Neighbourhood Health Services

Debate between Baroness Merron and Baroness Maclean of Redditch

Monday 7th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Maclean of Redditch]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how they intend to measure the success of neighbourhood health services in reducing demand for hospital care and improving access to primary care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, success will be measured against five minimum national goals in the neighbourhood health framework, which was published in March 2026. That will include improved access to general practice and better urgent and emergency care performance. Integrated care boards and local authorities will establish locally owned neighbourhood plans with metrics that reflect population needs. An independent national evaluation, which will be commissioned through the NIHR, started this April to support national policy and delivery of neighbourhood health and evaluate its adoption and uptake.

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[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. She set out the government policy, which states that local health and well-being boards will work with communities, health and care organisations and wider partners to establish outcome measures that cover the whole life course of the individual and reflect both health and social care needs. Can the Minister say how, bearing in mind the wider devolution agenda, the Government will measure neighbourhood health outcomes to allow for effective comparison between regions?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

The noble Baroness set out exactly what the plan is, and I am grateful to her for doing so, but I emphasise that the whole point of the independent national evaluation is that it will evaluate the whole breadth of neighbourhood health. It started in April and will run for three years. I further emphasise that it is about continual engagement and developing different ways that neighbourhood health can be successful. It will also model what the long-term outcomes and improvements can be, depending on how you do it. All that will mean working with the local ICBs to see about their progress, but they are well aware of the expectations upon them, and they will set their own ways forward.

NHS Adult Gender Identity Clinics

Debate between Baroness Merron and Baroness Maclean of Redditch

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, 5,624 patients under 25 were referred to adult gender dysphoria clinics in 2023-24, 6,355 were referred in 2024-25 and initial figures show that 6,167 were referred in 2025-26. There are strong safeguards within the existing service provision and specification that was agreed following public consultation, including with the medical royal colleges. These include specialist assessment, accounting for complex co-morbidities and care delivered by a multidisciplinary team with a wide range of expertise, including in neurodiversity and endocrinology.

[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer, but I wonder if she has had a chance to review the landmark study from Finland recently, which suggests very strongly that gender medicine actually has a very negative impact on vulnerable young people with complex needs and, far from actually helping them, in fact is harming them. Can I urge her to expedite one of the most important recommendations from the Cass Review, which is to bring in a separate set of services for 17 to 25 year-old young people who are experiencing gender dysphoria? She will know that, currently, the adult clinics operate an affirmative model; that can be very worrying because young people can access life-altering and irreversible hormones after only two appointments. For young people with a whole set of complex needs, I do not think that is right.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, we are indeed committed to developing services for 17 to 25 year-olds, and I certainly recognise that this is a potentially very vulnerable time in a young person’s journey, as was clearly outlined in the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. I can say to the noble Baroness that we recognise changing patient demographics, and therefore a holistic biopsychosocial assessment framework is being developed for use across all services, including a complexity measure to support understanding of the impact of any co-occurring conditions, as the noble Baroness refers to.