Health Bill

Anna Dixon Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I worked in the Department of Health at the time that NHS England was created. I have always been sceptical about the Lansley fantasy that somehow the NHS could be made separate from the Department of Health and Social Care. I saw at first hand man-marking and duplication of function. This Bill finally puts the nail in the coffin of the complex arrangement of masses of arm’s length bodies that was created by Andrew Lansley. Will the right hon. Gentleman please agree that this is the time to restore stronger democratic accountability for our NHS?

[Stuart Andrew]

I gently remind the hon. Lady that it was the former Secretary of State who said that he did not want to go through another reorganisation, because it would be very costly. We still cannot get a clear answer from the Government about how much this is all going to cost the taxpayer, and there are estimates of £1 billion. There are still serious questions to be answered. The hon. Lady talks about democratic responsibility and accountability, and she is right to do that. She is fortunate—depending on one’s point of view—to have a mayor, but my constituency and county do not. Will my constituents get less of a voice in their NHS than her constituents in Shipley? That does not seem fair to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s plan to make it easier for doctors and clinicians to share critical information in a single patient record, but I would like the Minister to confirm whether access to patient records could be extended to carers, giving them the ability to access information concerning the person they care for. The NHS often fails to look after our amazing carers, so I am keen for ICBs to have a duty to identify and support the health and wellbeing of our fantastic unpaid family carers, and give them the right to a break.

Our health service needs to do a better job of identifying the next of kin of people who die in its care. There are currently 4,000 public health funerals each year for people whose loved ones cannot be reached, including Ken Bower, a friend of my constituents Cathy and Richard. In his memory, they launched the “Next of Ken” campaign. I invite the Minister to meet me and my constituents to see how this could be embedded in the patient record.

Ministers should promote integration between local authorities and the NHS, and I urge Ministers to implement a stronger duty to integrate health and care services. I welcome the duty to reduce inequalities in access to care, but the Bill needs to go further. I echo calls from colleagues for a cross-Government duty to have due regard to health inequalities.

Finally, as an officer of the APPG on patient safety, I know that the relevant Minister has received many representation on the issue of patient safety, not least from the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). I hope the Minister will provide reassurances that when harm occurs, there will continue to be fully impartial investigation by HSSIB and clinicians will be able to speak openly about safety incidents.

The Health Bill is a comprehensive and ambitious piece of legislation, but I hope that, on the matters I have mentioned, changes will be considered in Committee. Our ambitions must be bold, our delivery must be rapid, and our NHS must be renewed.

Health Bill

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Danny Beales]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. Having worked in neonatal care services and areas of specialised services in the NHS for 10 years, I understand that one of the benefits of NHS England was that it brought together highly specialised services, ensured consistent service specifications and uplifted the quality and availability of care across the country. I hope that when we make decisions about which specialised services will be devolved to ICBs, consideration will be given to that point. Equally, we have heard from national population health programmes such as the Diabetes Prevention Programme, which has been a huge success. As we make the final decisions about the level at which decisions are made, we cannot lose the benefits of public health initiatives at scale, such as vaccinations and prevention programmes. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts and reflections on that.

Integrated working is also important—as I say, we have to blend budgets and bring together decision makers across current silo divides. In that spirit, I very much welcome the change made by Government amendment 60 to give local authorities a seat back at the table. We need a bigger voice for public health and social care in health decision making, not less, so I thank the Minister and the Government for listening to the Health and Social Care Committee and moving on that. In the view of the NHS Alliance, this is not enough; it would like to see a reciprocal duty to collaborate, which is an interesting suggestion. However, the Government’s amendment is an important start.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and others on the Select Committee who did the work on strengthening local authority representation on integrated care boards. Does he agree with the sentiments of my new clause 106, which says that we need a stronger duty to co-operate, both within the NHS and between the NHS and local authorities?

[Danny Beales]

My hon. Friend might have read my speech, because I was about to turn to her amendment’s proposal of a report on integrating health and social care. It is an interesting idea that has a great deal of merit, and I hope that the Minister, in her response, will outline the Government’s approach to enabling more progress on integrating health and social care, particularly with the ongoing Casey review.

Inequalities have already been mentioned in the debate. Obviously, one of the Government’s key ambitions is growth in every postcode; another is good health in every postcode. Time and again we see disproportionality and inequalities that are seemingly hardwired into our health system. To change that, we are going to have to do something differently, and I welcome new clauses 90 and 91, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner). Unfortunately, those amendments have not been selected for debate, but they definitely reinforce the Government’s 10-year plan commitment to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest regions and the poorest, and to raise the healthiest generation of children ever. Unfortunately, we have moved away from those goals over the past 10 years, and we will have to do something differently if we are to bridge that gap. In my own constituency, from north to south, there is a huge divide in the quality of health and outcomes based on postcode. That must change.

Although the Government are not minded to accept those amendments, I know that the Minister is passionate about inequalities and that the Bill requires neighbourhood health plans to be developed. That will be an important new measure when responding to neighbourhood health needs, and in preparing those plans,

“the responsible local authority and…partner integrated care boards must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”

I hope that the Minister will explore using this guidance to ensure that as they are developed, neighbourhood health plans specifically address inequalities between neighbourhoods.

Finally, I turn to the SEND system, which is another major challenge with which the Government are rightly grappling. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft), a fellow member of the Health and Social Care Committee, for new clause 85, which would address the chasm between the education system and the health system. While this is fundamentally a health Bill, it is right to ask what more the health system could and should be doing. As the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), has rightly said already, the “H” is far from present in EHCPs. Decision makers are not required to come round the table, and the specialists are not provided. I have been to specialist schools in my constituency where there is no nursing provision, so people miss school days, and where there is no specialist transport, so people cannot even get to school, because bus drivers do not have the proper health knowledge. We need to have an education and health response. I therefore hope that the Minister will address in her closing remarks how, if this Bill is not the right mechanism, future SEND reforms may pick this issue up and how the Department of Health and Social Care will contribute.

There is a great deal to support in this Bill. It is a major step forward, particularly for digital healthcare, giving people control of their records and joined-up care. I hope that the Government will continue to drive forward reform of our health system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Gordon]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to see that, and I tabled new clause 93 to get the answers to some of those questions that not just constituents in my patch but those in hers are asking us as Members of Parliament. It is particularly frustrating that we are in the third year of this Labour Government, and although talk of dental contract reform kept cropping up at the outset, we have seen little progress since, so I would press the Minister on what more can be done to make sure those gaps are filled.

On new clause 121, I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for diabetes, and we have some fantastic care and world-leading practice for diabetes, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales). This new clause would maintain existing national diabetes prevention, treatment and audit programmes, and would mean we see an explanation from the Government with regular reports in Parliament about how those are being continued.

Overall, Members across the House have tabled a fantastic number of amendments. I hope the Minister will pay attention to them and can provide us with some responses.

[Anna Dixon]

I worked as a civil servant for the coalition Government, and I saw at first hand some of the duplication and confusion caused when NHS England was set up, so I welcome this Bill and the decision to abolish NHS England. However, reversing the fragmentation caused by the Tories’ failed reforms of the NHS will not on its own create a more integrated and joined-up service for patients and carers. That is why I have tabled new clause 106, which would require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within six months of the Act passing on how well NHS bodies and local authorities are working together to integrate health and social care in England.

Having worked in the health and care sector, I know how vital it is to have integrated services, and I know as an MP, as I am sure do others, and from personal experience how devastating unco-ordinated care can be for patients, their families and our NHS. One of my constituents, Ellerie Carroll, was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, an inoperable brain tumour, in September 2024. Very sadly, she died in May this year, aged just nine. Ellerie and her parents, Freya and Christian, suffered in ways that are unimaginable, but it was a lack of co-operation between services that added to their suffering. To give just one example, after going for a MRI scan at Great Ormond Street hospital, Ellerie had to endure a repeated scan at Leeds General Infirmary in Leeds due to an inability to share results between hospitals. I hope that the single patient record, which the Bill also creates, will help to join up systems and reduce such problems.

We see disjointed care within the NHS between hospital and community services, but also between health and social care. Another constituent, Roger, in his 90s, had a fall and serious head injury last year. After the acute hospital treatment in Leeds, there was a failure in the NHS to join up his care with Bradford social services, resulting in delays to his discharge. He developed infections and delirium. After nine months of being moved from one hospital to another, and despite his wife fighting to get him home with support, he died in hospital. These are the consequences when our health and care systems are not integrated. It is also expensive. Around one in 10 hospital beds in England are occupied by someone who does not need to be there, often because community care or social care are not available.

Any reform of the NHS will ultimately fail unless we simultaneously reform adult social care. That is why I welcome the priority given to this issue by the Prime Minister and the commitment he made to bring forward the conclusion of the Casey commission. But even if we build a national care service, which we must, there is a risk if it does not work in sync with our national health service. It is essential that we place very clear obligations on all parts of the NHS to co-operate and integrate with social care.

I ask the Minister to set out in her closing remarks how she and the Secretary of State will monitor the Bill’s impact on integration, and how they will ensure co-operation remains a critical priority for the NHS—not just on paper, not just in law, but in the way that we all experience health and care in a joined-up way.

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I rise to speak to clause 1 on the abolition of NHS England and clause 6 on promoting innovation.

What characterises the first of those is an announcement without any clear plan. That is what has driven the cost and confusion that a number of Members across the House have spoken about. Those in any doubt about that can just look at NHS England’s own 2025-26 annual accounts, which show that the costs are already more than £100 million higher than forecast and now sit at above half a billion pounds. I do not recall seeing that on election leaflets. Indeed, just six directors at NHS England are being paid over £800,000, and that points to the cost.

Sometimes such big figures are hard for constituents to get their heads around. Just to localise it to my own constituency, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB alone paid out £14 million in redundancies last year. It merged with a number of other ICBs to form the Central East ICB, yet we know hear from the Government that it should align with metro mayors, which means going back to exactly what it was before: the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB.

That is just one of many confusions around the announcement. The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) spoke about confusion over the timetable and what was described to the media as now an impossible timetable. We also saw reports in the media this weekend about the destination of staff in NHS England. Can they actually go into the Department, or will another body be set up because of the pay disparity between the two? All this is around 18 months on from the actual announcement.

The confusion seems to extend to the Government themselves, because they seem unable to answer pretty straightforward written parliamentary questions. Given the time limit, I will give just a few examples. I asked how many people have been hired to NHS England since the announcement of its abolition, not least given the huge cost—over half a billion pounds—of voluntary redundancies. Despite the deadline passing, the Minister has not answered the question. We know from another written parliamentary question that more than 1,000 jobs have been advertised. It is relevant to know, in an organisation that is paying people to leave, how many people it is hiring. I also asked how many people had accepted voluntary redundancy, another written parliamentary question that has passed the deadline without answer. The process is characterised by a lack of transparency.

Health Bill

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 8th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I am speaking today in support of new clauses 113 and 114, which stand in the name of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and to which I have added my name.

I say at the outset that I am in full support of this Government’s ambitions on cancer. I welcome the recent investment in radiotherapy equipment, and I sincerely want the national cancer plan, which was published in February, to succeed. But I speak as someone who worked in the health service, who is a cancer survivor and who has taken a particular interest in this issue, not least as vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy. It is in that capacity, and as a supporter of what the Government are trying to achieve, that I respectfully ask Ministers to accept one or both of these new clauses.

By way of brief explanation, new clause 113 requires the Secretary of State to publish and maintain a national framework of agreed metrics for radiotherapy, requires integrated care boards to report annually against those targets and requires a report to this House once a year. New clause 114 asks very straightforwardly for a single review of access to radiotherapy and radiotherapy waiting times to be laid before Parliament within six months.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the ethnic inequalities we see in cancer outcomes and access to cancer treatment such as radiotherapy should also be included in the suggested review?

[Grahame Morris]

This is a huge issue that should concern everyone. I believe there is cross-party consensus on the issue of health inequalities and huge variation in access depending on which part of the country people live in. That is an absolutely valid point.

We know the international consensus is that around half of all cancer patients have an evidence-based indication for radiotherapy at some point in their treatment. We should be aware that here in the United Kingdom in 2021, the last date for which figures were available, only 35% of cancer patients received it as part of their primary treatment.