Oral Answers to Questions

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are focused on delivering real results for patients by scrapping unnecessary targets, bringing back the family doctor, and requiring online bookings, which will help deal with the 8 am scramble. We are investing an additional £889 million to reinforce the front door of the NHS. That is the biggest increase for more than a decade, and it means that there will be hundreds more GPs since we came to power. This week, we have announced record investment to enable community pharmacies to deliver more services for patients, and to free up GP time.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

A recent NHS England report laid bare the catalogue of failures that left a patient with a history of violent aggression unconfined, untreated and completely unmedicated for nine months, until he killed Ian Coates and the young friends Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Barnaby Webber, from Taunton in my constituency. Will the Prime Minister join me and the people of Taunton in paying tribute to the families who have campaigned on this matter? Will he confirm that a public inquiry is to begin? Given the 50% cut to the cost of integrated care boards, will he also confirm that mental health services, both in the community and secure, will not suffer as a result of those cuts?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that tragic case, and I pay tribute to the families. When it comes to cases such as this, I often find it hard to think how I would respond if I were a family member in such circumstances. I am not sure that I would have the courage that those families have to campaign in the way that they have done, and I pay tribute to them for it. We need to get to the bottom of all these issues, wherever they may lie, and that is what we will do.