Richard Tice MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  I will not, because so many hon. Members wish to speak. In this country we are lucky enough to have some of the finest palliative care in the world, and it is a noble aspiration to want to improve that—to be the best in the world. Nevertheless, many of us will have seen loved ones, family members and friends, suffer huge pain even given the finest palliative care. The trauma that that leaves for those left behind can be painful and enduring, which is why we are where we are.

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

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  No, that would be unfair as so many wish to speak. In considering the Bill, I think, yes, let us improve palliative care, but let us remember that choice, when faced with certain unimaginable pain, is the right thing to provide. That is why I will be supporting the Bill.

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

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  I rise to support new clauses 13 to 15, and to oppose amendment 42. I commend the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) on the way that she has navigated this incredibly difficult and sensitive process. In considering these clauses and the passage of the Bill, I have kept in mind the simple but difficult word “pain”, because the legislation is about those who face a certain death in unimaginable pain, and its relationship with palliative care and the word “choice”.

• 12 Apr 2025 · Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) and I have been calling for British Steel to be a strategic national corporation for some six years. We said to the previous Administration that the last thing they should do is sell it to the Chinese, but they ignored our splendid advice. The industry requires long-term investment. The problem, as we all know, is that it has been beset by short-termism and short-term thinking, as well as by the vast electricity costs in this country, partly caused by net stupid zero and the carbon tariff. There is now a great opportunity for the House to unify. As the Secretary of State confirmed, we have the opportunity to take British Steel into public ownership—this weekend, we would urge, for the sum of £1. We could do a great deal for the taxpayer. We should invest in refurbishing and relining these blast furnaces, in the same way that the French are doing in Dunkirk. They are spending a quarter of a billion euros in Dunkirk, and we should do the same. We should bring in excellent global expertise to help British Steel. There will be opportunities if we do those things and have long-term procurement contracts for raw materials, including the opportunity to use British coal from Cumbria. That is an opportunity that the Government declined, but it would create more jobs and save on transport costs. There is also the opportunity for long-term procurement contracts for British Steel products. Those are opportunities to make British Steel a long-term, viable business for the taxpayer. We can bring in long-term patient capital. If we do those things, we can get everything that we want. Primary steelmaking is a vital strategic asset, and Scunthorpe can be its epicentre. We will support the Government’s Bill today, but there is an opportunity to go further, to be bold and to be courageous. The Secretary of State should show his cajones and show some mettle. This weekend, he and the Government have the opportunity to remove the uncertainty for 3,000 families in Scunthorpe. Let us go for it. Let us nationalise British Steel this weekend and make British steel great again.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Face-to-face GP Appointments · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes some excellent points. There is clearly a place for telephone appointments. When researching the topic in more detail, I was astonished to find that of the gap between the 64% or 65% of face-to-face appointments and 100%, telephone appointments represent some 25% and Zoom or Teams appointments are just 5% to 7%. I would have thought it would have been the opposite. Surely it is better if GPs can see the pain that might be etched on a patient’s face. We can look at the broader context—at what is happening to our population, and to the number of GPs, and at the pressures on GPs—and ask: is that why the percentage of face-to-face appointments has collapsed so significantly? In England, there are 6.5 million more people than in 2015—an increase of some 17%. Interestingly, the number of GP appointments increased in that period by a similar percentage, give or take; it went from just over 300 million appointments to over 360 million appointments. In fairness, and with due credit, there has been a recent increase, month on month, in GP appointments, which is to be commended, but it seems strange that the number of full-time, fully qualified GPs has barely moved in those 10 years. It is true that there are more trainee doctors and trainee GPs in the system, but the number of fully qualified, full-time-equivalent GPs has basically stayed static. That means, of course, that the number of patients that a GP has on their books has increased significantly, from over 1,900 per GP to over 2,300 per GP. We can therefore understand the increase in pressure on them. Given those health needs, they will feel the need to see as many people as possible, so we can see the temptation to hold telephone or Zoom appointments.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Face-to-face GP Appointments · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to hold this Adjournment debate on face-to-face appointments with GPs. I ask hon. Members listening and watching to go back to October 2023 and imagine that they have abdominal pain and some blood loss. They seek a GP appointment and they are given a telephone appointment. They are given a diagnosis of endometriosis and prescribed some painkillers. This diagnosis, sadly, turns out to be incorrect. They then move forward, still in pain, to mid-December 2023. They receive a letter with a gynaecological appointment for the end of January 2024. But they are still in deep pain. The pain intensifies. Their husband rushes them to the urgent treatment centre at Pilgrim hospital, where a doctor sees them and reaffirms the diagnosis of endometriosis. The doctor says, “As you are being looked after by a GP, there’s nothing more I should do.” Over the next two weeks, the pain intensifies, to the point where at the end of December 2023, they are rushed to A&E. It is just before new year. They are told to come back for tests on 2 January 2024. Those tests reveal some problems and some lesions around the liver. They are put on a two-week cancer pathway with more tests, CT scans, MRI scans and an endoscopy. On 2 February, they are given the results of those tests. Sadly, the cancer has spread to such a degree that nothing more can be done. Just three days later, they pass away. It is impossible to imagine or to understand this, but it is the tragic story of Laura Barlow, aged just 33, the mother of three young daughters: Summer Skye, Bonnie Rae and Bella-Mia. Her husband Michael Barlow is here in the Gallery with friends. His campaign, after the tragic loss of his wife Laura, is for more face-to-face appointments, and for patients to have the right to one if they feel they need it. It is worth looking at the context of face-to-face appointments in our healthcare system. Going back some six years to 2019, around 80% of all GP appointments were face to face. According to NHS England, for the last two months, the figure is just over 64%. How do we compare to other nations? In European nations with different healthcare systems, the average is 84% or 85%. We have some 20% fewer face-to-face appointments than some of our international peers. I am just a layman, not a doctor, but it must be common sense that an experienced, highly skilled, professional GP looking a patient in the eye to physically assess them face to face must give patients the greatest chance of a correct diagnosis. Sometimes, a GP will spot something that the patient was not even aware of.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Face-to-face GP Appointments · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. This comes back to the basic concept of common sense. It must be easier for a GP to make the correct diagnosis when seeing someone face to face. We all make mistakes, but when our medical professionals on the frontline, whom we all admire, are under pressure and tired, and they make mistakes, that can have devastating, life-changing consequences. We will never know the difference it may have made if Laura had the correct diagnosis in October 2023, but it must be right to give all patients the best opportunity. I know that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who I have interacted with in the Chamber, is absolutely determined to make reforms across the healthcare system. He has started actively, abolishing NHS England, making changes to the Department, and doing much more. That brings me to what else can be done. We can look at the pressures on GPs. I was astonished to read that almost 50% of all GPs are thinking of retiring in the next five years. Almost 50% of them cite the increased pressure of bureaucracy, paperwork and administration. Surely we want our trained GPs in front of patients; we do not want their time being absorbed by unnecessary burdens and paperwork. If that is driving our GPs away from the noble profession of curing and helping people, we have to look again. I hope the Health Secretary, the Minister and colleagues will drive a change in processes. When I was with people in my constituency of Boston and Skegness recently, doing more research, I was astonished by what I found when I spoke to a GP and liaised with her. She gave me some examples of bureaucracy clogging up the system. For example, if a GP refers a patient to a consultant in hospital, and the consultant says, “Yes, the patient needs this, but I also need to refer them to another speciality just down the corridor in the same hospital,” that cannot be done directly. The consultant has to write back to the GP. That letter goes through the post, with a hundred other letters a day. Then the GP has to refer the patient back to a different consultant, with that different speciality, down the corridor in the hospital. That lacks common sense. It appears that if the consultant wants to prescribe medication to the patient who has been referred, they are unable to do that directly; they have to refer back to the GP, who has to spend more time providing the prescription. That appears to lack common sense. If the consultant wants to request blood tests, on many occasions that will have to be referred back to the GP, by letter or maybe by email, so that the GP can request those tests. All that leads not only to delay for the patient, and to time being consumed, but to more work for the GP, who we all surely want to see more patients face to face. There are other situations that seem to be clogging up the system. Take our old friend GDPR. It is well-intentioned, but when I went to a pharmacy in Boston a few weeks back, the pharmacist said, “We have the same software system as the GP surgery, right next door to us in the same building, but because we have different modules, and because GDPR does not let the modules talk to each other, it leads to increased delays and a lack of productivity and, for patients, a lower-quality service.” They went on: “We could do so much more. We could relieve the GPs of some of the work they are doing, so that they could see the patient face to face.” Then, a week later, I was in a care home in Boston, with carers and experts in the room. We were talking through the issues. They said, “There are processes and procedures that we can do that we are not allowed to do, so a GP has to do it; or we have to request an ambulance from the hospital, clogging up ambulance waiting lists or clogging up A&E corridors, when we could do those procedures.” Again, the great concept of common sense cannot be applied. I think we all know that we can do so much better than that. Then there is the issue of referrals. When a GP makes a referral to a consultant, that referral often gets assessed by a non-clinician as to whether it is correct. I would have thought that we should be able to trust highly trained, highly skilled professional GPs and back their judgment on the frontline. If they think someone needs to be referred to a consultant, surely that does not need double or triple-checking. Again, that delays good patient care and causes more blockages for the GP, more admin and more paperwork. Then there are our friends at the Care Quality Commission: an important supervisory process and concept. I hear about the processes, the box-ticking, the patient panels—all that is just more admin, more time and more resources consumed outside the core function of face-to-face treatment and care for patients. It therefore seems that this is not a party political issue, but one of driving continuous improvement in our healthcare system, and of the Department, as it moves forward with the reforms we all want to see, saying, “Actually, let’s look at all the processes. How do we reduce the blockages? How do we remove any unnecessary paperwork and burdens? How do we improve the technology?” Indeed, artificial intelligence, which is so recent, is a huge opportunity for healthcare and technology in healthcare, and for GPs to, for example, double-check or triple-check their own diagnoses. These are great opportunities facing us, but most fundamental of all, we must give our GPs every support, every ease of progress and the right technological assistance behind the scenes in the back office, so they can face all of us when we are unwell and need treatment, because that is when they can use their experience, wisdom and knowledge to get to the right diagnosis. It would be a tribute to Laura—it would be her legacy—for patients to have the right to see a GP face to face. Easing the processes would make life easier for GPs and would make them want to stay in the profession, because they know that face to face they will achieve a great and noble cause and good.

• 13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Secretary of State on the changes announced today to cut unnecessary waste and bureaucracy. We all know and agree that healthcare should remain free at the point of delivery and, of course, that the NHS needs reform. Just last Saturday, I was in a care home in Boston with a lady—an expert—who knows Melanie Weatherley, and she was telling me about the unnecessary processes within NHS England on the frontline that constrain good care in care homes, impose unnecessary constraints on ambulances and block A&E wards. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the changes and reforms will include unnecessary processes on the frontline in care homes?

• 10 Mar 2025 · Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension · Hansard source

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  It was working well, and we had people coming from around the world to help the NHS—but we were training our own, and that was a great thing. That comes back to the point that what has happened in the past 15 years is the complete failure to deliver for population growth at every level. The madness of the cap on training our own people who want to be nurses or doctors—it is absolutely ludicrous. We encouraged businesses in that by saying, “You do not need to invest in training. You can just bring in people from overseas.” What happened? That brought in low-skilled, lower-cost labour from overseas, and we were told by the authorities, the ONS and the Office for Budget Responsibility or its predecessors, that that would be a good thing for the country. Now, we have been told by the OBR, which has just caught up with things, that lower-skilled and lower-cost labour never contributes financially to the economy more than it takes out.

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

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  I think we all share the Secretary of State’s aspiration to move healthcare out of hospitals and into the community. However, the two GP surgeries that I visited in Skegness just before Christmas are concerned that the impact of the national insurance increases on their staffing budgets will be around £100,000 per surgery, which will force them to reduce staffing capacity and, therefore, appointment capacity. What will the Secretary of State do to help those GP surgeries in that situation? There seems to be a conflict between the sensible aspiration and the practical reality.

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent case for the Bill to be passed today. What he is actually saying is that there are specifics that require debate, analysis and discussion in great detail in Committee—that is the whole point of it. If it is not dealt with properly in Committee, it will not pass Third Reading. He is suggesting that because he does not like those specifics, we cannot discuss the Bill in any detail.

• 16 Oct 2024 · Steel Industry · Hansard source

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  I am grateful, Mrs Harris, for the opportunity to wind up the debate. I thank all the hon. Members who have made contributions to the debate, and I thank the Minister for her closing remarks. It seems to me that there is a sense of unity about the ambition—we have to protect our critically important steel industry in the United Kingdom. The Government are probably correct that they have been handed a bit of a hospital pass on this vital issue. They understand that. However, the truth is that I am an impatient guy, so I will not resile from asking the Minister and the Department to move at incredible pace to secure the industry and the jobs, and—as the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) said—to reduce the uncertainty. This debate has enabled all of us to highlight the risks ahead. We cannot be here in a year’s time hearing that Jingye has said, “It can’t be done, we’ve got to shut the blast furnace, it’s going to shut”, and the Government are not ready for that. I think that is what this debate has done; it has highlighted the serious risks out there. I understand that the Minister cannot share the details of commercial conversations that are clearly going on, but that is what we must be prepared for. I have asked for a commitment, and I believe that the best way to secure that commitment in Scunthorpe is to have some form of commercial stake. Where I think we differ is that there is a confidence within the Government—the hon. Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) referred to this specifically—that the electric arc furnaces will be attractive and commercially viable for Tata and Jingye. However, there is a serious risk that that will not be the case. Electric arc furnaces are much more viable in the United States because, as the hon. Member referred to, the electricity price in the US is between a quarter and a third of ours. The reason for that is completely the opposite of what the Minister said. It is because the US has cheap gas—its own gas, which is shale gas—that allows it to produce cheap electricity. We have identified the risks and we share many of the same ambitions. We differ on certain issues, but it is absolutely critical that the Government lose no time at all and push forward hard. I am encouraged by the ambition to increase capability and the ambition to ramp up investment, but we have to understand something. I do not see how we can get more investment if we cannot get electricity prices down. That is the critical objective and the Government have that responsibility. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered the steel industry.

• 10 Oct 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  May I suggest that the Leader of the House celebrates her special birthday by granting a debate on the amendments to the international health regulations that were agreed at the World Health Assembly in the summer, and that we give MPs a vote on the issue before we hand over sovereignty over important matters of national public health to the World Health Organisation?

• 9 Oct 2024 · Sepsis Awareness · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing the debate. These are extraordinary tales that we hear from loved ones and family. A very good friend of mine nearly died of sepsis seven years ago, but—I have to be honest—I had never heard of it until that moment when he nearly passed away. This could be one of the most extraordinary opportunities for our healthcare system to make a rapid difference. Sepsis is so quick but so preventable. In the pressured environment of our hospitals and our GPs’ surgeries, it is so easy for healthcare professionals to miss it. If it becomes embedded in all of us through a major publicity campaign, which could be organised relatively quickly, to ask ourselves that simple question, “Could it be sepsis?”, in the same way that we often ask, “Could it be meningitis?”, and if we could help medical professionals by asking them that question too, we will have the ability to prevent death or major life-changing injuries and to save money for the NHS. It is a massive win-win, and I hope the Minister can rapidly respond both positively and appropriately.

• 12 Sept 2024 · NHS: Independent Investigation · Hansard source

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  I think the whole House agrees with what the Secretary of State said in his statement: the NHS needs reform. In reality, when I speak to people in the NHS, almost all of them say that this is not about a shortage of money, but about the legendary levels of waste, bureaucracy and mismanagement. Indeed, the report refers specifically to the huge number of regulators, accountants and bureaucrats from the top down. Is there recognition among the NHS senior leadership that management reform is a critical part of improving healthcare in the United Kingdom?