Health Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I have tabled several amendments to the Bill, but I will hopefully keep my remarks focused so there is a good opportunity for other Members to make their speeches.

The Bill should be about fixing the front and back doors of the NHS. It offers the opportunity to bring in tangible changes for patients to address pressing problems and introduce desperately needed improvements to patient safety and experience. The primary care and social care crisis, in particular, are millstones around the neck of the NHS. But instead of addressing them, the Bill has focused on a top-down reorganisation, which risks diverting time and money away from those pressing issues, and it gives sweeping powers to the Secretary of State, which is not in itself without risk.

The Liberal Democrats would instead have put social care and general practice at the heart of the Bill—a move that would represent real reform of the health service. In particular, new clauses 54 and 56 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) would together transform the rights of family carers through guaranteed respite care and reform of the carer’s allowance. They would put free personal care, and an end to catastrophic care costs, at the heart of social care reform.

New clause 53, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire), would ensure that everyone can see a GP within seven days, or 24 hours if urgent, and amendment 17 would introduce a primary care investment standard. Although general practice is the core of a patient’s relationship with the NHS, it has seen its funding decline as a share of NHS spending. Less than 10% of the NHS budget is spent on primary care, although that is estimated to constitute 90% of a patient’s direct experience with the NHS. A primary care investment standard would help to reverse that trend. Dentistry is another area of primary care that has been neglected, leading to dental deserts and dangerous DIY dentistry. New clause 18 would introduce a scheme to end dental deserts, and guarantee appointments for children and those most in need.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

New clause 82 refers to the family mental health pathway, but from diagnosis right through to treatment and, tragically for some, bereavement, mental health support for families cannot be an afterthought and must be a statutory proactive duty. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government and the Minister should take that on board?

[Helen Morgan]

I broadly agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am about to come to mental health. It is right to modernise the NHS and end some of the duplication that we see between NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care, but the way it has been handled has been chaotic. It has been combined with 50% cuts to ICB budgets, unfunded redundancy payments, and chaos through the system. I was alarmed to read the report in The Times at the weekend about advice to the Secretary of State that the changes envisaged under the Bill are impossible to implement, given that the staff of NHS England are on different pay scales to those in the Department. Given those significant hurdles, I hope that in her closing remarks the Minister can provide some reassurance that abolishing NHS England in the way the Bill envisages is achievable.

We are particularly concerned that the functions of the Secretary of State under these reforms open the door to political capture, which is a huge risk given the unstable political climate we live in. Amendment 16 would create a firewall between the Secretary of State and operational decisions. These new powers are particularly worrying in the context of patient safety issues created by the Bill, which we will discuss in more detail tomorrow.

Beyond the Department, the Bill is complacent on taking seriously the vulnerability of our NHS to foreign interference and its implications for national security. That is why we tabled new clauses 2 to 5, which recognise and address the role of the NHS as part of our sovereignty, and the sensitivity of patient data. New clause 17 would require scrutiny in the House of the arrangement between the United States of America and the United Kingdom on pharmaceutical pricing. That deal, forced on us by Donald Trump with no say from the British people, will hike medicine prices in the coming years by billions of pounds, and deserves parliamentary scrutiny. All those shortcomings of the Bill attest to the fact that the NHS already spends far too much time and money responding to failure, rather than improving the safety and quality of services in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome this landmark Bill, which will protect and strengthen our health service for decades to come, but for children with special educational needs and disabilities who are disproportionately impacted by not getting the healthcare that they need, I believe that it should go further. That is why I tabled new clause 85, which seeks to address the fundamental imbalance in the provision of health services for disabled children and young people. Currently, the statutory duty to deliver education, health and care plans—the legal mechanism by which children with special educational needs and disabilities can receive support—sits entirely with local authorities.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Lady for all her endeavours in this regard. Does she share my concern that when a child is diagnosed with cancer, the parents are instantly overwhelmed by medical jargon, by appointments and by sheer panic? Does she agree that the Minister, and the Government, should accept the common-sense duty to ensure that no family faces those critical first two weeks completely alone?

[Jen Craft]

I do agree. The hon. Gentleman has made a very good point about the impact of childhood illness, not only on the child but on the family. I also agree that support for families is crucial. They are part of the care team for children when they are unwell, and that acknowledgment needs to be strengthened and acted on.

As I was saying, the statutory duty to deliver EHCPs sits solely with local authorities. In practice, that means that councils are the only bodies that can be held legally responsible for providing the service that a disabled child needs to access education, including health services such as occupational or speech and language therapy. Health bodies are not subject to the same requirement, and I know from my work as a member of the Health and Social Care Committee and a constituency MP, and as a parent of a disabled child, that that too often means that they are not at the table when it comes to delivering services for children with special educational needs and disabilities. There is a fundamental lack of accountability in the system. That, in practice, can force local authorities or families to procure privately, which can drive shortages in the NHS workforce or can mean that provision is substandard or non-existent.

My constituent’s son Haider, for example, has an EHCP which outlines his need for speech and language therapy to gain full access to education. Despite his mother Qaila’s relentless efforts, that support was not delivered for months. Qaila tells me that she has been forced to watch while Haider has become withdrawn, anxious and isolated. My constituent Elizabeth has a similar story. She has been fighting to get occupational and physical therapy for her son William, but significant delays in securing assessments from healthcare professionals have resulted in inaccurate, unhelpful support arrangements.