Health and Adult Social Care Reform

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Wes Streeting

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I was grateful to staff at Derriford hospital for showing me at first hand the emergency department pressures when I visited just before Christmas. I have also visited Derriford at the height of summer, when it experiences high pressures. There are year-round difficulties at Derriford, and I thank the staff and leadership of the hospital for what they are doing in difficult circumstances. We will come forward shortly with the timetable for the new hospitals programme. I expect that it will be published sooner than the Conservatives apologise for their appalling record.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, but can he expand a bit more on the new agreement with the private sector? For example, he mentioned that the surgical hubs will be delivered solely by the private sector, but what arrangements will there be for emergency care, when the occasion arises?

[Wes Streeting]

Some of the new capacity announced in today’s elective reform plan will come through the independent sector, and some of that new capacity will be in the NHS. It is our ambition to rebuild the NHS so that it is available for everyone where and when they need it, and we will work with the independent sector. We are publishing full details of our independent sector agreement, so that people can see the deal that we have reached, and the sensible and effective partnership, including safeguards and protections, that we have come to. I look forward to working with the sector to make sure that everyone, whatever their income and background, can get faster access to care.

NHS: Independent Investigation

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Wes Streeting

Thursday 12th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I can absolutely reassure the hon. Member that RAAC-impacted hospitals are a priority. We are putting safety first, and it is just a shame that when his residents had a Prime Minister in their backyard, the Conservative Government did not fix the problem.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

For the sake of openness and transparency, I will just mention that I am a former chair of an NHS trust and a public health academic. I recognise the real issues that are raised in the findings of the Darzi rapid review. I am grateful to Lord Darzi for referring in particular to the inequalities that we have experienced, and how those inequalities were laid bare during covid. Will the Health and Social Care Secretary expand on the cross-departmental work that he is doing? I agree with my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) and for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) that people’s socioeconomic circumstances drive their health status. We do not want a situation where, for every 1% increase in child poverty, six additional babies per 100,000 live births do not reach their first birthday.

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and congratulate her warmly on her election to the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee. I am looking forward to sharing, through the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the work that our Departments are doing together, particularly on the link between mental health and unemployment and on integrating pathways. She is right about the social determinants of ill health. That is why I am genuinely excited that, through the mission-driven approach that the Prime Minister has set out, we are already bringing together Whitehall Departments, traditionally siloed, to work together on attacking those social determinants. The real game changer is genuine cross-departmental working, alongside business, civil society and all of us as active citizens, to mobilise the whole country in pursuit of that national mission, in which we will be tough on ill health, and tough on the causes of ill health, as someone might have said.