Wes Streeting MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I absolutely take the point the hon. Gentleman is making about the importance of place-based leadership. That is why one thing we will be looking to do, as part of the 10-year plan process, is to clarify roles and responsibilities in different parts of the system to ensure that we have better strategic place-based leadership.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Whatever stage the Bill got to, it was not completed, was it? We will bring back a tobacco and vapes Bill that is stronger than the Conservatives’ and I look forward to seeing if they support it.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The decision on the winter fuel allowance is not one that the Government took lightly, but we inherited a £22 billion hole in the nation’s finances. We continue to stand behind vulnerable households by increasing the state pension with the triple lock, delivering the warm home discount and extending the household support fund to support the most vulnerable pensioners.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am sorry for my hon. Friend’s constituents, and so many others who are dealing with the consequences of the Conservatives’ failure on dentistry. I would be delighted to meet him to discuss the challenges in his area.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Today, I am publishing the full findings of Dr Penny Dash’s review of the Care Quality Commission. Her interim report made it clear that the CQC was not fit for purpose, with fewer inspections being carried out, urgent follow-ups being neglected and patient safety being put at risk. Today, she makes seven recommendations for improvement, and I have made sure that the CQC has begun urgently putting them into practice. We are also publishing a review of the CQC’s deeply flawed single assessment framework today. Sir Julian Hartley will shortly begin as its new chief executive, with my full support.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  After the performances I had to put up with when the right hon. Lady was at the Government Dispatch Box, she has some brass neck complaining at the Opposition Dispatch Box that I am not answering her questions. She will know that we are working at pace to stand up 40,000 more appointments every week as our first step, as promised in our manifesto, and we will deliver. More than that, we will go into the next election with a record of which the right hon. Lady can only dream.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Alan Milburn is alive, he is safe and we are treating him well.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  How did it go?

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I must make some progress; I will try to take more interventions shortly. The public are clear that they do not want the NHS to be sacrificed. They gave Labour our marching orders at the general election to rescue the NHS and turn it around, and that is what we will do. I appreciate that the shadow Health Secretary must be embarrassed by all this, not just by the state that she and her Conservative predecessors left the NHS in, but by what Conservative Members have been saying. I was going to say, “Members who are sat behind her,” but they are actually not—I think they are hiding in shame. [ Interruption. ] The shadow Health Secretary says from a sedentary position that we have already had this discussion. The Conservatives would rather we just moved on and forgot their abysmal record. Well, I am afraid that we are not ready to do that just yet. At least some of her Back Benchers now say what they refused to say when they were in office: that the NHS is broken. Some of them even admit that only Labour can fix it. When the shadow Secretary of State stands up, I wonder whether she can tell us whether she agrees with the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who said: “I applaud Wes Streeting for having the political courage. I think only Labour can really say this. The NHS is sort of their thing…I really hope that we can get behind him”. It is not just Back Benchers. What about the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)? He said: “I’m very supportive of what Wes Streeting is saying… The Conservative government put a lot of money into the NHS, the record is there for all to see… I’m not one of those who is seeking to attack…the Labour Party on the NHS.” He is going for my vote, but sadly—or gladly—I am not qualified to vote in that particular election. Perhaps the shadow Health Secretary can tell us what the shadow Foreign Secretary meant when he said we were not— [ Interruption. ] She is clearly enjoying this. Was the shadow Foreign Secretary speaking for the shadow Cabinet? [ Interruption. ] No, he was not. Let me move to my favourite comments on the NHS from a Tory MP. This right hon. Member said: “We were not obsessed with how we can ensure that it actually delivers the experience that patients actually deserve…Out of fear of our opponents mischaracterising our efforts, we shirked the difficult decisions…If Wes Streeting comes forward with genuine reforms I think we should back him.” Those are the words of the candidate that the shadow Health Secretary is backing to lead her party, so does she agree with the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)? Will she finally apologise for her part in the Tories’ abysmal record and have the humility to admit that when it came to NHS reform their cupboard was bare, and that actually they quite agree with our efforts to clean up the mess that they left behind? For all the agreement with our diagnosis and praise of our plans, the problem is that there is no apology. Of the four leadership candidates and eight former Health Secretaries, not a single one has apologised for the state they left the NHS in. Would the shadow Health Secretary like to correct that record today and finally say sorry? I expect that we might have to wait a long time. While the Conservatives continue the longest leadership election in history, we are getting on with the job of cleaning up their mess.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. Of course it is not just in Loughborough that we have a challenge with access to general practice; it is right across the country. I want to be clear, because GPs come in for a lot of criticism: primary care may be broken, and the front door to the NHS may be broken, but GPs did not break it. In fact, there are fewer GPs now than there were in 2015, yet they are providing more appointments. They have worked hard to improve the productivity of general practice, but they are under-resourced. That is why we are committed, as I told the Royal College of GPs just last week, to delivering the shift that we need out of hospitals and into the community—to growing primary care, including general practice, as a proportion of the NHS’s budget, so that we have the GPs needed to treat patients on time.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I was delighted to visit Milton Keynes hospital with my hon. Friend before the general election. It is doing incredible work in the conditions that he describes; in particular, its innovation in the application of smart, everyday, practical technology to improve patients’ experience is to be commended. I share my hon. Friend’s anger, his constituents’ anger and the anger of people right across the country in every community—including mine, by the way, where a hospital upgrade was promised. We were told there was a plan and a timetable, and we were told that the programme was fully funded. Then we came into government to find that the timetables were a work of fiction and that the funding runs out in March. That is something else that the shadow Secretary of State should apologise for, and I look forward to hearing her apology. People across the country are owed an apology. Let me say to every hon. Member who is in the same position that I, my hon. Friend and people across the country are in that we will not play fast and loose with the public’s trust, and we will come forward with a plan for the upgrade of hospitals that is credible, achievable and funded. That is the difference between the way that this Labour Government will behave, in terms of both public trust and public money, and the way that the previous Conservative Government behaved, which was a total disgrace.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I must begin to conclude my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I see that the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care is seeking my eye. Given that I will be before her Committee soon and know where my bread is buttered, I give way.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I strongly agree with the hon. Member. I will talk about the 10-year plan shortly, but I can guarantee that children and paediatric care will be front and centre of that plan. We can do much more to shine a spotlight on paediatric waiting lists, as well as doing much more in practice. She mentioned children and young people’s mental health, on which our parties strongly agree. We will deliver our manifesto commitment to put mental health support in every primary and secondary school in the country, as well as providing walk-in services in every community, so that young people receive the mental health and wellbeing support that they need and do not get to the crisis point reached by far too many of our children. The hon. Member’s intervention is an example of why I am looking forward to the debate. I hope to listen to contributions and to challenge from all sides of the House. Before I take any interventions from Conservative Members, I advise them that if they want to get a hearing on the NHS ever again, then the first word that should pass their lips is, “Sorry”. Only last week, at the Conservative party conference, we did not see a single shred of remorse or contrition for their appalling record. Indeed, when it comes to the shadow Secretary of State and her party, it seems that sorry is the hardest word. The NHS is broken. NHS staff do not want to accept that, but it is. According to YouGov, that is what the vast majority of patients say. It is also what staff tell me every time I am on the frontline, but I understand why some people find the word difficult. In the past few weeks, I have met some of the NHS team who happened to be on duty on Monday 29 July. I have listened to paramedics describe the scene they walked into at the community centre in Southport. Children and adults who had been dancing to Taylor Swift were lying bleeding and, in some cases, tragically dying as a result of an unimaginable, senseless, mindless attack. Those paramedics had to make split-second decisions about who to treat and in what order to give the injured the best chance of survival. Security teams cleared busy hospital corridors to shield as many people as possible from the horror. Lab teams mobilised blood supplies. Receptionists fielded calls from panic-stricken patients. Surgical teams across multiple hospitals worked together, fighting to save those young lives. Even now, months later, mental health staff are picking up the pieces for families who are either grieving or going through the unimaginable challenge of supporting their children through what they witnessed. On that day, those NHS responders—the whole team involved—were the best of humanity confronting the worst. That is who NHS staff are. That is what they do. Let me be clear: the NHS may be broken, but NHS staff did not break it. I want to be clear about this too: what is broken can be fixed. While the NHS may be in the midst of the worst crisis in its history, the biggest asset that we have is the people who work in it. They are up for the challenge, and up for change. The NHS is broken, but it is not beaten. Together with the 1.5 million people working in the health service, this Government will turn our NHS around, get it back on its feet, and make it fit for the future.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I strongly agree with the former Minister. I will take that as a representation for the forthcoming Budget and spending review, and ensure that his comments are sent straight to my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Without pre-empting future fiscal events, we have been clear for some time that it is investment and reform that deliver results. That is how the last Labour Government delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. If people are in any doubt about what investment minus reform does, they need only look at what Darzi says about our hospitals: after 2019, lots of resource was poured in, particularly in relation to staffing, but productivity fell. It is investment and reform that deliver results, and this Labour Government will deliver both.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  The shadow Secretary of State says that it is nonsense. She is very upset about it, so let me point out to her that earlier this year, the Conservative former dentistry Minister, who served in her team, under her leadership, proposed a monthly £10 insurance fee to see a dentist. That is what the Conservatives were planning before the election. [ Interruption. ] If the hon. Member wants to intervene, I will give way.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I must make progress. There are lots of speakers and little time. Secondly, there will be a shift from sickness to prevention. It will mean that we take action to give our children a healthier and happier life, flattening the curve of rising pressures that threaten to overwhelm the NHS by building a healthier society, which will help to build a healthier economy. Thirdly, there will be a shift from analogue to digital. Upgrading the NHS app will give patients real choice and control over their own healthcare, creating a single patient record owned by the patient and shared across the system so that every part of the NHS has a full picture of the patient that they are treating. Getting the NHS working hand in glove with our country’s leading scientists will put modern technology and equipment in the hands of NHS staff, and patients at the front of the queue for the latest treatments.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady mentions Pharmacy First. How many pharmacies went bust on her watch?

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I strongly agree with the Chair of the Select Committee and commend the work of the previous Committee, to which she refers. She has certainly given me some revision for the first meeting that I will attend. To answer her question, she is absolutely right that digital transformation and place-based healthcare planning are key. This Government will have a much sharper focus on health inequalities than the previous Government did. In fact, if we consider the NHS over the past 30 or 40 years, even when it has performed well overall, and patients in every part of the country have received access to timely care, some health systems have still been more challenged than others. We need to be honest about the structural challenges in those areas. Secondly, she is absolutely right that, if we are serious about health and prevention, we need a serious cross-Government approach. That is why I am delighted that the Prime Minister’s mission-driven approach has already seen Departments coming together with a focus on prevention. That will deliver fruit. This is the major surgery that our national health service needs over the next decade to make it fit for the future. There is no time to waste, so we have hit the ground running. We inherited a Care Quality Commission that is not fit for purpose. I was genuinely stunned to learn that one in five health and care providers has never been inspected; some hospitals have been left uninspected for a decade; and inspectors were sent to care homes when they had never met someone with dementia. The Conservatives did not think that patients would like the answers, so they stopped asking the questions. This Labour Government are different: we will be honest about the problems facing the health service, and serious about solving them. Our policy is radical candour. Today I am delighted to announce that Sir Julian Hartley has been appointed the new chief executive of the CQC. He is a proven reformer with a track record of turning around large organisations, and I am confident that he will provide the leadership that staff in the CQC need to address this crisis, improve patient safety and restore confidence in the regulator. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so this Government are taking action to turn the regulator around. That is the difference a Labour Government make. We inherited the farce of newly qualified GPs facing unemployment. Patients could not get a GP appointment, while GPs could not get a job, so we cut red tape, found the funding and are recruiting an extra 1,000 GPs. That is the difference a Labour Government make. We have tabled a motion to ban junk food ads targeted at children —our first step towards making our country’s children the healthiest generation that has ever lived. That is the difference a Labour Government make. Just this week, the Secretary of State for Science and Technology and I announced funding to produce new cutting-edge cancer treatments: a new blood test that can detect 12 different cancers. We are backing Britain’s scientists to save lives. That is the difference a Labour Government make. Of course, strikes in the NHS have cost taxpayers billions. Patients saw 1.5 million operations and appointments cancelled. The Conservatives saw strikes as an opportunity to scapegoat NHS staff, so they let the strikes rage on. In fact, the shadow Health Secretary had not even bothered to meet the junior doctors since March. This Government do not exploit problems; we solve them. I called the junior doctors on day one and met them in week one, and in just three weeks, we had negotiated a deal to end the strikes. That is the difference a Labour Government make. Those are just our first steps. Rebuilding the NHS will not be easy and it will take time, but we have done it before and we will do it again. Along with the millions of dedicated staff in health and social care across our country, this can be the generation that takes the NHS from the worst crisis in its history to build an NHS fit for the future—an NHS that is there for us when we need it, with world-class care for the many, not just the few. That is the change that Britain voted for; that is the change we will deliver together; and that change has already begun.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Member for her intervention. I wish that this was a challenge only in her constituency; it is a challenge right across the country. As I said to the Royal College of GPs last week, it will take time to rebuild general practice, so that it is back where we want it to be. We would be delighted to hear more from her; I will ensure that my Department makes contact, and that a Minister is in touch about the challenge in her constituency.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that brings me to our reform agenda. To deliver the Government’s reform agenda, we will have to take on both left and right-wing orthodoxies—for simplicity’s sake, we will call them The Guardian and the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail agrees on the need for health service reform, but attacks proposals for public health reform as “nanny state”. The Guardian loves prevention, but all this talk about health service reform makes it very nervous. The truth is that the Daily Mail and The Guardian are half right and half wrong. We all need to face up to the challenges of today. Our society is getting older and living longer but becoming sicker sooner. Those rising tides of demands and costs are combining to form a perfect storm that threatens to shipwreck the NHS.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I strongly agree. Although health is devolved, I look forward to working constructively and closely with Governments right across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, because every part of the health system in every part of the UK is going through challenges. We are determined to do that. [ Interruption. ] I think the hon. Member wants to come in again.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member’s point is taken. The NHS stands at a fork in the road. There is a choice before us, and the parties represented in the House have different opinions on the best way forward. The first option is for the NHS to continue on its current path—to head down the road to ruin, on a mismanaged decline, with a status quo so poor that patients are forced to raid their savings to go private, and with the worst yet to come, because many Opposition Members believe that all patients should have to put their hands in their pockets when they fall ill. Reform UK has openly stated that it wants to change the funding model and replace it with an insurance-based system, and plenty in the Conservative party want to head in the same direction, chasing Reform UK down the hard-right rabbit hole.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I must make more progress. That is the choice: public health reform or higher taxes; NHS reform or no NHS. The Tories did neither; Labour will do both. It really is reform or die, and we choose reform. That is why this month we will begin formal engagement with NHS staff and patients, who will help to write the 10-year plan for our NHS—a plan that will deliver the change and modernisation that our health service is crying out for—with three big shifts in its focus. First, a shift from hospital to community will turn the NHS into a neighbourhood health service as much as a national health service, so that patients get more of their tests, scans and healthcare on high streets and in town centres in their own community, and from the comfort of their own home. It will ensure that patients can easily book appointments to see the GP they want to see in the manner that they choose, and it will bring back the family doctor, rebuild NHS dentistry and build a national care service.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered Lord Darzi’s independent investigation into NHS performance. I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this debate on Lord Darzi’s investigation into the national health service, not just so that we can debate the past and what went so badly wrong, but so that the House can also debate the future of our NHS, how it needs to change and the many reasons to be optimistic about what our health service can be. We have to start with honesty. For too long, Conservative Governments swept problems under the carpet, more interested in scapegoats than solutions. [ Interruption. ] I know; it is terrible. That is why I asked Lord Darzi to conduct an independent investigation into our national health service. He is an eminent cancer surgeon, with 30 years’ experience in the NHS, yet what he found shocked even him: some 100,000 toddlers and babies were left waiting for six hours in A&E last year; more than one in 10 hospital beds are taken up by patients who do not need to be there; children are less healthy today than they were a decade ago; adults are living longer but getting sicker sooner; conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure are rising relentlessly; mortality from preventable causes is far higher than in other advanced countries; almost 3 million people are off work sick; and waiting lists are at record highs while patient satisfaction is at a record low. The fundamental promise of the NHS—that it will be there for us when we need it—has been broken for a decade. Why? Because of four knock-out blows. First, a decade of under-investment means NHS staff are forced to use pagers and fax machines, with fewer cancer scanners than Greece and buildings literally crumbling. That is not to mention the disgrace that the previous Government’s new hospitals programme was written according to fictitious timetables, with the funding running out this coming March. Secondly, there was Andrew Lansley’s disastrous 2012 top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for, cost billions and took years. It was an enormous waste of time, talent and money that should have been spent on caring for patients. Thirdly, there was a failure to reform. The reforms made by the last Labour Government, which delivered the shortest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction in history, were ditched—a golden inheritance squandered. Fourthly, there was coronavirus. Lord Darzi found that the NHS was hit harder than any other comparable healthcare system because of the damage the Tories had already done. It is not just that they did not fix the roof when the sun was shining; they doused the house in petrol, left the gas on and covid just lit the match. That is why millions are stuck on waiting lists, ambulances do not arrive on time and people cannot see their GP. Never forgive, never forget and never let the Tories do it again.

• 7 Oct 2024 · NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right to raise the issues of recruitment and retention. My message to staff who are thinking of leaving the NHS, or who perhaps have left the NHS in recent years because of working conditions and because there was no light at the end of the tunnel, is to stay—or indeed return—and help us to be the generation that takes the NHS from the worst crisis in its history, gets it back on its feet and ensures that it is fit for the future. On the workforce plan, let me just say that it was regrettable that it was only at 5 minutes to midnight that the previous Government published such a plan. We were highly flattered by the fact that so much that underpinned that plan was Labour party policy commitments, such as doubling the number of medical school places and increasing the number of nursing and midwifery clinical training places. We are committed to those headline commitments. We will inevitably want to update the workforce plan in the light of the 10-year plan and some of the analysis that underpins Darzi. We are clear that that kind of long-term workforce planning is essential, and we are committed—