Peter Prinsley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Feb 2025 · Clean Power by 2030 · Hansard source

  More

  5. What progress he has made on achieving clean power by 2030.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am an MP from rural Suffolk, and I hope we can create affordable rural housing. Why did our predecessors not try to do that? I believe that changes to the rural exception regulations could help achieve it, and at an appropriate scale, so that we retain the character of our towns and villages. We need to help build housing, but crucially we need to help build local communities. We need there to be housing for young families, but also housing for older people, perhaps with embedded building features such as walls that are sufficiently strong to hold grab rails. I was told by Age UK only this morning that in Japan stamp duty is waived if the children of older people buy houses near where their elderly parents live. Too many of our villages in Suffolk, and in Norfolk, where I live, are occupied by ageing residents far from family and services. I am sure we can make changes to improve things, while repopulating the rural community and building resilience for the future. So let us rebuild our rural communities at a scale sympathetic to the existing settlements.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Road Safety: Young Drivers · Hansard source

  More

  Once a person has passed their driving test in this country, they are simply released on to the roads. This new Parliament must act to change that. On Boxing day 2017, a 17-year-old from Suffolk crashed his Ford Fiesta, his first car. His friends William Smedley and Jake Paxton, just 18 years old, both from Bury St Edmunds, died. Men who have recently learned to drive are at high risk of accidents. Graduated drivers licences have been adopted in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. They work so well at reducing accidents that they are being expanded all over the place and states are progressively adopting stricter rules. From December 2024, Western Australia, which previously had the most lenient system of licensing in the country, placed limits on the number of passengers that someone could carry. The legislation is known as Tom’s law, in reference to Tom Saffioti, a 15-year-old boy who died in a crash while a passenger in a car driven by a new driver. In the UK, drivers can display a P plate after passing the test, but those come with no additional rules. Let us graduate the licence for drivers in the UK. That is not the nanny state; it is simply good government. Everyone in room seems to agree, so let us make it happen.

• 27 Jan 2025 · Clinical Academics · Hansard source

  More

  The number of clinical academics is in worrying decline. These are the people who teach our doctors in universities and are conducting groundbreaking research. Consultant clinical academics’ contracts with universities give them pay parity with the NHS. However, the universities do not have the funding to match the costs of the new NHS pay structure for consultants. I have heard that, unable to retain them, 20 out of 26 medical schools in the country are offering voluntary redundancy to their staff, and sometimes not voluntary. Does the Minister agree that we must do all we can to support medical education and research in this country?

• 27 Jan 2025 · Clinical Academics · Hansard source

  More

  5. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help retain clinical academics in universities.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

  More

  May I say how moved I have been by all the speeches that I have heard this afternoon? On Monday I will stand in Abbey Gardens in Bury St Edmunds, at a steel teardrop erected as a memorial not only to the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, but to the 57 Jews slaughtered by their neighbours in Bury St Edmunds in March 1190. I will also the honour the memory of the liberation of Auschwitz precisely 80 years ago. In East Anglia, Bury St Edmunds, Norwich and King’s Lynn were important centres of medieval Jewish life. However, East Anglia also has a sad role in the history of European antisemitism. It was here that the myth of the Jewish blood libel first emerged when, in 1144, the Jews of Norwich were falsely accused of the ritual murder of a boy named William. That myth persisted for centuries, played its part in the growth of antisemitism in the 20th century, and lives on to this very day. The blood libel stoked hatred in Bury St Edmunds, culminating in that vicious massacre in 1190. In the aftermath, the town expelled all the surviving Jews. Exactly 100 years later, in 1290, King Edward expelled all the Jews from England. I stand here not only as the first Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds, but as its first Jewish MP. I am a Jew who represents a town that, almost 1,000 years ago, was the first in the country to expel the Jews. History has come full circle. However, sadly, antisemitism is on the rise again in this country. The number of antisemitic hate crimes has reached record levels—more than double the number in previous years. The Community Security Trust reports that damage and desecration of Jewish property rose by 246% on the previous year, which is deeply concerning. The CST does crucial work to protect Jewish communities across the country, enabled by the support of His Majesty’s Government, for which we are all deeply grateful. Similarly, Holocaust education, promoted through the work of the Holocaust Education Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, is of great significance in this country. This generation is privileged to know the last few living witnesses of the Holocaust. We must make sure that their stories do not fade into obscurity, but survive in the collective memory of humanity. I finish with a few lines by the medieval poet Meir of Norwich, written as he fled England in 1190—the earliest Hebrew poetry ever written in this country: “When I hoped for good, evil arrived, yet I will wait for the light. You are mighty and full of light, You turn the darkness into light.”

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with my hon. Friend, as he will see. There are odd shifts, night duties without hot food, and days and weeks that go by without an opportunity to meet supervising consultants. Short clinical attachments mean that the relationships previously created with senior mentors are rare. Just last week, I received an email from a surgeon who was my consultant in 1986. He had noticed in a surgical journal that I had become an MP, and I remembered him as the brilliant surgeon that he was. These are the relationships that make people feel as if they belong within a wider profession, but I doubt whether the young trainees of today would have the chance to make such lasting connections. There is little security of employment, because doctors are obliged to apply every year or two for another post, probably in another place. The doctors’ mess used to be a place where young doctors could find a sort of surrogate family in an unfamiliar place, but that is now sadly a thing of the past. According to research from the British Medical Association, fewer than 10% of UK trusts or health boards offer hot food after 11 o’clock at night. The demands of the job affect relationships. Many young doctors are in relationships with fellow doctors, but lucky indeed are the couple who can work and live in the same place, or even contemplate raising a young family together. Sadly, relationship difficulties and breakdowns are commonplace. Holidays must be taken at odd times, and rotas are inflexible. Doctors are left unable to take a day off to attend a wife’s graduation, a sister’s wedding or even their own wedding—all true. Progression in a chosen career depends on a multitude of competitive interviews and hugely costly professional exams. There is no security of employment. In a survey called “Fight Fatigue” conducted by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, 50% of respondents said that they had had an accident or a near miss when driving home after a night shift—I recall fatalities like this in my own hospital; 84% were too tired to drive home after a night shift; and only 64% had access to any rest facilities. What would we say if the same were true of airline pilots, to whom anaesthetists are sometimes compared?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I agree with exactly what the hon. Gentleman said. In a recent survey, 29% of hospital doctors said they were unable to take any breaks at all during the working day; for GPs, the figure rose to 40%. That is simply not safe, for either doctors or patients. In a 2023 survey conducted by the Royal College of Surgeons, half of respondents cited poor working conditions as the main challenge in their job. It is no wonder that so many colleagues are retiring too soon. The average age for a radiologist to leave the NHS is now 56, yet we are desperately short of these vital specialists. This is happening across many specialties. Just in 2023, 23,000 English doctors left the profession prematurely. We cannot afford to lose our most experienced doctors. Too often they are discouraged from continuing in practice by a bureaucratic and costly appraisal and revalidation process, and they simply throw in the towel. Their experience is a vital asset to the NHS, and we must think carefully about how we retain them or return them to the workforce. One solution will be to create simple routes for experienced doctors to practise flexibly.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I do agree. I believe that the Government intend to do something about the somewhat terrible state of GP premises; the Health Secretary confirmed that only yesterday. There are serious questions about the support that individual GPs receive, especially for mental health. At present, GPs rely on the NHS practitioner health service for addiction and mental health support.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I agree that we must put resources into general practices to deal with the Government’s plan to move care from the hospital out into the community. I am sure that needs to be addressed. The partnership model, which has served us so well, is now surely threatened as fewer young GPs are prepared to take on the responsibility or the financial risk of general practice.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I will speak of general practice shortly. My son is an A&E doctor here in London, and I am therefore one of three generations of doctors who have served the NHS continuously since it began; the welfare of doctors is personal for me. This Government have already done much for doctors, who are on the frontline and not the picket line for the first time in several years, but burnout, fatigue and stress are still very real problems that threaten to undermine the efficacy of our NHS. Today’s new doctors graduate into the profession with debts of nearly £100,000. They immediately enter a lottery to be appointed to their first jobs as pre-registration doctors, sometimes ending up miles away from family and friends in places they have never visited before. Now that reminds me of another job that I just started. Young doctors are left immediately responsible for life-and-death decisions, sometimes with insufficient support. They are left scrabbling at the very last minute for somewhere to live—the on-call accommodation that my generation remembers has disappeared—and I have known several of them to sleep in their cars. It has not escaped my notice that the new name for junior doctors is “resident doctors”. Resident doctors? That is the very last thing they are. If they are lucky, there is a place for them to rest, but many a time I have arrived to find a young doctor fast asleep from exhaustion at an office desk.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I was not aware that the practitioner health service was not available in Northern Ireland; I certainly agree that it ought to be. The practitioner health service was designed to be used by only 0.5% of GPs, but in fact it is accessed by 10 times that number. Ensuring that such services are fully funded will be important. There is alcohol and drug abuse, loneliness, depression, insomnia, anxiety and, sadly, suicide—including two of those who I graduated with from Sheffield, both in their very first year of medicine; and two doctors, a psychiatrist and a neurosurgeon, from my own road in Norwich. One of my own trainees was rescued at the last minute from a very serious attempt. All doctors know of this problem, but few speak of it. Last week, I informed the House of my former student who described the terrible flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder of the young clinical intensive therapy unit staff who witnessed 40 or 50 covid admissions die at a hospital in Yorkshire, and the complete lack of support they received. Many are reluctant to seek help and do not know where to turn. Itinerant junior doctors not registered with GPs are known to self-medicate. We simply cannot leave them on their own. In conclusion, I will respectfully make some suggestions, which have little or no cost implications. In making them, I am thinking especially of our resident doctors. They include to provide identified mentors, not simply people called educational supervisors; simplified contracts, transferable across trusts and between hospitals; clear, early information for doctors about what they will be paid and their rotas, timetables and holidays; hot food at night, and places to rest and sleep; to cover exam fees and make examinations fair and achievable; and to provide parking at the hospital and, crucially, a GP for every doctor and simple access to mental health support. Medicine is a brilliant career—satisfying, interesting and rewarding. Let us look after the doctors who look after us.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I agree completely with the hon. Member, which will be no surprise. The training of doctors is under threat. I spoke in the House about how cash-strapped universities are issuing redundancy notices to clinical professors, with no real plan on how to teach the increasing number of medical students or to continue the vital medical research for which our country has such a strong reputation. There was a 31% decline in the number of clinical academics in the country between 2004 and 2022. Something must be done about that. Our GPs are under pressure as never before. Who is looking out for them? They face massive lists of patients and huge demands. We know that we must support them, for they are the front door of our NHS.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

  More

  I beg to move, That this House has considered the welfare of doctors. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. Our NHS is described as “broken”. Gigantic waiting lists; ambulance delays; collapsed confidence that the NHS is there when we need it; poor access to general practice, dentistry and pharmacy; and, disgracefully, falling life expectancy in some places—these are all failures of the last Government, who could not look after the NHS despite record funding. Labour must mend the NHS; we have no choice. We invented the NHS. We fixed it before and we will fix it again. In this debate, I speak about the people who work in the NHS. There are nearly 1.5 million of them, all contributing in their own way, but let me speak specifically about our doctors. Doctors in this country are in crisis. They are leaving the profession, retiring too soon and emigrating. Who is looking after our doctors? I come to this place as a surgeon. I am one of the very few surgeons ever elected to Parliament. My dad was an RAF medic, who served in Aden in world war two before joining the newly invented NHS in 1948. He became a consultant physician in Teesside, where I grew up, and then a professor of geriatric medicine in Melbourne. He wrote an excellent account of his life called “New Ideas for Old Concerns”, which is full of fascinating accounts of his medical experiences during the war and later in the new NHS. It was a time of such hope and optimism, and I sincerely wish that we will be able to recreate that hope today.

• 20 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme Review · Hansard source

  More

  I feel doubly blessed this afternoon because the West Suffolk hospital in my constituency is to be rebuilt and the James Paget hospital where I have worked for 30 years is to be rebuilt. Does the Secretary of State agree that our primary care estate is in a terrible situation and that we must also invest in general practice facilities?

• 20 Jan 2025 · Obesity: Food and Diet · Hansard source

  More

  A bariatric bed is a special big, strong bed used in hospitals for extremely obese people. When I was a medical student, there was no such thing as a bariatric bed—not invented, not needed. But then, hospitals did not have food banks for their staff either. So how have we got our relationship with food into such a mess? The epidemic of obesity is a public health emergency costing billions. Millions of our citizens are dying early. The Government simply must act. This cannot be left to the market. We did it with smoking, and now we will do it with obesity. We have no choice. We know that at the heart of the matter is high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt, factory-produced food that is often ultra-processed, cheap, convenient, tasty and very profitable for a few very large food businesses. Nor must we forget that it is our poor citizens who are most affected—those who are cash-poor, time-poor and at high risk of a poor diet. We cannot continue like this. The Government must act to change food habits. This is not the nanny state; this is simply good government. “Smoking kills,” it says on cigarette packets. Some food kills, too, so how about “The food in this packet will kill you if it is not part of a healthy, mixed diet”? Obesity is a massive issue for surgeons, increasing morbidity and mortality. Although we can staple stomachs or inject up to 3.5 million people with anti-obesity drugs, we all know that that is not the answer. Let us use the power of Government to legislate: warnings on food packets, breakfast clubs in schools, which we have already introduced, advertising bans, tax incentives, cooking education and an end to the dependence on the cheap, unhealthy food that blights the lives of so many of our citizens. We have no choice.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Obesity: Food and Diet · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend’s intervention was not really an intervention, because I had reached the end of what I wished to say. Nevertheless, I thank him sincerely.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Health and Social Care: Winter Update · Hansard source

  More

  Winter pressures have caused the cancellation of thousands of operations, including many of my own lists. Does the Secretary of State agree that the opening of the dedicated Clare Marx surgical centre in Colchester, serving patients in Essex and Suffolk, is an extremely welcome development?

• 9 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  While welcoming rail renationalisation, may I ask what can be done to expedite investment in crucial rail infrastructure developments, such as the Haughley junction in my constituency, taking traffic off the A14 and possibly facilitating Bury St Edmunds to London trains? Was the previous Prime Minister’s promise to redeploy funds from the cancelled HS2 realistic?

• 7 Jan 2025 · Road Safety · Hansard source

  More

  A constituent of mine lost her son, Alan, in a dreadful accident on the A14 in September 2023. He died in a collision with a lorry that was stationary on a live lane. The lorry driver was disqualified from driving, and had no MOT on his trailer and no insurance. Despite the driver committing road safety offences, the Crown Prosecution Service determined that the driver did not cause the death under current legislation, and he was only charged with disqualified driving. Will the Minister commit to examining the Road Traffic Act 1988 with a view to introducing an offence focused on presence, rather than causing? I would suggest this wording: “A person being disqualified from driving—”

• 7 Jan 2025 · Mental Health Services · Hansard source

  More

  I have just been visited by my former medical student, a young doctor in Yorkshire working in an intensive therapy unit, who told me that 40 of the 50 patients who were admitted with covid died. Many healthcare workers are suffering from flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. What measures will the Government take to look after the mental health of the healthcare workers who so bravely helped us during the covid pandemic?

• 6 Jan 2025 · NHS Backlog · Hansard source

  More

  May I carry on, as I have very little time? I am glad that the Prime Minister has made general practice and care in the community a central part of his plan. General practice is the front door to the NHS. Patients who have a genuine connection with one or two GPs are less ill and live longer. There is an illuminating article entitled “Closer to home” in this month’s Fabian Review by my Suffolk GP colleagues Drs Reed and Havard, who reimagine GP as a comprehensive community health service close to the patient, with multiprofessional teams of health workers and with mental health services and district nursing all in one place. Patients know who their doctors are and know that the community health centre is the place to go. Let us call them Bevan community health centres. We really can manage most clinical problems in the community, and investing in our brilliant GPs is truly the key to the crisis. Community hubs with diagnostic capabilities for larger populations would send to hospital only people who need to go to hospital. We must do something about productivity. I started my career with four workers in the theatre operating on eight children, only to reach a situation today of operating on four children with eight workers. As we reform and rebuild our NHS, let us bring the 1.5 million staff members with us on this great journey, for it is on them that we and the NHS depend. The measures announced today will surely help, but only if we find enough staff and invest in training. Let us look after those who look after us, with fair pay, fair conditions and a great deal of respect. That must be our mission.

• 6 Jan 2025 · NHS Backlog · Hansard source

  More

  I had expected to tell the House that I had come straight to Parliament from my operating theatre in Norfolk, where I had been dealing with ear, nose and throat surgery backlogs this morning, but late last night I received a call telling me that my operating list was cancelled because there are no beds in the day unit that was purpose-built to avoid that issue, and which opened only a few years ago. Every surgeon in the country will be familiar with that situation, and in every hospital, surgical teams are sitting idle waiting for beds. It is like a fog-bound airport where nothing can take off. There are enormous backlogs across almost all of surgery, especially in gynaecology and orthopaedics. We are short of theatres, short of anaesthetists and short of scanners. Our patients are suffering and deteriorating in front of our eyes. Some of them are dying. We are short of all manner of specialists, including crucial diagnostic radiologists and pathologists. Delays in diagnostic imaging and reporting are very problematic—there are more than 1.5 million people on the waiting list to receive a diagnosis—but the Labour Government will deal with the massive NHS backlogs because we did it before. Between’97 and 2010, we abolished the waiting list, but in the period from 2010 to 2023, waiting lists reached record levels. Now we see access to GPs, dentistry and all routine surgery as the political emergencies that they are. We all hear terrible accounts of the consequences of such delays from our constituents. We know of them first hand from our own families. My son, who is an A&E doctor, describes trollies of elderly, incontinent patients two abreast in corridors, and in car parks. He is unable to admit his patients, and that is right here in London. We know that we must rebuild our hospitals, and we will start with those that are actually falling down. My constituents were so pleased to hear both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor promise here in Parliament to replace West Suffolk hospital in Bury St Edmunds.

• 6 Jan 2025 · Health and Adult Social Care Reform · Hansard source

  More

  There are very worrying reports of cash-strapped universities reducing the numbers of clinical academics; indeed, some are being made redundant at a time when there is increased demand for doctors. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is an extremely concerning development?

• 18 Dec 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  Q13. We have in our NHS many brilliant émigré and refugee surgeons from the greatly troubled middle east, and I have been privileged to work alongside some of them from Iran, Iraq and from Syria, which we think especially now. What practical measures can the UK take to help ensure that Syria now has the best chance of becoming an open society and the second functional democracy in the region?