Wes Streeting MP: speeches 2025

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Speeches

25 Mar 2025 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source
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I am well aware of the challenges at Stepping Hill hospital and the need for support and investment in services in Stockport, not least thanks to the representations of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra). We are looking carefully at this situation and are committed to working with leaders locally to try to improve the quality of and access to services to give local people what they deserve.
25 Mar 2025 · Community Hospitals · Hansard source
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the innovation and the impact of virtual wards. I have seen at first hand the impact they can have—not just in providing better value for taxpayers and freeing up hospital beds for those who genuinely need to be in hospital, but in providing what everyone wants, which is to receive high-quality care in the comfort of their own home wherever possible. That will be a big part of our 10-year plan, and of course, it will be underpinned by really good community nursing and community healthcare teams.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising these serious issues. There are issues of concern here, and she clearly describes a concerning situation for the local community. We need to look carefully at what is happening, and the Minister of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), would be delighted to meet her.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am very sorry to hear of June’s experience. It illustrates why our determination to end the 8 am scramble for appointments is so necessary, starting with a new requirement for practices to make online appointment requests available through core hours, as well as the big uplift we have invested into general practice. I hope that will start to see improvements so that people like June will not be left queuing outside in the cold.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am grateful to the hon. Member for all the work she has been doing on this issue. She is right: we need more integration of services, and we need to look at where we can share facilities to achieve better care for patients and better value for taxpayers.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The irony! There is one big difference between what this Government are doing and what the Conservative party did for 14 years, which is that this Government will actually deliver a new Watford general hospital where the Conservative party failed.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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It was thanks to the decisions taken by the Chancellor in the Budget that we were able to award £889 million for general practice. That is why the Minister for Care was able to get the GP contract agreed for the first time since the pandemic. Opposition Members cannot continue to welcome the investment and oppose the means. They have to spell out where they would cut services or raise taxes instead.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Since I reported to the House on the Government’s plans to abolish NHS England, hammering the final nail into the coffin of Lord Lansley’s disastrous 2012 reorganisation, the reforms have been welcomed almost universally across Parliament—with the exception of Lord Lansley. I am pleased to report that the new chief executive of NHS England, Sir Jim Mackey, has appointed the transformation team that will deliver better care for patients and better value for taxpayers’ money. We are working closely together as we finalise the 10-year plan for health, which will be published around the spending review in June.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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As my hon. Friend says, we have brought NHS waiting lists down five months in a row, including during the peak winter pressures. We have delivered the 2 million more appointments we promised seven months early, and we published our elective reform plan at the beginning of the new year with the Prime Minister, which sets out the combination of measures, the investment and the reform that will ensure that we deliver the shorter waiting times and the faster access to treatment that my hon. Friend’s constituents and people right across the country deserve. I look forward to keeping him updated.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Baroness Casey will be making contact with all party groups in order to set dates with parties across this House very shortly, and of course she will be kicking off her commission in April, which is now only days away.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Despite the significant uplift announced by the Chancellor at the Budget, system financial returns during the planning round suggested an overspend for the coming year of between £5 billion to £6 billion. When I said I would not tolerate overspending in the NHS, I meant it. When I said I would go after unnecessary administrative costs, duplication and bureaucracy, I meant it. That is what this Government are doing to protect frontline services.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am sure that the whole House will want to send our condolences to the right hon. Gentleman following the loss of his father. It is good to see him back in action—if not always back in action. Given the scale of the job reductions and savings that we are seeking to make, the total quantum will be determined once the final shape of the organisation is determined.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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We are delighted to receive the hon. Gentleman’s representations. We will look carefully at the case he makes and will consider visits as diaries allow.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question, as it gives me the chance to pay tribute to the late great Baroness Jowell, as well as to the work taking place in her name through the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission. There have been frustrating delays in getting funding out the door for the purpose for which it is intended. Ministers are looking carefully at this issue, and we want to make more progress more quickly, to ensure that families do not receive the same death sentence that our late friend did.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The Chancellor took almost immediate action to deliver the uplift in pay for NHS staff that they deserve. We are working closely with the Royal College of Nursing, Unison and others ensure that we tackle the challenges of low pay in the nursing profession that the hon. Member describes.
25 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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Phase 1 of the Casey commission reports next year and the final Casey report is due by 2028, but the Chancellor has already announced an increase in funding for social care in the Budget, through means that the hon. Lady’s party regrettably seems to oppose.
25 Mar 2025 · Independent Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender · Hansard source
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I am grateful to Professor Sullivan for her report. Sex and gender identity are not always the same, and it is important for patients that we record both accurately. I know the House will share my concern at some of the findings from Professor Sullivan’s report, such as trans patients not being invited for cancer screening because of how their gender is recorded. I can assure the House that I am already acting on reports. Last week, I instructed the health service to immediately suspend applications for NHS number changes for under-18s to safeguard children. Taking such action does not prevent the NHS from recording, recognising and respecting trans people’s gender identity.
25 Mar 2025 · Independent Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender · Hansard source
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I will absolutely undertake to share the approach we are taking with my counterparts across the United Kingdom. The approach I have always taken is one that understands the importance of biological sex, that recognises, understands and supports that someone’s gender identity may not always match their biological sex, and that seeks to navigate a way through what has been an extremely toxic and sometimes harmful debate in a way that protects the sex-based rights of women and protects trans people and their identity. I know that my colleagues across Government are taking an equally sensitive approach, and I think it would be in everyone’s interests if we saw a similar approach across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is important not just in the provision of services, but in accurate data and research, that we make that distinction, which does not in any way undermine respect for people’s gender identity.
25 Mar 2025 · Independent Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender · Hansard source
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I am grateful to the shadow Minister for her question. I speak to the Science Secretary on too frequent a basis—on a daily basis. He and I are both looking very carefully at the findings of the Sullivan review and working through its implications for both the health and care services, for which I am responsible, and for the Government digital and data services, for which he is responsible.
25 Mar 2025 · Independent Review of Data, Statistics and Research on Sex and Gender · Hansard source
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The shadow Minister raises a good example of how conflation of sex and gender identity is not helpful both in terms of data analysis and of recognising health inequalities. It is also not helpful in making sure that we understand variances between people based on their different backgrounds and characteristics and that we provide targeted, personalised and effective healthcare that deals with healthcare inequalities. That is why we are carefully studying the recommendations made by Professor Sullivan, with a view to making sure that we are meeting the needs of everyone, including the trans community, who I understand, not least because of the way that the debate has been conducted in recent years, are anxious about the implications of the report. However, I genuinely think that the report will lead to better, more inclusive and fairer outcomes for everyone, including the trans community.
13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source
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That is an excellent question. We are building an outstanding transformational team with Sir Jim Mackey, which will be announced very shortly. It will bring together some of the best leaders across the country, and expertise from outside the NHS, to drive the scale and pace of transformation that is necessary. My hon. Friend is right to say that it is existential, because we cannot allow the curve of cost and demand to continue to rise to the extent that it is. The NHS’s long-term workforce plan has one in nine people in our country working for the NHS. On the current trajectory, in 50 years’ time, 100% of the public would be working for the NHS. That is clearly not a sustainable position. I tell people who resist this reform out of love for the NHS not to kill it with kindness. We have to bend the curve of cost and demand to ensure that our health services are sustainable for the long term on the equitable foundations of a public service, free at the point of use, that we will always defend. I also say to my hon. Friends on the Government Back Benches that if we do not get this right, goodness knows what will come next. The Leader of the Opposition says that she wants a debate on the funding model for the NHS. The leader of the Reform party—I am not sure whether he is the Leader of the Opposition yet—says that he is up for anything. I am sure he is. That should worry us. To those who want to debate the funding model of our NHS and the equitable principle of it being a public service, free at the point of use, I say that we are happy to have that debate but the Government are unequivocal: under Labour, the NHS is not for sale. It will always be a public service, free at the point of use, so that when people fall ill, they never have to worry about the bill.
13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source
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That is a great question from my hon. Friend. We have to give people the tools to do the job. The Prime Minister set me and my hon. Friends in the Department an enormous challenge on behalf of the public. In turn, I am setting an enormous challenge for NHS leaders at every level, but particularly for frontline NHS leaders. We have to give them the tools to do the job in terms of data platforms and the technology that they are given to work with, ensuring that they have access not just to cutting-edge treatments and medical technology, but to the back-office productivity support that can drive efficiency and improvement and, frankly, liberate managers and frontline staff from the arcane systems they are working with. Some of the very best people I have met in the last few years, shadowing this portfolio and now holding it in government, are NHS leaders, especially on the frontline. It is my responsibility to give them the tools to do the job. That is not just about financial resources; it means bulldozing through some of the regulatory barriers and overcentralised instructions that stop them making decisions in the best interests of patients, in terms of clinical pathways and value for taxpayers. I have given them an undertaking that I will have their backs, both on the decisions that they will have to take on the frontline and on bulldozing through the national bureaucracy that is tying them up in knots when we need to set them free.
13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source
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I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, and I echo what he said about the talents of people at NHS England. I did not take this decision with the Prime Minister lightly. Indeed, it was not my instinct coming into government, but it has been shaped by what I have seen and experienced over the past eight months. Clinical leadership is vital, and that is not just doctors; it is also nurses and other clinical leadership. We have a brilliant chief nursing officer, who remains in place and will be part of that clinical leadership team. I can assure my hon. Friend that we do not want any political interference in what should be decisions for clinicians. What we need is the right political leadership to give that clinical leadership the tools, power and freedom to do the job that only they can do, and that they do best.
13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman makes a fair challenge on the bureaucratic nature of decision-making. We are working with Treasury Ministers and colleagues across Government to take an axe to that unnecessary bureaucracy. He will be absolutely fuming when he finds out who was responsible for it.
13 Mar 2025 · NHS England Update · Hansard source
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I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that thoughtful question. Let me say two things to him. First, democratic accountability matters, both in terms of patient outcomes and value for taxpayers’ money. One of the things that I, my Labour and many of my Conservative predecessors have reflected on a lot over many years is what the role of the Secretary of State, and Government, is in a national health service where clinical decisions should always be clinically led. It is the Secretary of State’s responsibility to be the champion for patients and for taxpayers and to ensure that the system as a whole delivers better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers. The argument that I have started, however, which has ruffled some feathers within the NHS and even more so with some of our country’s most loved charities in recent months, is the fallacy that the Secretary of State can or should just fire endless instructions into the system, as if a Secretary of State or, for that matter, an NHS England could just pull some big levers and drive change in such a vast and complex system. That is a falsehood. Of course, we should set national strategic priorities on behalf of the public. We should ensure that there is more transparency and information so that patients, communities and staff can hold the system and themselves to account to improve performance. However, the overcentralisation has to stop. In future, it will be for the Department and the NHS nationally to do the things that only the national health service can do, providing the enablers for the system as a whole. What we are presiding over and embarking on, however, is the biggest decentralisation of power in the history of our national health service. That will put more power into the hands of frontline leaders and clinicians, but even more fundamental and transformational, more power into the hands of patients. If we get that right, we will have an NHS that can truly be the envy of the world. If people continue to indulge in the fallacy that more targets from the centre or more—or indeed, less—political control is the answer, we will fail. The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the CQC. It has got itself into a terrible mess and I know that that is not what he intended when he rightly made the decision to create the Care Quality Commission. That is why Sir Julian Hartley knows that he has our full support, not just in turning around the CQC as it is, but in reforming it so that it can be the best guarantee and safeguard of quality that patients and the public deserve. Dr Penny Dash’s forthcoming review findings will also help to drive that reform agenda at pace.

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