Steve Barclay MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Government are spending millions of pounds and there is no plan. The measure was announced without working that out, it came as a surprise to many within the system, and it has had a chilling effect on many decisions. That is not isolated. Just today, we had the complete shambles of local government reorganisation. On the last day before the summer recess, the then Secretary of State rushed to the House to push through an announcement, which the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is now reversing, while the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is contradicting her by saying that the Government want to have a higher legal appetite for risk and fewer consultations. There is confusion across Departments, and the issues with clause 1, which a number of Members have spoken to, illustrate that. Given the time limit, I will turn to clause 6. I do not doubt for a minute that the Health Minister and the Secretary of State—anyone in the Department—want to promote innovation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) spoke a lot about capital to revenue switches in his book, and the pressure that takes away from innovation. As Health Secretary, I used to have a wry smile at the battles I had with him, when I was pushed by the Treasury to do exactly the same thing. The issue is not the lack of will; the issue is the alignment between procurement, regulation and clinical leadership, particularly in the colleges, as well as the ability to scale innovation—it is not about having more ministerial pilots. Finally, because I am almost out of time, I will pick up on the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee’s good points around data. When I was in the Department, my frustration was that I often had to go on open-source dashboards to get information that should have been available to me as a Minister, and I suspect that that is still the case. We should make data dashboards a common theme—the CSV files that the Department publishes are extremely difficult to access. Make data more transparent; it will help the debate in Parliament and, I dare say, it will help Ministers get more support.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Health Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to clause 1 on the abolition of NHS England and clause 6 on promoting innovation. What characterises the first of those is an announcement without any clear plan. That is what has driven the cost and confusion that a number of Members across the House have spoken about. Those in any doubt about that can just look at NHS England’s own 2025-26 annual accounts, which show that the costs are already more than £100 million higher than forecast and now sit at above half a billion pounds. I do not recall seeing that on election leaflets. Indeed, just six directors at NHS England are being paid over £800,000, and that points to the cost. Sometimes such big figures are hard for constituents to get their heads around. Just to localise it to my own constituency, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB alone paid out £14 million in redundancies last year. It merged with a number of other ICBs to form the Central East ICB, yet we know hear from the Government that it should align with metro mayors, which means going back to exactly what it was before: the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB. That is just one of many confusions around the announcement. The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) spoke about confusion over the timetable and what was described to the media as now an impossible timetable. We also saw reports in the media this weekend about the destination of staff in NHS England. Can they actually go into the Department, or will another body be set up because of the pay disparity between the two? All this is around 18 months on from the actual announcement. The confusion seems to extend to the Government themselves, because they seem unable to answer pretty straightforward written parliamentary questions. Given the time limit, I will give just a few examples. I asked how many people have been hired to NHS England since the announcement of its abolition, not least given the huge cost—over half a billion pounds—of voluntary redundancies. Despite the deadline passing, the Minister has not answered the question. We know from another written parliamentary question that more than 1,000 jobs have been advertised. It is relevant to know, in an organisation that is paying people to leave, how many people it is hiring. I also asked how many people had accepted voluntary redundancy, another written parliamentary question that has passed the deadline without answer. The process is characterised by a lack of transparency.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment · Hansard source

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  Labour Members will recall the political pain that I am sure many of them faced when the winter fuel proposal was announced. It was put forward to save around £1.3 billion to £1.5 billion a year. They will also recall the angst, the ministerial resignations and the delay that occurred around the defence investment plan, which cost about £15 billion, less than half of which is actually new money—about £6.9 billion. It is very surprising that the Government propose to spend more on this building and this estate than they are spending on the defence investment plan. As a deposit, they are planning to spend more than half of what was put forward as a saving on winter fuel. If colleagues are surprised to hear that, I can tell them that of the four options being brought forward, even the cheapest is more than £10 billion. In a nice sleight of hand, though, all the works on the northern estate—which are essential to the restoration and renewal programme—are excluded. That is more than a further £5 billion over the next 10 years, and that is excluding the half a billion we have spent over the past five years just on preparatory work, before building anything. After spending half a billion on preparatory work, the National Audit Office said last month that the £3 billion that is being brought forward is to allow the programme to progress from four options to two. When the legislation was passed, it was with one option; after seven years and half a billion pounds, we have gone from one option to four, and it is now proposed to spend a further £3 billion to go from four options to two. As the headline figure is so large, however, the proposal is to commit £3 billion, but to lock in the next Parliament so that, in essence, it has no choice but to sign off a figure that this Parliament knows it will be highly reluctant to sign off. All of this is being done with no debate in this House, despite more than half the Parliament being new Members. This is not a new issue—I raised this point in the exact same debate last year, the Sir David Amess debate, and have raised it multiple times in the House. There has been no debate about these gigantic figures, despite the level of debate we have on other topics. The Government might say that this is a parliamentary matter, but it is not; it is the Government who will provide the money, and it is the Government who have the majority in the House. This is happening because, bluntly, there has been a breakdown in trust between officials—who are deeply frustrated with Members and peers because they feel that we have not set a clear budget or a clear timeline, and that the goalposts are being moved regarding the options—and Members and peers, who are frustrated because they feel that officials are not responding to concerns. In 2021, the Leader of the House said that this scheme was massively gold-plated, but the trade-offs are still not being addressed. Let me give just one example—that of the Lords roof. Although the Finance Committee does not cover R&R, we had a proposal this week on the Lords roof, which is work outside of R&R. An extra £1 million of costs was being incurred just because the Lords would not agree to finish at 10.30 pm. When I put that to Members of the Lords, they were completely unaware of that figure. I am almost out of time, but the point I want to make to the House is that these are huge numbers, and it is ridiculous that there has been so little transparency and debate. R&R is going to be a national scandal; I keep raising it, but nothing is changing. It is time that we had a debate in this House, made this issue transparent and brought some clarity to it, including a defined budget and a time limit, which I would set as one Parliament.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Rearmament and Warfighting Readiness · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the broader point, which is the lack of detail on reserves, other than to say that it is all being parked until the next Parliament. That is a wasted opportunity. Reservists also need clearer communication from the Government, including on the training days and reserve service days this year. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will say a bit more about that. Finally, we know that a Government reshuffle is coming, and if issues such as national resilience are to be addressed, they quite rightly require an all-of-Government response. Yet there is very little detail. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar said regarding the answer to his written question, the MOD is often reluctant to answer on national security grounds, and there is very little detail on how other Departments will prioritise their budgets and what the key performance indicators are, particularly when new Ministers are likely to be coming in. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be KPIs relating to the defence investment plan for those Departments, and if so, when will they be set out?