Ambulance Response Times

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) for securing this important debate and for opening it with, as usual, a thoughtful and well-researched contribution.

It is no surprise that Members have largely been in agreement in this debate, and they have made useful contributions, so I will quickly run through them. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) importantly highlighted the issue of burnout and the impact of the current situation on hard-working staff in the ambulance service, and the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) highlighted the huge regional variations and the inequality of service for people who live in very rural areas.

The hon. Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) told a story�which would be familiar to people in Shropshire�of long handover delays; my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) mentioned the importance of dealing with stroke patients and seeing them quickly; and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss), with whom my constituents and I share the West Midlands Ambulance Service, highlighted some of our concerns with that service as a whole.

I was first elected in the North Shropshire by-election back in December 2021. All that time ago, when my colleagues and I were out canvassing, it was extremely apparent that ambulance service delays were the No. 1 issue for my constituents. Every canvassing session we did, somebody heard an absolutely heartbreaking story of an ambulance delay that had led to a much worse outcome for a loved one, or possibly even a death. In all honesty, it was a shocking campaigning issue to have to focus on.

Almost a year later, after being elected, I completed a shift with West Midlands Ambulance Service in Shropshire, and I was blown away by the professionalism, dedication and hard work of the ambulance crew. But suffice it to say, the delays were still as appalling as they had been a year before.

Since then, there has been huge political turmoil, and that has not helped the situation. There have been four Prime Ministers, six Secretaries of State for Health and Social Care, and two Governments, and I am afraid to say we are still not seeing the improvement that we need. This winter, handover and waiting times reached the point where in some ambulance services people suffering heart attacks were at times advised to drive themselves to hospital. That is an unacceptable situation.

The most recent available data for my local ambulance service in Shropshire�the rural element of the West Midlands Ambulance Service�goes up to December 2024, and it still paints a stark picture of the distressing reality facing my constituents and people across Shropshire. The mean waiting time for category 1 callouts was 12 minutes 19 seconds, while the target is seven minutes. For category 2 callouts, the mean waiting time was 50 minutes and 36 seconds, while the target is 18 minutes. Those categories include callouts to people suffering from heart attacks and suspected strokes. For category 3 callouts, the mean waiting time was well over 200 minutes, and the target is an hour. After a long campaign, �21 million was secured to boost emergency care, and there has been improvement, but response times are still totally unacceptable.

At times, as many as 16 ambulances have been queuing outside the Shrewsbury and Telford emergency departments that serve my constituents. More than one in three ambulances have to wait for more than an hour to hand over a patient, and the longest wait was an astonishing 17 hours. Even this week, as we approach the spring, a constituent told me they had stopped to help an elderly lady laying on a cold pavement with a suspected stroke and had had to wait nearly an hour and a half for an ambulance or first responder to arrive. All the while, the lady�s breath become more and more shallow. This crisis is real, and it has not significantly improved.

Let us look at the national picture. The Darzi report found that each day in 2024 around 800 working days were lost to handover delays. However we cut that�14,000 paramedics a year; 112 years�it is just not acceptable. It is no surprise that people have lost faith in emergency health services as a result of the last Government�s appalling neglect of the NHS. The paramedics, nurses and doctors in our emergency departments go above and beyond, but they are stretched to breaking point and are unfortunately starting to leave the service because of burnout. We are campaigning to end excessive handover delays by increasing the number of staffed hospital beds and by tackling the impact of degrading corridor care.

Let me focus for a moment on social care. Crucially, A&E delays are often caused by an inability to admit patients because thousands of people are stuck in hospital every day when they would be better cared for elsewhere. Bed occupancy is well above safe levels in hospitals, and one in seven hospital beds are occupied by somebody who would be better cared for either in a care home or in their own home. Meanwhile, local authorities such as Shropshire are spending as much as 80% of their budget on social care. They are at risk of issuing section 114 notices as they are unable to cope any longer.

It is really important that we get on with the cross-party talks on social care and with the Casey review. We in the Liberal Democrat party absolutely welcome that, but we urge the Government to speed up the timetable and crack on with it as soon as possible, because 2028 is too late for a long-term solution for social care. The cross-party talks that fell through last week need to be reinstated. I urge the Minister to encourage the Secretary of State to do that as soon as possible.

Let us focus for a moment on the rural problem. Imagine an ideal scenario in which the issue of handover delays has been resolved, the urgent and emergency care plan has been successfully implemented and the 10-year plan has sorted out other issues across the NHS. For those who live near Oswestry, Whitchurch or Market Drayton in my constituency, the nearest community ambulance station has closed and the nearest station or hospital is well over 20 minutes away�that is, if the traffic is clear. Otherwise, if the response time targets for category 1 or 2 calls is to be met, they are reliant on a spare ambulance roaming free in the community, waiting for that call to come in. That is unrealistic. We would expect and hope that, in between calls, paramedics would go and have a cup of tea and a sit down, to decompress from some of the awful things they have seen that day, if they do not have a patient to go to immediately. Hopefully, they go back to the ambulance station in between call-outs.

The implementation of this centralised model across the country is detrimental to the people who live a long way from an ambulance station. It may well be efficient in urban areas, but it certainly is not working in rural ones. I hope the Minister will commit to reviewing the service that is received in rural places. There are thousands of people in large market towns. For example, Oswestry has nearly 8,000 residents, Market Drayton has more than 12,000 and Whitchurch has nearly 10,000. These people expect to receive an ambulance within the target time. I must urge the Minister to commit to looking at ambulance station provision in those areas. I also repeat my colleagues� calls for the Government to publish accessible, localised reports on response times and to create an emergency fund to reverse the closures of community ambulance stations that have already taken place.

The Midlands Air Ambulance Charity does fantastic work across the west midlands and is one of the busiest air ambulance charities in the country. It does not have an NHS contract; it is entirely reliant on the contributions of people living locally. I wonder whether the Minister might consider putting air ambulance services on a statutory footing, because we are so dependent on them, particularly when specialist hospitals might be a long way away and air ambulance crews supply specialist support to stabilise patients where they are found, at the roadside or in their home.

The situation is unacceptable, and I look forward to seeing the urgent and emergency care plan, which I hope it will consider the needs of rural areas. I must urge the Minister to look at social care, because that is one of the key things we need to do to fix the crisis in the NHS.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I call the Opposition spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) for securing the debate. I thank all the hon. Members who have taken part, including my hon. Friends the Members for Redditch (Chris Bloore), for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) and for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss), and the hon. Members for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) and for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), as well as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson). I will endeavour to deal with as many issues and questions as I can. If I do miss any, will hon. Members please get in touch with me afterwards, and I will make sure they are picked up?

The hon. Member for West Suffolk mentioned the commitment made by the Secretary of State to meet him and visit his constituency, and I will ensure that that issue is raised. The parliamentary private secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan), is here, and I am sure she will be happy to pursue a response. We will also do what we can to get a response from the Treasury for the shadow Minister.

The hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton and other hon. Members rightly raised constituents� experiences of long waits for an ambulance response. I put on record my deepest sympathies for the hon. Lady�s constituent Jim on the loss of his wife. As the Secretary of State has made clear, this is not the level of care that staff want for their patients, and it is not the level of care that this Government will ever accept for patients.

Lord Darzi investigated the issues facing the NHS, and his report was honest about the challenges facing the health service. Urgent and emergency care performance remains a long way from a resilient position and there is continued high demand for A&E and ambulance services, with ongoing seasonal winter pressures. For example, in December the London Ambulance Service recorded more than 121,000 incidents, the highest on record for the service. Improvement needs to happen across the urgent and emergency care pathway and through the expansion of neighbourhood health services.

Nationally, congested emergency departments reduce the productivity of ambulance services, a matter that I think almost all hon. Members raised. A huge amount of time is lost to ambulance handover delays because there is no space for patients. Having crews tied up waiting outside hospitals exacerbates poor ambulance response times. We have also seen the continued normalisation of corridor care. We will never accept patients being treated in corridors; it is unsafe and undignified. We are investing an extra �26 billion to begin turning around the NHS, and we will do all we can, as fast as we can, to consign corridor care to the history books.

Lord Darzi�s investigation into NHS performance highlighted wide variation across different parts of the country. The situation is unfair to patients and goes against the principle of a universal service. I acknowledge that there can be challenges in rural areas, where longer distances often mean that patients wait much longer for ambulances than in urban areas. I often find myself in this place with the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton, and we both talk about the experience in our rural constituencies. I assure her that that is on my agenda. As she says, ambulance response times for the south-west and some other areas highlight the rurality differential.

In January, the South Western Ambulance Service�s average response for category 2 emergency incidents, which include strokes and heart attacks, was 51 minutes and 45 seconds, which is 26 minutes longer than the best-performing ambulance trust in England. The NHS constitutional standard for category 2 average response times is 18 minutes, and no ambulance trust in England has met that target since the pandemic. This cannot go on. Prioritising patient safety will always be the Government�s and the NHS�s main focus. We are committed to getting A&E waiting times and ambulance response times back to NHS constitutional standards.

The independent review of ambulance trust culture was published in February 2024. Its recommendations included addressing workforce pressures. NHS England is working closely with ambulance trusts to implement those recommendations. We have made some significant investments in the ambulance workforce, and the number of NHS ambulance staff has grown by 9% compared with last year, but we recognise that there is much more to do on retention and wellbeing for ambulance staff. That is something that we will continue to work on.

We cannot keep plugging the gaps. There is a need for more fundamental reform. We have been clear that there are no quick fixes and that to turn things around will take investment and reform. We have provided the highest real-terms capital budget for the NHS since before 2010. We announced an extra �22.6 billion in day-to-day health spending and an additional �3.1 billion further capital investment over two years. That extra investment will be accompanied by fundamental reform, of which ambulance services.

In January, the Government published �Road to recovery: the government�s 2025 mandate to NHS England�, which clearly sets out delivery instructions for the NHS through the prioritisation of the five key objectives aimed at driving reform in the NHS. Improving A&E and ambulance service performance was also one of a small number of prioritised objectives in the Government�s mandate to NHS England to specifically start to address the current challenges facing urgent and emergency care.

In turn, NHS England�s planning guidance for this year includes the target to improve average category 2 ambulance response times to no more than 30 minutes across 2025-26. The guidance also sets out a range of key actions for the NHS to deliver in the same timeframe, focused on reducing avoidable ambulance dispatches and conveyances and reducing hospital handover delays.

[Helen Morgan]

Will the Minister pick up on the point about social care? Inability to admit to hospital is a key point in the handover delay problem, and the social care talks are a key measure in solving it.

[Ashley Dalton]

The hon. Member will be delighted to know that I am coming to that point next.

We are working on reducing delays and getting hospital handovers back to within 15 minutes, ensuring that no handover between hospital and ambulance services takes longer than 45 minutes. We want to improve the range and co-ordination of services to avoid unnecessary ambulance conveyances, including through improving access to urgent community response and hospital at home services, and continuing to build on ambulance services and the great work that they do to increase the hear and treat rates so that people can be advised on what they can do and what services they can access that might mean they do not need that ambulance. We will also be driving consistency and commissioning practices across England for ambulance services. I will say a little more about the rurality element in a moment.

We are taking the first steps in the reform and improvements that we want to see in services, and we will shortly set out further plans in the urgent and emergency care services plan. We know that there is no solution for ambulances that does not include tackling the challenges facing adult social care. Health and care services need to be more joined up.

Today, there are approximately 12,000 patients in hospital beds who have no criteria to reside. They do not need to be there but cannot be discharged for reasons of capacity. Over the last month, on average, 276 of the patients with no criteria to reside were in the Somerset integrated board area. That is why the Government are making available up to �3.7 billion of additional funding for local authorities that provide social care. We are funding more home adaptations through the disabled facilities grant this year and next, so that people�s homes can be safer, reducing the risk of their needing an ambulance. We are reforming the better care fund to ensure that the pooled NHS and local authority funding spent on social care contributes to wider efforts to reduce emergency admissions and delayed discharges.

Department of Health and Social Care

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I thank the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for securing this debate and for his excellent opening speech.

We all know that we have reached a crisis point across the NHS and care sectors, with more patients than ever waiting for treatment. That is affecting not just those in need of care and treatment, but those who work tirelessly across the NHS and care sectors, who are feeling the full brunt of the crisis. The Conservatives have a legacy of hours-long waits for ambulances, treatment in crowded hospital corridors—captured in horrifying detail by the “Dispatches” documentary, which looked into the hospital that serves my constituents in North Shropshire—and communities grinding to a halt under the weight of all sorts of waiting lists and backlogs. We urgently need to move forward.

The Secretary of State has repeatedly outlined the need to shift from treatment to prevention and from hospital to community, and the Liberal Democrats absolutely support him in that endeavour—indeed, we called for many measures that would achieve that shift in our own manifesto. Stronger primary care and community services were the strong recommendations of Lord Darzi’s report, which was commissioned by the Secretary of State and has been broadly welcomed.

There has been a great deal of consensus across the House today that we need to take those measures, but I fear that these estimates paint a picture of an NHS that continues to pour money into the previous, failing model in which capital budgets are drained to pay for day-to-day services and a huge proportion of increased spending goes on NHS staffing, while community care and primary care providers wrestle with the huge increase in employer national insurance contributions.

When that is combined with the decision to scrap targets on mental health and community services for the sake of prioritising targets on elective care, we must ask: when will the stated objectives of the Secretary of State really be matched by actions? The latest estimates are an indictment of the broken state of the NHS after years of Conservative neglect, but we urge the Government to go further and faster to address the failure.

[Ben Coleman]

Having heard the hon. Lady’s comments and the comments of those on the Conservative Benches, may I share with her my confusion? She seems surprised that she has not heard the full solution of what this Government are going to do with the NHS, when it is quite clear that there will be the three shifts, a 10-year plan and a huge amount of reform coming down the line. As that seems to have escaped the Opposition’s attention, has it also escaped hers?

[Helen Morgan]

There is clearly a point in the debate at which we need to urge the Government to go further and faster. As a constructive Opposition, that is exactly what we will do.

Primary care providers are on their knees, and I am afraid to say that that has been made worse by the national insurance hike announced in the Budget. They cannot meet demand for local appointments as things stand, and in many cases the constraining factor is the estate in which they operate. Prescott surgery in Baschurch in North Shropshire wants to provide additional services to the community and keep people away from hospital, but the surgery is physically not big enough. A local developer has provided land for a new surgery, and the local council has community infrastructure levy funding for that building, but it cannot be done because the ICB will not pay the notional rent, which everybody has agreed to forfeit. It is crazy. I hope that the Minister can commit to finding some kind of easy solution to that kind of nonsensical situation that we find ourselves in.

[Nesil Caliskan]

On the point about the inability of ICBs sometimes to get things going, in my constituency it has taken the ICB nine months to procure something very similar. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is about not just their ability to pay, but their procurement processes?

[Helen Morgan]

I fundamentally agree. There are many such instances, and I chose that one because I spoke to the providers there recently.

I will come on to community pharmacy, because I am particularly concerned about pharmacies, which are a key pillar of care in the community, dispensing prescriptions and providing over-the-counter medicines and advice. Critically, they also provide Pharmacy First, but they are closing at an alarming rate. Analysis by the National Pharmacy Association predicts that another 1,000 pharmacies will close—900 of them by the end of 2027—if the current rate of closures continues. That is because of a 40% real-terms cut in their funding since 2015.

In fact, community pharmacies are essentially subsidising the NHS by making a loss on many of the prescription drugs that they dispense. In a few weeks’ time, in April, they will be clobbered by not only the NICs hike, but the increase in business rates, which will affect high street retailers. Shamefully, they have not even had their funding rates for the current financial year confirmed—the one that ends in three weeks’ time.

Pharmacy First, the flagship plan to move care into the community, has not had its funding confirmed beyond the first week of April this year, which is in just a few weeks’ time, according to the National Pharmacy Association. In her remarks, will the Minister confirm the future of Pharmacy First? Is there a funded plan to deliver that service? What steps are being taken to keep our community pharmacies in business? If we want to see care in the community, it is essential that we support them.

I want to mention dentistry. In Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, the number of NHS dentists fell by 12.3% from 2019-20 to 2023-24. Many of my constituents cannot access a dentist, and the Government have committed to improving the situation, so can the Minister confirm when the negotiations on the new dental contract will begin?

The crisis that the social care system faces is daunting, not least because of the additional national insurance hike that will take place in a couple of weeks’ time. Last week, caring organisations launched an unprecedented day of action, with thousands of people marching on Westminster to highlight the precarious state of the organisations that provide care. The Darzi review found that people waiting to access social care account for 13% of NHS hospital beds. We all understand the urgency of tackling social care, but the cross-party talks collapsed last week—they have not started. There is no date for a new meeting, and there are no published terms of reference. We think that 2028 is far too late to resolve this problem, so can the Government urgently reinstate those talks and act now to deal with the social care crisis?

Before I conclude, I will talk about mental health. As Lord Darzi has said,

“There is a fundamental problem in the distribution of resources between mental health and physical health. Mental health accounts for more than 20 per cent of the disease burden but less than 10 per cent of NHS expenditure. This is not new. But the combination of chronic underspending with low productivity results in a treatment gap that affects nearly every family and all communities across the country.”

He is dead right. By April 2024, about 1 million people were on a waiting list for NHS mental health services, of whom 340,000 were children. My casework is full of children who wait months and months for the diagnosis and treatment that they need. The Government have removed the targets for mental health waiting lists; I urge them to reinstate those targets, so that we have parity between mental and physical health in our health service.

I am very conscious of time, so in conclusion, I will just reiterate our asks. Those are to ensure that social care talks start immediately; to deal with the problems with pharmacies; and to make sure that mental health and social care receive parity.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Maternity Services

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this important debate and making such an excellent opening speech, in which she covered most of the ground that we need to cover.

It is important to acknowledge that the vast majority of babies arrive safely, despite the increasing number of complex pregnancies. My own experience of having a baby was 16 years ago, but I am sure that the thousands of women having babies now are having the same experience that I did. The staff of hospital maternity units make you feel simultaneously that you are the most important person ever to have given birth, and that you are the umpteenth person to have done so this week, they know exactly what they are doing and you can relax. I felt like that even when everything went wrong, which is a great testament to the professionalism of the staff at Wycombe general hospital all those years ago.

This is one of many debates on maternity services that I have attended in the last three years. The first followed the issuing of Donna Ockenden’s report on maternity services in Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust, which serves my constituents, including Kayleigh and Colin Griffiths, who fought alongside Rhiannon Davies and Richard Stanton and others to give a voice to the many families who suffered as a result of the failings at the trust. But that was not the first scandal in NHS maternity services—Morecambe Bay had already been investigated and reported on by Dr Bill Kirkup—and, tragically, it was not the last either. Dr Kirkup has reviewed significant failings at East Kent, and Donna Ockenden is currently investigating a huge number of incidents at Nottingham. We have also heard the concerns of the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tom Rutland) and for Leeds North West (Katie White) about the state of services in Sussex and Leeds. I am sure that Members across the House are concerned that the tragedy at Shrewsbury and Telford will not be the last.

It makes me quite angry to say that that is not a surprise. We have heard that 65% of trusts were rated inadequate or requiring improvement when it comes to safety in maternity services in the latest CQC survey. That is despite the previous Government’s commitments from the Dispatch Box, which I believe were made in good faith, to deal with unsafe staffing levels and bring about cultural change across the country. The lack of action is unacceptable. Donna Ockenden described the Conservative Government as being “asleep at the wheel” when it came to making progress on the 15 immediate and essential actions she recommended for the whole of England in March 2022, despite their having accepted all those actions.

Each of the reviews into these heartbreaking tragedies has found the same recurring themes: poor management of incidents when things go wrong and, critically, a failure to learn from them, which is indicative of defensive management culture and sometimes toxic working arrangements, including a feeling among staff that they do not have the freedom to speak out and, when they do, inadequate protection for whistleblowers; failure to ensure safe and timely assessment at triage; reluctance to acknowledge the need for medicalisation for a C-section when one is in the best interests of the mother; unsuitable estates and a lack of access to equipment, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire); and, underpinning all these issues, unsafe staffing levels.

That last point is really important, because staff are experiencing burnout. They are leaving the service in high numbers, and are unable to deliver the care that they really want to deliver to mothers at their most vulnerable moment. There are no excuses now—the issues have been identified time and again—but there is evidence that we are going backwards on maternity care. The 2015 national maternity safety ambition to halve rates of stillbirths and neonatal and maternal deaths by 2025 has stalled and is unlikely to be met this year.

There is a shocking disparity of outcomes between different ethnic groups. Black women are more than twice as likely to die than white ones, and other ethnic groups also carry an unacceptably high risk. No one really understands why; there has been no research into it. There are clear links to deprivation, because people in deprived areas also carry a much higher risk, but translation difficulties, certain health conditions and, shamefully, even racism may all play a part in this shocking disparity. The women’s health strategy for England proposed to address these disparities, but it is impossible to point to any measurable progress. Poor maternity care can have a devastating impact on families, and it makes no sense for the taxpayer either. As we have heard, 60% of the value of clinical negligence claims is related to maternity services, and that costs more than £1 billion a year. It makes no sense not to address these issues.

It is important to acknowledge the work of charities such as Sands and Tommy’s and the work of a number of APPGs in this place over the last few years, including the baby loss, maternity, and birth trauma APPGs, all of which I was involved in. They have campaigned tirelessly for safe staffing levels and to improve care across England, and indeed the UK. This debate relates to England because health is a devolved matter, but the whole of the UK must strive to become the safest place in the world to have a baby.

Addressing disparities in obstetric care is essential for a fair society. The immediate and essential actions of the Ockenden report must be implemented at once, because if they are not, more families will face the trauma of a birth injury or worse. The actions included a commitment to safe staffing, and in 2022 the Government made a significant investment in staffing; it is essential that that is continued. The commitments made in the workforce plan must be backed by adequate funding, and include expansion of the wider maternity and neonatal workforce. The UK Government must renew the national maternity ambitions beyond 2025 to include all four nations, and include a clear baseline to measure progress. They must also address this critical issue of health disparities. In her 2022 report into Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust, Donna Ockenden said:

“The impact of death or serious health complications suffered as a result of maternity care cannot be underestimated. The impact on the lives of families and loved ones is profound and permanent.”

In my first debate on this subject, in March 2022—the day that report was issued—everyone in the Chamber contributing said that the scandal at Shrewsbury and Telford should be the last. It was not. I hope the Minister will today commit to a strategy to ensure that maternity care scandals are ended on the watch of this Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Last week, the Secretary of State issued a new mandate for the NHS in which a number of mental health targets were dropped. I accept that targets that drive perverse behaviours should be dropped and that some sharpened focus is necessary, but mental health waiting lists are at a record high, huge numbers of people are not at work because of poor mental health, and our young people are being let down badly by CAMHS, not least in my constituency of North Shropshire. Does the Secretary of State accept that mental health targets should be reinstated and that mental health should be treated with equal priority to physical health?

[Stephen Kinnock]

What we know about targets is that if we try to overload a system with too many targets, it causes confusion and ends up with, as the hon. Lady rightly says, perverse outcomes. We are clear that we do not want to have a system based on just making policy by press release, as was the case under the previous Government, putting out press announcements about loads more targets. It all makes for nice front-page headlines, but it does not lead to any serious delivery of the strategy that we need to deliver. I am with her on the point about focus. We are absolutely committed to mental health, as is set out in the planning guidance. It is also one of the priorities in the planning guidance, and we will continue to deliver on that priority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I, too, welcome the new Minister to her place. This morning’s oral health survey revealed that more than one in five five-year-olds in England have experienced dental decay, affecting their ability to smile and socialise, as well as causing pain and distress. Will the Secretary of State guarantee the Government’s commitment to tackling the problem, and back Liberal Democrat calls for an emergency scheme that guarantees dental check-ups for children?

[Wes Streeting]

This is an issue that the Government are prioritising. The hon. Member will be aware of the commitment we made to provide 700,000 urgent dentistry appointments. We are ramping up to deliver on that commitment, as well as to deliver supervised toothbrushing in our schools. Further wider-ranging reform is needed; I am working closely with the Minister for Care to rebuild NHS dentistry, after the rot left in it by the Conservatives.

Accessibility of Radiotherapy

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Sir John. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I promise that I will not go on at great length, partly because—

[Tim Farron]

Because I did!

[Helen Morgan]

Well, my hon. Friend did go on at great length. He has secured a really important debate for World Cancer Day; it is an honour to speak in it for the Liberal Democrats. He outlined the issues comprehensively; I am not sure that I could improve on what he said. I welcome the Government’s announcement earlier today on the national cancer strategy and I highlight the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), who campaigned for it.

Cancer services in general have declined to an unacceptable level, as I think everyone would agree. I hope that the Government stick to their word on addressing that issue and ensuring that everybody can access the care they need, when they need it and—as my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) pointed out so eloquently—where they need it.

In the UK, over 100,000 cancer patients receive radiotherapy treatment each year from a specialist workforce of 6,400 professionals. Cancer is one of the most difficult diseases—it is difficult for individuals and it is difficult for their families—and yet the number of patients who have waited over four months to receive cancer treatment has more than doubled since 2020.

Like so many areas of NHS care, the time people have to wait and the quality of care that they receive depends hugely on where they happen to live. That has to change; I hope that the Government will make that one of their urgent missions. People’s chances of surviving should not depend on their postcode.

NHS data shows that the west midlands had over 150,000 radiotherapy attendances in 2022, which is the most recent available data. That is the highest of all regions, yet hospitals such as Shrewsbury and Telford hospital in my constituency have had some of the worst waiting times. In September 2024, at the Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin trust, only just over half of patients requiring radiotherapy met the 62-day treatment standard. The target for treatment is 85%.

It is important to acknowledge that the situation at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust is improving—I welcome that—and that it was impacted by the staff shortages that many hon. Members have outlined today. But it is not just about numbers and statistics; it is about the impact on people’s lives. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham has pointed out the importance of scans, and some of my constituents who are undergoing cancer treatment have waited a long time for scans and say that sometimes they have not had the result of a scan until their next treatment was due. That is due to staffing shortages.

Waiting times are important, but so too are distances, particularly when somebody is poorly and finding it difficult to travel a long way. People in Shropshire are served in Shrewsbury, so I am glad to say that the distance issue is perhaps not as acute as it might be in other rural areas in the country, but the public transport issue remains so. Many people rely on friends and family to drive them to appointments, as there is no other reliable way of getting there and a taxi is simply too expensive for them to consider. For that reason, some will not be accessing the care that they need. Across the country, 3.4 million people live further away than the target of 45 minutes from a radiotherapy centre, so it is important that we address those radiotherapy deserts and ensure that people can access the care that they need.

In addition to the outdated, sparse machines and low morale, we found that 65% of staff felt that they did not have enough machine capacity and 93% felt that workforce numbers were too low. Therefore, in addition to the long distances involved, we must put an end to the problem of people being unable to be treated not just because they live a long way from the equipment, but because the equipment, when it is available, is outdated or because there is nobody to staff it properly and interpret what needs to be done.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has said all this before, so I will draw my remarks to a conclusion. The Liberal Democrats would boost cancer survival rates by introducing a guarantee that 100% of patients would start treatment within 62 days of their urgent referral. We need to replace the ageing radiotherapy machines and increase the number of machines, so that no one has to travel too far for treatment. We need to recruit nurses, cancer nurses and the specialist staff required to staff the radiotherapy machines. We would also like to see a cancer survival Bill, requiring the Government to co-ordinate and ensure funding for research into those cancers with the lowest survival rates. I hope the Minister will be making cancer a top priority for the new Government and push to reinstate the UK as a global leader in cancer research and, most importantly, in cancer outcomes.

I welcome the commitment already made to invest £70 million in replacing ancient machines and delivering new ones, but I hope the Minister will consider where that investment is distributed so that we can address the urgent problem of treatment deserts. I hope that he will also consider that this is a spend-to-save issue—radiotherapy treatment is both effective and cost-effective, and a worthwhile investment for the NHS to consider from a financial perspective.

I also want the Minister to commit to introducing a 10-year workforce plan for radiotherapy as part of the national cancer strategy to which the Government are already committed, to ensure that people get the care they need, when they need it, with the appropriately qualified professionals necessary to deliver it.

Finally, we must address the problem of building space. Many of our hospitals, as we all know, are crumbling. Care must be delivered in an appropriate setting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham has outlined on a number of occasions. In conclusion, we welcome the Government’s steps so far, but I would like to push them to go further.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Helen; as you predicted, your speech was pointed and not too long. I now call the shadow Minister.

Auditory Verbal Therapy

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for introducing the debate, as well as Sam, his family and Auditory Verbal UK for campaigning on this important issue. I confess that I am quite new to auditory verbal therapy, and it has been fascinating to research the issue more for the debate and to listen to hon. Members’ contributions.

The hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South made a hugely compelling argument for improving access to auditory verbal therapy, setting out not only the benefits for the children who would be able to improve their ability to listen and speak, but the economic benefit that would derive from what I think we can all agree is a small investment—as an accountant, I can confirm that £2 million is probably a rounding error in most instances. I also thank other Members for their useful speeches today, not least the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Frith), who highlighted the importance of early intervention, and the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), who highlighted the educational impact that early access to appropriate therapy can have.

There are more than 50,000 deaf children in the UK. Around 7,200 of them are under the age of five. Some 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents, who do not have the experience of dealing with hearing impairment. Although deafness is not a learning disability, deaf children face a significant attainment gap during their time at school, and their educational outcomes are poorer. There is also a higher risk of poor mental health. In addition, deaf people are less likely to have decent employment, and suffer generally from inequality as a result of being hearing impaired.

It is important to say up front that all deaf and hearing-impaired people have the right to participate fully and independently in society. Too often at the moment, those rights are not being fully realised. Liberal Democrats believe, as I am sure hon. Members from all parties do, that every deaf child deserves the best possible start in life, the opportunity to flourish and for their families to be supported, so that they can express themselves and communicate with ease, in the way that is most comfortable for them.

The hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) highlighted that offering a range of therapies is the best way to support families who have a child who is deaf, and that they should be able to exercise choice when deciding which therapy is most suitable for them. Under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, local authorities in England have a duty

“to safeguard and promote the welfare of children within their area who are in need”

by providing

“a range and level of services appropriate to those children’s needs.”

A child is defined as being in need if they are disabled, and the Act says that a child is considered disabled if they are deaf. We are therefore in a position where it seems that local authorities must be compelled to provide appropriate support for deaf children and their families. The National Deaf Children’s Society notes that

“in some cases, local authorities do provide funding to help”

a child “access AVT”.

The problem is that the Government have confirmed that audiology services are commissioned locally and that

“the responsibility for meeting the needs of non-hearing children lies with…National Health Service commissioners.”

That leaves us with the dreaded postcode lottery. It would be helpful if the Government provided guidance to local authorities on the level of support they should be providing, particularly, in the context of this debate, for AVT.

Locally in Shropshire, headteachers report an inability to access basic speech and language therapy for hearing children. The strain on local government finances will clearly have a significant impact on what is available to children in each area. Will the Minister confirm whether provision of AVT will be a responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care or local government? Therapies such as this might sometimes fall into the gap between the two, and it would be useful to understand how it can best be delivered.

As I mentioned, I am slightly new to this topic but Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for better support for people who are deaf, and particularly for those who communicate through British Sign Language. We would like BSL to have official, equal status to the UK’s other languages, and would like free access to sign language lessons for parents and guardians of deaf children. We welcome all the developments in improving outcomes for deaf children, including technology such as cued speech visual systems, for which there is a major centre in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden).

I echo the call of the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South for a pilot scheme—that seems a sensible way forward. The existing research on AVT is promising but the evidence base is still narrow and a pilot scheme seems the best way to broaden that evidence base and convince those who have not yet been convinced by meeting children who have benefited profoundly from the therapy. More broadly, the Government should strengthen the availability of basic speech and language therapy training for people working with children to ensure that children who are struggling with hearing impairment can be identified, that their progress is monitored and supported, and that an equal outcome is found for them.

In conclusion, will the Minister confirm whether the provision of AVT is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care or a local government issue, bearing in mind that the provision of such assistance comes through local government? Will he also confirm that the 10-year plan will address services such as AVT for deaf children and adults? Finally, will he consider a pilot scheme to broaden our understanding of the benefits of AVT?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman will know that NICE has a prioritisation board, and ultimately that is the decision-making process for prioritising guidelines and the entire operating framework for what falls under NICE’s remit. This is something that absolutely should be on the radar, and of course we are constantly in conversation with NICE about its prioritisation, but it is important that it takes an objective clinical stance on the question.

We have committed to develop a 10-year plan to deliver a national health service that is fit for the future. The engagement process has been launched. As we work to develop and finalise the plan, I encourage those concerned about the availability of services to support children with hearing loss, including auditory verbal therapy, to engage with that process to allow us to fully understand what is not working, as well as what should be working better and the potential solutions. I encourage all hon. Members present to go to change.nhs.uk to make their voice heard.

This summer, we will publish a refreshed long-term workforce plan to deliver the transformed health service we will need to build over the next decade to treat patients on time and deliver far better patient outcomes. We are also in the process of commissioning research to understand the gaps between the supply and demand of different therapy types for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. That will help us to understand the demand for speech and language therapists and inform effective workforce planning.

[Helen Morgan]

I am pleased to hear that the Government have increased the number of speech and language therapists, which is so important for young people who are struggling to achieve their potential in an educational setting, but will the Minister address the specific point on commissioning by local authorities? Often, they are so strapped for cash that they are effectively trying to limit demand.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Commissioning is led by ICBs. It is important that ICBs have open channels of communication with local government. We in the Department of Health and Social Care have close contact and engagement with colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and it is important that that relationship and interaction feeds down through the entire system, but the leading organisations on commissioning are the ICBs.

A number of colleagues raised the question of a pilot scheme to identify how our existing workforce can work differently. The early language and support for every child programme is an excellent example of different professions coming together to support children and young people—local authorities, schools, and the health and care system working together in the community to support our children and young people. The ELSEC workforce model focuses on recruiting pre-qualification speech and language therapy support workers into the workforce to improve the capacity and knowledge of staff who support children with emerging or mild to moderate speech, language and communication needs in early years and school settings.

Nine regional pathfinder partnerships are trialling new ways of working to better identify and support children in early years settings and primary schools. We have asked pathfinders to consider how to make the model sustainable after the project period. The therapy assistant roles have the potential to attract individuals to train to become speech and language therapists through the apprenticeship route. I understand that Auditory Verbal UK is progressing a National Institute for Health and Care Research grant application to support a pilot, and I would welcome an update from AVUK about how that is going when we get the chance to meet.

We welcome the work that AVUK is doing to upskill health professionals to deliver auditory verbal therapy. On the point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth, there are as yet no NICE guidelines on hearing loss in children, and NICE has not made any recommendations on AVT specifically. Decisions on the need for guidelines on new topics and updates to existing guidance are made by NICE’s prioritisation board, in line with NICE’s published common prioritisation framework. I understand that NHS England met with AVUK and discussed the need for more high-level research evidence for the intervention and the need to develop evaluations of impact. I am pleased that AVUK has been invited to join the chief scientific officer’s audiology stakeholder group, where it will contribute to decision making.

We recognise the impact on the lives of children of timely access to high-quality services, including different therapies to help children to develop the right skills to engage with education. The Government’s ambition is that all children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life. We will strengthen accountability on mainstream settings to be inclusive, including through the work of Ofsted, by supporting the mainstream workforce to increase their SEND expertise and by encouraging schools to set up resourced provision or SEN units to increase capacity in mainstream schools. That work forms part of the Government’s opportunity mission, which will break the unfair link between background and opportunity, starting with giving every child, including those with SEND, the best possible start in life. We will work with the sector, as essential and valued partners, to deliver our shared mission and restore parents’ trust.

I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South for securing this debate and sharing her insight on the vital issue of early interventions for non-hearing children. We recognise the importance of such services and the life-changing impact they can have on the lives of children. We are committed to ensuring that all children receive the support they need to live healthy, fulfilling lives. I will continue to work closely with NHS England and the Department for Education as we strain every sinew to deliver on those commitments.

Obesity: Food and Diet

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to close the debate for the Liberal Democrats. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing the debate. All the contributions, including his opening speech, have been excellent and well informed.

I was particularly interested to hear about the existence of good food deserts in Blackpool South and Liverpool West Derby. Even in Shropshire, where we grow some of the most wonderful and nutritious food that can be imagined, we have a higher-than-average obesity rate: 67% of adults are overweight and 32% are medically obese. That is an interesting reflection on the availability of good food and on people’s ability to choose healthy options because of the cost of food at the supermarket. In rural areas, housing is more expensive but average wages are lower. If people cannot access public transport, as the hon. Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan) pointed out, they are often forced to shop at expensive local shops and are thereby forced into buying packets of less nutritious food.

We need to deal with obesity. Two thirds of the adult population are overweight. The NHS is spending almost a tenth of its annual budget on diabetes. Obesity has a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of people who deserve better: they are three times more likely to develop colon cancer, two and half times more likely to have high blood pressure, and five times more likely to have type 2 diabetes. The history of tackling those problems is a litany of failure for all three major parties in 30 years of government because, as other hon. Members have mentioned, we have had 700 different policies on the issue over the years, with no impact. It is time for a coherent strategy to tackle the obesity crisis.

It is good to tentatively welcome the Government’s new national food strategy and their steps on junk food advertising, which are a positive move. The Liberal Democrats would like to see the Government go further, particularly on the use outdoor advertising in areas where people are particularly vulnerable to seeing it. For example, we want local authorities to be allowed to restrict outdoor advertising near schools.

I am interested in some of the suggestions that have been made about planning and fast food outlets, especially as 35.2% of children aged 10 to 11 are now overweight—a staggering 20% rise since 2015. That coincides with a 16% fall in spending on obesity-related measures in the public health grant during the same period. We welcome the Government’s proposed preventive measures. We hope that some of the large sum earmarked for health and the NHS in the recent Budget can be put into public health and prevention measures, because we want to stop people getting unhealthy in the first place rather than dealing with the problem after it occurs.

In Shropshire, one in five children aged four to five are overweight and more than one in 10 are obese. Ironically, almost half are not eating enough fruit and veg, despite the fact that they are grown all around us. The same number are not active enough. To encourage activity, we could introduce a different classification for leisure centres. Hon. Members have mentioned the importance of swimming pools and places to become fit and healthy. I know that the hon. Member for Stroud says that the food element is more important than the activity element; none the less, we should be encouraging getting fit as part of a healthy lifestyle. Will the Minister consider making leisure centres part of our critical health infrastructure so people can rely on their leisure centre staying open and can have somewhere to go if they cannot exercise in their home or their local area?

Healthy eating helps with other preventable problems, such as tooth decay. My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) mentioned poor oral health, another avoidable issue that we can deal with. The importance of good oral health in care homes has recently been impressed on me by various members of the dentistry profession, because poor oral health can lead to aspirated pneumonia. That is a partially separate issue from obesity, but unhealthy and sugary snacks are being offered to people in care homes, so I wonder whether we can encourage healthier eating in those settings as well as in our schools and hospitals.

There is no getting away from the fact that obesity is intrinsically linked to inequality and deprivation. Since 2019, the cost of a weekly food shop has risen by almost a third. As I mentioned, rural areas are not excluded. In Shropshire, 14% of households are struggling with food poverty, or as I prefer to call it, poverty. There is a high risk of cost of living vulnerability for children who are in poverty.

Lots of Members spoke about the great work of their local food bank. In Shropshire, an organisation called OsNosh takes food that is due to be thrown away by the supermarkets at the end of the day but is still perfectly good to eat. The next day, it produces fantastic chef-cooked lunches that people can enjoy. If people are able to pay for those lunches, they can do so; if they are not, they do not have to. It is a wonderful way of bringing the community together to eat good food without the stigma of not being able to afford it. However, I think we all agree that reliance on the third sector to solve this problem is not really acceptable in the modern age, so lifting families out of poverty must be a priority for the Government. Our policy is for free school meals for all children in poverty, and a roll-out of free school meals to all primary schools is our ambition when funds allow. I hope that the Government also have the ambition, when funds allow, of lifting the two-child benefit cap, which would lift a quarter of a million children out of poverty.

Holiday activities and food programmes happen across the country, not just locally. In the summer, I visited a HAF programme in Oswestry at which children were offered a healthy meal, a day out of the home—often in a much safer environment than their home—and a good day of activities. The organisation that delivers that in Oswestry, the New Saints Foundation, offers it not just to children whose families cannot afford a nutritious meal at home but to all children, to remove the stigma, and give all the kids a fun day at the HAF programme. Future funding for HAF programmes is not certain, so will the Minister clarify what will happen to them? They are a really good way to ensure that children eat healthily through the holidays, as well as when they are at school and in receipt of free school meals.

The hon. Member for Stroud also mentioned labelling. I am conscious of time, so I will be fairly brief with this little anecdote. Labelling can be really misleading, even to parents who are comfortably off—I would not describe myself as the most well off—and well meaning. It was a long time ago, so I will not mention the brand, but I resorted to buying an organic brand of food for my child when we were at the puree stage of weaning. He became so addicted to it that it became really difficult to wean him off on to something much more nutritious, filling and healthy, such that I had a sleepless night every night because he was still hungry. One evening, I had a very embarrassing moment in the supermarket, almost having a breakdown because I had bumped into an old friend and the supermarket had sold out of these food pouches, and that was a complete disaster.

I found out later that although the puree was organic and had no added sugar, it was actually really high in sugar. It was essentially just pears, water and some spelt, so it was really sweet and sugary. I had inadvertently given my child something that I had expected to be healthy but was not. Good labelling would have solved that problem; I am sure that it would help many parents whose child has a single brand addiction. It was 15 years ago, and the brand may well have reformulated since then, which is why I will not mention the name, but it is something that we need to be aware of.

The right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) spoke powerfully about his own struggle with his weight, and he mentioned the use of various different types of jab to tackle obesity. I do not think that we should dismiss jabs out of hand. Clearly, they are very helpful for some people, but I really think that the Government’s emphasis needs to be on prevention, and on a public health strategy to stop people getting to the point of needing to use those drugs in the first place.

The UK should be one of the healthiest countries in the world. We have a great history of grassroots sports, the highest-quality food production imaginable, and world-leading medical research, but we are becoming sicker, and falling behind similar countries. It is time to act. We welcome the junk food advertising ban and restrictions on high-caffeine energy drinks as a really good first step. We also welcome the commitment to a national food strategy. I put in a plea for our farmers, who work to very low margins. I ask for the strategy to consider the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator, and ensure that our farmers are kept in business to continue to deliver our food. Finally, please consider our calls for prevention, to give children a healthy start in life.

Health and Social Care: Winter Update

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I associate myself with the comments of the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State regarding the abhorrent attack in Oldham.

The pressure on our hospitals this winter brutally demonstrates the scale of action needed after years of Conservative neglect of the NHS. Across England last month, 71% of A&E patients were seen within four hours, but that statistic varies wildly depending on where one happens to live. At Shrewsbury and Telford emergency departments last month, ambulances had to wait an average of over two hours to hand over their patients. Just 50% of patients were seen within four hours, and nearly 1,500 patients were left stuck on a trolley for more than 12 hours.

Statistics like these often fail to have much impact now, because we have heard them so regularly—particularly since winter crises have become normalised—but it is very important that we consider who is behind them. It is patients such as my constituent Emma, who having been diagnosed with sepsis spent 48 hours in a fit-to-sit area and then 12 hours on a trolley in an X-ray corridor before finally being admitted, alongside a horrifying delay in the medication required to deal with her life-threatening condition. Yet we often have to wait weeks for data that fully explains what is happening in our hospitals, and no official data is collected about the number of critical incidents. This leaves patients potentially ill-informed, and it makes scrutiny and support in this place, in particular, difficult to provide.

Will the Secretary of State commit to introducing faster and more detailed reporting about the live state of play in our emergency departments, including the number of critical incidents and the temporary escalation spaces, and give a timeline for reporting that information? Will he publish information that shows the impact that delays are having—for example, by looking at the number of deaths in emergency departments—and will he act on the long-term Liberal Democrat request to publish localised data on ambulance delays so that support is provided in areas, such as Shropshire, where it is most needed?

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for her usual constructive contribution to proceedings. She is absolutely right to raise the issue of variation in performance across different parts of the country. It is not acceptable, and one thing we will be doing as a Government is to ensure that, as well as creating a rising tide that lifts all ships, we raise the floor in performance so that we see far less unwarranted and unwanted regional variation. She talked about the Shrewsbury and Telford trust, which has had a number of challenges over many years. We have seen some signs of improvement as recently as this week, and we continue to support local leaders as they strive to improve the performance of their system overall.

The hon. Member raises some good and interesting questions about the frequency with which we publish data. It is right that we ensure that data is properly validated so that accurate data is put into the public domain, even as NHS England’s control room monitors live reporting into the centre. I will take into account what she said about her requests both for more live data—collected and published data—about critical incidents and for more localised data in individual trusts, including ambulance services, to monitor variations in response times within a region. Although the points she has raised are interesting, I add the caveat that we would not want to burden the system with more reporting requirements if that causes a distraction from improvement. I tend to lean towards more transparency in data and reporting, however, and I will take into account the representations she has made as we put together our urgent and emergency care plan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Coverage Care, a not-for-profit adult social care provider in North Shropshire that operates 11 care homes and employs around 1,000 local staff, has been in touch to say that it expects the impact of the increase in national insurance contributions to be £840,000 in the first full year of implementation. Given that there are huge numbers of vacancies across adult social care in North Shropshire, will the Secretary of State consider exempting social care providers from the national insurance increase? Otherwise we are putting money into social care with one hand and taking it away with the other.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I refer the hon. Lady to my previous answer on the very substantial funding that we are providing to local authorities, which of course are key to the adult social care system. However, funding must always be married with reform. We have brought forward a packed programme of reform—from data sharing and empowering care workers to take on basic healthcare to promoting better use of care technologies—and in the spirit of cross-party collaboration that we believe is absolutely vital and urgent in this area, I gently encourage her to see those reforms as the first step towards rebuilding our care service and making it fit for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Dentistry is a key part of primary care, yet an estimated 5 million people in England have been left without an NHS dentist. That is why today a petition is being handed in at Downing Street signed by more than a quarter of a million people. We have moved on from the election, but we do not yet have a timetable for when the negotiations for a new NHS dental contract will begin and when another 700,000 extra urgent appointments will be rolled out. Can the Secretary of State confirm the timetable for those improvements? What specifically are the Government’s plans for the new patient premium, and will he offer assurances to dentists that any changes to the current model will be outlined in detail to them as soon as possible?

[Wes Streeting]

We are looking at two things, the first of which is making sure we deliver what we said in our manifesto, including the 700,000 urgent appointments. We are determined to deliver those as fast as we can and my hon. Friend the Minister for Care is having discussions with the British Dental Association to that effect. He is also looking closely, as am I, at the money that is already going into NHS dentistry—how that money could be better spent and how it is that year after year, despite people’s teeth rotting to the extent that they are having to pull them out themselves or children having to attend A&E to have their teeth pulled out, we saw consistent underspends in the dentistry budget under our predecessors. We are determined to give dentists the tools to do the job so that patients can see a dentist when they need one.

Health and Adult Social Care Reform

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I add my thanks to those of the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State to all those who worked in our health and care services over Christmas and the new year.

Our health and social care system is in crisis, so the Liberal Democrats are broadly supportive of the measures that the Government have announced today. However, we do have some concerns, not least that action on social care may arrive too late and that the focus on elective care may come at the expense of emergency care. The Liberal Democrats have long called for cross-party talks on social care, so we are glad that the Government have listened and we look forward to working constructively with the Secretary of State and other UK-wide parties as the review develops. However, carers, care providers and councils are on the brink of bankruptcy and they need solutions right now, not in three years’ time. There have been many such reviews, and what is needed now is action on the recommendations they have made.

It is absolutely crucial that waiting times for elective care are cut radically, so the action announced today to speed up scans and treatment is very positive. A waiting list of more than 6 million people is one of the worst legacies left by the Conservatives, but those legacies include overcrowded A&Es and unacceptable ambulance delays, which can mean the difference between life and death, as people in North Shropshire know only too well. Emergency care is under immense pressure at the moment—one visit to Shrewsbury hospital demonstrates that—and we need bold action if we are to ensure that this is the last ever winter crisis.

As the MP for a rural area, I hear every week from constituents suffering because of the crisis, so they will be following today’s developments closely. Many of my constituents are elderly—far more than average—and they are the people most likely to need the NHS and the most likely to be digitally excluded. According to Age UK, around 29% of people aged 75 and over do not use the internet, and around a third do not have a smartphone. They deserve as much choice and control as everybody else, so can the Secretary of State outline how those without access to the NHS app will be able to benefit from the same options and information as those who do have access?

Will the Secretary of State consider fast-tracking the social care review so that the sector can get the urgent attention it needs? Will he commit to rescuing our emergency services by supporting Liberal Democrat calls to make the NHS winter-proof with a new winter taskforce that builds resilience in hospital wards, A&E departments and patient discharging? Finally, will he define what a working-class area is, because the health and care crisis is acute in rural Britain and we cannot afford to be left behind?

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the Liberal Democrats for their support for the commission and for the way in which their party has put the issue of social care much higher up the political agenda, particularly during the general election campaign. That has been very helpful to me in the last six months and to the Government, and we look forward to working with the Liberal Democrats to build as broad a consensus as we can on the solutions to the social care crisis.

As I have mentioned, we have hit the ground running in a number of respects, including the biggest expansion of carer’s allowance since the 1970s. On investment in health and social care, I just point out that the £26 billion the Chancellor allocated to the Department of Health and Social Care alone at the Budget dwarfed what the Liberal Democrats promised in their manifesto. I know that not all the funding decisions the Chancellor and the Government have made in the last six months for the desperately needed investment in our public services have been popular, but I respectfully say to people who disagree with the decisions the Chancellor has made that they need to spell out which services they would cut or which other taxes they would increase, because those are the choices. We have made our choices; we stand by them. What people cannot do is welcome the investment but not say how they would fund it if they oppose what we have done. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the entire Government have been willing to make unpopular choices in the last six months because we believe they are the right choices to get Britain out of the hole it was left in by our predecessors. People will not thank us for resorting to the short-termist, sticking-plaster, government-by-gimmick politics that plagued this House during the last Parliament.

I turn to some of the other issues that the hon. Lady mentioned. We will make further proposals on urgent and emergency care reform. I want to take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, whether it is “hear and treat” over-the-phone triage—a more appropriate community response that is often faster than ambulance response times—or getting ambulances and ambulance handover speeded up at all our hospitals with the “release to respond” approach. We have seen that working successfully in some parts of the country, but it needs to be consistently rolled out.

The hon. Lady talked about patient choice for those who are digitally disconnected or do not want to organise their lives around their smartphones. That is why I believe very strongly in choice—different courses for different horses. Those of us who do not book appointments over the phone free up the line so that those who prefer doing their business and booking appointments by phone can get through.

The hon. Lady asked us to fast-track the social care work. The first phase of Louise Casey’s commission will report next year, but we are of course willing to talk to parties across the House about how we move forward.

The hon. Lady urges us to set up an urgent and emergency care taskforce. Let me reassure her that the Minister of State for Health my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) and I have every week—and often more frequently—convened health and care leaders virtually and in the Department to keep a grip on what is going on, to provide as much central support as possible, and to respond to crises as they emerge. If only that was just about setting up a taskforce. We already have one; what we need is sustained improvement from one year to the next and that is what we are determined to deliver.