Health Bill

Calum Miller Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I reassure my hon. Friend that what the Bill seeks to achieve, through local health watches across the country, is to bring the voice of patients closer to the people who plan and deliver services. Too often, we have not seen action following feedback. We need to ensure that such feedback is integrated into the planning and delivery of services, so that patient voices are heard.

I have set out some of this Labour Government’s achievements less than two years into office, which shows that decline is not inevitable. Our determination to deliver on what people voted for is making a real difference. We have started to make progress, and we are building an NHS that is fit for the future.

Labour’s choice in government has been, and will always be, to strengthen and improve the NHS as a service that is universal and publicly funded, with use based on need, not on ability to pay. That choice is backed by people across Britain, yet for the first time in a generation, some Members of this House are openly calling for the NHS’s founding principles to be abandoned. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who I note is not in his place—[Interruption.] He never is—good point. Time and again, he has made it clear that he would tear the principles of the NHS to shreds and bring in an insurance-based system that would benefit only his friends in finance. Be in no doubt: Reform would sell our health service to the highest bidder. That would be a devastating mistake, and we must not let it happen.

Instead of turning our backs on the principles on which the NHS was founded, as some Opposition Members would have us do, I will fight every day as Health and Social Care Secretary to build the modern health service that our country demands and that patients deserve.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

I welcome the Secretary of State to his place. He has spoken about two themes: the scale of ambition of this Bill, and the need for the patient voice to be heard at the heart of it, given how much all our constituents care about the NHS. In the case of Healthwatch, can he reassure the House that bringing the scrutiny of local voices up to the level of the Secretary of State will not diminish the independence of the local healthwatch organisations that, in Oxfordshire and elsewhere, do so much to promote the patient voice and to hold the NHS to account for its services?

[James Murray]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words about my taking on this post. I can reassure him that, as I will come to in my speech, the Bill sets out to integrate the national Healthwatch into the Department of Health and Social Care through a new patient experience directorate and to integrate local healthwatch organisations into integrated care boards and local authorities, which are responsible for delivering health and care at local level. This measure is about making sure that patient voices at national and local level are closer to those deciding on and delivering services, so that those voices are heard.