NHS Sustainability and Transformation Plans

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Philip Dunne

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dunne]

Shortly. I must make some progress.

The plans offer the NHS a unique opportunity to think strategically. For the first time, the NHS is planning across multiple organisations—both commissioners and providers—with local authorities to address the whole health needs of an area and the people it serves. Also for the first time, the NHS is producing multi-year plans showing clearly how local services will develop over the next five years to deliver real improvements in patient care and better efficiency to ensure that the NHS continues to be able to cope with rising demand from our ageing population. That is leading some STPs to face up to tough choices about the future of some services. Such choices have often been postponed again and again because they were too hard or relied on individual organisations operating on their own to shoulder the responsibility rather than it being shared across the geography or the whole healthcare economy.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does the Minister recognise the concerns in constituencies such as mine that have a border with Wales? The numerous closures of hospitals in Wales by the Labour Welsh Government are placing pressure on NHS trusts in Cheshire and Merseyside.

[Mr Dunne]

My constituency also shares a border with Wales, so I am acutely aware that Welsh patients regrettably have to wait longer and have worse access to treatment than those in England. Many of them look to English hospitals for services that are unfortunately not available in Wales, in part due to a conscious political decision of the Welsh Government to allocate less funding to the health service in Wales.