NHS Funding: South-west

Alison Bennett Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) for bringing forward this important debate.

We have been reminded by hon. Members that the Conservative legacy is pensioners left in agony, waiting for hours for an ambulance that may not come in time; women forced to give birth in unsafe, overstretched conditions; and people having to pull out their own teeth—in the 21st century—because they cannot find an NHS dentist. We have heard from hon. Members that the south-west has some of the longest ambulance waits in the country, some of the worst repair backlogs, and waiting times for GPs and dentists that are simply unacceptable. That is not just a strain on our health services but a daily struggle for families, carers and patients across our region.

The Liberal Democrats believe that people deserve better, and that they should be in control of their own lives and health. That means people getting the care that they need, when they need it and where they need it, without them having to fight every step of the way. Instead of lurching from one crisis to the next, as previous Governments have done, we have a plan. It starts with early investment in community health—in GPs, pharmacists and dentists—so that fewer people end up in hospital to begin with. We will finally fix the crisis in social care, so that people are not left stuck in hospital beds with nowhere to go.

If we expect to rely on our NHS in future, we simply must invest in it. We need not just big grand schemes but investment in the simplest yet most important things. For example, in my own patch in Mid Sussex, the Princess Royal hospital recently had only one of its four lifts working over a weekend.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is much more expensive to provide services in rural areas than in urban areas? An example is the pharmacy funding model, which relies on footfall. On a recent visit to Modbury pharmacy, staff told me that they are really struggling to stay afloat because they do not have enough footfall, and they cannot reach the national payment threshold that would enable them to survive. Does she agree that we need to look at rural exceptions for critical services such as community pharmacies?

[Alison Bennett]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about rurality, which is obviously a big issue in the south-west. It is also a serious issue in Sussex where we have things in common with the south-west, such as having an older than average population and all the challenges that come with that, as hon. Members have mentioned.

Hospitals want to be able to sort those issues out, but they are left juggling priorities, barely scraping by with the current levels of funding. Things do not work if we do not look after them, and if we do not look after our health system, it will not be able to look after us or our loved ones. Although I am sure that the Minister will make the point about capital investment in the NHS, which is welcome, the future looks very uncertain and precarious for our ICBs, as a number of hon. Members have said.

Soon after ICBs were first created, they had to cut their budgets by 30%. They have now been asked to cut their budgets by 50% on average. Indeed, for Sussex, the cut is more than 50%—it is 53%. It is no surprise that Sussex and Surrey have formally proposed merging their ICBs, which, by running at the same time as local government reorganisation and the creation of a mayoralty, means we will end up with an ICB that does not have the same footprint as the new incoming mayor.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

What does my hon. Friend think about how ICB funding is weighted? I contend that the formula overemphasises the size of each ICB and the size of the registered population, but does not account sufficiently for age, given that older people require more funding spent on them.

[Alison Bennett]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. It is vital that when we look at per head of population funding, we think about the different factors that actually drive up the true cost of delivering healthcare across the country, which obviously varies by region.

On ICBs, I will press the Minister on three points. First, on the timescale for cuts to be delivered by ICBs, they have to be completed by the end of 2025. The Sussex ICB had about three weeks to make that initial submission to the Department. Does the Minister think that those timescales are realistic and achievable? Secondly, what will the cost of the redundancies be for ICBs? Has that calculation been done? For Sussex, we are looking at more than half the workforce losing their jobs. Thirdly, what is the impact assessment for patients and the service that they will receive as a result of cuts to ICBs?

For too long, social care has been treated like the back door of our public services. It has been overlooked, underfunded and taken for granted. That must change. That is why we must once again ask for more urgency on social care reform. I believe that personal care should be free at the point of use, just like the NHS—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the shadow Minister.