Helen Morgan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Seventeenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is really important not to blame people who have seen convincing information online or have been given convincing information by people who ought to know better—including at political party conferences. We need to battle the source of that information and ensure that accurate, factual information is available and communicated to everyone in an accessible way by people they trust. That is key to all this. As I have said before, ostracising or ridiculing people who have been given information in a very convincing way is not the way to resolve this problem. We need to tackle it in an understanding way by communicating the facts sympathetically and accessibly. It is important to note that concerns about vaccinations are not exclusive to a single group of voters. There is significant vaccine hesitancy across some ethnic minority communities and in hard-to-reach places across the country. We must do more to support doctors, nurses and the NHS to fight fiction with facts, or the long-term health of the country will suffer. That is what new clause 77 seeks to do. There is some great local work being done, but there needs to be a joined-up strategy to combat all aspects of disinformation, because a nice social media video telling people to get their jab will not beat it. Now that Reform UK has a greater presence in our local government, NHS leaders will have to handle more and more difficult conversations with anti-vax and conspiracy theorist councillors, and they deserve support to engage with those people effectively and constructively. The proposed strategy would provide just that. It would have to consider “support for medical professionals to build trust and engage with persons who are anti-vaccine…investment in public messaging to combat medical disinformation, including engagement with trusted online influencers…outreach campaigns focused on communities that are sceptical about vaccinations…introducing criminal liability for those, including online influencers and politicians, who profit from medical disinformation, and…a new verification requirement for any social media account claiming to be a medical professional.” We must do more systematically to protect the NHS and our nation’s health from the growing threats of medical misinformation. We urge the Government to give this issue the focus it needs, and we hope that they consider this new clause one way to do that.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Seventeenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  New clause 57 would ensure that the average waiting time for diagnosis and treatment for elective conditions for women’s health issues does not exceed the average waiting time for wider NHS elective treatment. New clause 58 would establish an inquiry into the poorer health outcomes that women face. In communities up and down the country, we have seen the devastating toll taken by the various and sustained failures to invest in and deliver better women’s health. Vital services remain understaffed and underfunded, while women and girls are going without the care they need. In 2022, we welcomed the first women’s health strategy, which promised to “listen more carefully to women, close gaps in care, improve research and tackle inequalities.” Those were all vital goals, but three years on, the problems remain stubbornly in place: long waits for gynaecology treatment, patchy access to services, women reporting that they are not listened to, pain not taken seriously and conditions diagnosed too late. Medical misogyny is a perverse and unacceptable norm in the health sector. Women are not offered pain relief when they need it. The side effects of treatment and drugs on women in particular are far too often overlooked and under-researched. More research is needed to improve medical and reproductive products for women. In addition, about half a million women are waiting for gynaecology treatment across the country. We just cannot keep failing women in this way. The current average wait for a diagnosis of endometriosis is nine years and four months. Tackling NHS waiting times, including for gynaecological services, must be a top priority for the Government. More needs to be done to tackle the backlogs. Waits for health conditions specific to women should not be so much longer than those for general health conditions. The former Secretary of State recognised that the NHS “has a problem with basic, everyday sexism and an appalling culture of medical misogyny.” We welcome that acknowledgment, but we believe that the Department of Health and Social Care should ask the same questions of itself. As I say, new clause 57 would ensure that the average waiting time for diagnosis and treatment for elective conditions for women’s health issues does not exceed the average waiting time for wider NHS elective treatment. It would be a meaningful step towards parity and equality. As we know, in the NHS what gets measured gets done. The Government’s new women’s health strategy is welcome—it has more urgency and has the laudable goals of tackling medical misogyny, of faster diagnosis of conditions such as endometriosis, and of better pain management—but in comparison with the men’s health strategy that was released last year, it lacks teeth. Its goals are laudable, but it lacks a named academic network, a formal National Institute for Health and Care Research-aligned research mandate, a committed stakeholder governance group, a named condition-specific research investment at a comparable scale to that in the men’s health strategy and a formal accountability architecture with named organisations, governance structures and public reporting obligations. This time, we need to back the strategy with real investment in the services that impact women, which have been stretched to breaking point. New clause 58 would introduce an inquiry into the poor health outcomes faced by women. We hope that such an inquiry would achieve the same goal and shed a light on women’s health issues, which seem to get so little focus at the moment.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Sixteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  New clause 36 would introduce a mandatory individual duty for members of NHS trust and NHS foundation trust boards to escalate evidence of systemic medical malpractice to the Care Quality Commission, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Health Services Safety Investigations Body. It would also impose a collective duty on the board to formally refer the trust to regulators if staff raise concerns about malpractice. New clause 37 would require the Secretary of State to create a standardised framework for coroners and medical examiners to formally refer suspected health system failings, including systemic issues, directly to the police, the CQC, the Department of Health and Social Care and HSSIB, with a duty on coroners to participate. It would provide legal protection for those making such referrals. The new clauses were tabled in the light of the Ockenden review into failings at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust, which came out a couple of weeks ago, and other reviews, including the review of Mid Staffordshire some time ago, which showed that hospital management failed to spot, and more importantly deal with, systemic issues. Staff were dismissed, failures were hidden from regulators, and patients and their families were not listened to. In the case of Nottingham, the board commissioned a number of independent reports into maternity services, and when it did not see an answer it liked, it just commissioned another one. We feel strongly that those issues should have been referred onwards as soon as they were known about. The new clauses would introduce a mandatory duty and create a standardised framework within which such concerns could be raised. Coroners and medical examiners often spot trends or worrying failures in care that they think might hint at something systemic, but their main power is a regulation 28 order. When an order goes back to the hospital board, it investigates and reports back: “Everything is fine. We’ve dealt with the problem. There’s nothing to see here.” Coroners are often overworked and trying to get through huge court backlogs, so they do not have sufficient capacity to push back, even when they question the diligence of the internal review. We want to give them more powers and standardised routes to escalate concerns to the police, the CHC, the DHSC or the HSSIB , where they see fit. We need as many eyes on this as possible, because we have seen a defensive cover-up culture too many times. We tabled similar amendments to the Hillsborough Bill to achieve the same outcome. We all know that the NHS is under strain and overworked, but trust management need to be more transparent, open and receptive to staff concerns. Although I do not intend to push the new clause to a vote, I am interested to hear from the Minister what the Government plan to do to ensure that concerns are acted on more quickly.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as a member of the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety, which is opposed to the changes to HSSIB proposed in the Bill. Over the last couple of weeks, we have been reminded why we need an appropriate safety landscape when things go wrong. We have had the Donna Ockenden review into Nottingham maternity services. We have had Baroness Amos’s national review into the picture following a range of maternity scandals across the country. Yesterday evening, I attended the debate on the regulations to compensate victims of the infected blood scandal. Safety is at the top of all our minds at the moment, as it should always be. Something that has come across very strongly from Members of all parties, on both sides of the House, is that culture is critical to ensuring that those types of issues—the huge scandals—never happen again. Indeed, smaller scandals must never happen again, because people need to be free. Staff in particular need to have the confidence that, if they report concerns about the way they operate, they will be safe to do so without jeopardising the rest of their career, and that those concerns will be acted on and the lessons learned. Everybody here wants to achieve that. I do not think anybody is arguing about the fundamental principle that, when there are concerns, they need to be raised in a safe place and that the lessons from those concerns need to be learned. That is why I share the lack of understanding of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, about why rolling HSSIB into the CQC will change that culture, because the CQC is a regulatory body and HSSIB is an investigatory one. Their missions are fundamentally different. Putting them together compromises the independent investigation element in a way that is very difficult to overcome. We were told in the evidence to the Bill Committee by HSSIB’s chief executive that it is often told, “We tell you this; we wouldn’t tell a regulatory body.” It is clear that this perception of safety is critical to the way in which people interact with HSSIB. We also heard in evidence to the Committee that the CQC warned that, as it stands, the Bill could leave it fighting against itself in the High Court. We could get a scenario where the regulatory arm of the CQC sought access to HSSIB’s confidential investigation reports, while HSSIB, the investigative branch, tried to keep them secret to protect its independence. That is not a situation anyone wants to end up in, and I am sure that is not the intention of this clause. I think the shadow Minister has already made this point, so I will not labour it, but it is also important that the investigatory body must be able to examine the regulatory frameworks, commissioning decisions and oversight arrangements without institutional conflict. When I look back, for example, at the scandal that unfolded at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS Trust over the maternity failings, I see that the CQC had given that trust a good rating during the course of all those terrible things going wrong. The CQC’s process clearly failed in that situation. It is difficult to imagine an arm of the CQC turning around in that scenario and saying that the CQC got its own assessment wrong. If it had tried to do that, it is difficult to imagine how that might have played out and that people might have had confidence in raising that problem. I am also concerned about this because, as the Minister has alluded to, the CQC has faced significant criticism and publicly admitted that it has failed to carry out its functions to the best of its abilities over recent years. Although I welcome the Minister’s assurance that the transfer would happen only once the CQC was in a better place, the CQC might—again—be part of the problem in some instances, and HSSIB must be able to point to that where appropriate. Lib Dem amendment 5 attempts to introduce the principle that, if this must happen, there needs to be a firewall in the CQC to keep HSSIB operationally independent. To achieve that, the amendment proposes to insert into the process a committee that is operationally independent of—with a majority of people who are not on—the CQC. Opposition new clause 42 seeks to do the same thing. I would be open to any suggestions that the Minister might make to reassure us that HSSIB will continue to be operationally independent, for all the good reasons that hon. Members have outlined.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester has made some general points about Healthwatch and the importance of an independent patient voice; I will not reiterate them, because he made them very well, but I want to speak specifically about local healthwatches and the benefits that they bring. I find it quite difficult to hear in this room, so I hope the hon. Member for Lichfield will correct me if I have misunderstood the gist of his speech, but I was frankly astonished by the suggestion that if local managers had heard about the problems at Mid Staffs or at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust, the concerns raised in those extremely serious scandals would have been addressed. The reality is that the management of both providers knew exactly about the concerns in those trusts, and they did not address them. That is why we have Healthwatch. The hon. Member for Lichfield may be aware that my parents live in Stone, which was in the Mid Staffordshire constituency at the time. My mum was a clerk to Staffordshire county council, and I recollect very strongly that the health scrutiny committee at that council questioned the trust about its appalling mortality rate and was constantly reassured that there was nothing to see here. It absolutely failed to mark its own homework. The suggestion that my constituents Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths, who fought for the Ockenden report on Shrewsbury and Telford, did not first try the local services is, I think, missing the point. With the Ockenden report on Nottinghamshire a couple of weeks ago, we also saw that the hospital trust commissioned several reports into its own maternity services, which found that it was failing. Instead of acting on them, it brushed them under the carpet and commissioned another. The suggestion that providers are capable in the current culture of dealing with those issues does not, I am afraid, hold true in the way it should across every trust.

• 7 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  New clause 1, which I tabled, would require the Secretary of State to appoint a maternity commissioner within the Department of Health and Social Care to oversee national maternity services. This person should be someone with experience and expertise in maternity services, and not a political appointment. It is important to start by saying that I tabled the new clause before we had the report from Donna Ockenden on the Nottingham review, and last week’s report from Baroness Amos on her national review, both of which recommended the appointment of a maternity commissioner. Obviously, since then, the Secretary of State has announced that he will appoint a maternity commissioner. None the less, I will state the arguments for having one, and if the Minister can give us some assurances today, I will not press the new clause to a vote. Just to set the scene, which I think we all know too well, maternity services in England have suffered a series of high-profile scandals. The cost of political neglect has been paid by families in terms of trauma, injury and lost lives. We have known for a long time that maternity services in this country have been failing. Numerous recommendations have been made over that period, but they have not been effectively acted on in a consistent way, and Baroness Amos’s inquiry finally confirms that. It is important to say that the vast majority of births take place safely, successfully and happily. However, where things go wrong, having a baby safely has become a postcode lottery. Women are being routinely silenced, and staff who raise the alarm on unsafe care or systemic discrimination have been put off or crushed by a culture of fear. We therefore need to make England the safest country in the world to have a baby. The Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on that for a long time, and following the Ockenden and Amos reviews it genuinely feels that there is now the will and focus to deal with the problem once and for all. This issue has been going on for far too long. We thank the Secretary of State for hearing our campaign and Baroness Amos’s calls for a national maternity commissioner to oversee national standards and drive change. We also pay tribute to campaigners such as Louise Thompson and the former MP for Stafford, Theo Clarke; without their advocacy, and without so many women sharing their stories, we would not be moving forward. It is important to say that one individual—one maternity commissioner—will not solve all the issues in maternity by themselves, but they can help drive change and address recurrent issues, whether those are cultural or about safe staffing. They can hold Ministers to account, help restore public confidence in NHS maternity service and ensure that accountability exists. But I want to be clear that the buck should always stop with the Secretary of State; they hold the power and the purse strings, and this role cannot be used by Ministers as a way to shirk that responsibility. I hope the Minister will clarify a few key points. First, can she reassure us that the commissioner will be independent and not a political appointee? It is essential that this individual feels confident to hold the Government to account and have those difficult conversations. That is far less likely if they are a political appointee. Secondly, women have made it clear that for them to be reassured that this change will happen and happen meaningfully, they need a clear timetable for when the maternity commissioner will be in place and operating. Understandably, the Secretary of State has not been able to provide that yet, given the need for this Bill to pass through Parliament and for the statutory role to be on the books, and given the time it will take his maternity taskforce to define what it wants the role to look like and for the appropriate legislation to be written and put in place. However, we hope we can get a firm commitment to a timetable from the Minister today or, if not today, then on Report. We think the commissioner should be involved in the establishment of the taskforce, because it is important that it does not develop a plan that they are required to implement, despite it being something they personally would not have approved. I therefore hope the commissioner will be in place very quickly, even if only on a temporary basis, so that they are working to get the taskforce plan into place. We heard from the Secretary of State that the commissioner will co-chair the taskforce alongside him. That seems to be the right move, and I welcome it, but, as I said, it is important that they have some role in shaping its action plan, so that they can feel responsibility for it and be fully behind its implementation. Will the Minister commit to introducing a temporary maternity commissioner so that that can happen? Finally, we have heard reports that the taskforce is not meeting very regularly. I hope the Minister can reassure me that it is now meeting much more regularly and getting that plan into place as quickly as possible, and that the Secretary of State is fully on board in driving forward the commissioner’s role as soon as possible. New clause 13, which is also in my name, is about putting a duty on the Secretary of State to create a scheme to ensure that every maternity unit in the country achieves a good or outstanding rating from the CQC. I will not repeat some of the points I have just outlined about failing maternity services, but the first quarter of 2026 saw the worst ever recorded rate for maternity injuries. Four years ago, the Ockenden review into the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust, which is in my area, found that over 200 babies had died unnecessarily in Shropshire. Yet, despite several immediate and essential actions being put in place, a subsequent CQC review found that the majority of maternity units in this country did not achieve a good rating for safety—they were inadequate in some way. That is just not acceptable. Our package of measures includes the maternity commissioner, which the Government are obviously progressing with, and we are very pleased about that. However, we also need investment in the service to ensure that that maternity commissioner has the resources they need to make the changes required. We therefore call for one-to-one midwifery care for every woman in labour; a consultant on every labour ward 24 hours a day, seven days a week; a director of midwifery—a senior, experienced midwife—in every maternity service to ensure that more junior midwives on that ward are suitably supervised; the restoration of ringfenced service development funding; and a dedicated neonatal workforce plan. New clause 13 also requires an annual report to be laid before the House on the “effectiveness of the scheme”. That would allow Parliament to track progress and hold the Government’s feet to the fire on it. Baroness Amos has also called for regular reporting to Parliament to maintain accountability, albeit through the maternity commissioner. There seems to be consensus, here and across the NHS, on the need for meaningful and decisive action on maternity. There is a great deal of overlap between our plan and the recommendations Baroness Amos has made, and I hope the Minister will be able to take some of these points on board and incorporate them into the Bill.