Simon Opher MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Sept 2026 · Lidos · Hansard source

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  In Stroud I celebrated the reopening of our lido by making a splash, jumping in fully clothed next to a woman dressed as a lobster. I want to thank Save Stroud Lido, the Friends of Stratford Park Lido and the whole community for working to reopen the lido. As the Secretary of State knows, most of our lidos were built in the 1930s and are in financial difficulty, so I really look forward to meeting the Minister and maybe establishing a lido fund to support our lidos nationally.

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for securing this debate and for her years of work in the A&E at St George’s. Emergency care is in crisis in the NHS, and corridor care is just an overspill because we cannot cope. That is because we are doing a few things wrong that we could remedy. I work as a GP. I did a surgery last Friday and actually tried to admit someone. I rang up A&E and they said, “Well, I wouldn’t send them up at the moment, as we’ve got a six-hour wait.” I realised that, quite often, we do not have an operable emergency care service, and this is something we need to work on. I will briefly go through a few causes and then a few remedies, and the remedies could be clinical as well as organisational. First, we have an ageing population. Frailty is increasing. In Stroud alone, in four years, the number of over 90-year-olds went up 29% in just that short period of time. We have an enormous cohort of very elderly and frail people. Secondly, as we have heard, we have a lack of beds due to delayed discharge—I will not say any more on that. Thirdly, we have a lack of care beds in the community to enable discharge. There is also a lack of capacity in GP surgeries for on-the-day appointments. In my surgery, 45% of our appointments are on the day, but we obviously need to increase that so we can absorb the demand in primary care.

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  That is absolutely true. We need to look at all the ways of reducing demand on GPs and, therefore, on A&E departments—that is what my speech is totally involved in—and pharmacies have a really good role to play. There is another thing here, which was noticed in the doctors’ strike. When we have senior clinicians on the front door of A&E, that makes the department much quieter, because they make decisions quickly and can take a bit more clinical risk as they are more experienced. Perhaps we need to rearrange how care works in A&E departments so that we do not get a backlog. I turn to the remedies. We are beginning to turn the NHS around—that is clear from working in it and from what my patients say. Things are beginning to change. We need to do a lot more, but we are investing a lot of money in it. We must not say that things are getting worse, because I believe they are slowly getting better. As so many have said, we need to fix social care. We could have a system whereby the community is responsible for a patient as soon as they are ready for discharge. Perhaps the community should have to pay for the patient to remain in hospital after that to encourage it to get them out of hospital. We must stop agency working in social care, because that is causing a huge amount of stress to carers. We need care to be based on a community model so that carers cover small areas and do not have huge travel times. We also have to improve GP access. I think we should also make it so that A&E departments see only accidents and real, genuine medical emergencies. So we need a little bit of an increase in funding for primary care. We also need GPs to be assessing emergencies up until 10 o’clock at night to relieve the pressure on A&Es. There are a couple of other things. I have said about getting more experienced doctors involved earlier in the process, but we also need to invest in scanners—so many people in A&E are waiting for tests before they go home. Also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) said, it is not appropriate to have mental health assessments in A&E; we need mental health assessment units, which I do believe the Government are bringing in. There are a few clinical factors. Perversely, we need not to be so risk-averse. For example, admitting a patient for risk of falling is ridiculous, because they are more likely to fall in hospital than in their own home. Dementia fluctuates, so just because someone has seen a slight increase in confusion, that does not mean that they need a whole batch of tests. We need to treat dementia more holistically. Polypharmacy—that is old people on loads of drugs—causes about 10% of admissions, so let us reduce that. We need good end-of-life care. Some 50% of people with cancer die in hospital—many of them face corridor care—and we need to reduce that, because most of them want to die at home. Every older person needs an advance care plan so that, when they become ill, we know whether they want to go to hospital. That is incredibly important in pathways of care. Corridor care did not appear overnight, and it will not disappear overnight. But, by rebuilding the NHS from the community upwards, fixing social care and investing where it matters most, we can ensure that no patient is left waiting for care in a hospital corridor ever again.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Ceramics Industry · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for his excellent opening speech. My remarks today will be at a slightly different level. They are focused on studio pottery—ceramics made on an individual basis, where each piece is unique and handmade. Studio pottery is growing in popularity in this country following programmes such as “The Great Pottery Throw Down”. There are thousands of makers up and down the country, and the industry is worth about £50 million in its own right. Pottery and potters are as old as the human race; although it might not be the oldest profession, it is certainly one of the earliest. Britain leads the world in modern studio pottery, which was largely started by Bernard Leach and the Japanese master Hamada in St Ives in Cornwall. Many of his techniques came from traditional Japanese techniques and favoured an apprenticeship system. More contemporary and well-known potters such as Grayson Perry and Keith Brymer Jones have all grown from that movement. However, making a living from pottery remains tough. The price of clay and energy have increased, and most potters earn well below the minimum wage. The Arts Council could help individual potters, specifically at the beginning of their careers. That would help nurture the industry, while a reduction in VAT on clay would help small producers. Furthermore, the way HMRC treats apprenticeships and mentoring needs a more creative attitude to help the industry. In Stroud, there are long-running potteries such as Lansdown Pottery and the newer Stroud Pottery. The Clay Loft in Nailsworth provides studio space and tuition for this very popular art form, while Stroud markets provide an excellent place to sell the pots.