Peter Prinsley MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 3 Jul 2025 · NHS 10-Year Plan · Hansard source

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  I welcome this brilliant plan. I particularly love the double helix that is featured on the front cover, because genetic discoveries have the greatest promise of all. If we all knew a little bit more about our health, we might all look after it a little bit better. Does the Secretary of State agree that the single patient record, with easy patient access, will be transformative?

• 3 Jul 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Can the Leader of the House assist me? I am concerned by the decline in clinical academics, who are crucial to the training of our future health workforce. To which Department must I address this matter? The Department of Health and Social Care defers to the Department for Education, and the Department for Education defers to the Department of Health and Social Care. How can we resolve this? May we please have a debate in Government time on the future of clinical academics and medical research?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Sadly, we have all seen the devastation caused by modern missiles. Germany is preparing to receive the Arrow 3 missile defence system, ordered just two years ago, which can intercept intercontinental missiles at 2,500 km. What plans have the Government to equip this country similarly?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Glastonbury Festival: BBC Coverage · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for her excellent statement. The murder of hundreds of Jews at the Nova music festival in October 2023 sparked this war, and the irony of broadcast antisemitism at Glastonbury here in the UK is not lost on any of us. How are Jews in this country, such as myself, to be reassured about editorial processes at the BBC, and who on earth will be held accountable for this error?

• 26 Jun 2025 · G7 and NATO Summits · Hansard source

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  F-35As—hard power; BBC World Service—soft power. Does the Prime Minister agree that the World Service is a crucial element of our soft convening power?

• 26 Jun 2025 · BBC World Service Funding · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the funding of the BBC World Service. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. Earlier this afternoon, hon. Members may have heard the Prime Minister agree with me that the World Service is a crucial asset of British soft power. Therefore, the debate may be superfluous in some respects, but as we are all here I think we will carry on with it. There are few institutions in the world that so consistently live up to the values we claim to cherish—truth, independence and freedom—as does the BBC World Service. Together with the royal family, the BBC is one of a tiny handful of British brands known by billions worldwide—and not just known, but trusted. It broadcasts in 43 languages to 400 million people a week, bringing impartial news to some of the most dangerous and controlled places on Earth. It is a beacon for those who are denied the right to free expression, and a trusted voice in a world increasingly awash with propaganda, intimidation and disinformation. It certainly strengthens our hand when we deal with tyrants worldwide. That is why it is so important to ensure its continued funding. The World Service costs £366 million annually to reach an audience of approximately 400 million people every week—what fantastic value! Across the globe, rogue and authoritarian Governments are increasingly leveraging media to undermine free societies. We see that clearly in Hong Kong, where the Chinese state is targeting journalists who report on the Chinese state’s human rights abuses, and we have seen it in Moldova, where last year’s presidential elections were disrupted by Russian disinformation—false stories pumped on to people’s phones by hostile powers. Those dangers have been only amplified by recent cuts to American foreign spending. The Voice of America was silenced by President Trump.

• 26 Jun 2025 · BBC World Service Funding · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member—my recent squash partner—for his intervention, I agree that we must be sure that whatever the BBC says is true; that must be the case. The BBC Arabic service—the language service—disappeared some time ago, and that is to be regretted. In Pakistan, a video falsely claimed to show the aftermath of an Indian airstrike on Pakistani air bases. That went viral—it was viewed over 400,000 times—stoking widespread fear and heightening tensions with India over Kashmir, but actually it was mislabelled footage of the 2020 Beirut port explosion. BBC Verify debunked the claim and calmed the situation. In 2023, a false story spread across the internet that alleged that the newly elected President of Nigeria had forged his university degree. There was anger and unrest until a report by the BBC global disinformation team revealed it to be false, which defused the situation. Those are not isolated stories; they are part of a growing global pattern. The fight is particularly crucial in an era when young people increasingly consume news online. A few weeks ago, I visited a school in my constituency at Bury St Edmunds and asked the children how they got their news. I said, “Do you get your news online?”, and almost every hand went up. Among 12 to 15-year-olds in the UK, only the BBC can compete effectively with the online tech giants. To continue to compete effectively and divert attention from untrustworthy sources, the BBC needs the resources to excel in what a young person recently told me is called the “attention economy”. With appropriate funding for new digital content, the BBC can significantly expand its impact. In recent weeks, our attention has undoubtedly been drawn to the middle east, particularly to Iran, and the power of the BBC’s digital reach is no clearer than through the work of BBC Persian. It recently reached over 32 million users on Instagram in just five days, despite the platform’s having been blocked by the Iranians. People were so desperate to view trusted BBC news that they risked their safety by using virtual private networks, or VPNs, to bypass Iran’s strict internet censors. Some posts achieved more than 12 million views. When Iran restricted internet access, BBC Persian increased broadcasts from eight hours to nearly 24 hours a day and launched an emergency radio service. Despite the fact that there were no reporters on the ground, the team diligently verified information amid severe misinformation campaigns. With adequate funding, the BBC World Service always steps up during global crises, delivering a public good for the benefit of a whole country.

• 26 Jun 2025 · BBC World Service Funding · Hansard source

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  I thank all hon. Members who have come here this afternoon for what I think has been a very interesting debate. It strikes me that there is more or less universal support for what is, I hope, a universal service. I was pleased that there was an increase of £32 million in the grant this year; I do not know whether that has anything to do with an interaction I had with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the Labour party conference. I went to an event put on by the BBC and listened to Katya Adler and some of the journalists there, and I was very moved by it, so I stood and asked a question about the £100 million cost of an F-35 jet, which seemed to me to be the same as the funding given by the Foreign Office to the BBC. I stood up and asked, “Do you think that we’d be better off with one more F-35, or should we just look after the BBC?” The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and I were in a coffee queue about an hour later, and he asked me whether I was enjoying the conference. I said, “Well, I was.” I explained about what happened, and he said, “Oh, dear. This conference is working very well, because you’ve just been to the BBC and they’ve just told you their story. Now, you’ve just told me that, and now I shall have to give them some more money.” I am hoping that Parliament continues to work in that way, but I agree that we need to have a long-term funding solution for what is one of our most precious resources. I thank everyone very much for coming this afternoon.

• 26 Jun 2025 · BBC World Service Funding · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The Voice of America was established to broadcast truth and liberty into European nations darkened by fascism and Soviet oppression. When the editor of Russia Today heard that the Voice had been silenced, he said it was “awesome”, which only highlights the importance of the BBC and Britain on the global stage. We should encourage the United States to reconsider its decision and restore the funding, but we must prepare ourselves to fill the gap through the World Service. That will mean additional demands on resources. The World Service is vital in the battle against misinformation, which is a modern fight unfamiliar to those who will recall a world where all media outlets provided trusted and verifiable facts. Misinformation, along with confused or false facts, has become one of the most pressing global threats, fuelling doubt, division and instability. The BBC World Service excels in countering misinformation. BBC Verify and its language services are being used to rigorously fact-check. They use cutting-edge AI to rapidly tackle and neutralise viral disinformation. Only this week, we heard how AI has been used to establish a new Polish language service.

• 26 Jun 2025 · BBC World Service Funding · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that remark. The World Service is ultimately about the listener. We must bear in mind, when considering the funding settlement for that service, that there are individuals living under authoritarianism whose freedom of expression is so very restricted. They rely on the World Service to provide an accurate and comprehensive global perspective. Funding the World Service is not just about serving elites; it is about earning respect abroad and safeguarding future freedom. Let us not be complacent when it comes to the funding of the BBC World Service. It is an important source of essential soft power and a way for the country to punch well above its weight on the international stage, to spread truth, to lighten the grip of totalitarianism, and in some circumstances prevent the need for us to use hard power at all. That is exactly what the Prime Minister told us this morning. It has been said that we could not recreate the BBC World Service today if we started from scratch. There is not the political will and no one would be willing to take such a risk. If we lose the World Service, we simply will not get it back. I do not think we should take that risk. The Government were bold to increase funding for the World Service last year, but a more steady and long-term funding arrangement must be put in place to prevent what I fear will be death by a thousand cuts.

• 26 Jun 2025 · BBC World Service Funding · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree. I first got into this subject when I met World Service refugee correspondents from BBC Persian and BBC News Russian at the Labour party conference. I so admired what they were doing, and it was a real inspiration for me. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office contributes £104 million a year to the World Service budget of £366 million. The BBC does an awful lot with its licence fee. I was told this week that, for the cost of a cup of coffee a week, it delivers drama, comedy and news across TV and radio, as well as one of the world’s most visited websites. However, money is tight and there are serious fears that its essential work will be chipped away. Like many, I would describe the BBC World Service as a tool of British soft power. Remarkably, the entire Foreign Office contribution to the BBC World Service is roughly equivalent to the cost of a single F-35 jet. We lately agreed to purchase a whole lot more of those, and that was the right move because we need to boost defence in a dangerous world, but it would be a critical mistake to invest heavily in just one aspect of our security while neglecting another equally essential aspect. Global inflation and rising costs are putting the World Service in increasing funding difficulties, and without more support there is a risk that it will lose critical technological capabilities, especially among younger audiences. Although broadcast services currently account for two thirds of the World Service’s reach and they remain crucial, the future is digital, and on digital platforms the BBC is not just competing with Russia and China but is up against Facebook, TikTok, Google and the others, so we need sustained investment. Despite all the funding challenges, BBC World Service journalists continue to bravely provide quality journalism in the most challenging circumstances, often at great personal risk. When it comes to Iran we rely heavily on the work of BBC Persian’s brave journalists who face, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) said, threats, asset seizures and passport confiscations just for doing their jobs.

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  As a young doctor, I would have found the measures that we are debating completely unconscionable, but now that I am an old doctor, I feel sure that this is an essential change. That is because of what I have seen over 45 years in hospitals. Our patients are at the centre of my thoughts as we consider this profound change. We must of course invest in palliative care, and we have some of the best palliative care in the world in this country. Some will say that there are no limits to the comfort that expert palliative care can deliver, but that has not been my observation, particularly as I think about some of my patients with advanced, disfiguring head and neck cancers, and about the terrible loss of dignity and autonomy that I have seen. That is what people fear, and that is why I believe that we are right to give people a choice—a final autonomous choice. I applaud the Bill Committee, and thank the many witnesses who contributed, for this is not easy work. The House has spent hours debating the amendments. The panel of the legal expert, the social worker and the psychiatrist will ensure oversight and scrutiny, and I have no doubt that this is better than a single judge, no matter how distinguished or wise. Family circumstances, free will and mental state will all be considered. I do not think we will see coercion to undergo assisted dying; families are more likely to talk patients out of it. I call this a Bill to assist people who are dying. The measures are not for people who are not dying. People who are terminally ill may live for a long time. They are not yet dying, and the measures are for them until they are. All of us must make the very best of every day, whether our lives be long or short. Of course, that is especially true for those with a terminal diagnosis. The vulnerable must be protected, and I believe that the Bill will indeed protect them—people who are disabled, and who have mental health disorders. Profound sadness as our lives are ending is quite normal, and clinical depression should be treated, but my observation is that the patients we are talking about are clear-headed and very rational. The idea that we risk opening a floodgate or some sort of mission creep is quite wrong. People will have a choice, and will make arrangements to be used only if needed. That will give final peace of mind—it is a final insurance policy. Let me come back to the patients I have treated over my long career, and to the wise words of the nurse who has been my compassionate colleague for many years. She said this was an essential change. There was the matron who recalled the carotid blow-out of her patient as a student many years ago—an image that never left her. There is the absolute sanctity of human life, but we are not dealing with a choice between life and death; we are dealing with death or death. There is also the sanctity of human dignity, and fundamental to that is surely choice. Who are we to deny that to the dying?

• 18 Jun 2025 · HS2 Reset · Hansard source

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  I welcome the statement from the Secretary of State. May I speak today of the east of England? The right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) famously promised a dividend when he cancelled HS2 North, so might we expect some of that to be used to replace the crucial Haughley and Ely junctions, in order to finally sort out the rail connections in the east of England?

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that the barbiturates that we are considering are conventional agents? They have been used in anaesthesia to cause loss of consciousness and suppression of respiration for generations. These are not novel substances.

• 12 Jun 2025 · Spending Review: Health and Social Care · Hansard source

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  I very much welcome yesterday’s statement, the funding, and the fact that the funding will go on for several years. Does the Minister agree that we depend on the people in our NHS? Will she join me in congratulating Dr Cameron and all the teams at the West Suffolk hospital, who, by adopting a whole-hospital approach, have abolished corridor care and improved the hospital’s throughput, using a model that could be widely adopted?

• 12 Jun 2025 · Long-term Medical Conditions · Hansard source

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  I thank all who have contributed to this interesting discussion. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and Rushden (Gen Kitchen), who has acquitted herself extraordinarily well and should be congratulated. It is quite obvious that many of our fellow citizens are depending on us. It is also obvious to me that the politics of healthcare really do matter. We have an opportunity to do something about this, and we must seize that opportunity, because I believe that is one of our great missions. I thank everyone very much for coming to the debate this afternoon.

• 12 Jun 2025 · Long-term Medical Conditions · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. Long-term conditions need a long-term plan. We were promised one of those, and it cannot come soon enough. The Chancellor’s statement yesterday, which committed to a 3% real-terms rise in NHS funding each year, gives me enormous hope for the future of our health service. Some 70% of that funding will likely go to the treatment of long-term conditions, so it is incredibly important that we consider how we should treat them. Most of us at some point will collect a few long-term conditions. Some of us are born with them; sometimes, they are serious disabilities. I am sure that we will hear some stories of those challenges. I reached out to the people of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket and heard many stories about their experiences of using our NHS. All too often, it is the same story: it is those with long-term conditions, not deadly diseases, who feel most let down now. The reality for many is that by the time they reach my age, they are fortunate if they have never had to visit a clinic or see a nurse about something that is no longer working quite as well as it should. The wheels begin to fall off all of us eventually. Living with a long-term condition has a profound impact on people. It can mean lost work days, missed opportunities and, for many, being pushed out of the workforce altogether. When people are unable to work because of poor health, they are cut off from society and their quality of life obviously declines. That also has a terrible effect on the economy. It is estimated that successfully addressing the crisis in long-term sickness would increase GDP by between £109 billion and £177 billion over the next five years, generating billions of pounds of additional tax revenue. This is a growing trend and as the population gets older it will simply become more pressing. I worry that we have not truly adapted our medical system to deal with this reality. When I was a medical student, a heart attack was managed with morphine and bed rest. Things have certainly changed, and yet the NHS has not changed enough. In 1948, it was created to deal with infectious diseases and acute hospital care, but the health needs of the population have changed completely. People now live long lives with conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. We need to focus on keeping those people in the community rather than waiting until they become so unwell that they have to be brought to hospitals. The NHS should not just be a sickness service; it should help people to manage their conditions and live much better lives. During our debate on dementia a few days ago, I heard many moving stories about families challenged by that devastating illness. Dementia fills so many hospital beds, and the cost to society is quite staggering, but the real message of the debate was about the need for better community care and greater investment in technology and research. That is true for dementia, but it is also true for many long-term conditions. We have the time and the ideas; now, we must use them. There is much talk about moving care from hospitals to the community, which is not a slogan but an absolute necessity. I have seen it work in practice: before I came here, I was involved in a project that moved care for people with hearing loss out of hospitals and into the community. Patients benefited from easier and quicker access to specialist NHS audiology and nursing services. We now need to see such an approach rolled out across the country. The neighbourhood practice model advocated by my Suffolk GP colleagues must be part of the answer, with community health hubs open into the evening, resourced with nurses and mental health services and incorporating a pharmacy, with a GP who is known to the patient and to the family. Those hubs would be the place to call when sick—a better option than calling 111 or having a long wait in A&E. They would offer access to multi-disciplinary teams all in one place, a bit like the geriatric day hospitals that my dad, Professor Derek Prinsley, a pioneer of geriatric medicine, introduced into his practice in Teesside in the 1960s. The NHS must be a neighbourhood health service, not just a national health service. That is how we join up care so that patients no longer feel like they are being pushed from pillar to post. Instead of being rushed between different appointments in hospital corridors, people should be cared for in one place, bringing lifesaving continuity of care. It is time to end the fragmented system of the past, where people ended up in A&E simply because there was nowhere else to go, and where we had older people lying in trolleys in the early hours for long-term conditions that could have been managed in primary care. A&E should be for real accidents and emergencies. That is how we must start thinking about the long-term care of long-term conditions. At the centre of our thoughts must be the patient. Health services are all too often designed to deal with patients with a single disease, but for a growing number, that is no longer a suitable model. If I have high blood pressure and asthma, I have to visit the practice three times: once for the blood pressure check and once for the asthma check, and then another appointment to see the GP. I think we can do better than that. How can we truly put the patient at the centre of healthcare? As I have said before, one answer is to embrace the digital transition and change the medical record paradigm. Let the patient have the record. Give them agency over their healthcare. If people knew a bit more about their health, they might care for it a bit better. More than one in five patients with a long-term condition has said they do not have enough information to manage their condition. That is 5.5 million people across the country who are not confident that they can manage their condition, so let us have the doctor ask the patient for the record, not the other way round. That would be a revolutionary change. I would like to talk about medical research. Of course, our country has an incredible record of medical research: Jenner, who devised vaccination; Lister, who invented antisepsis; and Fleming, who discovered penicillin—British doctors who saved unimaginable numbers of lives. Then there is Dr John Snow, who removed the handle from the water pump in Broad Street, near to where we are sitting today, ending the cholera epidemic and founding the field of public health. It is on scientific advances like those that we mostly depend as we fight many long-term conditions. We will hear of artificial pancreas pumps to treat diabetes and genetic treatments to cure sickle cell disease and arthritis, but let us not take that progress for granted. We should support medical innovation and put the best technology into the hands of our doctors. I am proud that the Government are boosting investment in diagnostic machines in hospitals across the country, because I have been told by constituents about the struggle of misdiagnosis—months and years spent unsure what is wrong with them, with doctors unable to shed any light. We are rolling out artificial intelligence and improving diagnostics across the country, and the Government have promised to support that further. Improving researchers’ access to medical data will be part of the approach. Let us imagine the scientific advances we could make if researchers could conduct studies on sample sizes of 67 million people. Scientific and medical advances depend on our brilliant young people, who must be funded and supported as they embark on research careers. The number of clinical academics is in decline, which is a particular worry of mine. We should challenge that and reverse it. The NHS is easily the biggest employer in our country—perhaps one of the biggest employers in the whole world—but what are we doing to ensure that its people can best support us? A failure to tackle long-term conditions is significantly impacting the NHS’s own workforce. Musculoskeletal conditions, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis are leading causes of absenteeism among NHS staff, with ambulance and clinical support staff particularly affected, but we also hear many examples of terrible workforce planning. We learn of nurses and midwives graduating from colleges carrying large debts, after working for thousands of hours on placements for free, only to find a recruitment freeze in the very hospitals that desperately need their skills. Instead, hospitals are spending huge sums on agency staff. This is not a long-term plan; this is short-term thinking of the very worst kind. I am glad that agency spending fell last year. We must make sure that we spend wisely on newly qualified nurses and midwives, which will end up saving the NHS enormous sums. We also ought to do something about their student debt. Why not write it off if they commit to working for five years in our NHS, giving them security? Our health service needs their expertise. What about the young doctors, of whom I have spoken before? We need enough GPs, nurses and clinicians to help people to get well, but every year, thousands of UK doctors qualify with debts of up to £100,000. Many are then sent far from home, family and friends just as they begin their careers, and after two years they face intense competition for higher training against thousands of international doctors who fill up our hospital rotas and keep our services running. Some young doctors find themselves repeating their foundation years or going overseas, and others leave medicine altogether. This is certainly not a long-term plan. We must do better. I have seen for myself that our hospitals can run better with the resources they already have. At my West Suffolk hospital I saw the results: corridor care has been abolished and long-term waits in A&E are now a thing of the past. That has been done by taking a whole-hospital approach to improve the patient experience and ensure that the appropriate health professional is dealing with the patient at the earliest opportunity. That does not cost more, the staff are happier and the service is massively better. That is what happens when we put people first, work together across the disciplines and take real responsibility for change. Mr Blair once spoke of dealing with crime and the causes of crime; today I speak of dealing with diseases and the causes of diseases. Poverty, poor nutrition and poor housing are at the heart of so much of our country’s ill health. Those are not just background factors; they are the root cause of suffering and long-term conditions. If we are truly committed to a healthier society, those are the challenges we must address. The mission of our party and our Government is to lift millions out of poverty, tackle deep inequality and shape people’s health from cradle to grave. We will not accept the shocking housing conditions endured by so many of our fellow citizens. These are not simply political and economic problems; they are the underlying causes of much disease and misery, and many avoidable deaths. There is much for us to do, but I am convinced there is much that we can do to create easier access to NHS services, improve primary care and support those who want to conduct groundbreaking medical research. I hope the Government will look to tackle our long-term conditions crisis.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak in support of new clause 64 in my name. It seeks to encourage a greater focus on the delivery of affordable housing through rural exception sites. I tabled it to prompt further consideration of the role that this policy can play in addressing the urgent need for affordable homes in rural communities. As many who represent areas with significant rural populations will know, we have a serious housing problem. Waiting lists grow faster in rural areas than anywhere else, and young people are forced out of villages and towns by the lack of affordable housing. Parents face old age without the comfort of their children nearby. Pubs, post offices and shops start to struggle for lack of customers. Those businesses close, and a small village and the whole community feels the damage. Rural exception sites, which are usually found on the outskirts of small settlements, offer a modest but vital solution. Developed for the provision of affordable housing to those with a connection to the area, they help sustain local economies, retain local people and skills, and keep families together. Because they adjoin villages, development takes place on a gently human scale; houses radiate out from a historical core, respecting the historical and rural situation. These are not soulless, disconnected housing estates. This is development on a scale that ensures that affordable housing is woven into the fabric of our communities, not added on. It preserves and recreates the social mix once typical of our towns, where, as Nye Bevan remembered, “the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and farm labourer all lived in the same street”. —[ Official Report , 16 March 1949; Vol. 462, c. 2126.] That sort of community is now an exception, but let us reform rural exception sites and offer a route back to that ideal. Despite the potential, the rural exception site regime is alarmingly underused. Out of 145 local authorities in the country, only 25 used rural exception sites to deliver affordable homes in 2021-22. I thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who is not in his place, although he was here for most of the afternoon, for his support for my new clause. Cornwall leads the country by example: 50% of what is delivered on rural exception sites across the whole of England is in Cornwall, and 20% to 30% of housing delivered in Cornwall is through rural exceptions. Why do we not equip other areas across the country, including my county of Suffolk, to do the same? Increasing awareness and engagement will double the output of affordable housing on such sites, so let us encourage officers and local authorities across the country to take a much closer look at the guidance. That will give us a new engagement strategy for delivery partners, who will work with the local community and landowners, which will be crucial. By giving rural exception sites the prominence they deserve in planning, we increase the supply of affordable homes but maintain the unique character and spirit of our rural communities. I was heartened to read in the Government’s response to the consultation on the revised national planning policy framework that further consideration is indeed being given to exceptions as a means of supporting rural affordable houses. That is welcome, and I am optimistic about the potential for rural exception sites to be brought forward in much greater numbers, delivering small-scale affordable housing that is crucial to ensuring that the English countryside has vibrant and inclusive communities for generations to come. Let us put the life back into the heart of rural England.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Joining Up Government · Hansard source

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  3. What progress he has made on joining up government.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Joining Up Government · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the Minister’s answer. Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket is privileged to host thousands of servicemen and servicewomen from RAF Honington, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall. They play a crucial part in the lives of our towns and villages. Can the Minister assure me that the Ministry of Defence is working with other Departments to ensure that places such as Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket will benefit from the announcements in the strategic defence review in the form of jobs, housing, investment and apprenticeships?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that such service charges are an outrage? There should be some form of guarantee associated with what services are in fact provided. I, too, have had many constituents complain to me about the complete lack of services that they pay for. As she says, if those services were something that was being paid for on the open market, trading standards officers would be involved.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Dementia Care · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this important debate. We have heard many moving speeches this afternoon, and it has been a great honour to sit and listen to them. We must remember that dementia is not a fact of life, or something that everyone must face as they get older. It is not inevitable as a part of ageing. Dementia is a disease— a dreadful disease at that. Some 1.5 million people will be living with dementia in this country by 2040, so let us treat dementia with the same seriousness that we treat all other deadly conditions. Let us not neglect dementia simply because it disproportionately affects older people. At present, we have a fragmented and complex health system that does not provide a clear enough route for people with dementia. Let us improve specialist dementia support in hospitals and in the community. It is simply our duty to do so. The estimated economic impact of dementia in the UK last year was £42.5 billion. By contrast, we learned yesterday that the defence budget is £58 billion. It is suggested that, by 2040, the dementia budget will be £90 billion, so something must be done. Improving the treatment of dementia in our communities and in primary care settings will certainly help to free up hospitals and care systems, because, as we have heard, people with dementia occupy a quarter of all the hospital beds in the country. Let us move dementia treatment into the communities, with specialist nurses in communities to ease the pressure. Dementia is not inevitable. We must be bold, optimistic and forward-thinking, and prepared to deploy radical advances in science to tackle the condition. Let us support our scientists and researchers as they strive to develop more effective treatments and make progress towards curing the disease. Let us support research by enabling the NHS to empower its clinicians to conduct research and to use patient data. That would help to facilitate medical research and increase the number of clinical academics, whose number has been declining for much too long. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) talk about hearing loss. Many members will know that I am an ear, nose and throat surgeon. Hearing loss is absolutely central to the problem of people withdrawing from the society in which they live. The simple testing of hearing and the provision of hearing aids will do much to help. I urge Members of a certain age to consider having a hearing test. I am interested to know what we can do with patient data. If researchers across the country ran studies on 67 million people, we would accelerate progress towards a cure. Artificial intelligence could be set to work analysing datasets and providing rich sources of longitudinal data to inform future research and cures. Artificial intelligence already models the folding of proteins that cause the disease, so to secure those benefits, let us do something about the collection of medical information, and let us prioritise openness by giving patients access to their medical records, allowing them to see how the information is being used to support the NHS. That is something we could do to help.

• 22 May 2025 · Access to NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  Is there a better metaphor for the state of this country than the state of dentistry? Fourteen years of neglect left us with a decayed system of NHS provision, with those able to pay the only ones protected. I see it myself with wards full of children with dental abscesses at the weekend. Residents have told me stories of searching for NHS dental provision that simply does not exist. In my constituency, the number of urgent appointments has increased by 35%, with practices providing urgent dental care services seven days a week and into the evenings, and there are more coming soon, so the Government are making a serious attempt to deal with the decades of decay and drift, but we must go further. We do not have enough dentists and we do not have enough dental service providers, so let us sort out the dental contract, which we have heard about. The right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who is no longer in his place, is quite right that NHS dentists are in fact heroes.

• 22 May 2025 · Access to NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  That is certainly a suggestion that should be investigated. We must increase the number of dentists, as we have only 24 dentists for every 100,000 people in the east of England. We also need to increase the number of training providers and training places, but even with the opening of a dental school it will take ages for there to be new dentists. One suggestion is that we sort out the dental accreditation system. Hon. Members may not know that there are only 600 opportunities to take the accreditation exam each year, but there are 6,000 people planning to take the exam—that will take 10 years. We must get the General Dental Council to increase the number of exam opportunities. We have begun to address this political emergency, but we must go further with a clear and fair offer focusing on what the Minister described as the triangle of patients, practitioners and the public purse, providing a service that ensures that we give excellent, affordable care for all, including prevention, especially for the most vulnerable, and in a way that means we can pay for it. NHS dentistry can be saved. Let us have a sign on the door saying, “Urgent NHS dental appointments available here.” Would that not that be great?

• 20 May 2025 · Spending Review: Cross-departmental Planning · Hansard source

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  Some 9,000 UK medical graduates compete with 15,000 overseas graduates for postgraduate training, meaning that many of our own graduates simply cannot progress into higher professional training, and either go abroad themselves or leave medicine. Does the Minister agree that the Treasury has a crucial role to co-ordinate spending on medical university education by the Department for Education and on postgraduate training by the Department of Health and Social Care, so as to ensure that public money spent on medical student education is not wasted?