NHS: Long-term Strategy

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend highlights an extremely important area of innovation that speaks to the point about how to adopt that at scale. I will come on to the issue of virtual wards. At Watford, they told me that it was saving the equivalent of another ward of the hospital by enabling people to be discharged to recover in their homes where it was more comfortable. Patient satisfaction was extremely high—over 90% in the programme in Watford. Not only that; the clinical wraparound support means that if they need to return to hospital, they are able to do so.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I, too, have seen the virtual ward at Watford General Hospital, which serves my constituents. We are very proud in west Hertfordshire that we were the first hospital trust to have that virtual ward, but he will know from his visit that the No. 1 priority of every member of clinical staff in that hospital is to have funding from the new hospitals programme to improve our hospitals in Watford, Hemel and St Albans. Could the Secretary of State please pledge to write to me within the next seven days to report on his meeting with the hospital trust and tell us whether and when we will finally get some funding, after being overlooked for decades?

[Steve Barclay]

It was extremely helpful to discuss the priorities for the new hospital build with the clinical team and the leadership team at Watford. I could see that for myself, and we are committed to it. This is an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) champions assiduously on behalf of the people of Watford, but I know that it matters to a wider cohort there and I am happy to write further to the hon. Lady as she requests.

The virtual ward at Watford—it is great to have cross-party support for that innovation—is further facilitated by the funding we announced in the autumn statement: the further £500 million this year, £600 million next year and £1 billion the year after. The Opposition say we are “failing to recognise” the scale of the current challenges in the NHS, yet when I set out in the statement the additional actions that we are taking, it was both to respond to the pressures from flu—the sevenfold increase we have seen, with 100 times the number of patients in hospital with flu compared with last year—and to facilitate the innovation that they highlight in programmes such as virtual wards.