Women’s Health Strategy

Julie Minns Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I completely agree with the right hon. Member. Donna Ockenden’s work is hugely valuable, and a lot of faith and trust has been placed in it, particularly by families. I do not know specific dates, but the Secretary of State and my noble Friend Baroness Merron, who leads on this work, have been discussing the matter with Donna Ockenden. I am happy to get back to the right hon. Member with the details.

On the specific point about the remit, I do not know the answer to that question. It is entirely sensible to look at progress and learn from mistakes. I know it is a challenge system, and we have to learn from those areas. If there are specific things to report back to the right hon. Member, I will get back to him, but this issue is absolutely a priority. The Secretary of State is meeting families directly. We know and understand that we have to do much better on this for everybody.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

Having listened to the shadow Minister, I am slightly tempted to suggest to the Minister that our women’s health strategy include provision for the treatment of collective memory loss. The shadow Minister completely ignored the fact that the Tories let our NHS fall into disrepute over the past 14 years.

I want to ask specifically about how our health strategy will deal with treatment and support for young people, particularly young women, suffering from depression and anxiety. That follows a tragic case in my constituency and a coroner’s report last week, which found that our local hospital was not able to support that patient.

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight some tragic incidents, and I know she will be working hard on behalf of her constituents. We are absolutely committed to the women’s health strategy. Clearly, that will be taken forward as part of the 10-year plan, and it is an important part of that. I met my noble Friend Baroness Merron yesterday and the team supporting that plan to make sure that we understand how those key issues are taken forward.

This is an opportunity, if I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, to say that the consultation on that plan is still open for ideas. We are keen to hear in particular from young people to make sure that we get a true representation. These sorts of things are not often consulted on, so we encourage young people and people who are suffering from depression and mental health issues to contribute their thoughts about the system they face as part of our 10-year plan consultation.

NHS Backlog

Julie Minns Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before I begin, I declare an interest, in that my daughter is an NHS nurse.

My Carlisle constituency includes Cumbria’s only city, but it also has a vast rural hinterland stretching from Rockcliffe in the west to the outer edge of the Northumberland national park in the east. Although my constituency’s rurality and relative geographic isolation make getting to appointments challenging, getting an appointment at all is by far the greatest challenge.

As of October 2024, NHS North Cumbria’s waiting list stood at 43,000. As for the target of 92% of NHS patients being seen for elective treatment within 18 weeks, the rate was just 59%. However, in 2010, the figure was 93.5%. In 2010, public satisfaction with the NHS stood at 70%, the highest rate ever recorded. By 2023, it had hit an all-time low of 24%.

Let us remind ourselves of what happened between 2010 and 2024. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) outlined, we had the disastrous Lansley reforms—reforms that the King’s Fund described as a “major distraction” for the NHS. They caused huge, unnecessary upheaval and created an “unwieldy” structure with “fractured leadership”. On top of those reforms, the Conservatives led a decade of under-investment in our health service. Spending grew by just 2% a year in real terms between 2010 and 2019, well below the long-term average in England of 3.8%, which we had seen since the 1980s. That meant that when covid struck, the NHS was already severely constrained in what it could do. The result is that overall waiting lists have risen to three times their 2010 levels, and 18 weeks is now more like 18 months. That is the record after 14 years of the Conservative Government, and why I am relieved that our NHS is no longer in the Conservatives’ hands.

As the Prime Minister set out today, this Government have a plan. By creating millions of extra appointments, we will finally get to grips with our backlog and give back millions of people their lives and livelihoods. I am delighted that there is recognition of the importance of providing services close to people, which is vital in rural constituencies like mine. That, and the injection of £26 billion into the NHS, will make a real difference for millions of people across the country. We are already seeing that difference in Carlisle, with the approval of a new £12 million urgent treatment centre at the Cumberland infirmary, which is set to open by the end of this year.

I am also delighted that north Cumbria will be one of the beneficiaries of a new £45 million pot set aside to create health and growth accelerators. These will not just improve health outcomes locally, but research the most effective approaches to helping people back into work and to standing on their own feet. That is Labour’s plan in action. This Government will set the shattered bones of our NHS.

NHS: Independent Investigation

Julie Minns Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I welcome the hon. Member to his place and thank him for that question. I am always cynical about huge volumes of regulation. We reassure ourselves as legislators and regulators that putting regulations in place means that we have dealt with the issue. But the problem is that if we fail to deliver, we put another regulation in place, then another, and then more, and before we know it, we have drowned the people responsible for delivery in so much regulation that they cannot sort the wheat from the chaff or see the wood for the trees, compromising standards and patient safety. That is why I welcome the work that Penny Dash has done in relation to the Care Quality Commission, and we will continue to work with her to reduce the burden of regulation, focus on the things that really matter and free NHS staff from red tape. I hope that he finds that reassuring. I plead with him not to send his party leader to agree with me as well, or I really will be in trouble.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as the mother of an NHS nurse. It is important that we remember what is at the centre of this issue: people. Three individuals came to my Carlisle surgery last week because they were at the end of their tether about the care that their loved ones had received, or not received, at our local hospital. One is the husband of a woman who has profound physical disabilities and cannot leave the House unaccompanied. She now has no trust in her local hospital because, among other things, her recent care involved her being fed food that she was known to be allergic to.

I also saw the parents of a young woman who has epilepsy, a physical disability and profound anxiety. The failure to put in place a care plan to account for all that means that she is now self-harming. The other case was that of an elderly woman whose husband was discharged from the hospital without her consent. He is now in a care home 20 miles away, and she cannot visit him. Will the Secretary of State assure those people that this Government will not only fix our NHS, but restore their broken trust in it?

[Wes Streeting]

I am so grateful to my hon. Friend. I enjoyed visiting her Carlisle constituency ahead of the general election campaign, and I look forward to working with her to improve health services there and across the north-west, especially in the rural and coastal communities that rely on the hospital in Carlisle, as well as on more local neighbourhood services. I must warn new Members that one of the most depressing things about the last nine years has been constituency advice surgeries, where people would come to see us about the consequences of the failure of Government and the failure of this place. We owe it to them to do better—better integration of health and care services, better access and outcomes, and better joined-up care. As she has painfully described, if we do not tackle the problems early, they become multiple, higher-cost and personal tragedies. We have seen enough of that.