Peter Prinsley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am an ENT surgeon. Why has there been no effective single patient record in the past? If there were such a thing, who would you give ownership of the data to? Sarah Woolnough: We have had developments over many years in the direction of a single patient record. We have shared care records; we have attempts in different parts of the country to move in that direction. On the one hand, we have been held back by legitimate concerns about trust, privacy and the right safeguards, but some practical barriers have also held us back. For example—and this is really important to make the single patient record a success—what does it take to ensure that we achieve interoperability, that the data is cleansed and that penalties are followed through if providers are not sharing data? We need to back up any legislative and policy intent with the resource and measures needed to make it happen. That is perhaps a bit of the history of why it has not happened. Sorry, what was the second part of your question?

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Who would the data belong to? Would it belong to the patient or to the healthcare provider? Sarah Woolnough: My reading of the legislation is that perhaps this issue is not quite resolved; the legislation does not seek to shift necessarily from having the GP as the data controller. Of course, there will be concerns as the record is brought together nationally. Ultimately, the data should belong to people and patients, but they rightly want to feel that it is protected and safeguarded appropriately through the system. There are a couple of other points to make as we design this. This is a work in progress, so it is not neat in the sense that you cannot say, “This is exactly what a single patient record is, and this is exactly what it will be for evermore.” I think the policy intent is to build and develop it over time. To give one example, patients and the public being able to understand who has access to their records, and for what purposes, might be really helpful in the process of building trust and belief that their data is being well looked after.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am a retired ENT surgeon and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Especially if it were the case that the patient were the data controller. Sarah Woolnough: Yes. Jacob Lant: Whoever ends up being the data controller, the most important thing is that patients have a right to express how their data is used. That is where it is really important to keep things like the national data opt-out up to date, and to ensure that it is clear and accessible for patients to express how their data is used for secondary purposes. That becomes much harder in a direct care scenario. If you restrict the sharing of data for direct care, you could inadvertently create a second-class system for people who are not in that. It is a really clear distinction. For secondary uses, we need a very clear opt-out, where people can understand how their data is used and express a preference.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I would love to amend the figures in my bank account—I would like to be able to go into my Lloyds bank account and add a nought to the end of the balance figure—but I cannot, because the bank controls that. But I am the one who has access to the data. Dr Byrne : I totally support that ambition. Patients and the public having more agency in their care, strengthening that relationship, and them being able to access their information through the NHS app is a great thing. That is hugely helpful, and there is real potential with the SPR to strengthen that. We have landed on agreement.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q So the ICB will commission it, but somebody will have to run it. Who should run a neighbourhood health centre? Maria Higson: If we want to be as open to change as possible, my argument would be that that should be decided locally. Would it not be fantastic if, for example, some of them were led by VCSEs that worked in close partnerships and had clinics where GPs came in? You can envisage a whole number of different scenarios, led by local communities and local organisations. This plays back to the health inequalities point, but that is how you do it, although it relies on you being open to different models and not trying to do a one-size-fits-all, which is really tricky when you are trying to implement.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Which organisations or people do you envisage running the neighbourhood health centres? Will they be run out of general practice organisations, or will the local authorities themselves be best placed to run them, so as to join up hospital care with community services? Councillor Wright: That is quite interesting; I was at a session this morning looking at communities, and there was a comment that for the NHS communities are about buildings, whereas for the local authority they are about people. I think it would be the ICBs and whoever they commissioned to provide neighbourhood health centres. I hope there would be enough input from the voluntary sector, the local authority, adult social care and public health—from everyone—but I see the ICBs as the commissioners and the people who organise them.

• 16 Jun 2026 · Health Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am an ENT surgeon. What do you think about giving the patient ownership of the single patient record as well as discretion over whether the information in that record is revealed to the clinical team? Dr Byrne: It is an interesting idea, but I am not sure. I heard your question earlier about data controllership specifically in this regard. You will not necessarily like my answer. There are two ways of answering the question; perhaps straightforwardly, legally, but also clinically. I will start with the legal answer, which in some ways is easier. Data controllership in data protection law is a very technical term; it is determined by who is making the decisions about processing the means of the data. An organisation running and controlling an electronic patient record would be the data controller. Obviously, this is ultimately a question for the regulator and the Information Commissioner’s Office to determine, but that would be the legal position, nevertheless. Clinically, we have to come back to thinking about what a patient record is for. Primarily, it is to provide good care in the context of the clinician-patient relationship. If you prioritise the needs of either side of that relationship, I think it is problematic; the needs of one must not outweigh the needs of the other. The clinical record is there to enable clinicians to record what someone is presenting with, the difficulties they are having, what investigations are appropriate, the findings and what the plan is. It needs to be there for that tool to work. To take you on a slight thought experiment, if it was entirely held within a patient’s control—however loosely we use that term, legally or otherwise—and we could all amend, correct, change or add our diagnoses, findings and treatments, that might be clinically problematic. That may not be the answer you want, but it is the straight answer, if I am honest, from both a clinical and legal perspective.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Defence Investment Plan · Hansard source

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  We are talking of spending, but modern warfare, like warfare since time immemorial, depends on the bravery of our fighting men and our fighting women. We also need a nimble and effective industrial base, for we used to have arrows, then there were bullets and shells, and now there are drones and tech. How can we be best prepared for the next war and support small and medium-sized enterprises in places such as Suffolk?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Local Plans · Hansard source

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  In Suffolk, many villages need new affordable houses, so what can be done to make the rural exception sites more attractive to developers?

• 15 Jun 2026 · NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  The question before us this evening is quite simple: are we prepared to rebuild NHS dentistry as a genuine public service? My constituents, and people across the country, demand and deserve NHS dental services that are accessible and available. I commend the campaign Toothless in Suffolk, which has been a tireless advocate, and many of my parliamentary colleagues who are in the Chamber this evening, who have spoken about their very own dental deserts. Families should not have to choose between going private and going without. The Americans talk about English teeth—wonky and yellow. That myth was dispelled, but sadly it is returning; children being admitted to hospitals with dental abscess and decay was once rare, but it is now familiar. Before the election, I spoke of the decay of the nation’s teeth as a metaphor for the decay of the nation—what an outrage! NHS dentistry disappeared in plain sight when the contracts were changed. The dentists simply switched their practice to private and informed their patients—it was not really a choice. This happened to me and, I expect, to many other Members. I was an ear, nose and throat surgeon in the NHS. I was paid to work at the hospital, not per case, but as part of a team tasked with providing a service to the population. The incentive was to work hard to benefit the greatest number of patients; nobody ever said to me that I could switch all my patients to strictly private operations in the hospital and charge a fee per case, yet that is what happened to NHS dentists. Surprise, surprise—private practice became very popular. There are plenty of dentists, although it is true that we could do with more. I welcome the new dental school at the UEA and commend the vice chancellor and his team for their work on it. I welcome the plans to increase the number of overseas dentists by increasing places for the General Dental Council qualifying exam, as there are many dentists who would like to work here. I also welcome the emergency dental appointments now widely available using the underspend in the NHS dental contract to provide sessional dental appointments. I definitely welcome the emphasis on prevention and the toothbrush campaigns.

• 15 Jun 2026 · NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  I thank my neighbour for his intervention. I agree that there is much that dental hygienists and dental nurses can do, especially in check-up work. There are many positive steps, and I commend our excellent Minister on everything he has done, but we urgently need the new contract and incentives and rewards for NHS dentistry. This debate is to ask the Government when that will happen, and what barriers are preventing that. The teeth of the nation depend on it.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Milburn Review: Interim Report · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that what is needed is a complete cultural change in our schools, giving equivalence of practical skills to academic pursuits? We have masses of rebuilding in our country after the wreckage of 14 years, including in Suffolk, yet we have no welders. Let’s fix this.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Preparedness for National Emergencies · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. Across the river, we can all see the covid memorial wall with a quarter of a million red hearts—a quarter of a million of our people lost. Few families were unaffected. My son is an accident and emergency doctor, and he was then working at a London hospital. His accounts of A&E were terrifying, and my wife felt that we had sent our son to war. There was inadequate protection for staff, with masks that did not fit and plastic aprons. PPE—personal protective equipment—was an acronym we had never heard before. Our hospitals simply did not have enough ventilators or intensive care facilities, and were forced to triage those who could be salvaged and those who could not. This must not happen again. We must be prepared, for who knows when there will be another pandemic. Let us learn the lessons and never forget those whom we have lost. Still today, there are healthcare workers with long covid and post-traumatic stress disorder. I think especially of our very young doctors and nurses, who were suddenly exposed to death and loss on levels quite unprecedented in our NHS. We must look after them. We must invest in pandemic research and preparedness. Public health is national health, and we must invest in it. Jenner first discovered vaccination in 1796 when he took pus from a cowpox lesion on a local milkmaid called Sarah Nelms and inoculated his gardener’s son, an eight-year-old lad called James Phipps—the first person ever to be vaccinated. Our country has a strong record of medical research, and we are all proud of it. Our scientists developed a covid vaccine that saved countless lives. Let me use this moment to make a further plea to do all we can in this House to support basic and applied medical research, for it is upon such scientific advances that we will all rely.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that we must have a single patient record, not simply federated records from other sources?

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I know of a quite frail diabetic patient with cancer, who underwent several operations as well as complicated chemo in London. He eventually decided that he was well enough to take a short holiday, so he went to Cornwall on the train. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving he was found in a state of collapse by his daughter, and taken to the nearest hospital late on a Saturday night. The doctors had no access to his medical notes, and no answer when they called the hospital in London, so they were puzzled. That situation is familiar to doctors. Patients are incredulous when they are told that we are unable to see all their medical records: “Surely everything is on the computer?” As a surgeon before becoming an MP, I worked in at least three different hospitals. There was no compatibility between the records, which meant that transferring care was complicated and hazardous. I would be asked to advise on a patient from another hospital, relying on a dictated note from the referring doctor, but I could not access the clinical records, the results of investigations such as the pathology test, scans or, crucially, the operating records. Consultations were delayed as I stared at creaking computers, with numerous software programmes, each individually protected by ever-changing and forgettable passwords, that slowly booted up. That obviously needs to change. I would link the NHS number to an unique single patient record. I would give ownership of the record to the patient, and let the patient be the custodian and the gatekeeper. That is the truly revolutionary idea. If someone could easily look at their medical record, with appropriate physician safeguards, they could monitor everything—blood pressure, heart rate—and perhaps there would be an incentive for them to look after their health a little better. Let us imagine for a moment the power of anonymised medical data for a population of 70 million people. The NHS is perhaps the largest complete set of health data on a whole population in the world. That is a huge resource for informing health policy and medical research. By tracking the health outcomes of millions of our fellow citizens, we can sort out all kinds of diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and mental health disorders. I can think of no greater innovation, or more helpful measure to improve the health care of this nation, than a single patient record.

• 1 Jun 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for that intervention, and I am aware that in various bits of the country such systems do exist. I would like to see a single patient record that is genuinely single, so that when my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher), who is sitting next to me, writes something in the record, I can see it, and when I write in my record, he can see it, and no letters are passing back and forth between us. That is why I am sure that legislating for the mandatory single record is what we must do, and as a surgeon who has worked for 40 years in the NHS, I will do everything I can to help.

• 1 Jun 2026 · UK Coastal Waters: Protection · Hansard source

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  12. What steps his Department is taking to protect UK coastal waters.

• 1 Jun 2026 · UK Coastal Waters: Protection · Hansard source

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  Off the tranquil coast of Suffolk lie critical pieces of infrastructure, communications cables and electrical installations. There are alarming reports of munitions that are capable of creating giant tidal waves, threatening our coastal communities and indeed our nuclear facilities. Will the Minister outline what steps the Government are taking to protect our coastal waters from hostile foreign activity and truly safeguard our national security?

• 21 May 2026 · Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill · Hansard source

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  I was interested in the hon. Gentleman’s comment about the shortage of welders. Does he agree that the Government’s plan for construction colleges of excellence, including the one in Bury St Edmunds, will be crucial for the provision of welders?

• 21 May 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his statement. I declare an interest as a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, but I speak for myself. The actions of Minister Gvir, seen on the news last night, are an utter disgrace. As a Jewish MP, I was ashamed, for sometimes it is not easy to be a Jewish MP in this House. Does the Minister agree that the actions of certain Israeli Ministers are not the responsibility of the Anglo-Jewish population, and that there can be no excuse for the terrible epidemic of antisemitism we have seen on British streets? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

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  I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention and agree that the BBC World Service is almost the best example of our country’s soft power. I welcome the extra investment promised by this Government to support its work, but I would like it to be greater. We will do all we can to support the World Service. The duty to protect democracy is a sacred duty of this House. It is a simple wish, and something I am sure we can all do.

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to be making a contribution to the debate on the King’s Speech. It touched on what, in my view, is the core foundation of the nation’s future, which is defensive readiness. My remarks will focus on what is a real part of our national defence: the defence of our democracy and our communities from hostile foreign influence. One might be forgiven for thinking that defensive readiness is about the quality of ships, aircraft, cyber-systems and military capabilities, but it is also about whether our elections are secure, whether our public debate is protected, and whether communities in this country can live free from hatred and fear. There is no doubt that foreign interference is a threat. The Rycroft review made clear that this country “faces a persistent problem of foreign interests seeking to exert influence on, and to interfere in, our politics.” That should be of concern to every Member of this House. Our elections are the foundations of our democracy. If hostile states can use online disinformation and covert influence to shape our political debate, they are attacking the public’s right to decide the future of this country freely and fairly. I am proud that this Government are rightly strengthening rules on political finance, including through tighter requirements on company donations and measures aimed at preventing foreign actors from using companies to influence UK politics. Some of that influence is well known, such as the millions of pounds from Thailand and the curious friendship between the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) and the world’s richest man. The Community Security Trust records antisemitic activity, which is now at record levels. I welcomed the eloquent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) and for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards), neither of whom are now in their seats. Not every antisemitic incident is foreign-directed, but it is clear that hostile foreign actors amplify hatred online and use it to further divide our society. That is why the threat from Iran and the IRGC matters so much. The Security Minister stated that the UK has responded to 20 Iran-backed plots since the start of 2022, presenting potentially lethal threats to British citizens and UK residents. That clearly presents a foreign policy and domestic security issue, and I strongly believe that the Government must tackle it head-on. What can we do to ensure defensive readiness? We must ensure strong election security, strong action against foreign online interference, and robust protection for Jewish communities facing real and sustained threats. My constituents, and communities across the country, rightly expect democracy to be protected and all their neighbours to be safe.

• 29 Apr 2026 · Agriculture: Government Support · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing this debate. I am concerned about the mental health of farmers. There is about one suicide a week among UK farmers. Does he agree that we must do everything we can to support the mental health of our farmers?

• 22 Apr 2026 · Junior Doctors’ Foundation Programme · Hansard source

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  I thank all hon. Members who came to speak in the debate. I particularly thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan), who gave very interesting Back-Bench contributions. I also thank the Minister and the Opposition spokespeople—the hon. Members for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and for Winchester (Dr Chambers)—for their contributions. It is quite true that the shadow Minister and I grew up on the same street—probably about 10 houses apart, but many more than 10 years apart. This has been an interesting debate, whose purpose was to highlight the plight of foundation doctors. As we have said, if we can fix the foundations, we will be able to fix the problems we have with our young doctors. I definitely think that this industrial dispute, which has been rolling and rumbling on for several years, is solvable. It sounds as though we were close to solving it and particularly to attending to the conditions of young doctors.