NHS 10-Year Plan

James Frith Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The NHS leadership are absolutely determined to work with us to reduce waste, inefficiency and bureaucracy. We have in Sir Jim Mackey an outstanding chief executive of the NHS, and he and his team are working closely with Ministers to make sure we achieve that goal.

As for the funding model, I just do not know where the Reform party stands from one day of the week to the next. I heard the leader of the hon. Member’s party on the radio this morning doing the dance of the seven veils. He is normally very good at being a straight-talking politician—that is how he likes to present himself—but I cannot follow what the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) thinks about this issue. Does he support a taxpayer-funded universal NHS free at the point of use? [Hon. Members: “No!”] I do not think he does. Does he support the European-style insurance system? I think he probably does—it is the only European thing he has ever supported, by the way. We are in no doubt: the NHS needs reform, but it needs the Reform party like a hole in the head.

[Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

I commend not only my right hon. Friend and his team on today’s 10-year plan but also the leadership and Budget of our right hon. Friend the Chancellor, who made today and the next 10 years of our NHS possible. For too long, the NHS has been stuck in crisis mode. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will remember taking an important call while in my constituency, and he will know that life expectancy in Bury North can vary by seven years in wards just one mile apart. In East ward, Redvales and Moorside, where he took that call, child poverty rates now reach 42%. Can I ask him to ensure that those wards get a healthy share of the new funding for working-class communities, so that we can start to close the health gaps and give every child the chance of a long, healthy life?