NHS England Update

Emma Foody Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: the estate is vast, it is underutilised, and we need to sweat our assets more effectively. We also need to reform bureaucratic processes. There are lots of reasons why we need to have tough controls on things such as spending, procurement and value for money, to ensure that there is appropriate and effective use of public money. But businesses do not operate in this way; they are able to counter fraud, waste and poor value for money, and they do it much faster. That is what the NHS needs to do. Across the public sector, we need to use our estate far more effectively to deliver better value and better services for the public.

[Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Health Secretary for the announcement he has made. As he rightly says, staff work incredibly hard and deserve our thanks, but we all recognise the huge strain that they and the organisation have been under. The health service is consistently raised as one of the top concerns by residents in my constituency. Can he share how today’s announcement, along with other measures he has previously announced, will build an NHS that is there when people across Cramlington and Killingworth need it?

[Wes Streeting]

We have to deliver improved services for patients in every part of the country. Her constituency and mine, which is on the London-Essex border, will have different needs, contexts and set-ups, and services may need to be shaped differently in order to meet those needs, but the standards should be consistent, the quality should be good and the safety should be guaranteed at all times. That is a far cry from where we are, and I genuinely think that decisions about services for her constituents will be far better taken much closer to her constituents and her community than here in Whitehall. That is why, as we are delivering month by month and year by year improvements in services for patients in every part of the country, we will also deliver the biggest devolution of power in the history of the national health service.