Social Care and Mental Health Services: Hornsey and Friern Barnet

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety (Dame Diana Johnson)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on securing this important debate. I have spoken to the Minister for Social Care, who is happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss her concerns, including her concerns around standards of care in particular. We can arrange for that to happen.

This debate is important because when we talk about social care and mental health services, it can be easy to talk in terms of systems, services, assessments and waiting lists, but behind every one of those words is a real person—someone who may be struggling to get through the day without the right support. It could be a family member who has reached breaking point in trying to care for someone that they love. Those are the people we must keep at the heart of the changes that we are making to our NHS and social care system.

My hon. Friend has taken a sustained interest in these issues in Hornsey and Friern Barnet, particularly the pressures facing adult social care and mental health services, the importance of community provision and the importance of ensuring that people can access the right support at the right time. Let me be clear: it is unacceptable that anyone is left without the mental health care that they need, particularly when they are in crisis.

Let me turn to the local picture in my hon. Friend’s constituency. There is clearly a variation in mental health need across north London. The prevalence of severe mental health illness is particularly high in Haringey, where an estimated 1.44% of residents are living with a severe mental illness—compared with 1.16% nationally—making it among the highest rates in England. Residents of Hornsey and Friern Barnet draw on mental health and social care services at some of the most difficult points in their lives. As my hon. Friend knows, the constituency is served by both Barnet and Haringey councils. There is a different picture in each area. Barnet was assessed by the Care Quality Commission as “good” in January ’25. Haringey was rated as “requires improvement” in February ’25, with the CQC highlighting concerns surrounding mental health discharge processes, communication and timeliness around hospital discharge, partnership working, and a shortage of move-on accommodation for people with mental health needs.

I appreciate how important these issues are for people who are already facing considerable challenges, and how frustrating it is when services do not work together effectively. The Department has therefore supported Haringey through its improvement offer, and I am pleased that the council has engaged constructively with that process. In May, Haringey requested to be de-escalated from the Department’s formal reporting process, which was accepted. The council provided a voluntary update on its progress in August, and expressed confidence in its improvement trajectory.

While that is encouraging, I want to be clear that de-escalation does not change the CQC rating, which remains at “requires improvement” until the CQC completes a further assessment. The CQC issued a notice of assessment on 3 August and we will now await the outcome. I hope that will provide a clear picture of the progress being made and, most importantly, help to ensure that people receive the safe, timely and joined-up support that they deserve.

I want to say a few words about the national picture for mental health. I think we all acknowledge that the challenge is significant, but our ambition is significant too. The 10-year health plan sets out our ambition to reform the NHS, and we are already taking important steps to improve mental health services, including reforming the Mental Health Act 1983 to support better and more personalised care, and recruiting thousands more mental health staff.

We are also making £473 million of capital funding available over the next four years, including community-based mental health centres and mental health emergency departments. That includes £343 million to establish 100 community-based mental health centres and 59 mental health emergency departments across England, building on the six centres already operating in Birmingham, York, Copeland, Tower Hamlets, Lewisham and Sheffield.

One community-based mental health centre will be established in most places in England. That typically coincides with a borough in London. Mental health emergency departments will cover approximately 50% of type-1 A&E departments by ’29-30, and I am pleased to report that there is already a unit at Highgate mental health centre on Dartmouth Park Hill, which has been operational since 2024, but of course we recognise that we must go further. That is why we are developing a new mental health strategy for England, which will set out how we can transform mental health care so that people receive support earlier, face shorter waits, and are helped to stay active and participate in education, work, family and community life.

On delayed discharge and in-patient capacity, my hon. Friend described how discharge delays can leave people with no choice but to remain in mental health in-patient settings for longer than is appropriate. The Government recognise the importance of ensuring that people can leave hospital as soon as they are ready, with the appropriate support in place, such as rehabilitation services. That provision requires effective joint working across health and social care services, which is why the better care fund has committed over £9 billion in ’26-27 to integrated care boards and local authorities. That pooled funding is intended to support services that help people to retain or recover their independence, and to prevent avoidable admissions. Funding recipients are expected to agree local goals for preventing avoidable admissions and reducing delayed discharge, and to work together to develop effective services.

Let me address the point about social care, housing and community support at discharge that my hon. Friend made so eloquently. For some people, particularly those with more complex needs, being clinically fit to leave hospital is not the only condition required for a safe and successful discharge; the right social care, housing and community support must also be available to enable them to live well in the place they call home. In particular, autistic people and people with a learning disability can lack suitable supported housing options in their community, which can contribute to people remaining in mental health hospitals past the point of need. The Government are taking action to increase the availability of appropriate housing and support, including through the £39 billion social and affordable homes programme that my hon. Friend referred to, through which we want new supported housing supply across a diverse range of housing types, including for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

NHS England is also investing £13 million in 2026-27 through its housing capital programme, to support areas to develop housing for autistic people and people with learning disabilities outside mental health hospital settings, alongside additional funding to support the development of crisis accommodation. Supporting timely discharge incudes ensuring that suitable arrangements are in place. It is essential that people leave mental health in-patient settings safely, with appropriate support in the community and with their needs properly considered.

Revised statutory guidance on discharge from mental health in-patient settings was published in 2024 under the National Health Service Act 2006. The guidance sets out how health and care systems can work effectively together to support discharge from hospital and ensure that the right support is in place in the community. It also includes best practice on involving patients and carers in discharge planning, as well as providing clarity on how health and care partners should work together effectively, including in relation to shared responsibilities and arrangements for funding section 117 aftercare.

Section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983 places a duty on the NHS and local authorities to provide aftercare once they have left hospital to certain patients who have been detained under the Act. That aftercare should provide people with the support they need to live successfully and safely in the community, while reducing the risk of deterioration in their mental health and the need for further hospital admissions. Depending on an individual’s needs, aftercare can include accommodation, day services and other health and social care support.

We know, however, that there can be a lack of clarity over which organisation is responsible for providing and funding aftercare and in which locality, which can lead to further delays in providing support to vulnerable people. The Government’s recent reforms to the Mental Health Act clarify which local authority is responsible for arranging an individual’s aftercare, by applying the existing social care rules on ordinary residents to people receiving aftercare under the Act. That should provide greater clarity and consistency for local authorities and ICBs, supporting more effective joint planning and better aligned aftercare services.

I now turn to longer term adult social care reform and the Casey commission, which my hon. Friend referred to. We need to think ambitiously about the future of social care. At its best, social care is transformational. It can give people the support they need to live independently, maintain relationships, contribute to their communities and live the lives that they want. That is at the heart of the Government’s vision for a national care service: a system that is more person-centred, integrated with health services and preventive. The Prime Minister has been clear that he wants rapid progress towards that vision, working in partnership with the adult care sector.

The Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, led by Baroness Casey, remains central to the Government’s ambitions to reform the sector. Baroness Casey’s Big Conversation on Care, launched on 29 July, gives people across England the opportunity to tell us what they want and expect from a future care service. This conversation will feed into the commission’s recommendations for the funding of adult social care, which will now be made in the summer of ’27. In the meantime, we will continue to put in place the building blocks of the national care service through improving support for the workforce and unpaid carers, and providing more than £4.6 billion of additional funding for adult social care in 2028-29, compared with 2025-26.

I thank my hon. Friend again for raising these important issues and for shining a light on the experience of people who rely on mental health and social care services in her constituency. They are encouraging signs of progress locally, particularly Haringey’s engagement with the improvement process, but clearly there is more to do. The Government are determined to support local partners to make these improvements, while addressing the long-term challenges facing social care. Ultimately, this is about making sure that no one is left waiting unnecessarily for care and giving every person confidence that the services around them will work together when they need them most.

Question put and agreed to.

Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

Diana Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety (Dame Diana Johnson)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Government in support of the Bill. I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on securing first place in the private Member’s Bill ballot, and on bringing this important Bill before the House. In the 21 years that I have been in this place, I have never even got close to getting a private Member’s Bill, but I heard from the right hon. Gentleman that he had had to wait 30 years to get his, so there is hope for us all. It has certainly been worth the wait. The Bill reflects both careful thought, and a determination to ensure that babies, parents and carers receive the sustained attention that they deserve.

I also recognise the valuable work of the 1001 Critical Days Foundation, and in particular Dame Andrea Leadsom’s long-standing commitment to that agenda. I served in Parliament with Dame Andrea, and I know that over many years she has helped to build understanding across Parliament, and beyond, of why pregnancy and the first two years of life matter so profoundly. Her leadership has kept babies and their families at the heart of the national conversation. I also commend the work of the CEO of the foundation, Will Quince, who previously served in this House and was a Health Minister, and of course I thank my distinguished colleague, the right hon. Lord Blunkett for all his work in this area. I want to refer to the late Baroness Tessa Jowell, who has been mentioned many times during this debate, and her pioneering work around Sure Start, which I will say a little more about later in my speech. I also thank Graham Allen, the former MP for Nottingham North, for all his work in this area. I am grateful to all the organisations, professionals, parents and carers whose advocacy and experience have shaped this debate.

I acknowledge the many excellent contributions we have heard today, but I will start with the outstanding speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), who until this summer was an excellent Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care. In the 21 years that she has been a Member of Parliament, she has fought long and hard for the rights of babies and children, be that by promoting school food or free school meals or special educational needs, or in this case through all the work she has done to ensure Government support for the Bill. As she said, “Back our babies, back the Bill.” She has been campaigning on these issues for so long—indeed, as the right hon. Member for New Forest West said, “since God was a boy”. In my view it is “since God was a girl”, but I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she has done.

We have had important and wide-ranging contributions from Members across the House covering many issues, and I will highlight a few. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), the Chair of the Education Committee, gave us the excellent phrase that is outside Sheringham nursery and children’s centre: “Building brains here”. I think that is very powerful. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) that raising children is a public good and we all have an interest in it. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) spoke about the important role of charities and the voluntary sector, of Home Start, and of the Extra Mile charity in her constituency. The hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) talked about medical misogyny and domestic abuse, which are really important issues, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) talked passionately about her frontline experience of early intervention at Sure Start and, absolutely, the power of sitting down with a cup of tea and having someone to talk to. I also pay tribute to her role as the Government’s national maternity adviser, and her wise counsel in that role.

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will carry on, because I want to say something about other hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) spoke as a recovering lawyer and talked about safeguarding issues. I found his scrutiny of the Bill’s clauses interesting and important, and we will obviously reflect on that. I wish the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) well as a new parent—I think he is the newest parent in the House, so all the very best with that. He talked about maximising the potential of every child.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) talked about surrogacy and made passionate comments about the surrogacy laws, particularly in respect of international surrogacy. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) gave her personal reflections and talked about her community. The hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) talked with great skill and knowledge drawn from experience in her role on the APPG, and talked about the importance of support for mums. I add my best wishes to those of my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) to Hallie on her first birthday.

We heard about health inequalities. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) talked about how investing in babies will provide the fairer, stronger and more prosperous country that we all want to see. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) talked from the perspective of being a grandfather. My hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) talked about temporary accommodation. My hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) quoted one of my favourite Larkin poems—Philip Larkin was the librarian at the University of Hull for many years, and as a Hull MP, I know that poem very well—and talked about the importance of getting safeguarding right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) spoke passionately on behalf of her constituent, Ashley, and baby Chloe. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend and Ashley, and I am pleased to hear about the improvements that have been made at the Royal Stoke hospital. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) brought her experience and knowledge as an NHS professional to the debate.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many Members were unable to contribute to today’s debate but have much to say, so will the Minister meet those Members to discuss further issues that were not raised during the debate?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I know that my hon. Friend has a great deal of experience in this area. My door is always open to Members of Parliament to discuss issues within my portfolio, so yes, of course I would be happy to meet those Members.

I want to say a little bit about the importance of the first 1,001 days. The Government have set out an ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children ever, and to give every child the best start in life. If we are to achieve that, we must begin at the very beginning. The 1,001 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday are a unique window of opportunity. During that short period, babies’ brains, bodies and relationships develop at extraordinary speed. The experiences they have and the care and support around them help to lay foundations for physical health, emotional wellbeing, communication and learning. I have seen that myself in recent weeks with the birth of my great-niece, Isabelle Diane.

A baby does not develop in isolation: their world is shaped by the adults who care for them. Supporting a baby therefore means supporting the whole family, helping parents and carers to build confidence, protecting their mental health, strengthening the parent-infant relationship and providing practical help with feeding and child development.

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will carry on.

That support must be accessible and compassionate. Parenthood can be joyful, but it can also be exhausting and isolating. Some families face the additional pressure of poverty, insecure housing, poor mental health or limited support networks. Early help cannot remove every challenge, but it can prevent difficulties from escalating and reduce inequalities before they become entrenched. That is why the child poverty strategy is also so important, alongside all that this Government are doing. Early intervention is not only the right thing to do for babies and families now; it is an investment in the future. When parents and carers receive the right help at the right time, children have a strong platform from which to grow, learn and thrive, and there is less need for costly crisis intervention later on.

I want to say a few things about Sure Start. We all know that well-designed support can make a lasting difference. Sure Start, launched in 1998 under the previous Labour Government, brought health, early learning, childcare, parenting and wider family support together for families with children under five. At its best, it offered a trusted local front door, with professionals working around the needs of the child and the family, rather than expecting families to navigate a maze of separate services.

The long-term evidence of the success of Sure Start is compelling. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that children with greater access to it experienced fewer hospital admissions later in childhood and adolescence, better educational outcomes, improved mental health and lower levels of school absence. That was felt even more profoundly by children growing up in disadvantaged communities. Very importantly, there is also a strong economic case. The central estimate is that Sure Start’s long-term financial benefits were about twice its up-front cost. That matters, because it shows that early support is not simply a desirable addition to public services, but can improve lives, reduce pressure on health and education services, and provide value for the taxpayer.

The lesson is not that every aspect of the past should be reproduced unchanged. It is that trusted local provision, early help, joined-up services and a clear focus on families can make a measurable difference. Those principles run through the Government’s approach today. Through the Best Start family hubs and the healthy babies programme, we are building a more joined-up, prevention-focused system of support. As part of the wider best start in life agenda, Best Start family hubs are designed to give families a clear route to the help and support that they need, making it easier for them to find information, advice and practical help, from pregnancy through to childhood. They bring together health, early education and wider family services, and connect parents and carers with support with parenting, relationships, child development, special educational needs and disabilities and financial wellbeing, and with community support. Since April 2026, all 153 upper-tier local authorities in England have been delivering the programme.

The healthy babies programme sits at the heart of the Best Start family hubs, providing focused help from conception to the age of two, particularly with infant feeding, perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationships. Those services support parents and carers to nurture their babies and promote healthy physical, social and emotional development. The Government are investing £200 million in healthy babies over three years as part of our wider £900 million package for Best Start family hubs and healthy babies. The healthy babies funding is helping 75 local authorities with high levels of deprivation to strengthen those services. The support is practical and preventive, and includes one-to-one and peer support with infant feeding, help with mild to moderate perinatal mental health difficulties, and evidence-based work to strengthen the relationship between parent and baby. The support also helps local areas to publish clear information and involve parents and carers directly in designing and improving services. Importantly, this is not a one-size-fits-all model. Local areas are responding to the needs of their own communities.

Effective support is about not simply making services available, but ensuring that parents, carers and expectant families feel confident seeking help and can access it when they need it. It means building on the strengths already present in communities, creating opportunities for families to support one another, and developing trusting relationships so that no family feel that they must face challenges on their own. Through the 10-year health plan, we are committed to expanding healthy babies nationally over the coming decade. We want to create a visible local offer, rooted in neighbourhoods and designed around families.

So why is the Bill needed? The Government are taking action to support babies and their families, but history shows us that effective early years support can be vulnerable when it depends mainly on time-limited programmes, non-statutory guidance or broad general duties. Priorities and funding arrangements change, and services that families value can lose visibility or become fragmented. As one of those who was around during the time when we had to fight to try to keep Sure Start in place, and who heard the warnings about how short-sighted it was to cut and dismantle the service, I know that the battle is really hard, so the Bill is very welcome.

The Bill provides a focused and proportionate response. Its central purpose is to ensure that the needs of babies, parents and carers are systematically understood, reflected in relevant decisions and made visible to Parliament. Pregnancy and the first two years should not be treated as a passing policy priority; they should receive sustained attention over time. The Bill does not create a new individual entitlement to a fixed list of services, and it does not prescribe a single model of what these services should look like. Instead, it creates a durable national framework, so that decisions on infant support services are informed by evidence, assessed need and the lived experience of families.

As we have heard, the Bill establishes five linked duties. First, the Secretary of State must make regulations specifying the publicly funded infant support services and relevant functions to which the framework applies. Secondly, the Secretary of State must assess the expected level of need for those specified services. Thirdly, in preparing that assessment, the Secretary of State must take reasonable steps to seek the views of parents, carers and those expecting to become parents or carers and must take those views into account. Fourthly, the Secretary of State must exercise the specified functions with a view to ensuring appropriate provision. Finally, the Secretary of State must report annually to Parliament on the level of provision and the contribution that those services make to positive outcomes.

The Government support the Bill because it aligns with our priorities. It advances our ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children ever and reinforces the work that is under way through the healthy babies programme and Best Start family hubs. For those reasons, the Government are supporting the Bill this afternoon.

Vaccination Rates: England

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety (Dame Diana Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Mrs Barker. I am grateful to the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), and its members for securing this important debate and am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for his passionate opening statement. I also welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), back to her place after the reshuffle; I congratulate her on surviving for so long.

I know that Members across the House are very concerned about this issue. I have been struck by the knowledge and expertise around the Chamber this afternoon. Many questions have been posed. If I do not get to every question that Members have asked, I will write to them with an answer.

After clean water, vaccination is the most effective public health intervention for saving lives and promoting good health. It protects individuals, protects families and protects communities. One vaccination can change the whole course of a life for the better or, if it is missed, for the worse. I am very conscious of that as a Hull MP, because in October 1961 we were the first city to mass-vaccinate with the new oral vaccine. When we faced a polio outbreak that threatened the city, over 350,000 people were vaccinated in two weeks. That led to the national roll-out soon afterwards, helping to virtually eliminate the disease nationwide.

Over generations, vaccinations have made diseases that once killed or disabled thousands of children rare and have eradicated smallpox worldwide. Vaccination is central to this Government’s wider shift from sickness to prevention. In terms of the diseases we protect against, we deliver at the moment what I still believe is a world-class vaccination programme, backed by expert advice from the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. But the benefits depend on high uptake, and childhood vaccination rates have moved in the wrong direction.

Falling vaccination rates are a very serious challenge. Despite our programme achieving more than 90% coverage for babies’ first doses against diseases such as polio and measles, we are not hitting our targets. There is no single cause and there is no quick fix. We know that some families struggle to get an appointment that works for them or have not received clear, trusted information in a way that works for them. Services also vary across the country. The pandemic put further pressures on the health system and misinformation can add to these problems.

[Sir Desmond Swayne in the Chair]

We are therefore acting on four fronts: clearer NHS organisation, more flexible services, better public information and joined-up digital records. I will deal with each in turn, but first I will address targets, as well as funding and delegation to ICBs. Let us be clear: the Government have not dropped vaccination targets. To summarise, our targets are 95% for routine pre-school immunisations and 90% for routine school-age immunisations. Our targets remain in force and are based on standards set by the World Health Organisation. We have simplified the NHS planning guidance to avoid duplication, but we did not lower our ambition. We are also backing targets with better accountability. Coverage of MMR vaccinations for young children will form part of how the performance of NHS ICBs will be assessed as they take on responsibility for vaccination services from April next year.

We have not cut funding for vaccination services. We have confirmed funding for the next three years, giving the NHS certainty as responsibility moves from the NHS regions to ICBs in April 2027. Excluding covid-19 vaccinations, that is a real-terms increase and will help ICBs and vaccination service providers to plan service improvements further ahead.

On delegation, ICBs are best placed to improve vaccination coverage because they understand the needs of their local communities. That matters because the reasons for low coverage vary from place to place. ICBs can shape these services around local needs and barriers, whether that means more convenient appointments or clearer information from trusted sources. This is devolution in action.

I reassure hon. Members that national bodies will continue to set standards, monitor performance and hold the system to account.

[Dr Chambers]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will carry on because I have very limited time, but I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman or talk to him afterwards. I know there are concerns about the cuts that have been made to ICB running costs. These are planned reductions that relate just to administration, not the funding that will be used to provide frontline vaccination services.

Turning to pre-school access, flexible services are critical. Vaccination rates are lowest in the most deprived communities, so improving uptake means making services easier to use. Pre-school children will continue to receive their vaccinations through their GPs. We have increased the payment to GPs for each routine childhood vaccination from £10.06 to £12.06 and changed the GP incentives to reward improvements where uptake is lowest.

However, we recognise that GP services will not reach every family and are therefore testing vaccinations through health visiting teams, including through 12 pilots across England, four of which are in London. Health visitors have brought vaccines to family homes to ensure that the most vulnerable families are offered these lifesaving interventions. We have also been expanding the use of community pharmacies and are evaluating that. We are looking at supporting targeted local outreach as well. The aim is simple: to reach those who might otherwise miss out.

School-age vaccinations are also a priority. The joint school-aged vaccination programme of work with my Department and the Department for Education is now overseeing actions to improve coverage in schools by resolving local delivery problems. The NHS is also rolling-out new digital technology to make it easier for busy parents to provide consent. It has published revised guidance for schools and the NHS and there are regional support forums to tackle any problems that are present.

We also have the Mavis—manage vaccinations in schools—scheme. That is a new digital system that allows parents to give consent online and helps NHS teams to keep records up to date. By September 2026, it will be used by 72% of school vaccination teams, covering more than 13,800 schools, with further expansion planned for April ’27.

Turning next to awareness, most parents want to do the right thing for their children. Our job is to ensure that they can easily find the clear and trustworthy information that they need. That means stronger public campaigns and confident healthcare professionals giving that advice. We think that it could also be provided by schools and better start hubs, as well as trusted local organisations.

We all agree that false claims online can cause huge concern and worry. As a number of hon. Members have said, the actions of politicians have consequences. We all share the responsibility to base our comments on science and evidence. We have seen the damage that misinformation can cause. The entirely discredited and morally repugnant claims linking MMR and autism in the 1990s led to a substantial fall in coverage, so experts now monitor emerging misinformation and respond with accurate information. I hear the calls today for stronger action against social media companies, but we do not want to mistake misinformation for the whole problem. To improve coverage, many families simply need vaccinations to be easier to understand and to access.

I will conclude with the issue of digital and data. We are improving vaccination records. At the moment, information is held in different NHS systems and does not always follow a patient between services. Through new digital systems, we are joining those records together. That will help healthcare professionals to see which vaccinations someone has had, allow the NHS to identify communities where uptake is low and give families clearer records, reminders and information about where to get vaccinated. Over time, families will also be able to access more of this through the NHS app.

Vaccinations have protected generations from serious disease, and all of us have a vested interest in ensuring that they continue to do so. That means clear accountability, easier access, trusted information and better record keeping. As I have set out, we are acting on each of those fronts. Rebuilding coverage will take sustained effort, but we will monitor progress closely and take further action wherever it is needed.

I note that the House of Lords Childhood Vaccinations Committee is due to report shortly. As the new Minister in this post, I will be looking very closely at the recommendations that come out of that report. I have had the chance to look at the letters that the Health and Social Care Committee wrote to one of my predecessors, and I can assure all hon. Members in the room today that I will go back to the Department and redouble my efforts to ensure that we see the increase that we all want in the number of vaccinations, particularly for children. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon.

NHS

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend not just for his question, which was excellent as always, but for his long record in the House, particularly in the world of healthcare. He was a superb Minister in the Department of Health and has chaired the Select Committee with great skill. He has scrutinised many a Minister, which I promise him is not a relaxing experience. I really pay credit to him.

May I also thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the importance of prevention? We want to bend the demand curve on the NHS. We know that demand has risen in recent years—we are seeing more people in A&E, we are seeing more cancer referrals and we are seeing more people accessing scans, checks and diagnostics—and we need to help people to understand that we can take responsibility for our own health. Through work such as that on using the NHS app as a gateway to prevention, I genuinely think that we will be helping not only our generations but, importantly, younger people, who sometimes get forgotten in our conversations about healthcare.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I welcome the commitment from the Health Secretary to paying the £210,000 interim payment to those infected under the contaminated blood scandal. But can I say that there is no clarity at all from the Government about the payments that Sir Brian recommended in April 2023 to those who have received nothing so far—the parents who have lost children and the children who have lost parents?

Can I seek a guarantee from the Health Secretary that we will see psychological support services put in place in England immediately? They are in place in Northern Ireland, in Scotland and in Wales. Since 2020, Ministers in the Department have been saying that those services would be made available. That is four years ago; it is not acceptable. After the statements earlier this week by the Prime Minister and the Paymaster General, that is something that the NHS could do quickly and which would have enormous impact, especially because, with the general election having been called, people do not quite know what will happen to the Government’s promises.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for all her work. She may recall that, when the inquiry was announced by the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), we had a debate on that matter where I spoke as a Back Bencher on behalf of a constituent; I very much hope that he and others gain some reassurance from the fact that I understand exactly the issues they have faced over many years. As Health Secretary, it is my responsibility, and indeed my privilege, to try to help them now.

In relation to the compensation schemes for those who have not yet received payments, I know that the right hon. Lady will have carefully pored through the responses of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General. We want to give the independent compensation authority—I underline independent because I am sympathetic to the sensitivities of families and victims around the role that the Department of Health and others played in their pain—and Sir Robert the chance to set up the scheme, assisted by the expert panel.

I promise the right hon. Lady that I have been discussing psychological support with the chief executive of NHS England for some time. We want to recruit the right people to conduct that incredibly sensitive work. It will take us a little more time, but I assure her that NHS England is acting quickly to bring in those services, we hope, by the end of the summer.

NHS Dentistry: Recovery and Reform

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I have no doubt that with my hon. Friend’s characteristic joy and as an irresistible force of nature, she herself will be an advert for dentists to come to work in her constituency.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

A constituent recently told me that when she tried to register members of her family with an NHS dentist, she was told that there was an eight-year wait. We know that workforce is a really big issue. On that basis, will the Secretary of State meet me and a cross-party group of Members of Parliament to talk about how we could develop a dental school at the site of the excellent Hull York Medical School to grow our own dentists for the future?

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Lady will know that part of the focus of the long-term workforce plan is to train people where they are most needed. I will happily arrange for her to meet the relevant Minister. On registration, the current system is not like a GP practice where, once a family is registered, they can only go to that GP. The whole reason that we have been encouraging dentists to update their details on the NHS website is so that people can move around to visit different dentists to get the treatment they need. Today’s plan will help turbocharge those efforts.

Pharmacy First

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Investing in technology is vital, but so is investing in the workforce. We have seen a 61% increase in the number of registered community pharmacists since 2010, and we aim in our long-term NHS workforce plan to increase that by a further 50%. We have already increased the number of training places for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome Pharmacy First, which I think is a very good initiative. In recent weeks we have seen the closure of two pharmacies in my area, on Beverley Road and Chanterlands Avenue. I am also told by leaders in the Humber pharmacy community that our area has one of the largest numbers of temporary closures because of problems accessing pharmacists. Will the Minister look favourably, therefore, on my idea to attach a school of pharmacy to Hull York Medical School? We need a school of dentistry, too. If we could have a centre of excellence in the Humber area, it might solve some of our specific workforce problems.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am always happy to speak to colleagues on both sides of the House about their ideas for new dental and pharmacy schools. It is an ongoing interest.

England is, in fact, blessed with huge numbers of community pharmacies—well over 10,000—and four in five of us are able to walk to a community pharmacy within 20 minutes. The number of pharmacies in more deprived areas is double the number in more well-off areas. We are very well served by our brilliant pharmacies, and I hope the Pharmacy First programme will improve their footfall and their value in each of our communities.

NHS Winter Update

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her work in the Department. She knows only too well the difference an inspirational leader can make to a local NHS trust, and at regional or national level. Managers who are good and committed to their local area, who work with their clinicians and other healthcare staff to try to look after patients all year round, have been put under the most enormous pressure over the last few weeks because of the strikes. I thank every single one of them for doing what they can to safeguard patient safety. As I say, I trust their judgment. If they have put patient safety mitigations in, it is because they consider, in their professional judgment, that they are needed.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The public health director in Hull published her report recently. She talked about the double jeopardy that my constituents face: from the most disadvantaged communities, they have shorter lives in far poorer health. At the end of last year in A&E, patients were less likely to be treated within the four-hour target than anywhere else in England. Why is that after 14 years of a Conservative Government who are committed, apparently, to levelling up?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Lady, who will know that our constituencies, albeit not necessarily in the same region, nevertheless share similarities, being relatively close to each other. The work and the progress made on urgent and emergency care is precisely because we were concerned about, for example, ambulance response times and hospital discharges. We worked with NHSE to bring together the urgent and emergency care plan and, for example, bring about 800 new ambulances on to our roads and about 5,000 more core beds into the NHS to try to address those needs. Unfortunately, the strike action that we have seen over recent days has very much militated against those efforts. We all accept that winter is a very difficult time for the NHS, and through the urgent and emergency care plan we have worked with NHSE to try to meet the demands that she so rightly puts forward.

Countess of Chester Hospital Inquiry

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment in putting families and their wishes central. I hope he will understand that as part of an independent inquiry, it will be for the judge to decide which hearings are held in public and which are in private. In essence, part of the initial discussion on a non-statutory inquiry and my discussion with the families was about balancing privacy concerns versus the more adversarial and public nature of a statutory enquiry. I know that Justice Thirlwall will be sensitive to the families’ wishes and what is the appropriate balance between hearings held in public and those held in private.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

After all that has happened, it was surely a mistake not to implement recommendation 5 of the Kark review. Why does the Secretary of State not just get on with it and bring it in to disbar senior managers in the NHS?

[Steve Barclay]

The Kark recommendations that were accepted, which cover events since those covered at Chester, are believed to have addressed the concerns about the revolving door, but given the issues that have come to light through the case in Chester, I have asked NHSE colleagues to revisit that decision without waiting for the inquiry to look at that. Of course, the inquiry will also look at what is the right balance of regulation for managers.

Recovering Access to Primary Care

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right about the opportunity that tech offers to deliver changes at scale and the fact that this is proven technology that is working and already up and running in many primary care settings. So often within the NHS the challenge is not the initial innovation—we get pockets of wonderful innovation—but how we industrialise it across the wider NHS. This recovery plan focuses on that, looking at how we scale the case studies to which he refers. About half of primary care does have digital telephony. The opportunity here is to target that funding at the other half; that is often the smaller GP practices, as well as those in coastal communities, because they find the transition to tech more difficult. That is why a key part of this recovery plan is about the investment in not just the tech, but in locums, to provide cover so that staff can make the transition to that new way of working.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The NHS workforce plan has been promised for years. Meanwhile, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) says, we are short of GPs, pharmacists and dentists in Hull. Will the Secretary of State answer the question she put to him: can we please build on the excellent work of the Hull York Medical School to set up a dental training school there, and a school of pharmacy and one for ophthalmologists? That would help in the longer term, but we need a proper workforce plan and the Government need to get on with it.

[Steve Barclay]

As I have said several times, we will publish a workforce plan shortly. We are committed to that and the Chancellor set that out in the autumn statement. Of course, when he was doing this job and when I was previously in the Department, we expanded medical undergraduate places by a fifth, so there was an increase then. I have said that we will also set out a dental recovery plan in due course.

Reforms to NHS Dentistry

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on their persistence. Let us hope it starts to pay off and they do not need that fourth debate on the subject.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South has said, NHS dentistry is in crisis. There is a recruitment and retention crisis, which the Government have allowed to develop and grow to the point that many of my constituents in Hull North have been left with no access to an NHS dentist. We all know what needs to be done to fix the problem, but the Government have continued to drag their feet over the need for a new dental contract, for new dental schools and for expanding the number of dentists that we have in this country. It is almost like they have hoped that those who can afford to do so will go private, and those who cannot will just sit and let their teeth rot.

Right now, people in Hull North are paying for the Government’s time wasting with their dental health. One constituent has told me of waiting lists at a local NHS dentist of more than 1,500 people, and another has tried to call every NHS dentist within 30 miles, but the earliest appointment they have available is January 2025. A concerned parent tells me that their 11-year-old has not seen a dentist since they were six years of age, and their four-year-old has never seen a dentist, despite being on several waiting lists across Hull since they were a baby. I have had headteachers tell me that children do not go to school because of dental pain and being unable to get access to a dentist.

In Yorkshire and the Humber, as my hon. Friend referred to, in the year ending 2022, 4,560 children under the age of 10 were hospitalised for tooth extractions. That shocking figure includes more than 1,500 babies and toddlers under five with cavities so bad that they have had to have their teeth removed. The situation is shocking and considerably worse in Yorkshire, the Humber and the north-east than elsewhere in England.

What we need are more NHS dentists. We need to recruit more NHS dentists, and if we want to tackle the dental recruitment problems, we obviously need to train more NHS dentists. Years ago, the University of Hull, in partnership with the University of York—I am very pleased to see in her place my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who represents that university—put in a joint bid for a dental school.

It was to go alongside the brilliant Hull York Medical School, which had been established under the Labour Government when there was a real need for more doctors to be trained. The idea was that we would “grow” our own doctors from the area where the medical school was based. Let us imagine what would have happened and the situation we would be in today if we had been allowed to have that Hull York dental school.

After all the dither and delay that we have been talking about, we can correct our course today. There is plenty of existing support and the capability to deliver a high-quality training facility in the Humber area, which could directly serve one of the worst affected regions in the country, but we need the Government to step up to give us the resources and provide the funding for places.

I am, however, grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), for agreeing to meet me after I raised this issue in Tuesday’s Health questions. I also commend him for the speed with which his office contacted mine to arrange that meeting. Getting a ministerial meeting that quickly is unusual these days, so I thank him for that. A Hull dental school could be part of a long-promised workforce plan for the NHS. It could mean that we have sufficient UK-trained, highly qualified dentists and, with the necessary changes to the dental contract, a decent reward for their hard work. We also need to remember that we are competing in a global market for dentists. I was struck by the fact that if a dentist goes to Canada, they receive a £63,000 golden hello and the offer of residence. That is clearly tempting for many dentists who train in this country and feel they are overworked and get too little pay.

To date, the Government have been missing in action, dentists have been voting with their feet and patients in Hull have been paying with their teeth. We need more NHS dentists. Let us train them. Let us get on with it and do it now, and let us do it in Hull.