NHS 10-Year Plan

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

We work closely with NICE to make sure that we consider, in an evidence-based way, the case for prescribing new medicines. We want patients to have access to the latest treatments and technology, and we work with the pharmaceutical industry to get as many medicines as possible to patients. We definitely need growth in this area.

I have a counter-offer for the hon. Gentleman. I notice that the Scottish Government are now on their fifth health plan; none of the others has worked. We are always willing to help, and I will put a copy of the plan in the post to my Scottish counterpart, but I will not hold out much hope. In England and Wales, where a Labour Government are in place, waiting lists are falling; in Scotland, waiting lists are rising, and we have heard astonishing admissions of failure from Ministers whose party has been in power for almost 20 years. It is very clear: Scotland needs an alternative. Scotland’s NHS needs an alternative: Scottish Labour.

[Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Yesterday was one year to the day since I completed my radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer. I was very lucky—my cancer was caught at stage 3 and was treatable—but I had to ask my GP for the prostate-specific antigen test that got me my treatment. I know my right hon. Friend has that said he wants to see a national screening programme aimed particularly at black men over 45, one in four of whom will get prostate cancer, people like me who have a family history of prostate cancer, and men over the age of 50. Will he ensure that we have a national screening programme as part of the 10-year plan?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of screening, and it is brilliant to see him fighting fit. That is exactly the sort of outcome that we want from effective diagnosis and treatment. He is also right to highlight the racial inequalities in this area. It cannot be right in this decade of the 21st century that black men are twice as likely as white men to die of prostate cancer. The national cancer plan will come out later this year, and the screening committee is looking at the case he makes. He will find at the centre of the 10-year plan a commitment not just to diagnose earlier and treat faster, but to tackle the gross health inequalities that blight our society in a way that is simply not tolerable in the 21st century.