Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), who made an interesting speech. He talked about the progress in primary care in his area. Sadly, I do not see such progress in south Manchester, where patients and GPs are in despair at the state of primary care after 13 years of Conservative-led Governments. We desperately need real change and new ideas for public services. All that we have is a damp squib of a King’s Speech, devoid of ideas and more interested in wedge issues than the country’s best interests.

I will start by looking at measures that relate to the NHS—two that are not in the Bill and one that it is. As a number of Members have said, it is desperately disappointing that there was no mental health Bill in the King’s Speech. This was an opportunity to strengthen safeguards and give new protections to vulnerable people. Alongside the demise of the mental health plan, the absence of such a Bill is a worrying signal about the Government’s priorities for mental health. I am really pleased that the Labour shadow Secretary of State has pledged that we will introduce a mental health Bill in a future Labour King’s Speech.

I also would have liked to have seen a measure to address the crisis in medical cannabis. It is now five years since medical cannabis was legalised in this country, and we have a handful of NHS prescriptions—literally; they can be counted on the fingers of one hand—while many thousands of people are getting private prescriptions for medical cannabis and paying hundreds and hundreds of pounds a month, costing them an absolute fortune. We absolutely need to address that. I recommend the private Member’s Bill that I introduced a couple of years ago to address that issue as a model for the Government to start from.

A measure that was in the speech was the tobacco and vapes Bill. I will always support measures to reduce the scourge of smoking, and I welcome measures to reduce the 5 million disposable vapes that are used every week in this country. We will certainly lend the Government the votes that they may need to get the measures through. Much play has been made of the idea that nobody under the age of 14 will ever be able to buy cigarettes legally. The emphasis has to be on the word “legally”. I have often stood up in this Chamber to say that prohibition often does not work. I really hope that the Government will give careful consideration to the impact that the Bill will have on the illegal market and organised criminal gangs—a point made earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). We will certainly support the Bill, but this needs to be done carefully.

Let me turn to probably the single most disappointing measure in the King’s Speech. With COP28 coming up, the speech was an opportunity to set out a platform for a greener future. The Government could have introduced measures to make it easier to build onshore windfarms, to sort out the electricity grid so that we can all be connected to clean energy, or to bring in a programme of energy efficiency and low-carbon heating. Those are all things that a Labour King’s Speech would have done. Instead, we got the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which will allow oil and gas companies to bid for new licences to drill for fossil fuels every year, riding roughshod over our net zero plans.

Last year, British households were the worst hit by the energy crisis in western Europe because of our high dependency on gas. For millions of households, bills this year will be even worse. The Government briefing says that the Bill will

“reduce reliance on volatile international energy markets”.

It will not. There is not enough gas and oil in our offshore fields to make any difference to the prices set by the international markets. The Government themselves have already admitted that the Bill will not do anything to reduce energy bills, and it rubbishes our efforts to fight the climate crisis.

Every respected body, from the International Energy Agency to the UN, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Climate Change Committee, has warned of the dangers of awarding new oil and gas licences. The Tories’ own former net zero tsar, the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), said:

“There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield.”

A former Chair of the Climate Change Committee warned earlier this year that Government inaction on net zero

“has been compounded by continuing support for further unnecessary investment in fossil fuels.”

The Bill will not deliver energy security. The way to deliver energy security is to boost our economy and stake our future on clean energy. That is what Labour will do, upgrading a million homes with our warm homes plan and delivering a clean electricity system by 2030.

I have talked about the worst aspects of the King’s Speech; let me mention some positives. Leasehold is a centuries’ old, unfair system. Almost every country in the world apart from ours has ended it. Britain’s feudal leasehold system has left millions trapped in expensive housing with ever-increasing service charges and fees. It is the root cause of the abuse and poor service that so many homeowners experience at the hands of managing agents, and Labour has been pressing the Government to fundamentally reform and overhaul the leasehold system for a long time.

I welcome the Government’s announcement that they will finally reform leasehold. It is long overdue, and they have not gone far enough; the Government’s new rules will apply only to new homes, and there is nothing to rule out commonhold for new flats, which make up the majority of leasehold properties. A Labour Government would fundamentally and comprehensively reform the leasehold sector. The system needs a complete overhaul so that existing leaseholders can collectively purchase more easily and move to commonhold if they wish. Labour would enact the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and right to manage in full.

I welcome the Renters (Reform) Bill, which is also long overdue. I am concerned about delays to some of the key measures, particularly section 21 no-fault evictions, which continue to leave renters vulnerable at the height of a cost of living crisis. Labour would strengthen the Bill to ensure that it meets the scale of the housing crisis that the Government have presided over, but we welcome reform to the rental market.

I warmly welcome the Football Governance Bill. Our national game has needed reform for years to protect the clubs that are at the heart of our communities. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on her excellent fan-led review, and I am really pleased that the Government’s White Paper contains most of her recommendations, particularly on the key issues of independent regulation and the protection of clubs’ heritage assets. My personal view is that more could have been done on financial redistribution, particularly the transfer levy. It is a shame that that was not mentioned in the White Paper. Perhaps after the consultation and when the Bill progresses, the Government can look at that again, so that we can really get the money that needs to go down the pyramid to support grassroots football. We welcome that Bill, look forward to its becoming law and will work with the Government to make it happen, because that is the right thing to do.

I will not test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, so in two lines I will mention two more Bills: the Media Bill—excellent. I am pleased that we are finally getting a Bill to protect public service broadcasting, but I am disappointed that a ban on conversion therapy has not been introduced. That is a betrayal of LGBT people who have been promised it by countless Tories, including Ministers, for a long time, yet that broken promise puts people at risk.

I will close by mentioning the future. We knew the Prime Minister is a fan of “Star Wars” but we did not know that he is a fan of “Back to the Future”. Lord David Cameron—really? He was the future once, but does anybody really think he is the answer to this country’s problems or that he is the change we need? No, Madam Deputy Speaker. We need real change in the future but that change has to be a Labour Government.