Health Bill

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Relevant documents: Oral evidence taken before the Health and Social Care Committee on 20 May, on the Work of NHS England, HC 583; Written evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, on the Health Bill, reported to the House on 20 May, HC 219.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Mr Speaker has not selected the reasoned amendment.

Health Bill

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. After the next speaker, there will be a four-minute time limit, but I will not reduce it further than that.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I would like to start by welcoming the commitment from the Minister at the Dispatch Box to bring forward a maternity commissioner, and by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for her tireless campaigning on this issue. When I worked for her many years ago, I was all too aware of the scandal at the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust, after sitting in on surgeries with her. Indeed, in my own constituency of Harrogate and Knaresborough, I have ended up with tireless campaigners coming to me when they face maternity issues at Leeds hospital.

I turn to the amendments tabled in my name. The first is new clause 36, which would require the Government to bring forward a formal transition strategy and to report back to Parliament on what happens when NHS England is abolished. I have tabled the new clause out of concern for families who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys mental health trust. They have said time and again that they are concerned about the delayed appointment of a chair to the inquiry. They are really worried about that as we see the largest changes to the health service in a generation, and they do not want the inquiry to be lost. I press the Minister on whether she might be able to push that forward or get her colleagues to do so.

New clause 43 would reduce inequalities in access to clinical research funding and trials. I have been working closely with Yorkshire Cancer Research, based in Hornbeam Park in my constituency. We know that funding for clinical research and trials across Yorkshire is about a quarter of what is received in London. If areas outside London and the south-east are getting less research funding, the logic follows that we will struggle to close inequalities in those areas.

Health Bill

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

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

New clause 81 proposes a single named co-ordinator bringing together information on financial support, employment rights for parents and carers, and signposting to relevant charities and support as part of a written plan for the family. This would cut away repetitive bureaucracy and mean that parents are no longer left to their own devices in trying to figure out a way through the challenges their families face in these situations. It is a simple duty, but one that could make a massive difference. At one of the most difficult times imaginable in a family’s life, it would ensure that they are no longer simply left to navigate an overwhelming and unfamiliar system alone. Childhood illness is traumatic enough. We should do everything we can to stop it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

I would like to speak to new clause 137. Cancer Research UK estimates that, in the six months since the national cancer plan was published, over 168,000 people were diagnosed with cancer in England. The number of those diagnosed is at a record high and this is projected to continue. Almost one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime, and no one in this country is untouched by the disease. I welcome the Government’s ambition to improve cancer outcomes in the national cancer plan. Alongside my amendment to the Health Bill, my current private Member’s Bill seeks to guarantee that the Government make progress towards delivering these targets and are held to account by Parliament on that.

Over the past five decades, cancer survival has more than doubled because of lifesaving research, earlier detection and cutting-edge treatments. However, in the last decade progress has slowed, and the 10-year cancer survival index was better in the early 2000s than in the 2010s, so we are in danger of going backwards. The national cancer plan commits to meeting cancer waiting times targets by the end of this Parliament. The previous Government failed to do that, and I really hope that this Government will manage it. It is also important that these targets are met, alongside a full range of commitments in the plan.

The Health and Care Act 2022 required the Secretary of State to include cancer outcome objectives in the annual mandate set by the Secretary of State for NHS England, and those outcome objectives explicitly took priority over other cancer objectives. I have tabled this amendment because the current Health Bill abolishes that mandate, including the previous statutory requirement for cancer outcome objectives to be prioritised over other cancer objectives, and a similar duty has not been replicated elsewhere in the Bill.

With the removal of the statutory requirement to prioritise cancer outcomes over other cancer objectives in the health system, there is a very real concern that progress on cancer outcomes risks being deprioritised amid the competing priorities of a Department facing many external pressures. I am therefore seeking assurances from the Minister that, despite the disruption of the ongoing merger and the removal of the cancer outcomes clause, progress on delivering the transformation laid out in the national cancer plan will be delivered, and that it remains a priority for the new Prime Minister and the new Secretary of State. I ask the Minister to guarantee that the capacity needed to drive forward this essential work on cancer is protected.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I call Kate Osborne.

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow and Gateshead East) (Lab)]

If I may begin on a personal note, just three weeks ago I had a second operation on my back, and I wish to put on record my sincere thanks to the staff who cared for me, from the clinicians who treated me to everyone involved in my care and recovery. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.]

Too often our access to healthcare depends on our postcode. That postcode lottery is stark in a number of areas, but nowhere more so than with IVF. As chair of the APPG on fertility, I have raised this issue repeatedly with Ministers. I again invite Ministers to attend our fertility roundtable tomorrow and to commit to ensuring that every ICB follows, at the very least, the NICE guidelines on access to IVF and fertility treatment.

We must strengthen the role of voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations in neighbourhood health planning and NHS commissioning. Voluntary organisations understand the barriers to care for hard-to-reach communities and often have trusted relationships with communities that statutory services struggle to reach. We see that particularly clearly in HIV and AIDS provision. Voluntary organisations have been fundamental to the UK’s response for decades, through prevention, testing, peer support, tackling stigma and supporting people living with HIV. I am extremely grateful to the National AIDS Trust for working with me on the new clauses, and I thank Ministers for their constructive engagement. Members of the LGBT+ community must have trust in healthcare providers, and community groups bridge that gap when needed.

New clauses 142 and 143 would actively harm vitally needed healthcare. The provision in new clause 142 has already been rejected in Committee, and we see it for what it is: an opportunity to attack some of the most vulnerable in our society. Access to much-needed healthcare has already been paused in the UK, and if access to treatment for gender dysphoria is now to be dependent upon additional research, the pathways trial must go ahead without further delay.

The provisions in new clause 143 were also rejected in Committee and are another attempt to vilify. The amendment fails to recognise the framework already in place to ensure that single-sex services are provided where they meet the requirements of the Equality Act. Neither the code nor the Supreme Court judgment mandate the provision of single-sex facilities. Providers must still consider whether the service falls within an exception within the Equality Act, whether single-sex provision is proportionate, what the impact might be on trans people, and what mitigation might be necessary.

I welcome the 10-year health plan. We have made great strides in repairing the damage done to our NHS—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I call Sir Bernard Jenkin.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government. It raises all sorts of constitutional questions, but those are not for today.

I will concentrate on HSSIB. I rise to support amendments 1 to 4, which would remove the abolition of HSSIB from the Bill. The Government have singularly failed to make the case for removing this crucial safety investigation function. It did not exist until recently, and now they want to scrub it out. I suspect that is because too many people in the health system do not like being held to account by an independent investigative body.

--- Later in debate ---

I was fortunate to get NHS speech therapy this summer, but not everyone is. That is why new clause 117, backed by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, calls on the Secretary of State to publish a strategy tackling waiting times and unequal access to speech and language therapy. To do this job, we all rely on our voices, so I urge the House to support new clause 117.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

That brings us to the Front Bench. I call the Minister.

[Karin Smyth]

We have genuinely had a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate, and I want to try to address all the points that have been raised. I think there is broad agreement across the House on the goals that we are seeking to achieve with the Bill: safer care, better outcomes and a stronger voice for patients. Every patient deserves safe and high-quality care, every community deserves to have its voice heard, and everyone should be able to access the care they need, when they need it. The question before us is how best to deliver those ambitions.

In general, we do not believe that the current landscape works, and that better outcomes are always achieved through new reporting requirements, additional layers of statutory process or more bureaucracy. Instead, we are committed to devolving responsibility and to empowering leaders in the NHS, while also holding them directly accountable, so that the NHS is focused on delivery and improving care.

I will begin with Healthwatch. I think there is broad consensus that we want to see patient voices heard strongly at every level of the healthcare system—it is something that all MPs feel strongly about, dealing with constituents as we do. Hearing the patient and user voice results in better decisions in a system that is designed around them—a system that is better able to correct when things go wrong.

Our ambition is to ensure that insight and experience from patients, service users and communities is part of commissioning and service planning decisions, rather than being held at arm’s length and outsourced. Our ambition is that this is done effectively everywhere. It is about strengthening the power of patients’ voices inside the NHS, where decisions are taken, not silencing criticism of those decisions. Within our approach, integrated care boards and local authorities will be expected to engage with people in their areas and will have a statutory duty to obtain their views.

That is a core part of the new strategic role of ICBs, and it involves transparency about what people have told the system, what the system has done in response and how learning is shared across partners. ICBs will be held to account if they do not demonstrate those elements. However, we have heard the strength of feeling in this place and in Committee, and as the Bill moves to the other place, I can commit to working closely with colleagues across this House and in the other place in order to review these provisions and ensure that our approach sufficiently empowers and devolves to local populations. We all want to ensure that the changes deliver for patients and service users, building public trust and ensuring that their voice is embedded in the care they receive.