical reason why someone should wait for 12 weeks before having any treatment. At the time, the Minister said that while there was “no formal national policy supporting minimum waits”, local areas may “choose to include minimum waiting times in Activity Planning Assumptions to ensure delivery of targets within agreed financial allocations…to support commissioners in managing activity to ensure they can sustainably manage within their budgets”. I do not understand why we would want to make people wait longer than necessary. The Royal College of Surgeons has expressed concerns and made clear that minimum waits prolong “pain and anxiety” for those made to wait longer, saying that it is “counterintuitive…to give commissioners the green light to impose 18-week waits, while simultaneously working to ensure patients begin treatment within 18 weeks.” Age UK deemed it a “rationing approach” that is “potentially harmful to the health and wellbeing of older people.” NHS England has made it clear that ICBs cannot introduce minimum waits of more than 18 weeks—that is longer than the target, so that makes sense—but waits between 12 and 18 weeks are permissible. Will the Minister explain why that is a good idea? Amendment 51 seeks to ban ICBs from introducing any operational policies requiring patients to wait a minimum number of weeks before they may access treatment. There are safety risks involved in introducing minimum waiting times. They distort clinical priorities and may make patients wait in unnecessary pain and anxiety. Treatment should be delivered when possible, based on clinical needs. If a patient has a high level of clinical need, they might need to be treated earlier than the minimum waiting time because of the suffering they are experiencing. Minimum waits are not only detrimental to patient experience by forcing people to live in greater pain and discomfort; in some cases, the delay may make the patient’s condition worse, and the treatment they need may be more extensive and even more expensive. Their condition may even become life-limiting or life-threatening as a result of the delay. The introduction of arbitrary minimum waiting times that do not have any relevance to patient clinical need raises worrying issues, clinically, professionally and ethically. Minimum waits will also hinder the NHS’ ability to cut waiting lists and get waits to within 18 weeks. Some providers will have a list of people who can be available at short notice for a procedure, who they can call on if there is a cancellation on the day. If that person has not waited the minimum, that may be left as a gap, and that operation or appointment may not happen. That is wasted NHS resource. Each month that goes by, many people are added to the waiting list, and some are removed from it. We are aware that there seem to be a lot of unexplained removals from the waiting list, and that has spiked recently. Among the people treated by NHS providers in April, around 600,000 were treated within eight weeks of referral, versus 74,000 who were treated between 14 and 18 weeks. The introduction of a minimum waiting time will therefore push back many people’s treatment by as much as 10 weeks. Minimum waits also worsen and entrench postcode lotteries, because patients who have differential waits, based on whether their ICB has decided to implement minimum waiting times, may experience differential levels of care because of where they live. They are also another way of undermining patient choice, because patients may want to be treated in one area or one hospital because of the waiting time. If they all have different minimum waiting times, that distorts patients’ ability to choose. Minimum waits are also completely contrary to the 10-year plan for health, in which choice and productivity were considered central features, along with the Government’s wider commitment to keep people healthy. I hope the Minister will agree with amendment 51, which would ensure that minimum waiting times cannot be instituted. Amendment 52 also concerns waiting times. You will no doubt have seen, Dr Huq, the many newspapers articles about the Government fiddling the figures on waiting times, and there has been a spike in removals from waiting lists. People have found themselves removed from lists or going back on lists, or have suddenly found out that their waiting time started more recently than they thought. Amendment 52 would require the Secretary of State to publish the number of patients who are taken off treatment waiting lists each month and why they were removed. It is important that we are able to explain to our constituents why the Government have decided to remove them.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Where a mayor is from one political party and local authorities are run by different political parties, the mayor, as part of the ICB, will be able to make decisions about spending done by authorities that are run by different parties. That will surely create a political conflict, or at least the potential for one.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member for Ashford talks about social media and social media comments. I wonder if, where the DHSC or the Government have put that waiting lists are falling, my hon. Friend has read any of the comments that come in from the general public below such proclamations.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  At present, integrated care boards will have a chair, a chief executive and at least three further ordinary members. Those three ordinary members will include a representative of the NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts in the area, someone from the primary medical services in the area and someone nominated by the local authority areas within the ICB area. Under the clause, the requirement for those individuals is replaced with a requirement to have someone from each of the mayoral authorities. Because of the order in which the Government have done this—removing half the budget from the ICBs, which has caused them to merge in a way that is not coherent with the Government’s not-yet-complete local government reorganisation—we have a situation where representation is not even. For example, in my ICB area the Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire and the Mayor of the East Midlands will each be able to choose someone to represent them on the board, but the proportions of the population are not even. Lincolnshire will be over-represented, which is not an issue for my constituents, but it may be for those from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Likewise, the northern part of Greater Lincolnshire, which is in a different region, has a small population relative to its ICB. Some mayors will therefore have representation that is not proportionate to their population size. There is surely a risk that the next step will be for the Government to say they want to make things more even, with ICBs working in relation to mayoral authority areas. Yesterday, the Minister for Care suggested at his appearance before the Health and Social Care Committee that the ICBs should be aligned with strategic authorities, but the only way in which that can happen once the Government have decided where the strategic authorities will be is if things are changed once again. That brings ongoing costs—financial costs, opportunity cost for service development, and cost to the people delivering these services. The people working hard to try to deliver the Government’s plan find themselves and their jobs threatened and chopped and changed all the time. We heard evidence that the concentration on reorganisation rather than service delivery, provision and development is causing distress to those people. We also heard about the effect on social care, which, certainly in Lincolnshire and in other places, is delivered by the upper-tier local authority, but not all mayors have any responsibility for health—our mayor does not. We will therefore have someone who is not responsible for health on the ICB while someone responsible for delivering social care will have their seat on the ICB removed. I am afraid that I simply do not understand that. I watched through several times the Minister for Care’s Select Committee appearance, and I still do not understand the rationale. I will be grateful if the Minister for Secondary Care could explain that.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I should say that I am on a waiting list for treatment myself. The validation process seems to involve phoning people to check if they still need treatment, which after a long period is perhaps not an unreasonable thing to do. However, if they then say yes, they are phoned again a few weeks later; and if they say yes again, they are again phoned a few weeks after that. That puts pressure on people to say, “Okay”. If they are then asked, for example: “Would you be happy to see the consultant so that he can check that you are still listed for the right procedure, given that your condition may have changed and you may want to do something else?” it feels entirely unreasonable to say anything other than “Yes” to that. Would my hon. Friend be surprised to hear that when some people do that they find that they do indeed need the same procedure, but that their waiting time has now gone back down to zero?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 51, in clause 16, page 12, line 10, at end insert— “(3) The regulations must ensure that integrated care boards may not impose operational policies requiring patients to wait a minimum number of weeks before they may access treatment.” This amendment would prevent minimum waiting times for NHS treatment.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 21, page 15, leave out from line 33 to line 6 on page 16 and insert— “(2) The constitution must provide for the ordinary members appointed as mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)(b) to include— (a) at least one person nominated by one or more NHS trusts or NHS foundation trusts which provide services under arrangements made by the integrated care board, in accordance with regulations made under sub-paragraph (2A); (b) at least one person nominated by a body representative of providers of primary medical services whose area falls wholly or mainly within the area of the integrated care board, in accordance with regulations made under sub-paragraph (2A); (c) at least one person appointed by a local authority whose area falls wholly or partly within the area of the integrated care board; and (d) at least one member nominated by the mayor of each mayoral strategic authority whose area coincides with, or includes the whole or any part of, the integrated care board's area (if any). (2A) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the nomination of ordinary members under sub-paragraph (2)(a) and (b), including provision about which NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts or representative bodies are entitled to make nominations. (3) The constitution must set out the process for making nominations under sub-paragraph (2). (4) A person making a nomination under sub-paragraph (2) must have regard to any guidance published by the Secretary of State as to the selection of candidates.” This amendment modifies Clause 21 so that, rather than replacing the existing mandatory membership requirements in Schedule 1B to the National Health Service Act 2006 with a requirement for mayoral representation alone, the new sub-paragraph (2) reinstates and consolidates the full range of required ordinary members.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  As has been said, the clause replaces the part of the NHS Act that requires NHS England to carry out performance assessments of the ICBs and rewrites it so that the Secretary of State has to carry out those assessments. That makes some sense, but, as the Minister said, it takes out the criteria against which the ICBs will be assessed. I accept what the Minister says—she wants those criteria to be set out more flexibly than can be done in primary legislation—but it is not reasonable or fair to assess people against criteria that they do not know in advance. It will be important, will it not, that ICBs know in advance what those criteria will be? Given what she said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston about writing to him, will she commit to writing to us to say not only what the criteria will be at the moment, but how far in advance ICBs can expect to receive them before they are expected to work to them and then be assessed against them? Will variation be a factor in whether an ICB is deemed to have been performing well or not? We know that there is a tension in the Bill between the Secretary of State’s need to equalise provision and the ICBs’ desire and intention to vary it and innovate. Given that the Secretary of State is a political individual, how will the assessment process be conducted in a way that gives ICBs and their leaders confidence that there will not be political interference in it?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Unfortunately, the Minister’s reassurances have not convinced me. In relation to change, “significant” means various things to different people. As for “proportionate”, what is “proportionate” to one person is not necessarily “proportionate” to another. Amendment 57 makes reasonable provision for a situation in which there is a change from national to local commissioning, or from local to—mostly, it is from national to local commissioning. Therefore, I would like to push it to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  But we were not planning to abolish NHS England, so we had no reason to worry about redundancy. We were not planning a large-scale abolition—the largest that has ever happened in this country. Amendment 57 would require the Secretary of State to publish and consult on commissioning transition plans before making regulations under proposed new section 3B that alter which services are commissioned nationally. It is a very reasonable amendment that would just mean that people get answers. It would mean that vulnerable people with unusually rare or highly complex conditions requiring regional or even national treatment could understand any changes the Government planned to make. We know that some services are delivered in only three or four centres in the UK. If a patient lives far from a centre, and suddenly that centre is closed, that can have huge travel and service implications, which can create huge distress and worry and make care worse.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am afraid I do not know the answer to that question. The key point is that it is not logical to abolish a three-tier structure and recreate it with taxpayers’ money to do exactly the same thing. If NHS England is replaced by the Secretary of State, the regional NHS England is replaced by the OPICs and the ICBs are at the bottom—the more local tier—what has changed? The middle tier will be doing the same thing.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 57, in clause 12, page 10, line 10, at end insert— “(4A) Before making regulations under subsection (1)(b) that would alter the range of services or facilities which the Secretary of State is required to commission nationally, the Secretary of State must— (a) prepare and publish a commissioning transition plan in accordance with subsection (4B), (b) consult in accordance with subsection (4C), and (c) lay the commissioning transition plan before Parliament. (4B) The commissioning transition plan must set out— (a) a description of each service or facility that the Secretary of State proposes to add to, or remove from, national commissioning responsibility under section 3B(1)(b), and the reasons for each proposed change; (b) a description of the body or bodies to which commissioning responsibility for each such service or facility would transfer and the basis on which that body is considered capable of commissioning that service or facility effectively; (c) an assessment of the impact of each proposed change on patients who rely on the affected services or facilities, including— (i) patients with rare diseases or conditions, (ii) patients whose needs cannot be met by a single integrated care board area, and (iii) patients who may face differential impacts on account of a protected characteristic within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010; (d) the transitional arrangements to be put in place to ensure continuity of service for patients during any transfer of commissioning responsibility; (e) the workforce and capacity implications for the bodies to which commissioning responsibility would transfer; (f) the financial arrangements for the transfer of commissioning responsibility, including the funding to be allocated to receiving bodies; and (g) the proposed timetable for implementation of each change. (4C) Consultation under this subsection must include— (a) integrated care boards that would assume commissioning responsibility under the proposed changes; (b) NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts providing the services or facilities affected by the proposed changes; (c) patient groups and representative organisations for patients likely to be affected by the proposed changes; (d) clinicians with expertise in the services or facilities affected; and (e) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate. (4D) Consultation under subsection (4C) must— (a) run for a period of not less than twelve weeks, and (b) begin no earlier than the date on which the specialised commissioning transition plan is published under subsection (4A)(a). (4E) Following the consultation period, the Secretary of State must publish a response to the consultation that— (a) summarises the representations received, (b) sets out the Secretary of State's response to the key issues raised, and (c) describes any amendments made to the specialised commissioning transition plan in light of consultation responses. (4F) No regulations under section 3B(1)(b) that alter the range of nationally commissioned services or facilities may be made until at least 60 days have elapsed after the consultation response required by subsection (4E) has been published.” This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish and consult on a commissioning transition plan before making any regulations under the new section 3B of the National Health Service Act 2006 (inserted by Clause 12) that would alter which services are commissioned nationally.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  We Conservatives share the hon. Lady’s desire to ensure that patients get their appointments as soon as they need them to be had, but she is talking about a difference between urgent appointments, within 24 hours, and non-urgent appointments, within a week. Who is going to make the decision about whether the appointment is urgent? Will it be the clinician? Will it be the patient themselves? Has she thought about where that responsibility lies?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  One thing that my hon. Friend mentions is the Government’s stated intention to bring things closer to home, as opposed to the reality of the Bill as drafted. Does he agree with me that the document that explains what will happen to the commissioning of specialist services, and that talks about seven regions and how ICBs could collaborate within those regions, might imply that the Government are looking forward to having seven areas in which most commissioning takes place? These are even larger areas than have been described in the mergers so far.

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I agree with much of what the hon. Lady has said. Does she therefore support amendment 57, which would ensure that such a consultation takes place?

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Clause 14 is very straightforward: it states that schedule 1 “confers functions on integrated care boards in relation to commissioning primary care services…transfers related functions from NHS England to the Secretary of State, and”— perhaps most interestingly— “contains other amendments relating to primary care services.” Schedule 1 essentially makes the following changes to the NHS Act 2006: it makes ICBs responsible for commissioning pharmacy services instead of NHS England; it amends section 99 to make ICBs responsible for commissioning dental services instead of NHS England; it amends section 83 to make ICBs responsible for commissioning primary medical services such as general practice instead of NHS England; and it amends section 115 to make ICBs responsible for commissioning ophthalmic services. Largely, this change is formalising existing delegation and the risk of disruption is therefore relatively low. Local commissioners can tailor decisions to local need, and it is better if decisions are taken closer to users. However, there are a few other things in there as well. Paragraph 12(2) amends section 97 of the 2006 Act containing local medical committees, which are statutory committees. The way it is phrased, “the whole or part of the ICB’s area”, does not allow for overlap. Is that the Government’s intention? The Government, in a broader sense, talk about the strategic authorities and having the mayoral authority level involved in the ICB. But in Lincolnshire, for example, an area that I represent part of, the local medical committee could not work in conjunction with the mayoral authority under this legislation, as far as I read it, because it essentially covers two ICB areas and two regions. The mayoral authority is the Greater Lincolnshire mayoral authority. That includes Lincolnshire’s upper-tier area, the Lincolnshire county council area. It also includes the areas around Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Immingham, which fall into the Yorkshire region as opposed to the midlands region, and therefore not a whole or part of any given ICB area. I wonder whether the Minister has any comment on whether that was the intention, because it is also the case with paragraph 24(2) of schedule 1, which amends section 113 of the 2006 Act on local dental committees. Again, although the ambition stated and discussed in the Health and Social Care Committee yesterday by the Minister for Care, who is responsible for primary care, was that ICBs were to be covered at strategic level, that would not be possible for local medical committees or local dental committees under my reading of paragraph 12(2).

• 25 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Of course, my hon. Friend is right. One challenge with the Bill is that although not all the measures are a problem individually, the way they are being brought in is a problem. The planning and organisation that has gone into it has not been coherent. A 50% cut has been made to the budgets of ICBs, which has required many of them to merge, but that has been done before the local government reorganisation has been finished, which means that ICBs have been melded together in a way that is not the same as the local government reorganisation. Let me again give the example of Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire had an excellent ICB, run by chief executive John Turner. That has now merged with Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire form the East Midlands mayoralty, but Lincolnshire ICB, as was, forms part but not all of the Lincolnshire mayoralty—which, as I said, also includes part of what was the Yorkshire region. Because the cuts were done before the local authority reorganisation, and the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, we have ended up with an incoherent pattern, which does not help, particularly for social care services that are delivered by local authorities. We will come back to that when we talk about who is on the ICB. The risk is that we end up spending money doing this twice—being forced to do it at short notice, because of the 50% cuts brought in overnight by Government, and then doing it again to try to sort out the mess and bring things back into line with the new local authorities as and when it is decided what they will be. Going on to the pharmaceutical arrangements—I should probably declare at this point that my brother is a rural dispensing GP—I share the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket in relation to rural dispensing GPs. Let me give the Minister an example from my constituency. The Cliff Villages medical practice was an excellent medical practice. However, there was a doctor retirement and the illness of a doctor, and as a result the service reduced in quality quite substantially. The ICB was working alongside the surgery and the one remaining practice doctor—not swiftly enough, it must be said. What happened in the end was that the Care Quality Commission came in, found that the service was really not good enough and closed the surgery down overnight, in the middle of the week. It was closed with immediate effect and there were no appointments for any patients in my constituency. Then, because the surgery had been closed, the ICB worked very hard to get a new practice in straightaway, and it got that opened on the Monday, which was pretty quick in the circumstances; but people lost their dispensing GP. Living in a rural area—I have a dispensing GP myself, living in a rural area—people can go to the doctor’s, see the doctor and, if the doctor perhaps says, “You need some antibiotics,” they can go back to the waiting room and sit there for 10 minutes, be given the antibiotics and then leave. That is significantly more helpful to a rural constituent than having to drive eight or nine miles into the centre of town, park the car, find somewhere to get the prescription and then go all the way home again, which would take much longer. People really value that service—I saw how much when I held a public meeting with the ICB and the new provider to talk about what had happened at the surgery, and 250 people turned up to an evening event in the village hall at short notice. It is hugely important to people. Will the changes allow the Secretary of State to step in in such circumstances, where the medical contract has been lost due to that cut-off by the CQC? Will that sudden loss of service be able to be replaced with a new dispensing service? Could Ministers have therefore given dispensing rights to the new provider? At the moment, those rights are not transferable, and it means that the only way that my constituents who live in that area and attend that practice can maintain dispensing rights is either to move house—perhaps to next door and back again, but they have to move house—or to change practice immediately, that same day, to another dispensing practice. To be honest, that seems ridiculous. Could the Minister make any comment on how the provisions in the Bill will help that situation and what her views are? I am confused by new clause 23 and new schedule 1; the Minister has introduced them later than the rest of the Bill, but they seem quite significant. They would move pharmacy appeals from the first-tier tribunal to an NHS body specified by regulations made by the Secretary of State. I presume the regulations are not yet written, so we do not know what form that would take, but the first-tier tribunal is part of an independent judicial system and the appeals will now be under political control, within the Department. Could the Minister explain why they think that is fair? Why do the Government want to do that? Is it just about saving money? How will the judgments made by that new authority be properly enforceable and give people confidence, given the change from the first-tier tribunal in the judicial system to something more politically controlled? I move on to new clause 2, which would require the Secretary of State to establish within six months a scheme to give patients the right to a GP appointment within seven days of seeking one, or 24 hours if urgent. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that and how she thinks it could be achieved. Modelling by the Health Foundation suggests that 6,500 full-time equivalent GPs—37,800 in total—will be needed by 2030-31 to meet greater clinical need. We have already talked about the doubling of medical school places; I presume the Minister has sought correction since we last spoke on whether the Government have a plan to double those places or not, but the Government are not on track to have that number of GPs. Is it simply that they do not have the resources to deliver it? I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments.