Layla Moran MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to all the Members who have shared their story; I feel we have learned a bit more today about how the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) became how she is. I am sure we have all heard so many heartbreaking stories from our constituents, and I want to thank all those who have contacted me, whether or not we agree, because sharing these stories is profoundly difficult. One constituent with incurable cancer contacted me, asking for the freedom to choose when to give up their battle. Her own brother had an incurable melanoma spreading down his neck, which left him barely able to speak to his loved ones. He went out at 2 am in his dressing gown, climbed on to a bridge and jumped on to a motorway below. This was witnessed by two girls who were walking home from a party. My constituent asks: “how many more need to take their own lives in horrific ways because they simply cannot bear the pain, discomfort and hopelessness any more?” She wants the right to decide for herself when enough is enough. Then there is the constituent whose sister went abroad to access assisted dying. The 84-year-old sang to her sister, who ended her life peacefully with her family around her. My constituent said: “It was a painless, peaceful and dignified death at the time of her own choosing. Together with giving birth to my children, it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my long life.” I do not believe that only families with means should be able to have that experience; it should be open to everyone. Let me turn to the issue of palliative care. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), who is a fellow member of the Health and Social Care Committee. Although we wrote the reports together, I have come to a different conclusion, with great respect. It is, frankly, a stain on successive Governments that palliative care is in this state. Our Committee’s findings were stark: commissioning variation creates a postcode lottery, bereavement support is frequently inaccessible, services are fragmented, workforce and skill shortages are widespread, and systemic inequalities persist.

• 11 Sept 2026 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I shall not. It is worth noting that the NHS has not been meeting its own standards on palliative care for decades. The then Minister for Care, the right hon. Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), appeared before our Committee in the spring, and he mentioned the importance of workforce. I ask again, where is that workforce plan? We need it, but that will not be the whole answer; we also need better data and early identification, clearer guidance and joined-up working with adult social care and local authorities. The Government have said that they will publish a modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care, and it is very positive that the interim MSF has been published, but let me tell the House how I see it as Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. I genuinely do not believe that palliative care would have been included in the early batch of MSFs if it were not for this Bill forcing the Government to do so. Furthermore, given all the issues and competing priorities of the NHS, let alone the competing political priorities of this Government or any other that comes after it in the next four years, I do not believe that palliative care will improve as fast as we want it to without the pressure of a Bill like this. I do not believe that this is an either/or proposition. I want palliative care to improve, therefore I will be voting for this Bill. I have to end with one more constituent’s story, and it is the story of Robert. His two parents had different views on this issue: his father did not agree with assisted dying, but his mother did. We are lucky in Oxfordshire that we have some of the best palliative care in the country. He described how her care was exemplary—she died without pain and was well looked after—but he felt that her wishes were not respected while his father’s were, and there were consequences to her not being able to access assisted dying, as her brother could not be there at her bedside when she passed. For those constituents who want a real choice at the end of life, I will tirelessly continue to want to improve palliative care, but I will also be supporting the Bill.

• 9 Sept 2026 · Summer Health and Resilience · Hansard source

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  May I welcome the Secretary of State to her place? I look forward to working with her as I have done with her predecessors. May I draw her attention to our Committee’s work on corridor care, and the correspondence between the Committee and the Minister for Secondary Care, who is in her place? I thought it was a constructive session. In our correspondence with the Department, we raised the issue of staff fatigue. Staff will understandably have questions, such as whether summer is the new winter, what now happens to the leave they were planning to take and the training they must attend, which they often cannot attend during the winter, so can she be clear with staff about that? In the letter responding to the Committee, the Department said that there are new NHS staff standards and new occupational health and wellbeing support, which is all fine, but it then says that there will be “a continued focus on workforce sustainability through the upcoming NHS Workforce Plan.” Where is that workforce plan?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  I have to say that I shed a tear—not necessarily at the sanctions part of the statement, but the part where the Government said that the occupation is illegal. Ever since my election as the first British-Palestinian MP, I have stood up to ask that question in statements such as this—I do not speak for the people of Palestine; I speak here for the people of Oxford West and Abingdon, but I could only ever speak for myself—and, frankly, I felt gaslit every single time I could not get a straight answer, so for that I say thank you. Now that Britain is standing tall on the world stage again—the United Nations was founded in Westminster in 1946, and we are applying international law without fear or favour again—how does the Foreign Secretary intend to work with Members across this House so that we can all play our part in ensuring that that institution and ours stand tall forever more?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady may be aware that the Health and Social Care Committee has a pre-appointment hearing with the incoming chair of the CQC tomorrow morning. One question I would like to ask them hinges on the answer to another question, on which I would have loved an update from the Minister. The previous Secretary of State said that HSSIB will not be merged with the CQC until the CQC is ready, but we have never had a list from the Government as to exactly what metrics they will use to decide when that happens. That will have a bearing on what kinds of questions we ask the chair and CEO. What specifically do the Government mean by “ready”? Does the hon. Lady not see that as a problem?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he has been a doughty campaigner on this issue, as have other members of the Committee, including the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman). We also know that much of the data is based on the data being taken from Chelsea and Westminster hospital, and not much else across the country. We have a lot of questions about that contract, hence why we came to the same conclusion. However, I primarily urge the Government please to consider new clause 85, in the name of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft), which would impose duties on ICBs for delivering education, health and care plans. In my constituency we held a roundtable to provide evidence for our own hearing on this issue—by the way, this was based on a recommendation that came out of the Education Select Committee’s work on EHCPs, so we decided to take up the “H” bit. In that roundtable, I heard movingly from families who kept saying things like, “Everything is a battle.” One child, Stefan, suffers from multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, which affects his hips, and needs support to get around. He is very bright and desperately wants to learn. His mother was at that roundtable, and told me that, exceptionally and against school policy, he is allowed to keep a phone on him. There is no one whom the school can employ to make sure he can be wheeled from class to class, so instead what happens—and mother and school have done everything they possibly can—is that Stefan rings his mum so that she can come from home and deliver him to his next class. Ridiculously, this is the kind of thing that goes to tribunal, and then those tribunals cannot hold the ICBs to the same level of accountability as local authorities. The whole thing is nonsensical.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for accepting our amendment on this issue. We pressed her and her colleagues over and over again—to the extent that we got a letter back that we honestly thought had been generated by AI, because the logic in it had no follow-through at all. I am delighted that she has listened. On what else does she intend to listen to us? In particular, there are amendments on the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, Healthwatch and health inequalities, which we will consider tomorrow, and, most importantly, the special needs amendment, which we are considering today. What else will she listen to us on?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention, and for the work of that Committee. We are doing work together right now on children’s mental health, so I am sure we will continue to pursue this theme. The point is that the impact was not just on that child; it was also on the mother, who could not work, and there was also the distress of having to battle the system. The mental health of both parents was affected. It does not need to be this way, and I genuinely believe that accountability is part of the answer. As such, my plea to the Government is simply to say that it is past time that the “H” part of EHCPs is put on a statutory footing, and I urge the House to support new clause 85.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  Let me start by taking up the theme of maternity, which has already been mentioned by a number of Members. I welcome the Government’s commitment to instating a maternity commissioner. I sit on the expert reference group—that is what we are called—that feeds into the maternity and neonatal taskforce, so I see how the Government are trying to pull all these different issues together. The Health and Social Care Committee has heard repeatedly, and across a number of inquiries, how important this issue is, and we need someone who is independent of Government and able to knit it all together. Our Committee’s “Black Maternal Health” report heard how workforce shortages are undermining efforts to improve maternity care, data is lacking, and there is a culture in which women, particularly black women, are not listened to. Investment and training are needed to tackle that. The “First 1000 Days” report found that the UK has some of the worst early years health outcomes in Europe, including in infant mortality, and we have called for proper targets for early years professionals in the long-lost workforce plan. As an aside, where is the workforce plan? I would love to see it. Locally, Oxford University hospitals provide maternity care for my residents, and indeed for my own family—baby took their first steps this weekend, finally! It was a momentous occasion. I also reflect genuinely that there are people in my National Childbirth Trust class who did not have as good an experience as we did. They have been proactively contacted by the hospital to have an apology and an explanation given for their awful, traumatic birth, and they did not even complain. In part, that is a result of the CQC inspections and, more importantly, the inclusion by Baroness Amos of OUH and John Radcliffe hospital in her report. I toured the hospital again this summer and heard specifically from trust leaders and midwives. They are doing everything they can to respond to all the criticisms being levelled at them by families, but they told me that there is only so much that they can do without a new building. Baroness Amos’s report said: “The maternity and neonatal units sit across multiple floors… We saw delivery suites that didn’t have windows, that were cold, small and cramped and had pillars in the middle of them affecting where equipment could be placed”. A large number of the suites did not have en suites. Can you imagine what it must be like to give birth in those rooms? As the Government knit together their action plan, I beg them not to forget investment, particularly capital investment, when they empower the commissioner to do their good work. Let me move on to a few other amendments. I support the work to tackle health inequalities in new clauses 90 and 91. Our Committee hears over and over again that if we want to unlock productivity in the NHS, that is where we need to focus. I also support the campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) and his cross-party new clause 34, which echoes the findings of my Committee. The Government really need to think again when it comes to Palantir and instead supercharge the capability of UK-based companies.

• 2 Sept 2026 · Rewiring the State · Hansard source

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  I warmly welcome the First Secretary to her post. I also welcome her good judgment in taking one of the esteemed former members of our Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), to be her Parliamentary Private Secretary. I know the First Secretary has probably already had some of this in her ear already, but I cannot lose this opportunity. This morning, the Health and Social Care Committee, with the Education Committee, heard moving evidence about why death by suicide has now overtaken almost everything else as the No. 1 reason that we lose children in this country. Often when we dive into issues like this, we find that education is not talking to health or to the local authorities. It cannot be beyond the wit of man, or indeed a shared governance structure with the right fiscal flows, to stop these stories happening. Will the First Secretary of State meet me to discuss what we are seeing in the Committee so that we can unlock the potential in all parts of society, because without doing that, I fear that the devolution agenda might fail?

• 1 Jul 2026 · Israel: E1 Zone Expansion · Hansard source

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  Build E1, kill the prospect of Palestine. It is that simple, and that is not a conspiracy theory; it is Israel’s stated aim. We have a small window to affect what happens next because the Israeli elections are happening soon, as the Minister said. If we are going to make any difference to the ordinary Israeli politic about who they decide to elect, we need to act now and turn this on its head. He talks about the technicalities in banning trade with the illegal settlements. I have laid a Bill that makes it quite simple: prohibit it now, put the onus on the Israeli Government to sort it out, and if they change their policy, we will change ours.

• 30 Jun 2026 · National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation · Hansard source

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  I, too, thank Baroness Amos, her team and, most especially, the families who so bravely gave the evidence that has formed this report. Further to the conversation about accountability, the Secretary of State will have noticed that some families are concerned that the commissioner is just one person, and that there is too much for them to do. Can he make clear that the buck stops with him and, indeed, the PM, and that he will not let go of this? The commissioner will report every six months to the Health and Social Care Committee—we welcome that—and once a year to Parliament. Further to that, will he personally commit that the Secretary of State will seek permission from Mr Speaker to make a statement to the House once a year, so that they can be held personally accountable for the progress made too?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on the NHS estimates and, in particular, the impact of the UK-US pharmaceutical deal. Let me start by briefly talking about the estimates themselves. I am sure that every Member has a copy of them; I have one every year. Given that we spend £211 billion on the NHS, it is rather extraordinary that £201 billion of that is simply two lines in this document. Last year, I made a request of the Department of Health and Social Care, in the light of the deal, that we get not just a better breakdown of the costs of the deal, but, more importantly, the ability to scrutinise the estimates. The Treasury’s own guidance says that the information in the estimates should be “informative” to readers. We can all read it, but—goodness me!—it tells us absolutely nothing. My request of the Department again, and much more publicly, is to sort this issue out. Other Departments do this much better, so there is no reason why we cannot. The information exists; it is a question of putting it correctly in a spreadsheet. Today, I hope that we will discuss the pharmaceutical deal. I have to admit that I had seen stuff about the deal, but it was not until a whistleblower came to my surgery that I really began to understand the implications of it. They said: “I am a doctor, a public health specialist, and a NICE employee. I am deeply concerned by the plan to change the NICE cost-effectiveness threshold. I continue to believe that the NHS would be better off if ministers decide to scrap their original plan to spend more on new, less good value medicines, and used the money instead to provide basic things that we already know are good value, but don’t manage to provide adequately.” Let us start by explaining what this deal does. It is worth mentioning that it is not a free trade agreement. That is quite important, because we will not get the normal mechanisms of scrutiny. This is one of the only ways that we can scrutinise it. We certainly do not get a proper vote on it. Different Committees of this House have raised that as a key point, so I am delighted that we are able to discuss it. The deal agrees with the USA that there will be no tariffs on UK pharma exports until January 2029, and we have agreed a series of measures in return. The most important of those, which was raised by my whistleblower, is the changes to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence thresholds. We must remember that NICE was set up as an independent body of Government to make health economics assessments for treatment and medicines, to maximise value for money. I do not need to remind the Minister that providing value for money for the taxpayer is in the NHS constitution. The Government gave themselves powers to direct NICE on cost-effectiveness thresholds, raising them from £20,000 to £30,000 up to £25,000 to £35,000 for each quality-adjusted life year. In plain speech, that is basically the amount of money that we would spend on a medicine to increase people’s good life expectancy by one year. Historically, the NHS has had a very good deal on medicines. That is in part because of where the QALY is set; in fact, research has been done that suggests that we could have put the figure even lower. It is not a budget, and does not have to increase with inflation. Some have made that case, and I will come back to that point in a moment. The second part of my speech relates to changes to the rebate mechanism. There is a voluntary agreement between the British pharmaceutical industry companies, and the NHS caps the amount that it spends on branded medicines. If the NHS spends more, it claws back some of the money from those companies. Under the deal, the UK Government are limiting that to 15%, which is down from 22.9%. Let us put those two things together: we have the NHS paying more for medicines, and receiving less back through rebates. There is an agreement in the deal that the UK will increase support for life sciences and spending on new medicines from 0.3% of GDP to 0.6% of GDP by 2036. That is an increase of spending on medicines, particularly, from 10% to 12% of the NHS budget.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I am frustrated, because everything the Minister is saying is in the press release. Can she please answer the question? Will the Government release the impact assessment? If they will not, will they at least allow a Select Committee to see it confidentially?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his speech, because he is showing how important this debate is. A lot of this has not been flushed out. Medicines UK, which is responsible for a lot of the generics that he talks about, disagrees with him, but that is a conversation for another time. My question is specific: does he agree that the lack of transparency behind this deal, and the lack of an impact assessment, is a material issue and that we should ask the Government to release such information?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  That is a really good point. I will come back to generics, which make up nine in 10 of the medicines that the NHS uses. There is also an issue of devolution here, which I am sure other Members will cover. At the moment it is very complex, and it is not at all clear how the deal will apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular. We cannot divorce this deal from the geopolitics. It is only happening because Trump decided that he wanted to slap tariffs on every country in the world and on a number of different sectors. The reason why the US came after the NHS is that historically, we get an incredibly good deal, but we have to admit—this is why this debate is so important—that we are using the NHS and NICE in geopolitical negotiations to appease the current President of the United States. Although Trump probably wants to be President for much longer than he will be, his term will come to an end, but the effects of this deal will last much longer than the period of time he might be in office, and the amounts of money involved are eye-watering. I wish we had more information in the estimates, but everyone knows the pressure the NHS is under.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I believe that by the end of my speech, the hon. Gentleman and I will be in violent agreement, if we are not already. There is one more aspect of this, incidentally: the supply chains deal, which I understand is being crafted. We do not have time to go into that.

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that lack of transparency is the nub of my speech today. There are some potential positives in the deal. At the 10 February sitting of the Business and Trade Committee, a representative of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said that zero tariffs and commitments to the pharmaceutical market in the UK were “welcome” and had been “sought for some time”. The Government’s press release points out that patients will get access to innovative new medicines—who does not want that? Of course we all want that, especially those who have incurable cancers and so on, but there is a trade-off. We all want to bolster innovation in the UK. I have an interest—I am the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. We are the other side of the Oxford-Cambridge growth arc. Biomedical sciences are going to drive my local economy, so I absolutely want that to happen, but there are also some important criticisms of this deal. First, Medicines UK, which represents a large number of pharmaceutical companies based here in the UK, has real concerns. The life sciences sector plan has stalled, and Medicines UK points out that even though the companies it represents supply nine out of 10 medicines to the NHS, those companies are basically not recipients of what is good in this deal. Mark Samuels, its chief executive officer, has also pointed out that while there may be new investment in this country, particularly in R&D, if we want to create jobs and strengthen the economy, we must also address the inadequate support for the production of goods in the UK. That is where long-term value is created, and it is where the UK misses out compared with other countries. I point colleagues to Denmark, for example, which has had extraordinary success in its economy because it not only invests in R&D, but ensures that a proportion of the manufacturing happens in Denmark. That is what drives economic growth. I now turn to the key point, which is the money. We do not know how much this deal is going to cost. There are two suggested amounts: the Institute for Fiscal Studies puts the cost at £9 billion, but the House of Commons Library briefing points out that the 0.6% of GDP in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast actually amounts to £14 billion. As has been mentioned, that is an eye-watering amount of money, in the same period that we need to be spending money on dentists, GPs, capital investment, attendance at A&E, prevention, the shift to community and the 10-year plan. When we should be seeing money delivered to the frontline, instead we are seeing money diverted to a small number of very large American-based pharmaceutical companies with no transparency, little debate and absolutely no vote in this House. It is the lack of scrutiny that I take issue with, and there are economists who point out that we could have an extra 330,000 excess deaths by 2036. The Minister is looking quizzically at me, but she has information that I do not. It could be that those economists are being alarmist, but maybe they are not. We simply do not know, because the Government refuse to publish the impact assessment owing to commercial sensitivities. Normally at this stage, I have a series of questions, but today—and this not just in the interests of time—I have only one: where is the impact assessment, and if the Government will not release it, what are they hiding?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Department of Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I am happy not to. Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).

• 24 Jun 2026 · Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services · Hansard source

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  I, too, pay tribute to those families who came forward with their stories, but also to the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of families across the country who are hearing these stories today and are triggered because it reminds them of their own, including in my area in Oxfordshire. What struck me most about the report was the section on leadership and culture, and how when midwives and members of staff raised the alarm, they did not have access to the board, and board members were not curious enough to ask the right questions. I am also struck that in the Secretary of State’s answers—he is right to point to the national recommendations that are yet to come; our understanding is they are coming next week—he failed to mention whether there will be any pot of money to ensure that any recommendations that need double-running in order to happen quickly will have the necessary resources. Can he assure the House not only that will his taskforce seek to implement these recommendations, but that he will ensure that the money exists for staffing, training and buildings so that they are implemented as quickly as possible, so that we do not have to sit here crying on these Benches on behalf of our constituents any more?

• 22 Jun 2026 · Pathways Study: Puberty Suppression · Hansard source

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  I welcome the statement and this approach. I thank the MHRA for engaging with the Committee when we asked it specific questions about this. It told us that the role of the regulator is to ensure that participants in any clinical trial are kept safe and are exposed to medicine only if there is a reasonable expectation of a positive effect, and that is what was foremost in its mind. It also reassured us that if it had not felt 100% assured, it would have not allowed the trial to go forward. There was a lot of disquiet about the iterative process that the trial has gone through—that it was stopped, paused and then started again. Could the Secretary of State outline for the House how usual or unusual that is? What support can the NHS offer those families who might have hoped to be part of the trail but now find themselves excluded from it?

• 16 Jun 2026 · Thames Water · Hansard source

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  In recent months, 35,000 houses in West Oxford have had their water pressure cut by Thames Water, in some cases by as much as 50%. Veronica in Osney Island says that her upstairs shower is now nothing but a dribble, and is barely usable. This is not a service; it is a scam, and my constituents are having to foot the bill for it. Their bills were put up last year. Can the Secretary of State explain to them what we are waiting for? Why can we not just let this failed company fail, and start again?

• 9 Jun 2026 · Health Inequalities · Hansard source

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  The Health and Social Care Committee’s most recent report into healthy ageing highlights the unacceptable 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of the country. It also points out that physical activity can be as effective, if not more effective, in treating the ailments of older life than pharmaceutical intervention. That is why we recommend that the Government target the least active groups to narrow that gap and embed activity into clinical practice. I welcome the Secretary of State to his place. We are yet to have our first conversation, so let us have our first meeting, in which we might discuss this issue and more, as well as how to embed tackling inequalities into the whole of the national health service.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Equality Act 2010: Code of Practice · Hansard source

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  Oxford is proud to have the highest proportion of trans and non-binary people of any area outside London, so it was with sadness that I received an email from a constituent, Jennie, who already accompanies their spouse, who is trans, to the toilet, because she is so worried for their safety. Last year, 3,800 hate crimes were reported against trans people, and the worry in the community is that things will only get worse, not better, as a result of this guidance. This weekend is Oxford Pride, and the Liberal Democrats and I will stand proudly with our trans and non-binary neighbours. My question to the Minister is simple: what if she is wrong? What if her assurance that this decision will protect trans and non-binary rights does not come to pass and the situation gets worse? Is she open to working with others across this House to fix this issue, or is this a done deal?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure—and slightly surreal—to follow the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), because he is very much an architect of the Bill, and I am sure that we would have had many questions for him about what he meant by parts of it. It was a pleasure to work with him when he was in the role, and I look forward to working with the new Secretary of State too. We all understand what is at stake here: far too many feel that the system is not working for them. The latest British attitudes survey showed that more than half of people in this country are dissatisfied with the NHS. That should give us all pause. When the abolition of NHS England was first announced, I welcomed its boldness because our population faces enormous challenges. Healthy life expectancy has not just stalled; it has gone backwards. We are getting older and we are getting sicker—so, yes, we need to be bold. There is widespread recognition that the three shifts in the 10-year plan, to community, to prevention and to digital, are the right ones, and if achieved—and that is an “if”—they will be transformative, but along with the enthusiasm, which I share, there is a big dollop of scepticism. Twenty-five per cent of the public do not believe this plan will make any difference to them, and we must prove them wrong. My message to this Government is this: “Focus on the plan. It is the right plan, and achieving it will be an enormous challenge. Also, please do not forget social care.” We must remember that this merger, which could risk becoming a distraction from the plan, did not start with the Bill; it started with the announcement in March 2025, and the effects are already being felt in the NHS. This was not in the manifesto, so it came completely out of the blue, with many people waking up and discovering that their jobs were at risk only from reading the news. It has been brutal. As a result, the Institute for Government told the Health Committee in our hearing just before the recess that there has been a “large drop in morale”, which is unsurprising. There has been uncertainty, poor communication and disruption. I have heard at first hand how decisions have been snarled up as key people have left, and we must learn from previous reforms that the savings often do not materialise because many of the same people who leave first end up being rehired—a point made in the Committee hearing a couple of weeks ago by the chair of NHS England, Penny Dash. So, despite my initial enthusiasm, there is much that we need to chew over. In the six inquiries and 13 one-off sessions that our Committee has done so far, there are clear themes for change, and it is on those that I will judge the Bill. The first theme is innovation. Pilots and moonshots are good, but they should not replace evidence-based prevention and joined-up thinking. For example, the Government’s obesity moonshot focuses on weight-loss drugs, but ignores the obesogenic environment of advertising, ultra-processed foods and lifestyle pressures. It tackles the symptoms and not the cause. And too often, these pilots show promise but are then never scaled up. What a waste! Innovation should be a mindset, not a buzzword, and we should strengthen clause 6 of the Bill to ensure that the long term is embedded from the outset. The second theme, which has come up already, is patient voice. Our inquiry into severe mental illness laid bare a system where vulnerable people feel like pinballs in a machine.