Community Pharmacies

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) not only on securing this debate, but on the manner in which she introduced it. As a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, which keeps this and other issues under constant review, I have been listening very intently today, and I will certainly be taking messages back to the Committee. I particularly welcomed the contribution of the hon. Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and his—pardon the pun—prescription for the better health of pharmacies.

I welcomed the announcement in the Minister’s written statement to the House yesterday, but it is notable that Community Pharmacy England has said that even with that extra investment, many community pharmacies will remain in financial peril. Although it softens the blow, it will not remove the threat or the peril hanging over many pharmacies around the country.

As for my constituency, there are 15 pharmacies in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which seems to be about average compared with other constituencies that have been mentioned, and Pharmacy First saves approximately 2,500 GP appointments per annum. That initiative is certainly delivering but, as previous speakers have said, it could deliver a great deal more.

It is telling of the times we live in that one of the tragically many pharmacies that have closed—I will not say where—has been replaced with an apothecary. I hope that that is not a sign of a continuing trend, but perhaps it says something symbolic about the way things are going. We are well aware that pharmacies should be at the frontline of one of the most important of the Government’s three shifts: the shift from hospital to community. Building up and strengthening the resilience of our community pharmacies is essential for the Government to deliver that shift.

One of the many brilliant community pharmacies in my constituency is Hall’s in Helston, in the south of the constituency. The pharmacy dispenses between 9,000 and 12,000 prescriptions per month, representing about 70% of the dispensing activity in the hinterland of the Helston area. Despite that critical role in primary care delivery, it is under increasingly severe financial pressure. It does not believe that yesterday’s announcement will relieve that pressure, because of how medicines are reimbursed.

As others have said, a key issue is the growing number of medicines that are being priced above the drug tariff. Essential medications, such as—I will get the pronunciation wrong—ramipril, bisoprolol and Creon are frequently being supplied at a loss. Price concessions are sometimes introduced, but they are often delayed, inconsistent and insufficient to reflect real-time market prices.

That creates a situation in which pharmacies must either dispense at a financial loss or deny supply. They use a system called e-CASS, which tracks real-time drug pricing. On any given day, there are between 16 and 40 lines that cannot be ordered through standard systems because the purchase price exceeds the reimbursement tariff. That number has increased significantly over recent years, indicating a worsening trend. As a result, independent pharmacies such as Hall’s are increasingly being forced to subsidise NHS dispensing from their own funds just to maintain patient care. That is simply not sustainable.

The situation is further complicated by ongoing medicine shortages. There are growing concerns that elements of the current reimbursement system are actively impacting timely patient access to medicines. Pharmacies are left simultaneously managing supply chain disruptions and financial risks, with limited systemic support.

We are also witnessing troubling behaviour in the sector. Some large corporate pharmacy chains are redirecting patients to independent pharmacies for medicines that are above tariff, incorrectly stating that those medicines are unavailable when in reality they are unwilling to supply them because of the financial loss involved. That shifts both the clinical and the financial burden on to independent contractors. Regrettably, that has begun to force difficult decisions across the sector as more medicines fall off tariff.

In addition, the continued closure of pharmacies is placing further strain on other parts of the NHS. It is putting further pressure on emergency departments and GP services, which is the exact opposite of the direction in which services should be going.

Health Bill

Andrew George Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is an enormous pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre)—I call him my hon. Friend as he is a fellow member of the Health Committee.

The 2012 Act was mentioned earlier, and I am one of the few Members who was in this House when it was passed. I was sitting on the coalition Benches at the time, but I eventually voted against the Second Reading and the Third Reading of the Bill because it broke the coalition agreement. We had agreed that there would be no top-down reorganisation, but it was the biggest reorganisation that the NHS had ever seen. Although the Liberal Democrats made the Bill significantly less bad—and I congratulate all those involved in that—there was still far too much that damaged the NHS. I welcome this Bill as it addresses some of those deficiencies.

On the points made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), I strongly agree about the abolition or the merging of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body into the CQC.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Clause 59 states:

“The Health Services Safety Investigations Body is abolished.”

It is going to be abolished.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but the representations made by both the CQC and HSSIB itself seem to refer to its amalgamation into the CQC. The point is that, as he rightly says, a really important role is played by HSSIB, which could be lost as a result. It is a vital safety agency, and its independence is really important. There needs to be a safe space giving those working in the service the confidence that they can blow the whistle confidentially to that service to improve, protect and enhance patient care. There is a major risk, as the evidence has shown, that the protected disclosure of important legal information could in fact be compromised as a result.

Many Members have also referred to clause 4, on reducing inequalities. I entirely agree, but I hope the Minister will also look at geographical inequalities. In my constituency there are places where, as a result of clinical improvements and sub-specialty developments, services are moving further and further away for people facing emergencies. For example, in 10% to 15% of stroke cases, mechanical thrombectomies are required, but in west Cornwall, people need to travel 80 miles to Plymouth to get that service. That geographic inequality is reflected in other areas of sub-specialty too.

Clause 10 refers to not

“causing a variation in the proportion of health services provided by the public or private sector”.

I would be interested in the Minister’s explanation of whether that is to protect the public sector or the private sector.

Other Members referred to the federated data platform. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) made an excellent speech on that on 16 April, which I hope the Minister will look at.

NHS Federated Data Platform

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley]

I agree with the hon. Lady entirely. The secret meeting in 2019 between Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings and Peter Thiel—the founder and chair of Palantir—that started this whole thing, for which there are no minutes, must be clarified as well.

I ask the Minister to consider using the contract renewal point to stop the chaotic expansion of the Palantir platform monopoly, to work to a staged exit with a retender for British companies to build a replacement for Palantir, and to deliver a better, long-term solution providing British sovereign capabilities in line with principles outlined by the Science and Research Minister and the Prime Minister.

The current contract delivers a subscription service that leaves no deliverables after the subscription—no software, no improvements and no intellectual property after spending more than £330 million. All the specially written software and intellectual property rights belong to the supplier, says the contract. All the rights to any know-how are explicitly retained by the supplier and not passed across on termination of the contract. The contract delivers no software—not one line—just a subscribed service; a permanent lock-in; a single point of failure.

Why are we building a leased service wrapped in glossy marketing promises, rather than a product that the NHS can own and trust? We are paying the supplier to hire Accenture, PwC, NHS experts and consultants to create a solution that we do not own—the supplier does. It uses external AI platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic and brings questionable value itself. Prior to it buying an opportunity to provide its system to help manage the data from the covid vaccine programme, the supplier had no expertise in health.

The three-year contract asks for 13 core capabilities to be delivered. According to the National Audit Office and the supplier, after nearly three years, it has partially delivered on three or four of those capabilities. Hon. Members may have received letters from the supplier, which has also taken to sponsoring newsletters that we see every day.

When in front of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, the only benefit offered by the supplier and by NHS England was an improvement in managing staff rotas to deliver a higher operation throughput, which these days can be done by a relatively simple app. That is beneficial, but it perhaps relates more to the Government’s improvements in staffing and pay than to any magic from Palantir. It claims to have achieved waiting list reductions by removing people who do not respond to messages, but there is no external scrutiny or validation of results. This is a dreadful contract, and it is not in the national interest.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. I know that, in a moment, he will come on to the point that this contract is coming to an end. I am sure that it is being reviewed by the Government—the Minister will respond on that issue—but we are encouraging them to bring the contract to a close, for the reasons that my hon. Friend is properly explaining. He will perhaps also agree that we should go through a transition period to ensure that the conditions he has described are addressed, so that the Government can benefit from the software that has been developed.

[Martin Wrigley]

I think my hon. Friend has been reading my speech in advance. I absolutely agree with him.

I see that the outgoing NHS England chief data and analytics officer, Ming Tang, has publicly joined Palantir’s fightback, saying that the system is delivering—but having introduced Palantir and lobbied to deploy it, she would say that, wouldn’t she? Given Palantir’s habit of lobbying civil servants and the revolving door from Government, I wait to see where she will end up.

I ask the Minister to review the contract, particularly in the light of the Government’s policies on investing in UK tech, value for money, technical lock-in, key performance indicators and strategic supplier status, which suppliers should have. I ask the Minister to reject extending the existing contract, which locks in the NHS forever and delivers nothing tangible.

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[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

I was expecting a promotion there, Dame Siobhain. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing the debate. He has brought forward an issue that sits right at the centre of how we shape the future of our national health service: how we use data, who we trust with it and how we ensure that technology supports care rather than complicates it.

The debate has been a thoughtful one, and in many respects it has been revealing. It has shown both the promise of the NHS federated data platform and the unease that still surrounds it. That tension really matters. I am grateful for the significant contributions we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, with 13 coming from the Back Benches by my count. Let me start by setting out where I think there is common ground across the House.

The NHS is under enormous pressure as demand is rising, complexity is increasing and waiting lists remain too high. Too often, clinicians are working without the full picture in front of them. Anyone who has spent time in the health service knows that this is not a system that lacks dedication. It is, however, a system that too often lacks coherence. Data is part of that problem as it is scattered, fragmented and difficult to use in a joined-up way. Records do not always reliably follow the patient, and information is duplicated, delayed or simply not available when it is needed most. The consequence of that is not just theoretical; it is time lost, inefficiencies and, at times, patients not getting the care they should when they should.

The case for doing things better is a strong one; in fact, it is unavoidable. The FDP is one attempt to respond to that challenge. It seeks to bring together information in a way that allows the NHS to work more effectively, helping clinicians and supporting managers with the ultimate aim of improving care for patients. There are some early signs that this is beginning to deliver; waiting lists have been cleaned up, and some hospitals have reported better flow through theatres and wards. Those are practical improvements. As is so often the case in government, the easier question is whether something can work; the much harder question is whether it will be accepted. There are clearly concerns here.

We have heard about reluctance in part of the workforce. I am not suggesting there is uniform opposition, but there is certainly hesitation and, in some cases, disengagement. We should be careful, however, not to exaggerate that. Big reforms in the NHS have always faced resistance, often at the start. This is not necessarily something new, and on its own it is not necessarily decisive. At the same time, however, it is not irrelevant; if the people expected to use this system do not have confidence in it, its impact will always be limited. Will the Minister say what is the assessment of staff engagement with the FDP and how the Government are ensuring that this is something done with the NHS, rather than done to it? In the end, that will make the real difference.

The same issue arises with public trust. People are right to care about their medical data—it is sensitive, personal and deeply private. Once confidence is lost in this area, it is very difficult to rebuild it. There are important safeguards in place: the data remains under NHS control, the access is tightly regulated, and the provider does not own or use the data for its own purposes. The legal framework underpinning those safeguards is strong. Those are not minor points—they really matter.

However, we also have to recognise something else. People are not just asking whether the system is safe today, but what it enables tomorrow. Could the data be combined in ways that reveal more than people expect? Could systems evolve in ways not originally intended? Could future Governments choose to use the capability in different ways? Those are not unreasonable questions; they are the natural questions people ask when large new systems are created. Again, I ask the Minister what more will be done to reassure the public about the limits of how NHS data can be used and whether he can set out clearly where parliamentary oversight comes in if the use of data is expanded in the future. Trust is not built by reassurance alone; it is built by clarity and restraint.

A significant part of this debate has understandably focused on Palantir, and it is right that it has. Palantir is now a major supplier within the NHS data infrastructure as well as elsewhere across Government, and that raises legitimate questions about not just capability but dependence. For some the concern is political, while for others it is about principle. For many, though, it is something much more practical: what happens if we become too reliant on a single provider for something as critical as health data infrastructure? I think that is a fair question.

However, we should also separate those questions from the broader argument about the company’s international work. In a global economy, companies will inevitably work with different Governments, and that alone is not a sufficient reason to exclude them from public contracts in the UK. The question of procurement design, competition and resilience, however, is a different matter.

[Andrew George]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Shastri-Hurst]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not. I want the Minister to have sufficient time to respond to the multiple contributions there have been today.

I ask the Minister the following questions. How are the Government ensuring that the NHS is not locked into a single supplier over the long term? What is the plan for maintaining genuine competition in this space? How easy would it be in practical terms to move to an alternative system if that was ever required?

There is then the issue of resilience. Some have argued that the FDP creates a single point of failure, while others have argued that the current fragmented system is itself a weakness and that greater coherence improves security and oversight. Both arguments deserve to be taken seriously. But practical questions remain: how resilient is this system to cyber-attacks or technical failure? What safeguards are in place? What happens if something goes wrong at scale?

The last matter I wish to address is that of governance. With the abolition of NHS England, there is now a question about where the responsibilities for the FDP properly sit. That matters because accountability cannot be diffuse. I take this opportunity to ask the Minister: who is responsible for the programme now, where does that accountability lie, and how will Parliament be able to scrutinise its performance going forward?

Better use of data has a real role to play in NHS reform, and the FDP may well prove to be part of that answer. Success will depend on more than just delivery; it will depend on confidence within the system: confidence from clinicians that the system helps rather than hinders them, confidence from patients that their data is properly protected and confidence from the public that our decisions are transparent, proportionate and properly accountable. If those conditions are met, this reform can succeed. If they are not, even the best designed system will struggle. We, as His Majesty’s loyal Opposition, will support what improves care and welcome what works, but will continue to ask questions that ensure reform is done properly in a way that sustains public trust. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. The NHS workforce plan will be published in the spring. I recognise the challenge he has set out, and we are determined to address it—we desperately need more midwives, and we certainly need good clinical leadership in this area. That is what the Government are working towards.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Minor injuries units are being phased out in urgent treatment centres such as the brilliant one at West Cornwall hospital in my constituency—its hours were cut under the Conservatives, and have not been restored. Those units clearly help to take the pressure off ambulance and emergency services, so what will Ministers do to ensure that those services are reinforced rather than reduced?

[Wes Streeting]

One rationale for both the 10-year plan and the medium-term planning we are doing across the NHS is to ensure better integration, with the principle of people receiving the right care in the right place at the right time. Decisions about local configurations are matters for local leaders, but we keep these things under review, and if the hon. Gentleman has concerns, he should certainly write to us.

NHS: Winter Preparedness

Andrew George Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

We will review eligibility, distribution and means of accessing the vaccine in the usual way. People should enjoy themselves over the Christmas period. It is a time for family and seeing loved ones and friends, but people should be mindful of the risks posed by this most virulent strain of flu. If people are symptomatic and likely to give someone they love something they would rather not have this Christmas, they may want to hold off for a week until they have recovered.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I strongly endorse the Secretary of State’s emphasis on the importance of vaccination, not least to protect the resilience of frontline NHS staff and face down the anti-vaxxers and vaccine-hesitant. Nevertheless, will he reflect carefully on his emphasis on the shift from hospital to community at this time, given that emergency departments are still in crisis and corridor care is still a norm across much of the country?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say, for the avoidance of doubt, that accident and emergency is for accidents and emergency situations. It is not an “anything and everything” walk-in service, and A&E departments are already stretched ahead of strikes. For patients who are in need of medical care or attention but are struggling to access their GP or wondering which NHS service local to them would be most suitable, NHS 111 provides a suitable service to triage and point them in the right direction. Of course if someone requires an ambulance, they should dial 999 in emergencies, and if it is an accident or emergency, people should attend emergency departments in the usual way.

Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I do want to finish this statement shortly, so could Members keep their questions and answers short? I call Andrew George.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the manner in which he has been handling the issue. However, I want to ask him about the way he summarised the position at the end of his statement. He presented it as a choice between striking and having more jobs and the other parts of the offer. I seek clarity on the matter. Is he genuinely saying that he is going to withdraw that? Was that purely for oratorical effect, or is that his negotiating position?

[Wes Streeting]

I regret to say that if the BMA rejects this offer, we will not proceed with it at this time. I wish that we were not in this transactional lock. I wish we could just move forward together in a spirit of partnership, with a bit of give and take. That is not where we are, and I think I would be crucified by the public if I were to take a different approach. It would be the wrong thing to do and it would incentivise people to strike further, and I cannot tolerate that any longer.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tessa Munt]

I agree. In fact, we do not just need specialists; we also need training for GPs and other healthcare workers.

I will highlight four areas in which we need to see much more from the Government going forward. Given the gravity of the situation, I would appreciate it if the Minister could arrange for written responses to a number of my points.

The first area is funding. If the delivery plan felt threadbare, that is because no substantive new funding was attached to it. Before the plan was published, all 72 Lib Dem MPs signed a letter expressing our concerns about the anticipated lack of funding, which of course came to pass. To put it bluntly, what patients need is transformed NHS care and a step change in research. Neither is likely to happen without investing some money.

The case for investment is clear. I urge the Minister to see this not as a sunk cost, but as an investment in a group of people who are desperate to contribute to society. We know that one in five working-age adults are out of the workforce, many because of health problems, yet remarkably there was no modelling of the demography of those living with ME for the delivery plan exercise, and neither the Department of Health and Social Care nor the Department for Work and Pensions has an estimate of what the neglect of people with ME is costing our economy.

I would like to look at some of the figures. The most recent estimate of the economic impact of ME was for 2014-15—10 years ago—and was carried out by 20/20health. The cost was then calculated at £3.3 billion annually, based on only 260,000 people living with ME. With many more affected following the pandemic and a decade of inflation, that cost will now be much higher. Even the most conservative estimate of current numbers living with ME, excluding cases linked to long covid, puts them at 404,000 patients. Does the Minister accept, using that conservative estimate and adjusting for inflation, the annual economic impact of ME today is likely to be at least £7 billion? If those living with ME-like symptoms following covid are included, we could be approaching an annual cost of £20 billion. Surely it is time for the Government properly to cost the impact of a condition that affects so many, rather than brush it under the carpet, and to invest accordingly.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a very strong case. She will be aware that there is still significant uncertainty among many clinicians as to whether this should be treated a medical rather than a psychological condition. Does she agree that, because of the gravity and extent of cases around the country, it is important that medical services are supported to deal with those patients and their symptoms?

[Tessa Munt]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point. Most people I speak to say that ME has nothing to do with psychiatry. We now have evidence from Edinburgh, which I will go on to in a moment, to explain exactly why that is the case.

Our counterparts in Germany have grasped the importance and scale of the challenge. Just last week, the German Government announced a national decade against post-infectious diseases, with a particular focus on ME and long covid. In Germany, an estimated 1.5 million people are living with ME or long covid. The German Government have rightly recognised post-infectious diseases such as ME as one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century. Last week, they committed €500 million—around £440 million—over the next decade into research to understand the causes of post-infectious diseases and to develop treatments.

Will the Minister confirm whether Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care have discussed that recent funding announcement and the logic behind it? I would love nothing more than to see the UK Government come up with a comparable level of commitment—or will the Government wait a decade for the German Government’s conclusions before taking action?

Department of Health and Social Care

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Paulette Hamilton]

Hear, hear. My hon. Friend makes some valuable points, and I agree with every one of them.

Underpinning the settlement I have described, however, is the Government’s pledge to generate £17 billion in efficiency savings over three years, with a staggering £9.1 billion expected in the final year of this Parliament. Critically, those savings have already been factored into the settlement—in effect, they have been spent before they have been delivered. In the light of that, we need absolute confidence that there is a clear and robust plan to generate those savings. The Government are assuming an annual productivity improvement in the NHS of 2%, more than triple the long-term average of 0.6%. They appear to be relying on digital transformation to unlock the bulk of those savings, which is risky, given the history of digital change programmes in the NHS.

Another source of savings is the plan to cut reliance on temporary staff by reducing sickness absence and overhauling staff policies, including limits on agency spending and eliminating the use of agencies for entry-level roles. Again, this is a welcome ambition, but delivering it will be a significant challenge, one that will require meaningful, sustained improvements to staff wellbeing and working conditions. We cannot build a sustainable workforce on good will alone. Therefore, will the Minister say when we can expect an updated and fully costed workforce plan to deliver on these ambitions?

Delivering the reforming elective care for patients plan is also central to achieving those efficiencies. It proposes reforms such as optimising surgical pathways through hubs, streamlining referrals, expanding remote monitoring and reducing unnecessary procedures. The plan assumes a rapid transformation of services, with significant improvements in productivity and patient flow expected within just a few years. That is ambitious, especially given the context of ongoing workforce shortages, ageing infrastructure and rising demand. Reform is essential, but it must be realistic, properly resourced and paced to succeed. We cannot afford to set targets that look good on paper but falter in practice, damaging morale and patient care. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the projected £17 billion in savings will materialise and be delivered on time? What happens to those additional resources for frontline delivery if those savings are delayed or fall short?

I will also touch on adult social care, which is in desperate need of reform. The Casey commission has an important job to do, but the terms of reference for the first phase of Casey’s work state clearly:

“The commission’s recommendations must remain affordable, operating within the fiscal constraints of Spending Review settlements for the remainder of this Parliament.”

Now that those settlements have been reached, can the Minister provide clarity to the House about precisely what fiscal constraints Baroness Casey’s recommendations will have to conform to? The £4 billion for adult social care announced in the spending review includes an increase to the NHS minimum contributions to the better care fund.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I thank my fellow member of the Select Committee and stand-in Chair for giving way, and I congratulate her on how she is introducing the issues today. Does she agree that the length of time set for the Casey review to report does not give us a sense of confidence that the Government have injected sufficient urgency to address the serious problems of ensuring that we have a robust social care system that can stand up to the pressures that lie ahead?

[Paulette Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Member for that deep and thoughtful point. He is absolutely right. Timescales are an issue, and that is why, as a Select Committee, we are asking the Government a number of questions so that we can scrutinise what is happening and get the information.

My Committee considered the better care fund in our inquiry into adult social care. It was introduced with the aim of driving better integration between health and social care, and shifts resources upstream from NHS acute services. However, the evidence we heard was stark. These resources have been overwhelmingly focused on hospital discharge. While timely discharge is important, that does not match the fund’s original objectives. How will the Government ensure that this increase in funding leads to a greater focus on prevention? The Chancellor referred to the Government’s plan for an adult social care fair pay agreement. Reaching such an agreement is not just desirable but essential. Staff working in care homes are far more likely to live in poverty and deprivation than the average British worker.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand). Of course, in this debate we have to reflect on the fact that the Government inherited the NHS in the very worst state in its 77-year history, which the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) reminded us of. The Government must pick up the NHS and try to restore it to the state that we would all like to see.

I approve of the three shifts the Government are proposing—no one could argue against prevention rather than ill health. Obviously we want to see advances in prevention, technology and delivery of services into the community, with better integration and improvements in the workforce plan. With that, however, I would like to see the Government advance the case for safe staffing. When I was last in this place, I was part of a campaign on that, which sought to achieve, for example, a ratio of never more than seven on acute wards—seven acutely ill patients to every registered nurse on acute wards. We should be aiming to try to support staff on the frontline, rather than leaving them under the pressures they currently face where they are seriously understaffed.

There are incredible pressures within the service itself. I know that, at the weekend, the A&E department of the Royal Cornwall hospital had more than 100 patients waiting to be treated, with ambulances often waiting outside. Our ambulance service is currently proposing to cut co-responders from some of our rural areas—where fire service staff support the ambulance service—which is a matter of great concern. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust is also facing a £50 million cost improvement programme this year, and many other trusts on the frontline are also facing similar pressures.

The Government must look at the capacity of the nursing home sector, as there are often many unused beds. We talk about the difficulty of discharging patients from a hospital, but there is also the risk of the independent sector cherry-picking the profitable bits of the NHS. We need, above all, to back up our NHS. As the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), the temporary Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, pointed out, social care is vital. If one in four social care workers are leaving the sector every year, we know that we have a serious crisis. The Casey review cannot come soon enough.

NHS Funding: South-west

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) on the debate. I will try, in my remaining two minutes, to cover four subjects very quickly. The first is about the fair funding question or whether the funding to an area is sufficient. The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) rightly referred to the seasonality of the pressures and the rural nature of the geography, but in Cornwall there is also the issue of the peninsularity of the geography. People cannot call on an emergency service to the north, south or west in a place such as Cornwall and therefore we need to make provision for services so that they can cover all eventualities. Also, this year, during the settlement process, people are talking about cost improvements within the ICB spending programme over the future year. In Cornwall, it is a cost improvement—the rest of us might describe it as a cut in services—of £108 million, which is about 7% of the budget overall. That will create tremendous pressure in areas such as ours.

The second issue is value for money estimates. I visited a brilliant project very recently: the Helston Gateway project, which has created a new GP surgery across 20 consultation rooms, and achieved that on the basis of a building cost of just £1,400 a square metre, which is half the cost that people would get if they went to private sector contractors doing it through NHS development programmes and certainly significantly less than in the private finance initiative programmes of the past. I strongly urge Ministers to look at such brilliant initiatives as a brilliant way to provide services.

The third issue is stopping private sector organisations cherry-picking the profitable parts of the NHS and therefore undermining acute sector trusts. Finally, I would welcome clarity as to why the acute trust in Cornwall is not having its debt written off, unlike other provider trusts and ICBs.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

The aim is to take the three Front Benchers from 5.09 pm, which means that the time limit is dropping down to two minutes each.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

I commend my hon. Friend’s constituent for her work with the Brain Tumour Charity, and I wish Lily well with her treatment. The Government have launched the brain tumour research consortium, which will support efforts to speed up the diagnosis of tumours and aid the recovery of patients, and the national cancer plan will ensure that we include brain tumour patients. We know that everyone’s cancer is as unique as they are, and this will be reflected in the plan.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

T4. In reviewing the NHS workforce plan, will Ministers urgently review the pay and status of registered nurses, who are, after all, the backbone of the NHS? Many are now dependent on food banks, thousands are saddled with student debt, and most will expect never to rise beyond band 5, which is a maximum of £35,000 a year.

[Wes Streeting]

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.