NHS Federated Data Platform

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley]

I do agree. Palantir will not enable GPs, paramedics or anybody else to see hospital data. They will have to go through Palantir to see that data, and they will not be able to access patient records from the hospital to the GP or vice versa.

Like any data warehouse, Palantir requires connecting software that reaches into each of the NHS’s internal systems and gathers data. That data gathering is being done NHS trust by NHS trust, as there are differences inside each one. That is embedding the use of Palantir-owned code inside every NHS trust by creating custom connecting software to connect and translate data.

In Devon, the local ICB has celebrated as a major success the adoption of the same electronic patient record across Devon’s four main hospitals. It has just gone live in Torbay trust, which serves most of my Newton Abbot constituency. In an organisation as diverse as the NHS, with such distributed responsibility, we can either impose one massive system to rule them all or build interoperability. Interoperability would allow GPs to see hospital records and vice versa. Palantir is not doing that.

Interoperability is how massive systems, such as the internet or mobile phone networks, work. They do not rely on one single system or supplier. In that way, a modular system, a bit like Lego, can be constructed that, overall, is immune to changes elsewhere in the wider environment, providing only the specific data required to deliver improvements in services. That form of system builds long-term capability and delivers without requiring a locked-in, expensive subscription. It can also be built by a UK tech consortium in parallel with phasing out Palantir, which would build UK sovereign solutions, tech skills and competencies.

Meanwhile, NHS England’s October 2025 medium-term planning framework mandates all NHS providers of acute, community and mental health services to sign up to the FDP, and it demands that any existing local data analysis systems are removed. That results in further lock-in.

[Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

One of the issues that the hon. Gentleman has not discussed in his excellent speech is governance. The commissioner of the contract is the NHS, and it is also the main oversight body. He has put forward a black-and-white solution—end or maintain the contract—but is there not a case for a more robust governance structure? That could involve giving more powers to the National Data Guardian or setting up a bespoke oversight body for this contract.

[Martin Wrigley]

If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the contract, he will see that it is subscription only: deliveries under supplier software—none; deliveries under third-party software—none. Any programming written under the contract is owned by Palantir. The contract has to be adapted for any next phase so that Palantir can be moved out.

Palantir is not only the wrong technical solution; NHS users report that it is awful to use. An open letter to NHS England said:

“we already have similar tools in use that presently exceed the capability and application of what the FDP is currently trying to develop or roll out”.

An NHS worker said:

“We’re being forced to use a convoluted system that makes even the simplest tasks feel like pulling teeth. It’s demoralising, and honestly, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and public money”.

An NHS data analyst said:

“Not only could similar functionality have been delivered at a fraction of the cost, but the existing tools are already better integrated, more intuitive, and more conducive to collaboration”.

In early 2025, Greater Manchester ICB reported that the FDP

“does not currently have any system-level products that offer the same or better functionality, compared to the custom-built system already in use for NHS GM”.

An NHS developer concerned about Palantir wrote to me to say:

“There are any number of reassuringly boring companies that could deliver this contract, many of them based in the UK, and then we could just get on with the exciting work of using technology to improve care for our patients”—

quite right too.

We must halt this path of chaos before the costs build any higher. I ask the Minister to use the change from NHS England to allow a change of direction towards a distributed, interoperable UK sovereign solution. Will the Minister cancel the expansion of the FDP to community and mental health service providers?

Palantir is the wrong supplier. Its name comes from a magical seeing stone in “The Lord of the Rings”. It is how the evil lord Sauron corrupted the good wizard Saruman—I think we should have known at the beginning. Funded initially by the CIA as a defence contractor, Palantir’s vision is to become the default operating system for data-driven decisions in high-stakes institutions.

Palantir’s chair, Peter Thiel, wrote:

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

He has warned about the coming of the Antichrist in the form of an oppressive world government. Palantir’s stated aim is to have domination over most Government Departments across the US and allies, including healthcare Departments. Louis Mosley of Palantir UK recommended that the UK Government develop a “common operating system”, combining healthcare and central Government data. That is just mad.

Palantir is a company that builds lock-in into its architecture as a clear business tactic. Palantir’s Foundry system was installed for £1 to manage covid vaccination programmes, after high-pressure lobbying and persuasion. It bought the advantage for future contracts by providing the system for free. The company had no healthcare experience prior to the pandemic, and demonstrates a lack of data security by design. However, the main issue is trust. The future of the NHS depends on intelligent use of data with patients’ trust. Gaining the public’s trust for research that involves AI will be hard enough anyway, without a company like Palantir controlling it all.

Palantir and its NHS England advocates claim big benefits for the NHS. The BMJ this week published analysis of the initial Palantir trial at Chelsea and Westminster hospital that shows the benefits to be exaggerated and untrue. The National Audit Office has yet to assess the value of the deliveries to date and cannot confirm the numbers in Palantir’s claims. Even if we accept that Palantir has delivered some benefits, they are hardly worth £330 million or the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s estimated whole-life cost of over £1 billion.

In addition, Palantir’s history with the Government is not good. After secret meetings and intensive lobbying in 2020, Palantir won a £27 million border control contract—without competitive tender, just like the Ministry of Defence contracts. The border system was subsequently terminated as it had no users and no value.

We need to replace Palantir, the chaotic, all-seeing, single-point-of-failure, data-hungry AI solution. We need a well-architectured, security-by-design, resilient and nationally significant bedrock FDP in the NHS for years to come that must be powered by UK technology. That will build UK skills and business, pay dividends for years to come and build trust from the UK public. The British Medical Association says that

“an FDP has the potential to transform how care is delivered, but only if it is done right—via a UK-owned FDP that has the full confidence and support of the profession and patients.”

I ask the Minister to take action now to stop the expansion of the Palantir solution, to review the dreadful subscription contract with Palantir, and to rebuild the FDP project to deliver a sound, sovereign system to make our NHS thrive in the world of data-driven health.

NHS Funding (York and North Yorkshire)

Julian Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Julian Sturdy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Given the rurality of the whole of North Yorkshire, which I mentioned at the start of my speech, we know that providing health care services is difficult and expensive. That is part of the argument for why the funding formula must be adjusted. At the same time, it must be more cost-effective to deliver services in people’s homes and offer more accessibility. Nevertheless, as my hon. Friend will know from the situation in her constituency, it is important that we also keep small hospitals open and accessible. I know that that is an important issue in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon. This debate is all about ensuring that we have a fair formula so that we can deliver those services.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

On that point, when we are here in London it is difficult for people fully to comprehend the distances involved for both patients and their families in North Yorkshire. The local provision from the hospital in Ripon and Castleberg hospital in Settle in my constituency is valued really highly by families and patients alike.

[Julian Sturdy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that is fundamental to a fair health care system and to fair health care for all. Through this debate I want to show how important that is for our area. We need a fair funding system that can deliver health care across not only York and North Yorkshire but the whole country. We must ensure that areas such as York and North Yorkshire do not suffer while others benefit. That is why we must get the funding formula revised.

Returning to IVF, the treatment now offered by Vale of York CCG does not help those who have been denied access to treatment, as have many people in my constituency over many years. They have either paid thousands of pounds privately or are now past the eligible age criteria for access to IVF. Despite that welcome news from the CCG, people living in our area had no access at all to IVF treatment for some time.

Alongside certain procedures that have been denied to many of my constituents, another area that has really felt the strain is A and E, which has hit the headlines in the past 24 hours. I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s £700 million increase to the NHS budget to deal with well-known winter pressures. That shows the Government’s foresight: they knew that the issue was looming and so put that money in. Nevertheless, altering the funding formula would also help areas that are constrained by their budgets, because A and E funding ultimately comes through CCGs.

Finally, I want to turn to the controversial issue of clinical exceptionality and the impact that it has had on several of my constituents. Where a treatment is not routinely commissioned by the local health authority, clinicians must submit individual funding requests on behalf of their patients, which are then decided by a special panel. In order to achieve funding, the GP is required to prove that their patient is clinically exceptional from the referenced population. Or, to put it more plainly, they must be suffering more than other sufferers of the same condition.

That is, just as it sounds, an extremely difficult task for already busy GPs. It also results in an extremely tragic situation wherein a small group of people who suffer with a rare condition slip through the net and do not receive the treatment that their doctors feel that they need. Their condition is too rare for the particular treatment to be routinely commissioned, but not rare enough to prove that they are clinically exceptional and therefore eligible for individual funding.

One young constituent of mine suffers with severe gastroparesis, as well as diabetes. His devastating condition effectively prohibits his stomach from doing the job that it is supposed to do. As a result, he feels almost permanently nauseous and vomits up to 30 times a day. His clinicians believe that the most effective treatment for him is to have a gastro-pacemaker fitted at a cost of £25,000. That may seem like a lot of money, but as my constituent is unable to work and his mother has had to leave work to care for him, the cost to the state is far greater each year. The alternative treatments that he currently receives, such as morphine, also come at great cost to his health and well-being.

I have been working for some time on behalf of my constituent and alongside his clinicians to try to obtain the necessary funding for the treatment he so badly needs. The most frustrating thing for him is to know that other patients under the same clinicians, who do not suffer as badly as he does, are being accepted for funding because they live in areas that do much better out of the existing formula than York. Sadly, I fear that the lack of funding in our area is causing the individual funding request panel to interpret the rules of clinical exceptionality much more rigidly than our neighbours in, for example, Leeds.

My nine-year-old constituent Ben Foy, of Strensall, has also been a victim of the deeply unsatisfactory situation. Ben suffers with narcolepsy and cataplexy after having the swine flu vaccine, and he is known to fall asleep suddenly up to 20 times a day. Along with Ben’s family and clinicians, I have tried numerous times to obtain funding for sodium oxybate to treat his condition, but we were repeatedly told that we had fallen short of proving his clinical exceptionality.

To sum up, as it stands the funding formula is clearly causing a disparity in how health care is delivered across Yorkshire, as well as across the country. It is imperative that we move toward a funding formula that gives much greater weight to age and that recognises rurality and its associated higher cost of health care provision, while scaling back on the amount given for deprivation. We cannot continue to have, as was previously the case with PCTs, CCGs in the deprived areas of Yorkshire and the Humber receiving substantially more per capita and consistently under-spending their allocation, at the expense of CCGs in areas such as mine. Time and again, we are seeing patients being refused or pushed away from treatment because of the funding formula.

Ultimately, I accept that it is a difficult decision for the Government, the Department of Health and the Secretary of State. Along with colleagues, I have met the Secretary of State and Ministers numerous times to discuss the issue. As I say, I know that it is a difficult decision, but I fundamentally feel that we have protected the NHS budget during the past five years and we have seen more money go into the NHS over that time, which is the right thing to have done, but now we must ensure that we have a funding formula that backs that investment up and can deliver a fair health care system for all.

Five Year Forward View

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

We are doing a number of things to tackle alcoholism. Alcoholism rates have continued to fall under this Government, so we are making good progress. The approach to alcohol is different from that to cigarettes, because responsible drinking is perfectly okay for a person’s health; it may even be good for their health, depending on which doctor they speak to. We want to be careful that our alcohol policies do not penalise responsible drinkers who may not have large salaries and worry very much about the pennies their shopping basket costs.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Women chief executives now lead every one of the three hospitals serving my constituency. We have to thank all members of the NHS for this report, but will the Health Secretary comment in particular on the role of women in delivering NHS change and development?

[Mr Hunt]

I am absolutely delighted to do that. The new hospital inspection regime we have introduced has shone a light on some outstanding leadership. One of the best examples is Basildon hospital, which had terrible problems, including blood-stained floors, blood on the carpets and syringes left lying around in wards. That failing hospital has been turned around by an inspiring chief executive, Clare Panniker, and in the space of just 18 months it has now officially been rated as a “good” hospital by the CQC. We welcome the brilliant leadership of a growing number of female chief executives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to improve the health of veterans.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to improve the health of veterans.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

We are rightly proud of the courage and dedication of our armed forces and it is our duty to ensure that veterans receive the best possible care. We continue to improve the health care of our veterans. The Government have invested £22 million in providing enhanced mental health and prosthetic services over the past few years.

[Julian Smith]

Alex Bentley, who chairs the Royal British Legion in Skipton and is the most incredible, passionate campaigner for our armed forces, has serious concerns about how the armed forces covenant is being applied by hospitals and local councils. Is there anything the Minister can do to champion the cause of this excellent Government scheme at local level?

[Dr Poulter]

Aside from the cash investment of £22 million directly in veterans services, we have made it a clear priority in the NHS mandate to make sure that the armed forces covenant becomes a reality in the NHS. We have now identified nine specialist prosthetic centres for veterans who have lost limbs and been injured in combat, and a massive amount of investment is going into services for veterans with mental health problems, including a 24-hour helpline. A lot of investment is being made at the national level and locally, and there will also shortly be dedicated resource for training local professionals on the ground.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that when we came into Government there was a historical shortage of investment in maternity and midwifery care. We now have almost 1,400 more midwives in the work force, training commissions are being maintained at a record high, and we are continuing to invest in on-the-ground capital projects to support the birthing environment for women.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

3. What assessment his Department has made of the effect of the European working time directive on patient care and the professional development of doctors.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

We are aware that concerns exist about the impact of EU legislation on some areas of training and service delivery within the NHS, specifically the impact of the EWTD on patient experience and continuity of care, and the detrimental effect on the quality of training for doctors.

[Julian Smith]

Harrogate hospital, which serves much of my constituency, suffers very badly from recruitment and retention issues as a result of the working time directive. Does the Minister agree that it, and other areas of social and employment law, should be front and centre of our renegotiation strategy prior to the referendum in 2017?

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight some of the concerns that have been raised by the Royal College of Surgeons and other groups about the impact of the European working time directive in medicine. That is why we have tasked the royal college with investigating and doing some work on exactly what the impact is on surgical trainees and elsewhere in the health sector. We look forward to its reporting back, and I hope that that will be very informative for future discussions on other work force regulations.

Accident and Emergency Departments

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I take issue with the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that this is a worsening crisis in A and E. We have hit our A and E target for the last 22 weeks. We recognise that there are real pressures and are seeking to address them. On the proposals for north-west London, he knows that I cannot comment until I have received the Independent Reconfiguration Panel’s advice. I will look at it very carefully, but obviously, considering the pressures on A and E departments across the country, I will want to ensure that any proposed solution makes sure that his constituents get the service they need when it comes to urgent and emergency care.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I welcome the £1.5 million for Airedale hospital in Yorkshire and urge the Secretary of State to keep a watchful eye on those hospitals serving some of the most rural parts of our country, such as the Yorkshire dales, which I represent.

NHS Funding (York and North Yorkshire)

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Streeter. At the end of April, the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), who I see in his place, and I met the health overview and scrutiny committee of City of York council to discuss the perilous funding settlement received by Vale of York clinical commissioning group. The meeting was also attended by Patrick Crowley, the chief executive of York teaching hospital NHS foundation trust, who said:

“The NHS system in North Yorkshire and York is on the brink of a crisis”.

At that meeting, the hon. Member for York Outer and I agreed jointly to seek a debate to discuss that crisis in Parliament. In the light of that, I hope, Mr Streeter, that you will allow the hon. Member for York Outer to make his own contribution to the debate. I am also pleased to see that the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) is present for the debate.

The funding for Vale of York clinical commissioning group has suffered a triple whammy. First, it started from the lowest base in Yorkshire and the Humber, because its predecessor body, the North Yorkshire and York primary care trust, received less money than any other PCT in the region. Secondly, the PCTs’ base funding was not split evenly between the five new clinical commissioning groups in north Yorkshire and York, and Vale of York CCG, which covers the city of York, received the lowest share of the funding. Thirdly, that meagre amount was top-sliced, because the former PCT had overspent its budget in the previous year. I will say a little more about all three issues, after which I will suggest an immediate remedy to the problems and a longer-term solution to the funding crisis.

The baseline funding received by PCTs in Yorkshire and the Humber in 2012-13 varied considerably across the region. North Yorkshire and York PCT received £1,475 per patient; Leeds received £1,550 per patient; Sheffield received £1,700 per patient; Wakefield received £1,800 per patient; and Barnsley received £1,900 per patient. Why did the other PCT areas get more? It was because the NHS funding formula allocates a base amount of money for each member of the public, adds or subtracts an element to reflect the age or youth of each person, and adds additional elements in respect of social deprivation. Areas of Yorkshire and the Humber other than north Yorkshire and York are deemed to face greater deprivation and, therefore, greater unmet health needs, and as a consequence they receive more money per capita.

The funding worked out through that formula, which reflects deprivation, was about £1,300 million for north Yorkshire and York in 2012-13. That sum was reduced this year by some £430 million, largely as a result of top-slicing for services to be provided on a national basis by the NHS Commissioning Board, which left some £865 million to be divided between the five clinical commissioning groups. However, they were not treated equally. Vale of York CCG received £1,050 per patient, whereas Scarborough and Ryedale CCG received £1,234 per patient, which is almost £200—20%—more per patient. The odd thing is that the same NHS foundation trust provides services for patients in Scarborough and Malton, which is part of Ryedale, and in the city of York. For some of those patients, however, there is substantially higher funding, which is likely to exacerbate the problems of postcode rationing. Some patients from the better-funded part of the patch will receive access to a wider range of treatments than those from the city of York.

How is the split justified? We are told that the funding was split between the clinical commissioning groups in north Yorkshire and York on the basis of the use that patients from their areas made of NHS services in the previous year. It is well known that middle-class people in more prosperous areas make greater demands of the NHS than do poorer people in deprived areas, so the two parts of the funding calculation for the Vale of York clinical commissioning group are pulling in diametrically opposite directions. The funding formula that allocates money to north Yorkshire and York reflects disadvantage, so north Yorkshire and York gets less than Barnsley, but the funding for the CCGs in north Yorkshire is split based on the use that they made of services, so relatively deprived inner-city areas of York receive less. The problems in those areas are not as severe as those in Bradford or Sheffield, but they are still greater than the problems faced by Richmondshire or Hambleton. It really is unfair to provide a baseline pot of money based on a lower allocation for north Yorkshire and York because it is deemed to have lower deprivation, but to choose the most deprived part of north Yorkshire and York and cut the funding further because people in deprived areas do not use health services as much as people in more prosperous areas.

I understand that when the funding body was determining how to split funding between the CCGs in north Yorkshire and York—indeed, across the country—it decided to use a demand-led formula rather than a needs-based formula, but it looked at what the results of a needs-based formula would have been. I asked the Minister whether he would release that information, but it was not readily to hand. If at least he released the figures on the north Yorkshire and York split, it would help us to work through with clinicians and health service managers in our patch whether the current double whammy, as I call it, is appropriate.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

When the group of North Yorkshire MPs met the NHS on several occasions this year, did the hon. Gentleman feel, as I did, as though it was less than transparent with us about how any of the calculations were made?

[Hugh Bayley]

All of us in north Yorkshire and York share concerns about the low level of funding for our patch. I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the lack of transparency, which is why it would be enormously helpful for the Minister to ask his funding advisory panel to carry out the calculation I have mentioned. That would illustrate whether there is a problem such as I have suggested, and it would help us to tease out an appropriate solution.

The third part of the triple whammy is that as a result of historical underfunding—under the previous Government as well as the current one—the North Yorkshire and York PCT had a deficit of some £20 million or £30 million year after year. As a consequence of the deficit in the final year of its operation, some £12 million was top-sliced from the baseline funding for the CCGs in our patch. I was afraid that that would happen, so on 4 July last year, I asked the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), whether he would guarantee that each CCG would start off with a clean balance sheet, and he replied that

“we, along with the NHS Commissioning Board, intend all the new clinical commissioning groups across England to start on 1 April 2013 with clean balance sheets and without legacy debt from primary care trusts.”—[Official Report, 4 July 2012; Vol. 547, c. 930.]

I do not think that anyone could argue that that was a slip of the tongue, because paragraph 3.2 of the Department of Health’s “Handover and Closedown Guidance” for 2012-13 states:

“CCGs will not inherit legacy debt.”

Furthermore, paragraph 4.5 of “The Operating Framework for the NHS in England 2012/13” states:

“CCGs will not be responsible for resolving PCT legacy debt”.

What should the Government do about this issue?

The first, and immediate, action should be to honour the commitment given to me in the House—similar commitments have been given to other hon. Members from north Yorkshire—and agree, as was requested by York’s director of public health in a letter at the end of April, that the Department of Health will “absorb and manage” the final north Yorkshire and York deficit, which is some £10 million to £12 million. I understand that that has happened in some areas, and has given those new commissioning groups a start without carrying debt that has arisen from management by predecessor bodies.

Secondly, I ask the Minister to assure us that in good time for next year’s funding allocation the contradiction between the needs-based formula that divides funding between the old PCT areas and the demand-based fix, which was used this year to divide the PCT patch budgets between the various commissioning groups, will be resolved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Sturdy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is why in my short contribution this afternoon I will focus solely on age.

We must note that under the previous Government the funding formula was changed and more money put into the national health service. In addition, deprivation was given more weight in the formula. On paper, ensuring that deprivation is the most important factor, seems, morally, the right thing to do. However, I believe that when that reasoning is put into practice it starts to fall down. The distortion within the funding formula has resulted in some areas being awash with money, leading to well-publicised vanity health care projects, such as the one in Hull, with its 72-foot ocean-going yacht at the cool price of £500,000. At the same time, York and north Yorkshire have consistently struggled, as ably put across by the hon. Member for York Central, to balance the books, which has resulted in their continuing to take difficult decisions about health care provision.

An example of such decisions is that the primary care trust had to stop offering routine relief injections for sufferers of chronic back pain. That decision has had a massive impact on the quality of life of many of my constituents—it has hampered their ability to work and has affected carers. I have raised that issue previously in this Chamber, yet people are again coming through my surgeries, as I am sure they are through the surgeries of other hon. Members here today, suffering from a lack of access to those important injections. The decision is consequently putting more financial pressure on areas such as welfare, and that far outweighs the cost savings made by local authorities under the funding formula. That demonstrates the lack of joined-up thinking under the current system.

It costs approximately eight times more on average for the NHS to care for a patient who is over the age of 85 than one who is in their 40s. York and north Yorkshire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) has set out, has one of the highest population of over-85s in the north, and my constituents are really suffering under the current formula. York and north Yorkshire also has a high number of care homes, and a typical GP practice states that 50% of home visits can be taken up just by care home residents, even though that group makes up only 2% of the patients on its roll.

I therefore urge the Minister, through NHS England, to review the current funding formula, to ensure that age is given more weighting.

[Julian Smith]

Was my hon. Friend not appalled, as I was, that when as a group of north Yorkshire MPs we sought clarification about why the NHS Commissioning Board had not given weight to the new Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation formula on age, we were told that the minutes of the meeting in which the decision was made could not be released, against the interests of all the people in our constituencies?

Children’s Heart Surgery

Julian Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy firmly to give both those assurances.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

The Health Secretary is absolutely right to push ahead with specialisation in cardiology services. I represent one of the most rural constituencies in England, and I thank him for taking on board the need for more focus on access. In the future, I recommend that more money and time be spent working with members of review panels, because about a year and a half ago, when MPs met them, it was clear that some of them were out of their depth. It would do everybody a lot of good if we spent more money and time helping them.

[Mr Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I am sure that that lesson will be learned.

Heart Surgery (Leeds)

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The apology would have been due to those families if Sir Bruce Keogh had not acted promptly in the face of data that showed the possibility of a serious problem at that hospital. He was right to react promptly and to get to the bottom of those data. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that if he had been a Health Minister at the time he would not have wanted the NHS medical director to do anything other than give absolute priority to patient safety. That is what happened. Like the hon. Gentleman, I am delighted that it was possible for operations to resume on 10 April.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

However we got to this point, I urge my right hon. Friend—on behalf of one of the leading campaigners for Leeds heart surgery, my constituent Lois Brown—to do everything he can to ensure that we move as quickly as possible to a decision on Leeds, based on the full facts and made in a transparent manner.

[Mr Hunt]

I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that that is my intention. There is legal due process—legal proceedings are under way—and he would want that to be respected. I am also anxious to read and digest the report of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. I would like that all to happen as quickly as possible within the law, so that we can conclude this matter and remove the great uncertainty that I know is unsettling so many people.

Social Care Funding

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Many older people across North Yorkshire have been waiting decades for this kind of certainty, so I thank the Secretary of State for bringing that to them. May I urge him to use his laser vision, which he has shown on this matter, to make health budgets and social budgets work much more closely together?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that is perhaps the biggest remaining issue that we have to face in the NHS and social care system today. There are interesting parts of the country, such as Torbay, where it is happening very effectively, but anything he can do in North Yorkshire to make it happen more speedily and more effectively will be very welcome.