NHS Funding Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The funding for training more nurses comes on top of what is in the Bill—the Bill is for the day-to-day running costs of the NHS—and it has already been committed to. The Bill will help us to create 50 million more GP appointments every year so that we can reduce the time that people have to wait to see their GP. It will help to pay for new cancer screening and faster diagnosis so that we can save tens of thousands of lives of people suffering that terrible disease. It will help to pay for the prevention, detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease so that we can prevent over 100,000 strokes and heart attacks. At its heart, the funding will help us to create more services in the community, closer to home, with pharmacies playing a much bigger role. For the first time in a generation, the proportion of NHS funding going to primary and community care will increase, shifting resources to the prevention of ill health, because prevention is better than cure.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend and neighbour talks about how we pay for the NHS, and he said that we cannot know what will happen in future, but does it give him good heart that in the last 24 hours, Ernst and Young has predicted that our growth will be higher than expected on the back of the election of a Conservative Government, which we all have confidence will deliver the growth that we need to fund the NHS?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. That just shows how sensible the British people were to elect a majority Conservative Government. The funding will also allow the NHS to invest in innovative technology, such as genomics and artificial intelligence, to create more precise, more personalised and more effective treatments. That will help the life sciences industry, which is one of our fastest growing industries, and in turn, help to support growth.