Stephen Kinnock MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2025 · Community Audiology · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is busted now.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Community Audiology · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and congratulating him on securing this important debate. Having now been in the same room as a specialist in ear, nose and throat, a former GP and a vet, I am not sure that I am entirely qualified, and I approach this debate with some trepidation. I certainly enjoyed the debate and, as the Father of the House rightly said, it was a privilege to be able to hear some of the insights, direct experience and expertise of hon. Friends and Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip has also been doing a huge amount of good work in promoting the flu vaccine ahead of winter, in his constituency and more widely, and I pay tribute to him for that. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency a few weeks ago, where I met the incredible team at the Pembroke centre in Ruislip Manor to hear about how they are delivering, designing and developing their thoughts about neighbourhood health hubs and the neighbourhood health service, which will be a pivotal part of our 10-year plan. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People estimates that one in five people in the UK—almost 12 million adults—are deaf, have hearing loss or experience tinnitus, and by 2035 that figure is projected to rise to over 14 million. For people with cognitive disabilities, hearing loss can have a real impact on their quality of life, causing confusion for people with dementia, making communication and social interaction more difficult and increasing loneliness and isolation. That is why our community audiology services are so important. They represent a comprehensive range of hearing care delivered in local, accessible settings, such as GP surgeries, community clinics and community diagnostic centres. They help people of all ages, offering assessments, hearing aid fittings and support for those with tinnitus and balance issues. They advise on equipment such as amplified telephones and alerting devices, while working alongside occupational therapists to support people to stay independent. They form part of a wider team with speech, language and other community services, acute care, and the ear, nose and throat department for issues that cannot be managed in the community. Community audiology services face challenges, particularly on waiting lists and inequality of provision. Members across the Chamber raised some of those points. The Father of the House rightly pointed out that there are 6.7 million people who should use a hearing aid but do not. We must overcome the stigma associated with hearing loss. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) was right to talk about the connection between hearing loss and the propensity for falls. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) shared his tremendous expertise as an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and I thank him for his insights about the Hear for Norfolk project, which is a very interesting model indeed. Perhaps we can follow up on it in the new year. The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) gave a remarkable exposition on hearing loss in dogs—I have to say that I did not have that on my bingo card for this afternoon—from which we all learned a tremendous amount. He also made a number of important points about hearing loss in humans, and we absolutely take them on board. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) rattled off a number of questions for me, and I desperately tried keep track of them. I got some of them and did not get others, so I will happily write to him on the points that I am unable to address now. He raised an important point about self-referral, which of course depends on local commissioning arrangements. There is inequality and unwarranted variation in the ability to self-refer. We want more self-referral. We think there are opportunities in upgrading the functionality of the NHS app. Our objective is absolutely to be able to do this without having to go through a GP. There are some technology-related solutions, but I want to assure him that there is no conscious decision from the Government to deprioritise self-referral; I just think that there are some variations. The old chestnut that we are constantly trying to crack is around devolving to ICBs the power and agency that they should have because they are closest to the health needs of their population, while ensuring that they are clear about the outcomes, frameworks and standards that we expect. We honestly hold our hands up and say that we have not got that right in all cases, but we are committed to self-referral as a principle and as a really important part of the shift from hospital to community. On ICB budgets, we have secured £6 billion through the spending review process for capital upgrades. A lot of that will help us to ramp up what we are doing on community diagnostics. That is one way to square the circle around the investment that we need on the ground for ICBs to be able to do more in terms of the services they provide by improving the equipment, the kit and the technology they have. Part of the answer to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth’s question relates to capital investment really helping to boost the services provided. The workforce plan is coming in the spring of 2026. I absolutely hear what the hon. Member says about the need to move forward on that. It has been a complex process. Obviously some of the changes and restructuring around what we are doing on NHS England have also had an impact on the process of putting the workforce plan together, but I am reliably informed that that will be in the spring of 2026. Timely access and effective support to services can make all the difference to someone’s quality of life, wellbeing and independence. As part of our effort to shift care from hospital to home, this Government want to support people to live independently in the community, and community audiology will play an essential part in making that happen. Community audiology is commissioned locally by integrated care boards. Funding is allocated to ICBs by NHS England. Each ICB commissions the services it needs for its local area, taking into account its annual budget, planning guidance and the wider needs of the people that it serves. This year, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor confirmed the Government’s commitment to getting our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future, with day-to-day spending increasing by £29 billion in real terms over the next five years. By the end of this Parliament, the NHS resource budget will reach £226 billion. That funding will support the growing demand for community health services, including audiology. It will help integrated care boards to expand diagnostic capacity, invest in local estates and equipment, and sustain the workforce needed to deliver high quality hearing care for patients of all ages. For the first time, we have published an overview of the core community health services, which include audiology, for ICBs to consider when planning for their local populations and commissioning processes. Our medium-term planning framework for the next financial years sets out our ambition to bring waiting times over 18 weeks down, develop plans to bring waits over 52 weeks to zero, and to increase capacity to meet growth in demand, which is expected to be around 3% nationally every year. We are asking systems to seek every opportunity to improve productivity and get care closer to home, from getting teams the latest digital tools and equipment they need so they can connect remotely to health systems and patients, to expanding point-of-care testing in the community. Systems are also asked to ensure that all providers in acute, community and mental health sectors are onboarded to the NHS federated data platform and use its core products. Our 10-year health plan sets out how we would make the shift from analogue to digital by making the NHS app the digital front door to services. We will make it easier for patients to access audiology services through self-referral. This will transform the working lives of GPs, letting them focus on care where they provide the highest value-add. This is how we will make sure everyone can self-refer—not just the most confident and health-literate. Patients can access NIH-funded audiology services directly without having to wait for a referral from their GP. That means improved access to care and shorter waiting times. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and other hon. Friends stood, as I did, on a manifesto to halve health inequality between the richest and poorest areas of our country. I know he will agree that access should not be based on where we live. A key part of our elective reform plan, published at the start of the year, is transforming and expanding diagnostic services so we can reduce waiting times for tests and bring down overall waits. NHS England is working closely with services to improve access to self-referral options, aiming for a more consistent offer right across the country.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Community Audiology · Hansard source

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  I can—we are absolutely committed to responding to the Kingdon review next year. We are working on pulling together our response to the report. It is extremely important, and there are serious lessons to be learned from it. We think Dr Kingdon has done an excellent piece of work, and we are very keen to build on it and take it forward. Community diagnostics, such as local hearing assessment clinics and testing in community settings, are being rolled out more widely through the expansion of our community diagnostic centres. We are opening more of these centres—12 hours a day, seven days a week, offering more same-day tests, consultations and a wider range of diagnostics. I am very proud that we now have 170 CDCs across England. Almost 2 million audiology assessments have been carried out by NHS staff since this Government took office, including 136,000 tests in October—the highest number of audiology tests for a single month in the history of the NHS. This is a crucial step in supporting the NHS to meet its constitutional standards and deliver quicker care to patients. I also want to salute the work of the Welsh Government, who have been pioneers in many respects with their plan, published this week, showing how Wales is also leading in audiology services on care in the community, training and infrastructure. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth asked about the Kingdon report, and in this debate on audiology services, I must take this opportunity to thank Dr Camilla Kingdon for the excellent review that she chaired into failures in children’s hearing services. As I have just told him, the Government are committed to responding to the recommendations made by Dr Kingdon, and we will publish a comprehensive response next year. Community audiology services face challenges, with long waits and inconsistency in access to services, but we are taking action through the medium-term planning framework, by expanding community diagnostic centres and as an integral part of our 10-year plan. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and I come from a political tradition based on solidarity, and this Government stand for a health service that leaves no person behind. I know that he shares my determination to get timely access to community audiology services for all 12 million of our compatriots who need them. I thank my hon. Friend once again for bringing forward this extremely important debate, and I thank all Members who have spoken. It only remains for me to wish you, Mr Vickers, as well as your entire team and everyone else in the Chamber, all the very best for Christmas and the new year.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Palliative Care: North Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and I really thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) for raising this important issue. This year, I have seen at first hand—at the Wigan and Leigh hospice, the Noah’s Ark Children’s hospice in Barnet, and Katherine House hospice in Staffordshire—the vital role that hospices play in our communities, so I completely understand why my hon. Friend speaks so passionately about Ashgate hospice. And I will take a moment to thank everyone working or volunteering in the hospice care sector over Christmas, especially those who are spending Christmas day away from their own families just to bring a bit of joy to the people they care for. This Government want a society where every person receives high-quality and compassionate care, from diagnosis through to the end of life. Hospices and wider palliative and end-of-life care services will play a key part in our efforts to shift more care out of hospitals and into the community. However, we inherited a palliative and end-of-life care system that is under pressure and we absolutely recognise the financial challenges that hospices face as a result of rising costs and reduced charitable income. Let me echo what my hon. Friend said by also commending his constituents who came together to put their time, effort and money into fundraising. The fact that they managed to save two beds at Ashgate hospice from closing shows how important the hospice is to the wider community, even if challenges clearly remain. Most hospices are charitable and independent organisations that receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding that charitable hospices receive varies, both within and between ICB areas. Such variation can often be explained by the level of demand in a particular area, but it can also be explained by the totality and the type of provision from both NHS services and non-NHS services, including charitable hospices, within each ICB area. Although the majority of palliative and end-of-life care is provided by NHS staff and services, of course voluntary sector organisations also play a vital part in supporting people at the end of their life. That is why a year ago, almost to the day, we announced a £100 million capital funding boost for adult hospices and children’s hospices, in order to ensure that they have the best physical environment in which to provide care. Ashgate hospice is receiving over £845,000 of that money over the two years of funding and Blythe House hospice, another hospice in north Derbyshire, is receiving just under £160,000. All of this capital funding is a once in a generation investment into hospices in England, which will guarantee future savings by making them more sustainable, including by fixing draughty windows, repairing old boilers, installing solar panels, fixing roofs, etc. We are also providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices that serve north Derbyshire. This year, Bluebell Wood children’s hospice is receiving £986,000, and Rainbows hospice for children and young people is receiving £1,462,000. Our priority was to protect children’s hospices from facing a cliff edge of yearly funding cycles through multi-year settlements, so we were delighted to confirm that this funding would be in place for the next three financial years. This money will be at least £26 million each year, adjusted for inflation, allocated via ICBs to children’s hospices in England, or around £80 million over the three years in total. Having said all that, I do not for one second want to give the impression that I am downplaying the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield has raised, nor do I believe that this money is a silver bullet for all the issues we face. As he points out, integrated care boards are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care services to meet the needs of the people they serve. My understanding is that what NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB calls its core contract value—the baseline funding in the contract with Ashgate hospice—has increased by 55% since 2022, which represents a higher share compared with uplifts the ICB has provided for other NHS services through its hospital trusts and other providers. I am aware that the ICB has been working with the Ashgate team over several months to understand why their costs have risen significantly over the last financial year. It has also offered £100,000 towards an independent review, which would be linked to a future service specification—in other words, the way in which the ICB provides funding to the hospice in future. Derby and Derbyshire ICB has committed to develop a new service specification for palliative and end-of-life care to inform its contracting going into 2026-27, and to engage on a new model of palliative and end-of-life care across the ICB cluster, aligning to the three shifts set out in the 10-year plan and delivered through the neighbourhood health model of delivery. However, it is clear from my hon. Friend’s speech that there are two sides to this story. It appears that there is a gulf in understanding between the ICB on the one hand and the management team of Ashgate and the community on the other—that is clear from everything my hon. Friend has said and from other interventions. I would therefore be more than happy to broker a discussion between the ICB, concerned Members of Parliament and the hospice to get to the bottom of what is going on, so that everyone is on the same page as to what is happening with the costs, where the problems lie in terms of provision and ensuring we do everything we can to retain this vital service. It feels like the dialogue between the ICB and the management team at the hospice is not working, and I am more than happy to intervene, to help to make that work. Perhaps I could sit down and discuss that further with my hon. Friend and other colleagues. As I said earlier, the delivery of healthcare is largely devolved in England, and ICBs are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care services to meet the needs of local people. Beyond the £100 million of capital funding and the £80 million of revenue funding for children’s hospices, we are not able to offer additional funding from the centre as things stand, although we are looking at and exploring other opportunities. As I told the sector in a speech to the Hospice UK conference in Liverpool last month, I know that this is not the message the sector wants to hear, and it is certainly not the message that I want to deliver. But with the public finances in the state they are in—the state that we inherited them in—I have to recognise that the Chancellor has made some tough trade-offs to support our public services, especially the NHS, in the context of our debt interest payments surpassing the entirety of our education budget as things stand. In these challenging circumstances, we are trying to support the sector in other ways. We are developing the first ever palliative care and end-of-life care modern service framework, or MSF, for England. That will be aligned with the ambitions set out in our 10-year health plan. We will closely monitor the shift towards strategic commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services to ensure that services start bringing down variation in access and quality. While there is a lot of diversity in contracting models across the hospice sector, we will consider contracting and commissioning arrangements as part of this framework. In the long term, this will aid sustainability and help hospices to plan ahead. The MSF will not just drive improvements to services that patients receive at the end of life; it will start helping ICBs to address challenges and variation in access, quality and sustainability. Further support is being provided to ICBs through the recent publication of NHS England’s strategic commissioning framework and medium-term planning guidance, which set out in black and white how ICBs should understand current and projected demand on services and associated costs, creating an overall plan to more effectively meet these needs through neighbourhood health. The medium-term planning guidance acknowledges the importance of high-quality palliative and end-of-life care. The guidance makes it clear that, from April next year, ICBs and providers must focus on reducing unnecessary non-elective admissions and bed days from high-priority cohorts—which include, importantly, people with palliative care and end-of-life care needs—and on enabling patients who require planned care to receive specialised support closer to home. That will be at the heart of the neighbourhood health service that we look to build. It is important to emphasise that the cohort of people who are reaching the end of life is a prioritised cohort within the framework of the shift to a neighbourhood health model. I hope that those measures will reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield of this Government’s commitment to the sustainability of the palliative and end-of-life care sector, including hospices such as Ashgate hospice. We will continue to work with NHS England in supporting ICBs to effectively commission the palliative and end-of-life care that is needed by their local populations. The work that our hospices do to support people in the sunset of their lives, to support families in their grief and to give such families bereavement counselling at their most vulnerable moments is utterly priceless. It is a sad reflection of the dire fiscal position that we inherited and the dire state of our public services in general that we cannot give more than the extra support that I have outlined, but we are doing everything that we can to support the sustainability of the sector in the long term while tackling inequalities and unwarranted variation in the quality and quantity of service provision. To sum up, strategic commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services is not working anything like as well as we want, frankly, across the country. It is clear that where there are gaps in an ICB’s understanding of the totality of the health and care needs of its population and in the capacity of partners and stakeholders in its ICB area to meet those needs, that process is not working as well as it needs to. That is what the modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care seeks to address. We do not have many MSFs—we have commissioned, I think, three or four in total across the entirety of what the Department of Health and Social Care is doing—so that MSF reflects the importance that we attach to palliative and end-of-life care. In the medium-term planning guidance, we have also emphasised that the palliative and end-of-life care cohort will be a top priority for our neighbourhood health strategy and the shift from hospital to community. That is what is happening at the strategic level, but I understand that at the constituency level, it also matters what is really happening for the community of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield and the worrying issues around Ashgate hospice. On the detail of what is going on there, I would be very happy to work with him to see what we can do with the ICB and other key players and stakeholders to address the specifics of that issue. There is a strategic challenge, but also an opportunity, for us and a more specific issue on which I would be happy to work with him. Dr Huq, I am happy to give the floor back to my hon. Friend for any closing remarks he wishes to make.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Palliative Care: North Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  Oh, okay. Does my hon. Friend wish to intervene?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Palliative Care: North Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  We have a plan for next steps and I look forward to discussing those with him further. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10( 6 )).

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  With the leave of the House, I will make some brief concluding remarks. I am very grateful to Members of this House for their contributions both today and throughout the passage of this Bill. I believe that by drawing on the lived experience of both Members and our constituents, we will be able to strengthen the intended impact of this legislation on people with serious mental illness and their loved ones. The passage of this Bill has seen the best of parliamentary commitment and co-operation, and the conduct of Members and peers has been collaborative and well-intentioned throughout. For too long, mental health reform legislation has sat on the shelf. This Government made a manifesto commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983, and we have delivered that within our first Session, providing an opportunity to transform the way we support those with severe mental illness and providing patients with greater choice and autonomy. I am reminded of what a patient in the 2018 independent review said: “I felt a lot of things were done to me rather than with me”. This Bill takes forward many of the changes put forward by the independent review, the recommendations of which were rightly shaped by the views of patients, carers and professionals. Many have asked about next steps and implementation. Post-Royal Assent, our first priority will be to draft and consult on the code of practice. We will engage with people with lived experience and their families and carers, staff and professional groups, commissioners, providers and others to do that. The code will go to public consultation, as well as being laid before Parliament before final publication. Alongside the code, we will develop the necessary secondary legislation. We will then need time to train the existing workforce on the new Act, regulations and the code. We estimate full implementation will take around 10 years due to the time needed to train the workforce and the need to ensure that the right community support is available. This timeframe necessarily spans multiple spending review periods and multiple Parliaments, so we are limited in the detail we can give about future spend and timelines. But we have committed to an annual written ministerial statement on implementation. This commitment will last for the 10 years or until the Bill is fully implemented, whichever is sooner.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Yes, I was just coming on to that, because the hon. Gentleman raised it in his speech. We are protecting the mental health investment standard in real terms, as it will rise in line with inflation. Our position is quite straightforward. We feel that for far too long the NHS has been run by a series of input-based targets which micromanage frontline leaders, while failing to ensure improvements in patient experience and care. We are bringing the era of command and control to an end, setting frontline leaders free to innovate and run their services as they know best. I also remind the Opposition spokesman that we are investing £473 million in capital funding in mental health nationally over 2026-27 to 2029-30. That funding will: support the establishment of a 24/7 neighbourhood mental health service; deliver mental health emergency departments, known as crisis assessment centres; expand neighbourhood mental health services; eliminate inappropriate out-of-area placements; and increase crisis accommodation for people with learning disabilities and autism. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that when we see a rising tide lifting all the boats, we are connecting our mental health spend to that rising tide. We are then seeing a rise in real terms on what this Government are spending on mental health across the board. I am very happy to again meet the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, and look at that particular issue. He raised it in Committee. I hope that some of the things I have just set out will help very much on the tragedy of suicide in our country. We are very conscious of how much we need to do to combat that. I put on record my thanks to all Members and noble peers who have paid such a close interest in the development of the proposals, along with the officials and parliamentary staffers who have supported us to do so. The officials involved in the Bill are too many to mention, but I would like to pay tribute to colleagues in my private office, Emily Cowhig and Penny Sherlock, who have done such sterling work on the Bill, supporting me and the entire team throughout. Transforming mental health care for the most vulnerable patients with serious mental illness requires the Bill to pass into statute. I am therefore grateful to hon. Members for their support in enabling us to do so. Lords amendments 19B and 19C agreed to.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Yes, we absolutely do agree. As the hon. Gentleman will hear as I proceed with my speech, we have three options in respect of what will happen in exactly the scenario that he has mentioned, and that has been very much the spirit of the amendment on which we have agreed with the other place. We will put patient feedback and outcomes front and centre by improving the transparency of reporting across in-patient and community mental health services. We will introduce an early warning system so that we can intervene earlier, using patient and staff feedback and clinical information to identify services that are at risk of providing poor-quality care. That is alongside our commitments to roll out mental health support teams in schools and colleges to full national coverage by 2029, to employ an extra 8,500 mental health workers by the end of the Parliament, and to pilot new 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres across the country. Once implemented, this long-awaited and transformational Bill will give patients greater choice and autonomy and enhanced rights and support, and will ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and respect throughout their treatment. Let me now briefly outline some of the commitments made by my ministerial colleague Baroness Merron in the other place. In response to the amendment tabled by Baroness May, the Government announced plans to launch a consultation on emergency police powers of detention. The consultation will look at in particular, but will not be limited to, sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, as well as exploring joint working approaches across organisations. We have committed ourselves to working with stakeholders as we define the scope of the consultation. In the other place, following engagement with Baroness Berridge, the Government tabled amendments in lieu regarding the appointment of a nominated person for a child under 16 who lacks competence. The amendment states that if no local authority has parental responsibility, an approved mental health professional—an AMHP—must appoint a person who has parental responsibility, a person named in a child arrangements order as a person with whom the relevant patient is to live, or a person who is a special guardian. If there is no suitable person with parental responsibility who is willing to act, the AMHP must consider the child’s wishes and feelings when deciding whom to appoint. This amendment clarifies whom AMHPs should appoint as the nominated person, and gives priority to those with parental responsibility. We intend to use the code of practice to outline what factors and nuances an AMHP should consider when making the appointment decision. If the AMHP later discovers that another of those on the list is more suitable to act as the nominated person, the legislation allows him or her to terminate the appointment of the nominated person and appoint the special guardian instead. I thank Members on both sides of the House for their support for the Bill, and look forward to hearing their contributions.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendments 19B and 19C. It is a privilege to return to the Mental Health Bill in this House for what I hope will be the final time in its passage. Thanks to the constructive and collaborative approach from Members across this House and noble Lords in the other place, we have been able to reach an amended and improved version of the Bill so that we can begin our vital work on the code of practice. In particular, I pay tribute to my ministerial colleague, Baroness Merron, for her outstanding work on this Bill. The Bill sits alongside the 10-year plan, which sets out our ambitious reform agenda to transform the NHS and make it fit for the future. We know that there is much more to do to improve outcomes, to tackle unacceptable waiting times for care and to fully meet the needs of the population in a tailored, personalised and timely way. We will overhaul how mental health support is delivered in England to drive down waits and improve the quality of care, backed by a whole-of-society approach to preventing mental illness and to intervening early. Last week, we announced the launch of an independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism. We are launching this review to understand the rises in prevalence and demand on services, to ensure that people receive the right support at the right time and in the right place. People who need it will access high-quality and compassionate mental health support at an earlier stage, and more people will recover or live well with mental illness. We will go further to improve the quality and transparency of care, working with experts and people with lived experience. We will publish a new modern service framework for severe mental illness, setting consistency in clinical standards across the country so that patients and families get the best-quality, evidence-based treatment and support.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I would be more than happy to meet her to discuss it, because I think the complexity of what she raises needs some detail.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for saving the Ladies Walk health centre in her constituency, which the Conservatives were trying to shut. We are advancing modern service frameworks for conditions where we can swiftly and significantly raise the quality of care. The National Quality Board makes recommendations on future modern service frameworks; its next meeting is on 8 December.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend, who is a tireless campaigner on this issue. We want to see more dentists in Burton and Uttoxeter, and across the country, which is why we are offering dentists £20,000 to work in underserved areas. We are making it a requirement for new dentists to practice in the NHS through our tie-in policy. We are also making additional urgent appointments available across the country, including for my hon. Friend’s constituents in Burton and Uttoxeter.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yes, I am happy to meet the hon. Lady.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. I met the GDC recently. It has completed the procurement of the new management agent to run the overseas registration examination, and I am confident that we will see a significant boost in the numbers—that is coming onstream very quickly. However, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman: it has been too slow, and it needs to speed up.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We have the interim reforms, and our response on those will be published very soon. We are working on the long-term reform of the NHS dentistry contract with the British Dental Association, and I would be happy to keep the hon. Lady updated on our progress.

• 25 Nov 2025 · NHS Dental Services: Norfolk · Hansard source

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  NHS dentistry is out of reach for too many people, and that issue is felt particularly acutely in rural areas such as Norfolk. This Government are rolling out extra urgent dental appointments across the country, and we will be making further improvements for patients to come in from April 2026. NHS dentistry was left to rot for 14 years under the Conservatives; Labour is putting it on the road to recovery.

• 25 Nov 2025 · NHS Dental Services: Norfolk · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is right: it is the Government’s responsibility to give a steer to the Office for Students, and we are very close to being able to put that together. I am expecting some advice from my officials later in the week, and I shall be happy to keep the hon. Gentleman updated on further progress.

• 25 Nov 2025 · NHS Dental Services: Norfolk · Hansard source

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  I, too, am absolutely delighted that more patients can see a dentist in Norfolk but, as my hon. Friend says, there is a long way to go. We are certainly not complacent, but we are showing that it is possible to turn things around. I am also pleased that the University of East Anglia has been approved as a dental school by the General Dental Council. The Office for Students has statutory responsibility for allocating dental school places, but I fully agree that UEA would be a good candidate for any additional Government-funded places allocated in future.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Palliative Care Strategy · Hansard source

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  I am very pleased that the measures we have taken have provided financial support. I absolutely recognise the challenging financial position, and I would of course be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that further.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Palliative Care Strategy · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to have announced in a written ministerial statement yesterday that the Government are developing a palliative care and end-of-life care modern service framework for England. The modern service framework will be aligned with the 10-year health plan, prioritising shifting care out of hospitals and into the community to ensure personalised, compassionate support for individuals and their families.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Palliative Care Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I notice he did not welcome the fact that we are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost and £80 million in revenue funding for children’s hospices over three years. We also notice that Conservative Members do like to welcome the additional investment generated from the last Budget, but they do not seem to welcome the means by which it was generated, so I would say to them: what would they cut or what taxes would they put up to pay for what we are doing to get our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future?

• 20 Nov 2025 · Unpaid Carers: Inequalities · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) for securing this vital debate. I pay tribute to her for her career-long dedication to adult social care and so many of the issues we are debating today. I also pay tribute to all the powerful and moving contributions we have heard today, many about personal experience, engagement with constituents and the stories we hear every day about the pivotal role that unpaid carers play in our care system, which are truly inspiring and uplifting. Every day, unpaid carers step up to sustain the health and wellbeing of millions of people across our country. Every day, they step up quietly and without expectation to support loved ones, neighbours and friends. I offer my heartfelt thanks, particularly on Carers Rights Day: thank you for the compassion, the commitment and the resilience you show. As Minister for Care, it has been my priority to listen directly to unpaid carers through discussions with carers of all ages, including during Carers Week. I have heard at first hand the realities of balancing care, work, education and personal wellbeing. Those conversations have been moving, honest and often humbling. They have reinforced just how essential it is that we continue to recognise and support the people who provide so much care to so many, and who hold so much of our health and care system together. As I said at the Carers UK “State of Caring” conference earlier this year, we have made genuine progress over the last three decades. The profile of the role of unpaid carers has undoubtedly grown, and awareness of their contribution is undoubtedly greater. Despite that, true equality of opportunity remains out of reach for far too many. My ambition is clear: that carers who want to work can do so without being penalised; that young carers can learn, develop and dream, just like their peers; and that caring must not lead to long-term damage to a person’s health, wealth or wellbeing. The data shows the scale of the challenge: unpaid carers are 16% more likely to have multiple long-term health conditions, and providing just 10 hours of care a week can significantly reduce someone’s likelihood of being employed and increase their risk of loneliness. These pressures compound existing inequalities linked to gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic background or age. We must continue to shine a light on these disparities, listen to carers’ voices and design support that genuinely helps them to thrive. The Government remain committed to ensuring that unpaid carers receive the right support at the right time in the right way. Under our 10-year health plan, unpaid carers will be recognised as partners in preparing personalised care and support plans. Their practical knowledge and experience will help to shape more responsive and realistic plans for the people they support. Early identification remains key. Too many carers still go unnoticed and unsupported. We will increase the information captured across the health and care system, enabling earlier intervention and more tailored help. We will also introduce a dedicated “My Carer” section in the NHS app, which will allow carers to book appointments, access information and communicate more effectively with clinical teams. That will not only support carers but streamline interactions across the system. Our shift towards a neighbourhood health service will increase the integration of health and care services, and it will bring multidisciplinary teams—GPs, nurses, social care professionals, pharmacists and others—closer to people’s homes. Working alongside unpaid carers, these teams will be better placed to deliver joined-up, community-centred support, focused on the health and care that people really need. We know that caring can have a profound impact on mental health. That is why we are expanding access to talking therapies and digital tools, and piloting neighbourhood mental health centres, offering round-the-clock support for people with more severe needs.

• 20 Nov 2025 · Unpaid Carers: Inequalities · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s points; I think that neighbourhood health, as a strategy, addresses his points about both the proximity and complexity. By definition, through shifting from hospital to community, we are addressing the proximity point. The fact that neighbourhood health will be based on multidisciplinary teams creates the idea of a one-stop shop for the patient, where their complex needs are addressed in one place. To ensure that local areas can meet their duties under the Care Act, the 2025 spending review allows for an increase of more than £4 billion in additional funding for adult social care in 2028-29, compared with 2025-26, to support the sector in making improvements. The Health and Care Act 2022 strengthened expectations around identifying and involving carers and ensuring that services are shaped by carer feedback. NHS England is helping local systems to adopt best practice through co-produced tools, case studies and events such as Carers Week and the Commitment to Carers conference. Initiatives such as GP quality markers for carers, carer passports and digital proxy access are already making a real difference and increasing the number of carers who are identified in the NHS. Balancing paid work and caring responsibilities remains a significant challenge, and too many carers risk financial hardship as a result. That should never be the case. Supporting carers to remain in or return to work is central to our plan for a modern, inclusive labour market. Employers benefit enormously from the skills, dedication and experience that carers bring. That is why in April we increased the carer’s allowance earnings limit to £196 a week—the largest rise since its inception in the 1970s—meaning that carers can now earn up to £10,000 a year without losing the allowance. The Carer’s Leave Act, which came into force in April 2024, gives employees one week of unpaid leave each year to help to manage planned caring commitments. We are now reviewing how the Act is working in practice, listening to carers and to employers of all sizes. That includes exploring the potential benefits and implications of introducing paid carer’s leave. To ensure transparency, and as hon. Members have noted, the Department for Business and Trade yesterday published the terms of reference for that review and we will hold a public consultation in 2026 on employment rights for people balancing work and care. Young carers make an extraordinary contribution, often taking on responsibilities far beyond their years. Our ambition is that every young carer should receive the support that they need to succeed at school and beyond. This autumn, we published key stages 2 and 4 attainment data for young carers for the first time—an important step in understanding and addressing the educational disadvantage that they face. Reforms across education and children’s social care will strengthen identification and support. Ofsted’s new inspection framework, introduced on 10 November, explicitly references young carers in the expected standards for inclusion, safeguarding and personal development. Local authorities must identify young carers who may need support and assess their needs when requested. We strongly support the “No Wrong Doors for Young Carers” memorandum of understanding that promotes collaboration across children’s and adults’ services, health partners and schools. I encourage all local authorities to adopt it. NHS England is supporting the identification of young carers through GP guidance and improved data sharing. It is also leading a cross-Government project, co-produced with young carers and voluntary, community and social enterprise partners, to support identification, strengthen support pathways and join up services across education, health and local organisations. Engagement workshops have already helped to shape the next young carers summit, in early 2026. Our 10-year plan sets out strong foundations for change, and we are now fully focused on delivery. Baroness Casey’s independent commission will shape the cross-party and national consensus around longer-term reforms, including proposals for a national care service. As noted by the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew), however, supporting unpaid carers requires commitment across Government. That is why I chair a ministerial working group, working closely with my counterparts at the DWP, the DBT and the Department for Education, to ensure that our policies reflect the realities of caring. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and others asked about the Government’s response to the Sayce review. I can confirm that we will publish that response this year and I am receiving regular updates from DWP colleagues on that matter. Additionally, our research arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is evaluating local carer support programmes to identify what works and where improvements are needed. As we look to the future, prevention must sit at the heart of our approach. Too many carers reach crisis point before they receive help. That not only places huge strain on families, but leads to avoidable pressure on hospitals, primary care and social services. By intervening earlier—through better identification in primary care, strengthened community networks and improved signposting —we can ensure that carers receive the right support before challenges escalate.

• 20 Nov 2025 · Unpaid Carers: Inequalities · Hansard source

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  I will be very happy to do that. We have launched the 43 sites, so I would be happy to share the documentation on how we launched them and the terms of reference. [ Interruption. ] I can see the representative from my private office is taking notes.