Oral Answers to Questions

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

We inherited a decades-old system whereby patient voice was divorced from decision makers, with more than 20 organisations offering a place for patients and users to share feedback. The Health Bill will put the views of patients and users at the heart of decision making, ensuring that that directly informs those responsible for commissioning locally, and we will create a new patient experience directorate in the Department to ensure that patient and user insight directly shapes national policymaking.

[Steve Darling]

The abolition of Healthwatch will see the NHS and the Government effectively marking their own homework. Can the Minister please give some assurances about how the Government will ensure that the voice of those with learning disabilities, complex needs and dementia is heard?

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the variety of needs that local commissioners need to take account of. That is exactly what the Health Bill will try to do, not by outsourcing that role to an outside body but by putting those views at the heart of what all commissioners do, which includes making sure that under-represented or often unheard voices do have a voice.

[Munira Wilson]

When Boots decided to close two pharmacies in Hampton, leaving a large number of elderly and vulnerable residents without local pharmacy provision, Healthwatch Richmond played a crucial role in ensuring that we got a new community pharmacy in the area. That locally led patient voice cannot be replaced by officials in Whitehall or our local ICB, which is about to suffer cuts of over 50% in its operating budget. If the Minister is really serious about championing patients, will she think again?

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting example of somewhere where local commissioners have failed to provide a service or recognise when a service disappears. They can do that by using very different voices, rather than outsourcing that responsibility. Through the Health Bill, we have to make sure that commissioners do their job properly, which includes taking account of patient voice at a very local level.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Replacing Healthwatch will mean that, ultimately, patients will not have confidence in the commissioners. We have just heard one example, and I can offer many examples from York. Healthwatch York, which is phenomenal and is led by Siân Balsom, has produced reports that have brought about change. I plead with the Government to review clauses 64 and 65 of the Health Bill to maintain Healthwatch. It should not be an either/or. We need commissioners to engage with the patient voice, but we also need Healthwatch to have the independence to advocate for patients.

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments about her local healthwatch. There are certainly examples of where this approach works well in local communities, and we need to understand those. However, it does not work well everywhere, and it means that local commissioners are not empowered and are not held accountable for their job of making sure that the patient voice and experience is held locally. There is also nothing to stop ICBs undertaking that role as they see fit in their local communities in the future, rather than our dictating how they should do it through one particular body.

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

While I support the Government’s desire to drive out bureaucracy from the NHS and simplify systems for patients, Healthwatch Hartlepool has done an outstanding job in ensuring that patients’ voices are heard as systems and services are improved. What can the Minister do to ensure that local expertise is retained in any new system?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. If that works well for his local system, there is nothing to stop it. How the ICB undertakes its role has to be determined locally to make it most effective for local circumstances, and it can undertake that role as it sees fit.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

11. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of unreported removals from waiting lists.

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

Over 85% of waiting list removals are made as a result of patient care, and since the end of the pandemic, unreported removals have been below pre-pandemic levels. Record levels of elective activity are being delivered by NHS staff, enabling us to cut waiting lists and meet our interim target of 65% of patients being seen within 18 weeks—the highest performance in over four years.

[Graham Stuart]

People in Beverley and Holderness want high-quality and speedy care, not massaged waiting list numbers that suit Labour narratives. Of course, Mr Speaker, you will remember that the last Labour Government had form on this as well, because the National Audit Office repeatedly found that the numbers were manipulated when waiting lists were similarly put on a pedestal. The Minister has the new Secretary of State by her side. Can she reassure people in Beverley and Holderness that we will have genuinely improved healthcare, rather than widespread manipulation and the cleansing of waiting lists to suit political purposes?

[Karin Smyth]

If anyone has forgotten, the last Labour Government left the NHS in a better state than it was in under successive Governments. That is not in dispute in terms of waiting list targets or, indeed, patient satisfaction. The right hon. Gentleman might want to look again at the record.

The point that the Conservatives seem to be intent on following up forever is an important one. Some 85% of the activity is a result of direct patient care. Validation, both clinical and clerical, is a long-standing routine practice of waiting list management. At roughly 15%—it was slightly higher before the pandemic—the rate is no different now from what it has been before, so it is not the case that something different is going on here. What we are doing is making sure that the right hon. Gentleman’s constituents—I appreciate that there are many other local problems in his system at the moment—can be clear that we have the right people on the right list for the right care in the right place by the right clinicians. That is what we are determined to do.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I commend the Minister for her work in reducing waiting lists for GP referral to first treatment, and they are genuinely coming down. She will be aware, however, that that statistic does not capture the entire picture, particularly for people who require subsequent follow-up care—for example, women with endometriosis or women waiting for breast reconstruction following mastectomies. Could she say a little about any plans she has to capture those waiting lists?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is someone who does understand the way waiting lists are managed and so on. We do not have any plans to add any new targets to those to which we have already committed to give confidence to the British public that we can fix the NHS and get waiting lists down. However, he raises an important point about how we support patients to understand where they are in the system and where their care will be provided. Part of our commitment in the elective reform plan, which we outlined last year, is that patients are kept up to date about where they are being treated and why they are being referred to perhaps a more local service, and we will continue to try to do that.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Last month, the Health Service Journal reported that the elective waiting list target was met largely—largely—because a record number of patients were removed from waiting lists in March without receiving treatment. Can the Minister tell the House how many patients were removed in March and what happened to them, and whether she is satisfied that they definitely did not need treatment?

[Karin Smyth]

As I have said, I am still a bit perplexed about why the Conservatives are perpetually highlighting their inadequate management of the health service, and the idea that patients are simply referred to a waiting list and then left there for a couple of years, which is what happened on their watch. It is important that patients know why they are on a waiting list, and obviously that they get the best clinical care as quickly as possible.

I do not have to hand the exact figure for March, which will be published as part of the normal process of publishing the waiting list figures. However, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that completed pathways were 5.9% higher in the 21 months from July 2024, when we took office, to March 2025 than in the previous 21 months. Patients, as they deserve, are getting the right care in the right place under this Government.

[Dr Evans]

It is not just the Conservatives who are raising this issue; it is patients and the Health Service Journal. The answer is that 350,000 people—a city the size of Coventry—were wiped off the waiting list with no treatment, and that is 100,000 more than the month before. If there is genuinely nothing to hide, the Government should not worry about putting out the figures. Will the Minister commit to a review to find out what has happened to those 350,000 patients, or does she believe that waiting list targets should be met by removing patients from the figures rather than actually treating them?

[Karin Smyth]

This is an established way of managing waiting lists and waiting times. We are making sure that there is adequate clerical and clinical validation of the lists, and that patients are treated where they need to be, which may often be closer to home and in more local circumstances. Of course, we have committed to greater transparency than there was under the previous Government, and we will continue to provide that. I did not quite follow the hon. Gentleman’s question, but I am obviously very happy to look at anything arising from it. We are confident in the data that is coming out—as I have said, this is standard practice—and the figure is roughly 15%, as it has been over many years.

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to improve the provision of NHS health visitors.

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[Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to improve accountability in the health service.

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

The NHS modernisation Bill will clarify and strengthen accountability in the NHS. It ends the fragmented accountability that we inherited on coming into government, and the reforms will restore clear democratic accountability, with the Secretary of State directly accountable to Parliament and the public. We will enhance local autonomy, ensuring NHS organisations are good partners and deliver for their local populations.

[Lewis Cocking]

We need more local accountability in the NHS. In Broxbourne we have seen thousands of new houses built, but when I and local Conservative councillors have pushed for new healthcare facilities to cope with the new demand, we have been refused. Can the Minister explain who will be accountable for that under the Government’s new system?

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Gentleman highlights a situation familiar to many of us. One of the many problems that we inherited from the last Government was the fragmented landscape, so I thank him for his question. A key part of the responsibility of integrated care boards is commissioning for their populations to improve access to healthcare and reduce inequalities. For the first time, ICBs will be held accountable through the outcomes framework.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

Jules Fielder from Hastings was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal lung cancer after doctors missed her symptoms, mistaking them for tennis elbow. As a non-smoking young woman, she did not meet the stereotype of what lung cancer patients often present with, but she was determined to channel her own tragedy into change. She campaigned for better, earlier awareness of symptoms among clinicians and members of the public, and she took that message to everyone she could. Together, we convinced Boots to roll out on-shelf awareness labels in the cold and flu medicine section to raise better awareness. Sadly, Jules passed away last month. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to all of Jules’s campaigning, and commit to continuing her vision in the Department of Health and Social Care by ensuring we use every possible avenue to raise better awareness and catch cancer earlier?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that example of tremendous public service in the face of adversity. We are sorry to hear of Jules’s passing, and our thoughts are with her friends and family. My hon. Friend highlights the way in which people can access and determine outcomes and the fact that it is the responsibility of those working in local health services—in this case, the ICB in particular—to involve people and use their experience to drive the change that we want to see as part of the Health Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

T2. One of the biggest barriers to accessing community healthcare in Bracknell Forest is constituents not being able to get routine diagnostic procedures done at their local GP or health centre, and instead having to travel. One constituent with cancer was told that he had to go to Guildford for a simple blood test. How will the introduction of a single patient record help to break down some of those barriers?

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

The single patient record will give clinicians timely access to a single trusted record so that decisions can be made more efficiently, avoiding duplication, allowing them to spend more time with patients. The system makes all information on a patient accessible in a single place and will allow the sharing of patient data among different settings, as my hon. Friend outlines, and provide more flexibility in where services are made available.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

T9. There is overwhelming evidence that marketised health systems, as the NHS has become, increase health inequalities. Will the Health Secretary consider amendments to the Health Bill that will tackle the rising inequalities in existing health policies, including allowing local NHS organisations to determine if they need additional private sector capacity?

[Karin Smyth]

I commend my hon. Friend for her experience in this area. She tempts me to look at amendments in that space, but we do not have plans for that at the moment. The changes we made to NHS England placed the responsibility regarding health inequalities in all our policies firmly at the Secretary of State’s door. I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend about her other ideas on that. The Bill transfers that responsibility to the Secretary of State and we have no plans to make any changes in that area.

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

T7. Thousands of people in West Sussex are unable to access an NHS dentist and many constituents in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton tell me that they have been unable to secure an appointment for years. What specific steps is the Secretary of State taking to increase NHS dental capacity in coastal communities, and when does he expect patients to see a measurable improvement?

Maternity Nurses, Nannies and the Infant Sleep Industry

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) for securing this debate and acknowledging the concern that has been raised recently in the field and by the media. We are all deeply saddened to see the impact of those giving poor advice on infant sleeping. Public safety is and has to remain the top priority.

As my hon. Friend said, being a new parent is a difficult time; I certainly recognise that helping an infant settle into a regular sleep pattern can be difficult for new parents and carers. It is a worrying and stressful time, as he said. Rogue advice from so-called experts can have a devastating effect on those who seek reputable advice and guidance.

Before I talk about regulation of the infant sleep industry, I want to clarify that the Department for Education is responsible for the regulation of nannies and childcare services, which my hon. Friend mentioned. The early years foundation stage statutory framework sets the standards and requirements that early years providers must meet to ensure that children have the best start in life and are kept healthy and safe. All early years providers are already required to meet the safer sleep requirements set out in the statutory framework, which currently links to the NHS safer sleep guidance. The Department for Education plans to update the wording in the early years foundation stage statutory framework so that the requirements are set out directly in the framework itself. That is due to come into effect from September 2026, subject to the usual parliamentary and legislative processes. The Department for Education has already written to providers informing them of the proposed new wording and to remind them that they must meet the current requirements.

The “Best Start in Life” campaign provides parents and carers with NHS safer sleep advice through a range of communication channels, including social media, the website and an email programme. Recently, we have collaborated with experts such as Rosey Davidson, a paediatric sleep consultant, to support the promotion of safer-sleep guidance, reaching approximately 40,000 parents through one post alone. The healthy babies programme supports new parents and families by offering integrated, preventive and universal support, including for perinatal mental health, parent-infant relationships and infant feeding, in the 1,001 days from pregnancy to age two. By delivering those services through a physical and digital Best Start family hubs network, we are ensuring that parents and carers have access to joined-up, family-centred advice and support that is delivered in communities where there are high levels of need.

In January, NHS England published a post-natal toolkit to improve the post-natal care experience for women and their families. The toolkit supports integrated care boards, their place-based partners, and health and care providers to work together with service users and professionals to improve the post-natal care experience and both short-term and long-term maternal and infant health outcomes. Additionally, NHS England has published guidance for GPs on the post-natal appointment that women should be offered six weeks to eight weeks after giving birth. That provides an important opportunity for GPs to listen to women in a discreet, supportive environment.

Qualified health visitors and their teams also have an important role, as my hon. Friend said, in supporting infant health, wellbeing and parenting confidence. They promote safe sleeping for babies and provide safe advice to parents. Services such as health visiting are being strengthened by providing over £13.4 billion of public health funding for local government over the three years from 2026/27 through a consolidated ringfenced public health grant.

“Maternity nurse”, “night nurse”, “baby sleep consultant” or other terms for these roles are not regulated professions. Often, those working in a sleep industry role will refer to themselves as a “nurse” to indicate that they are suitably qualified to advise. That can mislead the public by providing an impression that such individuals are qualified and professionally registered to provide a particular level of care, advice or care intervention that they do not hold, which puts the public and babies at risk.

In May 2025, the Government announced our intention to protect the professional title “nurse” within this Parliament. Protecting the title “nurse” will make it a criminal offence for someone to call themselves a nurse unless they are registered as a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, or part of one of a number of exempt professions, such as dental nurses and veterinary nurses. These new protections will also apply to longer professional titles that include the word “nurse”, such as “maternity nurse” and “night nurse”. To ensure that we get these changes right, we will shortly be publishing a call for evidence on the protection of the title of “nurse”.

I invite everyone present and those interested in this debate to share their views, which will inform the future legislation underpinning the Nursing and Midwifery Council that will implement this change. We want to hear from those working in healthcare, but also those in other fields such as childcare and care for animals as well as the general public, to understand what exemptions should apply and to ensure that those who may be affected by this change can feed in their concerns. We are also seeking views on protecting other titles such as “nursing” and “health visitor”.

However, ultimately this is about patient and public safety. When someone seeks treatment, support or advice from a “nurse”, there is a legitimate expectation that the individual is suitably qualified and professionally registered. Our proposed changes will make it a criminal offence for someone who does not hold such qualifications and professional registration to claim to be a nurse.

This is an important subject and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it, and I know there is further interest across the House. I hope people will respond to the call for evidence, and we will of course continue to work with colleagues to make sure this is a safe place for parents.

Question put and agreed to.

General Medical Council

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

I thank the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) for raising this extremely serious matter very powerfully on behalf of his constituent Elizabeth, following the tragic loss of her son Jack. Our thoughts are with her and the rest of the family. We Members of Parliament find ourselves dealing with tragedies, but we are able to give our constituents a voice, and that is a great honour—a sad one, but one we take very seriously. I commit to working with the right hon. Gentleman as we move forward.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, the General Medical Council is there first and foremost to protect patients and maintain public confidence in the medical profession. It is the regulator of all medical doctors, anaesthesia associates and physician associates practising in the United Kingdom. It defines standards for ethics, competence and patient safety, and it has a duty to investigate concerns about doctors’ performance or conduct.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Verita review, so let me start there. In January last year, Cambridge University hospitals trust commissioned Verita, an objective investigations company, to undertake a review of the hospital’s governance. Meanwhile, the Kennedy report into the missed opportunities surrounding Dr Stohr’s case is still ongoing. Verita’s report was published in October 2025 and made 23 recommendations. The broad themes that emerged from that investigation were: first, that doctors needed more oversight, clinical supervision and performance management; secondly, improving safety governance through better board-level visibility and escalation pathways; thirdly, proper oversight of clinical reviews, and ensuring that they are acted on promptly, and that changes are made; and finally, a change in medical culture and behaviour, so that staff feel empowered to hold their hands up when things go wrong. The trust has accepted the findings, published an action plan and apologised to affected families, as I understand it. We expect the hospital to implement the findings of the review in full, because Jack Moate’s family deserve absolute transparency from the authorities, and they have the right to know that lessons will be learned when things go wrong.

The right hon. Gentleman wrote to the Department on 15 May, and his letter makes it very clear that this is one of the worst and most distressing cases that he, in his long experience, has ever encountered. Having read that letter, I agree with him, and I know he does not use those words lightly. I can confirm that the GMC has now done the right thing and launched an investigation into the conduct of Kuldeep Stohr.

The GMC is an independent body, and I cannot go into all the specifics of an individual case, as the right hon. Gentleman will know from his time as Health Secretary. It would be wrong for me to give any further commentary on a live investigation, not least because that could prejudice the outcome and be a barrier to Jack’s family getting justice. Suffice it to say that I am just as appalled as the right hon. Gentleman is that this has gone on for so long.

It has taken almost a decade of missed opportunities for the families to start getting the answers they deserve. I understand that the former Minister for patient safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), met some of the families in November. He also intended to go to Cambridge to meet families and representatives of the trust. Today I can confirm that the new Minister for patient safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), is willing to meet the right hon. Gentleman and the Moate family to discuss the shocking circumstances of their case. I hope that they can take some comfort from knowing that although my hon. Friend is new in post, she takes these issues very seriously, she has been a champion for her own constituents who faced patient safety failures in her local trust, and she will be following this case very closely indeed.

It may be helpful for me to outline the broader principles that govern the GMC and its regulatory framework. When an allegation is made about a doctor, the GMC has a duty to investigate and, where necessary, take action to safeguard the health and wellbeing of the public. In serious cases, it can refer a doctor to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service. These procedures can result in doctors being removed from the medical register. That strips away their right to legally practice medicine in this country. The MPTS is a statutory committee of the GMC. It operates separately and independently, which is crucial to maintaining public confidence in its findings. The tribunals have a legal duty to protect the public, and we have clear expectations of them.

This year, we are taking action to modernise the regulation of all healthcare professionals in the UK. In March, we published a consultation on reforming the General Medical Council legislative framework. The reforms would make the process for assessing a doctor’s fitness to practice swifter and fairer, and, as we have heard, the consultation runs until 23 June. The right hon. Gentleman tempts me to consider making amendments to the Health Bill. Given his experience, he will understand that I will not commit to doing that, but I can commit to discussing the matter further, and I encourage him and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who raised the shocking al-Fayed case, to engage with that consultation. We will consider the outcomes of that consultation before we bring legislation to the House, but we expect to lay the General Medical Council order before Parliament later this year, subject to those conversations. I am happy to ensure that the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield have any further meetings that are necessary with me or with officials, given the tight deadlines that will have to be met under that timetable.

I will touch on the Mann review, which the right hon. Gentleman also highlighted. As we all know, the NHS was founded on the principle of treating everyone equally and with respect. We have been crystal clear that racism and discrimination betray everything the NHS stands for and its ability to provide safe, world-class care. That is why the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), asked the noble Lord Mann to conduct a review into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS. As the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire said, this morning Lord Mann published a series of robust and practical recommendations, and we support every one of them.

The right hon. Gentleman read out some shocking stories from his time as Health Secretary. I cannot comment on them now, but I assure him and other hon. Members that in the weeks and months ahead, we will work with all organisations that have been named in the review, including the GMC, to ensure partners across the system are supported in delivering meaningful change based on the recommendations. I know that the GMC is as committed to rooting out racism from its ranks as we are, and we will leave no stone unturned to get this done.

Trust is the glue that holds our institutions together. The public have an absolute right to know that they can trust their doctor, and when things do go wrong, they have a right to swift and transparent justice. I cannot begin to imagine what Jack’s family, and especially his poor mum, are going through. I thank them for their consideration in discussing this with us, and I know that there are many other families involved. The system that we build has to do right by families like theirs. I commit to working further with the right hon. Gentleman and others in this place to do just that.

Question put and agreed to.

Health Bill

Karin Smyth Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

I was going to say that sometimes it is the hope that kills you, but instead I will say that it is a pleasure to close the debate on behalf of this Government.

Let me begin by commending the many fantastic speeches that we have heard this evening. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) made some excellent points about spinal cord injury and specialised commissioning. His comments apply to many people, and I take them on board. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) talked about the experience of Alex Savage and his work with the Tessa Jowell Foundation; we thank Mr Savage for that, and mourn his passing. The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), made a number of valuable points, and I will continue to engage with her and her Committee. I also note the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn). My hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jen Craft) and for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) talked about the experience that they bring to this place in relation to SEND, supporting disabled people—particularly children—and joining up services. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) drew on her experience of designing services for the future around people and patients.

As ever, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson)—another excellent manager from the service—for the expertise that he brought to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) made some excellent points about professionals in NHS England, and about communications professionals as well. We know that it is difficult, and we want to use their expertise as we go forward. My hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Alex McIntyre), for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) and for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) talked about mental health, obesity prevention and their local services. I thank the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), for his support for my work in presenting the Bill, and I am relieved that he is still here in support this evening. That is good to know. A week is a long time in politics.

As I often tell people—you have heard it before, Madam Deputy Speaker—I have Lord Lansley to thank —or blame—for my being at this Dispatch Box. I left the NHS and stood for the Bristol South constituency because I could see the coming catastrophe of those coalition reforms. In 2010, patient satisfaction was an all-time high; in 2024, it is at an all-time low. In 2010, the last Government inherited the shortest waiting lists in history; in 2024, they left the waiting lists at record highs. In 2010, the NHS was efficient and delivered value for money; by 2024, we had dropped down international rankings despite a massive increase in headcount at the centre. That is the scorecard that the last Government left for the 2012 reorganisation.

In preparing for this debate, I have looked through my past comments since becoming an MP. In 2016, I said that despite being a non-executive director and manager in the NHS, I could not easily navigate the plethora of bodies in the health and care field. From 2016, it got worse. Each crisis or scandal brought more so-called independent bodies, but no more efficiency, effectiveness or, crucially, safety. We on the Public Accounts Committee were desperately trying to get clarity on accountability for spending, but we did not get it. In 2019—this is on the record—I did an interview with the Health Service Journal in which I highlighted how the role of Parliament in nodding through the estimates bore no relation to financial accountability or spending in my local NHS, and how it was impossible to follow through on funding allocations for facilities for my constituents, or even to understand the decision making of local commissioners, trust boards, regions, NHS England, the Department or the Treasury. When I sat on the Opposition Benches, I watched Tory MP after Tory MP chastise their own Government about what was happening in their constituencies, which was met with a shrug of the shoulders to say, “It’s all down to NHS England.”

The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), talked about ICB accountability, but there is none. Many MPs come to me and say that they cannot get a response from their ICBs. At the moment, some people cannot even get a response to their emails. It is shocking, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) outlined so clearly. The Conservatives’ approach was to hand £200 billion of taxpayers’ money to one body, and more taxpayers’ money to a host of others that were charged with delivering, monitoring and checking a health system in which there is a lot of monitoring, a lot of checking and no end of tick boxes but, crucially, too little delivery of the high-quality services that the British public deserve and the staff want to give.

That cavalier approach changed with this Labour Government, why is why we are bringing forward this Bill. We are abolishing NHS England, devolving commissioning budgets to ICBs, putting patient voice at the heart of the new directorate, and making local commissioners in councils and ICBs embed patient voice and experience in their commissioning, rather than outsourcing their responsibility and then ignoring it. The system does not work, and Members know it. Patients deserve better.

This is the biggest transfer of power to local systems that we have seen. Most significantly, this Government are delivering on giving power to patients, who are frankly astonished to find in 2026 that their records are not joined up in the NHS. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) made an excellent point about the impact that that has on veterans. Although we have a patchwork of local workarounds that benefit a few people—in Manchester, Bristol or the north-east, for example—patients across England have the right to their own record, and for their clinicians to have access in order to deliver the care they need. That point was well made by my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), for Ashford (Sojan Joseph), and for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), all of whom gave us real examples of patient experience. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) says, it is about time that we had single patient records. We heard about the impact on patients from my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy), who spoke about the sad passing of his father.

A lot of questions have rightly been asked about the single patient record and data, including by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool), my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley), and my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale) and for Wolverhampton North East (Sureena Brackenridge). We want to make sure that we get this right. They should know that although the Bill establishes the legal framework for the SPR, much of the detail will be in secondary legislation. I can assure the House that all Members will have a chance to scrutinise the regulations in due course. However, we firmly believe that pursuing a single patient record is the right thing to do. We have found that patients and staff support it, as long as it is built with the strongest safeguards for security and privacy. We hear their concerns, and we will make sure that those safeguards are built in.

The single patient record will protect personal data by default. It will be considered critical national infrastructure, with the highest standards of cyber-security and information governance, so that only the right people can access the right information at the right time and for the right reasons. There will be audit trails of who has accessed a patient’s data, and UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 will apply. The Bill does not create new legal gateways for purposes other than direct care. It does allow data to be used for research, population analysis and service improvement, but only where there is a separate legal basis for doing so.

Let me pick up on the issue of accountability, which is very important to me personally. I agree that it is important to get this right, and we need to work both nationally and locally. I am old enough to remember the world before 2012. For 60 years, the Secretary of State had overall responsibility and accountability for this service. I think the comments about local accountability were well made by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell). Let me be clear: the Bill puts more power, not less, in the hands of local organisations. ICBs will be responsible for commissioning a wider range of services, including primary care, and they will hold a large proportion of the NHS budget—over £179 billion, as before—but at the same time the public expect Ministers to be accountable for the NHS they pay for.

Therefore, Ministers should have the tools to hold ICBs to account and direct the system where necessary. That is why the Bill provides the Secretary of State with a power of direction, but with important safeguards on appointing specific individuals and directions to intervene in decisions about services provided to a particular person. If a NICE recommendation on a drug or treatment exists, this takes precedence over a direction. The powers in the Bill will ensure the Secretary of State is able to create the conditions for ICBs to succeed with effective and proportionate forms of intervention, where necessary.

Another major point made this evening was about Healthwatch. I think there is an important philosophical point about independence, the perception of independence and effective decision making, which we will discuss in Committee and it will be important to do so. However, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), outlined very well, we have had these bodies for 50 years. Patients are saying that the system does not work and are not reporting to it, so the system does not work. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) and my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) and for Dartford (Jim Dickson) about getting the balance right, and we will discuss those really valuable points.

Currently, the patient voice sits isolated in separate organisations, which criticise the status quo but are not able to change it. That is why we want a new director of patient experience in the Department to ensure that voices are heard as part of every decision. Locally, it is the job of the commissioner—and I have been a commissioner—and of a good commission organisation to include the patient voice and experience in all its decision making. That is where the difference is made, and such organisations should not be outsourcing those decisions. That is the difference, but a debate is to be had, and we have to assure people on the perception issue. We want to ensure local ICBs incorporate the patient voice and experience appropriately—including digitally excluded people, as the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) said— into their decision making. How that happens is not set in stone. It is our job to set the destination, not exactly how we get there. If an organisation can provide a good service locally for the patient voice and experience, the ICB could continue to contract with it.

Briefly on HSSIB, I hear the points from the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), whom I have met, and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) and other Members have raised these issues. The Dash review is very clear—I recommend Members to read it—and it is why the new CQC will combine its regulatory functions with the depth of HSSIB’s investigatory capability to the benefit of both. As was rightly raised by the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), the safe space is important to enable people to share concerns in confidence, and that is safeguarded in the Bill. I understand that there is a perception issue, but we must ensure that that is real. The CQC has also raised some operational issues with implementing the integration of HSSIB, and we are working with it to ensure that, when passed, the measures concerned will be implemented effectively.

To conclude, the Bill is only one part of our modernisation agenda, but it is a crucial one, because for decades Governments have failed to grapple with this fragmentation. Like capital and the workforce, the problem was put in the “too difficult” box and left to this Government to solve, but solve it we will. The single patient record will finally mean patients get the joined-up, proactive care they deserve. By voting for this Bill, we can have a fresh start in NHS history. I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Health Bill: Programme

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Health Bill:

Committal

(1) That the Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 16 July 2026.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Jade Botterill.)

Question agreed to.

Senior NHS Workforce Pay

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

I am pleased to announce that we are publishing our response to the recommendations made by the independent Senior Salaries Review Body for the 2026-27 financial year.

I hugely appreciate the incredible work of talented staff across our NHS, and that is why I am formally accepting the headline pay recommendation of 3.0% for senior leaders across the NHS in England, to give them a well-deserved pay rise. This award relates to:

Over 3,200 very senior managers (VSMs)

Over 400 executive senior managers (ESMs)

These awards mean that the Government are delivering a well-deserved pay rise, on top of those in preceding years, underlining the extent to which we value our senior leaders. Eligibility for pay awards for VSMs is linked to their organisation’s performance as determined by the NHS oversight framework segment to which they are assigned: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-oversight-framework/

I am grateful to the Chair and members of the SSRB for their thoughtful consideration of the evidence presented to them. Their report recognises the vital contribution that NHS leaders make to our country. The SSRB has examined the economic picture and evidence on recruitment, retention, motivation and morale to reach their recommendations.

The SSRB made a further two recommendations, which are not directly related to headline pay. I recognise the challenge of recruiting those at the top of the Agenda for Change pay scale into VSM roles. To help address this, I am therefore pleased to accept the recommendation to deliver training and support knowledge-sharing for remuneration committees and chief people officers. However, we will do this over a longer timeframe than envisaged by the SSRB, to allow sufficient engagement with relevant stakeholders in the design and delivery of the training. Following engagement with stakeholders, we will deliver this training within this financial year.

I can also confirm that I am accepting, in principle, the recommendation to withdraw the very out-of-date executive senior managers pay framework. It is not feasible to withdraw and replace the framework ahead of April 2027. Any changes to ESM pay setting and reward will need to be carefully sequenced and considered alongside the ongoing DHSC/NHSE transformation.

We will continue to implement commitments to improve the support NHS staff receive and their experience at work. Ensuring the NHS is a great place to work is fundamental to improving patient experience: from reducing the backlog in elective care to ensuring timely access to GP appointments.



Next steps

We have listened to the workforce and understand the difficulties they face when pay awards are not delivered on time. I am pleased to be announcing the pay awards earlier than the previous year. We will continue work across Government to keep bringing forward the pay round for all public sector staff.

The SSRB report will be presented to Parliament and published on gov.uk.

[HCWS66]

NHS Pension Scheme: McCloud Implementation

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

On 11 December 2025, I issued a written statement on the implementation of the McCloud remedy for affected NHS pension scheme members. I updated on progress in planning for the delivery of the remedy and reaffirmed my commitment to deliver the remedy to the coalition Government’s discrimination. I also committed to keeping the House informed of progress.

The NHS Business Services Authority has now developed and aligned its plans for the delivery of the McCloud remedy. An independent review, led by Lisa Tennant, has considered those plans and the NHSBSA’s capacity, capability and functions to deliver the remedy. Lisa Tennant is now preparing a final report, which I intend to publish in due course.

The independent review has found that significant progress has been made in the NHSBSA’s planning for the remedy, including the comprehensive analysis of steps that will need to be taken to provide each individual member with their remedy choice and to enact it. Given the level of complexities in the membership of the NHS pension scheme, this has been a substantial undertaking. The review also highlights a number of dependencies that are critical to delivering the remedy. These include:

Procuring external suppliers to bolster NHSBSA’s capacity to manually calculate remediable service statements for some members;

The release of software to automate statements as far as possible, enabling future retirees to make their remedy choice at the point of retirement, and to further automate calculations for members who are already retired.

I remain committed to setting deadlines that prioritise the delivery of the remedy to members who are likely to be facing financial detriment as a consequence of the discrimination identified by the McCloud judgment. The deadlines must be realistic and achievable. They must also ensure that the scheme’s ongoing performance is maintained and protected alongside the delivery of the remedy. I expect these dependencies will have advanced sufficiently, or been appropriately mitigated, to enable me to issue new statutory deadlines with confidence before summer recess.

Subject to the dependencies outlined above, the NHSBSA’s plans currently forecast that:

Retired members whose remedy period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 benefits are still affected by the discrimination identified by the McCloud judgment—in that some or all of the accrual for that period is 2015 scheme accrual—should receive their remedy choice by the end of December 2027;

Retired members whose remedy period benefits are no longer affected by this discrimination—in that all of their accrual for the period is 1995 to 2008 scheme accrual—should receive their remedy choice by the end of June 2030;

All active and deferred members who are due a remedial pension saving statement should have received this by the end of March 2027.

I have asked the NHSBSA to take steps to communicate to members when they can expect to receive their remedy choice, and which deadlines, when issued, will apply to them.

The NHSBSA continues to issue remediable service statements and remedial pension saving statements in line with its delivery plans. To date, 10,462 remediable service statements have been issued to retired members who are most likely to be facing financial detriment. Of those, 5,804 have been returned and 5,368 decisions have been enacted. A further 11,457 have been calculated and are scheduled to be issued in alignment with the NHSBSA’s delivery plan. In addition, a remediable pension savings statement has been issued to 121,824 members, and 19,952 are outstanding.

[HCWS55]

Health and Social Care

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2026 Written Corrections

The following extract is from the statement on the Women’s Health Strategy on 16 April 2026.

[Karin Smyth]

The waiting list for gynae care was north of 600,000 when we took office. Today that figure is finally moving in the right direction, but we cannot make as much progress as we would like because the system simply was not designed with women in mind…

Women’s health pathways are being prioritised in NHS Online, and menopause and menstrual health services will be among the first to go live when it becomes operational this year.

[Official Report, 16 April 2026; Vol. 783, c. 1049.]

Written correction submitted by the Minister for Secondary Care, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth):

[Karin Smyth]

The waiting list for gynae care was nearly 600,000 when we took office. Today that figure is finally moving in the right direction, but we cannot make as much progress as we would like because the system simply was not designed with women in mind…

Women’s health pathways are being prioritised in NHS Online, and menopause and menstrual health services will be among the first to go live when it becomes operational next year.

Allied Health Professionals

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for introducing the debate and to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) for bringing it forward and setting out her role as a physiotherapist.

I am grateful for the opportunity to set out the practical contribution of AHPs to delivering this Government’s priorities for health and care. I agree with many hon. Members who have spoken that the 10-year health plan, “Fit for the Future”, and the forthcoming 10-year workforce plan, due in the spring—we are now in the spring, so hopefully very soon—provide a real opportunity to optimise the AHP contribution for the years ahead, including by supporting AHPs to work at the top of their skills. As a Department, we are clear that the three shifts that patients and the public need—more care in the community, a stronger focus on prevention and better use of digital and data—must be delivered in day-to-day services. AHPs will be central to making that happen.

As we have heard, AHPs make up the third largest workforce in the NHS. They include physiotherapists, occupational therapists, radiographers, speech and language therapists, paramedics, dietitians, podiatrists, and arts therapists, among others. They work across hospital, community, primary care, mental health and education settings, bringing regulated, evidence-based practice that supports faster access, better outcomes and better value for the taxpayer.

The contribution of AHPs is not confined to any single service line. AHPs assess, diagnose, treat and rehabilitate. They support self-management and they work in multidisciplinary teams spanning health, social care and education. That combination—clinical autonomy alongside team-based working—is exactly what we need to redesign services around neighbourhoods and around people’s day-to-day lives.

First, on the shift to community, AHPs work across neighbourhoods, primary care and community services, including in people’s homes. They prevent avoidable admissions and they help people leave hospital sooner and recover well. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists support rehabilitation and independent living. Paramedics are increasingly part of urgent community response and neighbourhood teams, helping people get the right care, first time, closer to home.

Secondly, on the shift to prevention, prevention is fundamental to AHP practice, as we have heard. AHPs support earlier intervention for long-term conditions. They play a key role in falls prevention, respiratory disease and musculoskeletal health, and in improving population wellbeing. That work helps people stay well and independent, and it reduces pressure on urgent and emergency care and on hospital waiting lists. That contribution aligns directly with the Government’s work and health agenda.

By providing early intervention and rehabilitation, AHPs help people with long-term conditions, disability or injury to remain in, return to and thrive in work. We heard no better example of the role that they play than in the very moving speech by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). I thank him for sharing his experience and I hope he is still enjoying playing with his son. It is good to have him in the Chamber being able to articulate that experience, which is not easy to do. Whether supporting recovery after illness, managing pain and fatigue, or enabling reasonable adjustments and independence, AHPs reduce avoidable time away from employment and help more people to remain economically active, benefiting individuals, employers and the wider economy.

Thirdly, on the shift to digital, AHPs are helping to lead the adoption of digital tools to improve access and continuity. That ranges from imaging and diagnostic technologies led by radiographers, to virtual rehabilitation, remote monitoring and data-enabled triage. Alongside shared care records, these approaches can support safer, more efficient and more personalised care. Remote consultations should be used where appropriate.

Across each of those shifts, AHPs also make an important contribution to mental health and wider wellbeing. Occupational therapists support recovery and independence, speech and language therapists help to address communication needs that can affect engagement, and arts therapies, which we heard about, including art, music and drama therapy, offer clinically led support. As was well articulated by many, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), those skills in neighbourhood teams can help to provide earlier, more joined-up care, including for children and young people.

I place particular emphasis on children and young people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock did so ably, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. AHPs play a vital role in early identification, assessment and intervention, supporting communication, mobility, sensory needs, mental wellbeing and participation in education and community life. Speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physios and others work alongside families and schools so that children can develop, learn and thrive, meeting their needs before they escalate.

For children with SEND, timely access to AHP support is fundamental. Delays affect speech and language development, social interaction and educational attainment, and they can place additional pressure on families and carers. That is why work is already in train with the Department for Education, NHS England, integrated care boards and partners in local government to strengthen community speech and language therapy and other AHP provision. Our aim is earlier support closer to home and better, joined-up services.

I recognise that many hon. Members will understandably focus on the current access and waiting times, particularly for speech and language therapy. We as constituency MPs all recognise that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, that is critical to achieving the Government’s ambition.

More broadly, in neighbourhoods, AHPs support people of all ages to avoid deterioration and to recover well through rapid assessment, rehabilitation and support management. That point was well made by the hon. Members for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade). Working alongside GPs, community nursing, social care, mental health services and the voluntary sector, they help prevent complications, reduce frailty and improve long-term condition management, easing pressure on acute services, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) rightly said. I thank her for her support for George Eliot hospital as it improves its services for her constituents.

Delivering those shifts depends on having the right AHP workforce in the right place. That includes those smaller AHP professions such as podiatry, orthoptics, and prosthetics and orthotics whose specialist skills are essential to prevention, independence and quality of life. Through our work with system leaders and professional bodies, we will continue to support education and training routes to improve retention and enable new ways of working across systems so that people can access specialist expertise when they need it.

As part of enabling AHPs to work at the top of their skills—that is what we want—we are also taking forward work to increase their ability to prescribe medicines where it is safe and appropriate to do so. That point was well made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney); others noted that duplication issue. I confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles)—I thank her for her expertise in operating department practitioners—that that does include ODPs.

We must also address variation in access, including in rural and underserved areas. Neighbourhood delivery models, stronger integration with local authorities and the voluntary sector, and sensible use of digital services can all help broaden reach while maintaining safe, personalised care for those who need face-to-face support.

AHPs bring the clinical skills and professional leadership to redesign pathways, strengthen neighbourhood teams and intervene earlier so that people receive effective care in the right place at the right time. My focus as the lead Minister for the workforce plan in the Department of Health and Social Care is to support systems to deliver those priorities. As part of that, I work closely with the chief allied health professions officer—it was news both to her and to me that there is concern about her ongoing role—and will continue to do so. I thank her for her help so far—indeed, including in preparing for this debate.

The 10-year plan set the direction to rebuild the NHS, but it absolutely depends on all our staff to deliver it. The long-term workforce plan produced by the previous Government essentially looked at supply, but it did not look at future service models, it did not look at the role of technology, it did not ensure sustainability for the future and it did not base itself on future workforce models. That is some of the reason why we have problems with, for example, bottlenecks and frustration—particularly for young people coming out of their training—in not being able to get into the right roles in the right places. That is part of the problem that we need to address with the workforce plan, which we will bringing forward in the spring, so that we ensure patients and the public have the services they deserve, and particularly so that young people and children get the best start in life. I look forward to bringing forward those plans.

I have been asked again for several meetings—it is always nice to be popular for meetings—and I look forward to working with people as we bring forward that plan. We are working closely with all representatives of the sector—I know that there is a lot of interest in this work—and I very much look forward to working with hon. Members in the House as we go forward with delivering the plan.

[Jen Craft]

I really appreciate the Minister giving way—I know that she was concluding her speech. She obviously cannot reveal the contents of the workforce plan before it is published, but particularly on paediatric care, can I ask specifically for reassurance that there is something in mind for the plan when it comes to servicing the SEND Experts at Hand provision? That will be key to delivering the White Paper aims and key to young people’s life chances. We hope to be able to see that soon.

[Karin Smyth]

I was literally on my last words, so let me go back. My hon. Friend tempts me to reveal more about the workforce plan. As I said, we are not waiting for the plan to work with our colleagues across the Department for Education, NHS England, locally in ICBs and so on to ensure that we deliver on that ambition. We will of course set out the overarching plan and where we want to have people in the future. I look forward to working with her and others on how that will work. We certainly want to engage with colleagues across the piece.

As my hon. Friend knows, the SEND White Paper—we all know this through our constituency work—is central to that and to the Government’s wider ambitions. We are due to publish the plan in the spring; I look forward to doing so very soon. I look forward to working with hon. Members on that, and I thank them for the debate and their contributions this afternoon.

Maternity Commissioner

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for responding so ably on behalf of the petitioners. That thousands of people wanted us to talk about this subject, many of whom will be watching—many are in the Public Gallery—demonstrates how important the issue is and how it touches so many of our constituents. I am grateful to my own constituents for signing the petition.

I place on record my thanks to Theo Clarke, who is also in the Gallery, who did a lot of work in this area when she was an MP, based on her own experiences. I agree with the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) that, by detailing injuries and raising some of the taboos, she did a great service to other women. I also thank Louise Thompson, also in the Gallery, for the time and effort that she has put into campaigning for improvements in maternity care following her own experiences. All the organisations that work on behalf of women, bringing forward their stories to national attention, do a great service—it is not an easy thing to do, and we thank them for it.

The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), and my hon. Friends the Members for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) and for Shipley (Anna Dixon) all highlighted their constituents’ experiences. To be clear, the Secretary of State leads on this work directly, and a meeting has been set with Louise and Theo to discuss the issue of a maternity commissioner more thoroughly. I encourage both Theo and Louise to continue to engage with the national investigation chaired by Baroness Amos. Their campaigning, along with that of so many others, has led the Secretary of State to directly provide the leadership himself, ensuring that the issue gets attention. We look forward to Baroness Amos’s recommendations.

As many Members have said, the vast majority of births are safe, and there are some outstanding examples of care in the NHS. But where things do go wrong, it can have a devastating impact on women and their families, who are at their most vulnerable when giving birth. We are fighting systemic issues, entrenched inequalities in maternity care, a failure to learn from mistakes, and culture and leadership issues.

It is appalling, as we have heard again in this debate, how in the 21st century in Britain there could be such a difference in outcomes for mothers from different ethnicities and for those from deprived backgrounds, not least in constituencies such as mine. That was a point ably made, as ever, by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who, in leading the APPG, does an amazing amount of work to highlight the issue. I confirm to her that we remain committed to setting a target to close that mortality gap, and will be informed by Baroness Amos’s recommendation. The issue of deprivation and ethnicity differences was also raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Paul Waugh) and for Worthing West (Dr Cooper). That issue is why the Secretary of State has launched the national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal care, chaired by Baroness Amos. She is bringing together the findings from past reviews and local rapid reviews, and new evidence from families and staff, into one clear national set of recommendations.

As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe said, previous issues and scandals have produced many recommendations, including, as we have heard, well over 700 recommendations on maternity care since 2015. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley reminded us, some of the information from those investigations has been available for well over a decade.

We know what needs fixing, but changes to processes and procedures here and there are not enough. There is a risk that some recommendations might fix the symptoms, but not the underlying causes. Many colleagues have talked about culture. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae): we cannot keep going round in the same cycle. There is an underlying cultural issue, and systemic change needs to happen. I commend my hon. Friend for the work that he does on the APPG and for sharing the loss that he and his family suffered. That loss is informing that work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) also talked about that culture and the need for deeper questions. Other Members talked about the need to speak up. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale, who highlighted the importance of that culture of encouraging people to speak up.

[Anna Dixon]

Does the Minister agree that training obstetricians and midwives together as a team is an important part of creating that unified culture that we know is so important to underpin safety for mothers and babies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Karin Smyth]

I agree. That is an important point about the culture in clinical roles and clinical leadership within the secondary care setting and across the entire pathway of supporting women. As part of our 10-year plan, we want to put patients across all parts of the NHS front and centre by building services around people instead of expecting people to build their lives around services.

In February, Baroness Amos published her interim report to share the insights she has gathered so far. She and her team have met with hundreds of families as part of the local investigations, and a national call for evidence from women and families has recently concluded. The surveys were open for eight weeks, hearing from women and families across the country about their experiences of maternity and neonatal care. Over 11,000 responses have been submitted.

A separate call for evidence for those who work in the maternity and neonatal pathway was also held recently. The workforce call for evidence received more than 9,000 responses from across 124 trusts. Baroness Amos’s final report, including one coherent single set of national recommendations, will be published in June.

Some of the women and families who have fed into the national investigation will have suffered terrible loss and harm. This subject is just about the hardest that any woman could ever talk about, and I want to thank all of those who have had the courage to share what they have been through. I thank again my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) for the inspiration that she has provided by, first, getting herself here, and then continuing to use her voice and doing it so well during her time in Parliament.

All those women and their families deserve to know that their voices will be heard and that action will be taken. That is why the Government have launched their new maternity and neonatal taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State. It will be the taskforce’s job to translate the investigation’s final recommendations into action. The taskforce will also hold the system to account for improving outcomes and experiences for women and their families. It is all very well coming up with more reports, but we have had enough of those. The taskforce will develop an action plan so that recommendations from the investigation do not gather dust on a shelf. The taskforce held its first meeting on 24 March and it was very positive and constructive.

The terms of reference have been agreed, with meetings every six to eight weeks going forward. The taskforce is made up of experts and key partners from across the maternity and neonatal sector as well as from the wider health sector. It includes representatives from harmed and bereaved families, frontline clinicians, academics and royal colleges—those who can speak directly to health equity and international expertise. The voices of families, and women in particular, are paramount throughout this process. The taskforce will be supported by several expert reference groups, at least five of which include representatives from harmed or bereaved families. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood Forest that it is important that we get this right and work across this field, so that this becomes a once-and-for-all piece of work.

I think we all want to end the cycle of recommendations that do not deliver, and we have heard a lot about that this afternoon. That is what the taskforce is designed to do. It will ensure that the systemic and national changes we need to see are achieved following the investigation’s final report and recommendations, but we are not sitting on our hands until we get to that report. A number of initiatives are already in place to improve experiences and outcomes in maternity and neonatal care. We have already recruited more than 800 more midwives and begun investing more than £140 million to address critical safety risks on the maternity estate, and we are rolling out programmes to tackle discrimination, racism and avoidable brain injuries. We will improve the NHS consistently week on week, month on month and year on year.

The renewed women’s health strategy, which was published last week, will tackle head on the injustices women face. In that strategy, we acknowledged much of what we have heard during this debate, including the existence of medical misogyny, the fact that women are not listened to and the fact that the culture needs to change. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) noted, it is important that women have choice.

The strategy sets out how we will focus relentlessly on delivering women’s priorities. The challenge for this Government over the next couple of years is not just to build on the progress we are already making but to accelerate it. I want women who signed the petition to know that we have heard them loud and clear. We know that there is so much more that needs to be done, but I ask that they do not judge us on the strategies we publish or the people we appoint—we must be judged by our results. Baroness Amos has given us the blueprint for making things better, and the taskforce will hold us to account. We will not just have one person driving action; there will be 18 of them.

In the meantime, we will not make significant commitments that pre-empt the outcome of the investigation, which we will have in just two months’ time. If Baroness Amos wants to recommend, for example, a maternity commissioner, then we will consider that carefully. The taskforce, with the Secretary of State chairing it to drive accountability, will deliver the action that we all need to see.

Women’s Health Strategy

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

With permission, I will make a statement on the Government’s renewed women’s health strategy.

The NHS was founded on the principle of equality and the right care for everyone, whenever they need it, but there is no getting away from the fact that it has failed to live up to that founding promise. For too long, women have been left to navigate a confusing system, fighting to get the basic care they deserve, and under-represented in health research. Above all, women’s voices and choices have been dismissed, and it is truly shocking how often women have been ignored when telling medical professionals about their pain. From pelvic mesh to endometriosis, we are expected to put up with pain as our lot in life, as if it were normal. But it is not normal, and since coming into office this Government have taken a number of measures to improve women’s health.

We have taken action to bring down gynaecology waiting lists, introduced menopause questions into routine health checks, made the morning-after pill available for free at high street pharmacies, stood up a rapid and independent investigation into maternity services, and introduced Jess’s rule, so that GP teams have to “reflect, review and rethink” if a patient presents three times with the same or escalating symptoms.

The blunt reality is that the NHS is failing women and girls on even the most basic measures of healthcare. Indeed, we do not treat all women equally either. The wealthiest 10% of women live almost 10 years longer than the poorest 10%, while the most deprived spend over a third of their lives in bad health—something I see starkly in my constituency of Bristol South. Disabled women experience poorer outcomes, and we should recognise the additional disadvantage faced by black and Asian women, who face the double discrimination of racism and misogyny all at once.

Our renewed women’s health strategy will address those and other glaring injustices. It will give women and girls faster care from a health system that actually listens. It will make it simpler and faster for them to access the care they need the first time they ask for it, and it will make sure that the latest innovations work for women, ranging from reproductive and maternal health to menopause and chronic conditions. Of course, every day women are receiving outstanding, compassionate care from our dedicated NHS staff, but being ignored, gaslit, humiliated and disrespected are all-too-common experiences for far too many. More than eight women in 10 say there have been times when healthcare professionals did not listen to them. Our mission is to dismantle the culture and ingrained behaviours that allow that medical misogyny to fester and grow, and that starts by listening to women.

Women’s voices and choices are the golden thread that runs through this renewed strategy. Their voices will be heard, as we work to reduce variation in how GPs listen to and respond to women, using patient survey data in a quality improvement programme. Their voices will be heard as we capture whether women have been treated with respect, kept informed, and involved in decisions about their own care. Their voices will be heard, as we co-develop new standards of care for procedures such as hysteroscopy, so that every woman has informed consent and a real choice over her pain relief.

Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced that we will do the first trial of a scheme known as patient power payments, which will cover gynaecology services. Women will get a say on whether the NHS provider should get full payment for the services women receive, based on the quality of their experience. It means that if a woman is not happy with her experience, a portion of the tariff paid to that provider would be redirected to fund improvements in the same services instead. In other words, women will have the power to kick medical misogyny where it hurts: in the budget.

All this is building on the evidence and expertise that informed the original strategy. I wish to acknowledge the intended ambition of that work, not least because it was based on the contributions of thousands of women. However, the changes that were promised have not translated into consistent improvements in access, quality of care or outcomes. Take gynaecology services. The waiting list for gynae care was north of 600,000 when we took office. Today that figure is finally moving in the right direction, but we cannot make as much progress as we would like because the system simply was not designed with women in mind.

I pay tribute to Baroness Merron, who has led this work on behalf of the Government. As she made clear in her foreword, this system was not designed in such a way—to be fair to Nye Bevan, in 1948 he was largely thinking about working men who were dying early in their sixties from the awful consequences of poor work, with some support for maternity services. We need to change that. We will support integrated care boards to introduce a single point of access for all non-urgent referrals to gynaecology and women’s health services, to speed up access. We will redesign the most common clinical pathways for heavy periods, menopause and urogynaecology, to remove unnecessary delays. Women with fibroids and endometriosis will be listened to at first presentation. They will be seen faster, and offered clear information through our new virtual hospital, NHS Online.

Women’s health pathways are being prioritised in NHS Online, and menopause and menstrual health services will be among the first to go live when it becomes operational this year. There will be a relentless focus on reducing women’s pain, improving standards, and reducing variation in both procedural and chronic pain management, including for chronic pelvic pain. We will launch a new programme to help young girls grow up understanding their menstrual health and know when to seek help.

From gynaecology to pain relief, our renewed strategy takes forward the work of the previous Government, and goes further and faster to fill the holes they left. It has only been made possible by the record £26 billion in funding for the NHS that was secured by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, the first woman to hold that office. All that will be underpinned by an NHS that finally listens with respect, dignity and compassion to the voices and choices of every woman and every girl, every time. That is not least with the creation of the women’s voices partnership, which is a new space for organisations representing women, giving them a direct line to Whitehall to inform national decision-making. The partnership will have a particular focus on those women who are most excluded from traditional services, and through it we will ensure that women’s voices help to shape the long-term direction of NHS reform.

Unlike the original strategy that was based on an outdated model of care, this renewed strategy maps across the three shifts in our 10-year plan for health. The shift from sickness to prevention will mean that women can better understand and act on their risk of conditions such as breast cancer and diabetes. The shift from hospital to community will mean services designed around women’s lives, with much faster access to diagnosis and treatment. The shift from analogue to digital will mean that women will avoid long waiting lists for painful conditions through NHS Online. Within two years we will launch a new challenge fund, backing the most promising women’s health technology start-ups, with a focus on tackling health inequalities in community settings. We are embedding new sex and gender policies into studies through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, so that findings are genuinely representative and no woman is left behind by science.

As every woman hearing this statement knows, to fully exercise power over our lives we need to be at the top of our game, both mentally and physically. We also know that women’s health has been neglected for too long. It therefore falls to this Government to restore the founding promise of our national health service, and to deliver the right care for everyone when they need it. From the classroom to the clinic, our renewed women’s health strategy promises a fairer, healthier future for women and girls everywhere, acting on women’s voices and choices, transforming NHS performance in services that matter most to women, supporting all women to live healthier lives, and creating an approach to research and development that works for and empowers women. We are designing the system to fit around women’s lives. This will not be a strategy that sits around gathering dust on a shelf, because women are counting on us, and we will not let them down.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I am glad to see that the much-delayed women’s health strategy is finally here, and I thank the Minister for her work on that and for advance sight of her statement. I am particularly pleased that Ministers have pledged to prioritise medical health conditions such as endometriosis and to continue the roll-out of the HPV testing that we piloted.

Today it is one year since the For Women Scotland judgment in the Supreme Court confirmed that sex is biological sex. At the time the Secretary of State told the public:

“We will be issuing guidance in the coming weeks before the summer”.

To be fair to him, he did not say which summer. This week, a Minister told the House that the guidance on single-sex spaces could not be published under purdah rules until after the local elections. Will the Minister explain why it is okay to announce policy on other aspects of women’s health but not on single-sex provision in the NHS?

I find it remarkable that the Minister has the audacity to talk about women harmed by pelvic mesh when, after almost two years in office, the Government have still not responded to the Hughes report. When do they intend to do so?

I was disappointed not to find a commitment in the strategy to the lobular breast cancer moon shot project. Will the Minister give us a timeline for what I understand is a commitment to that project by the Government?

The Minister talked about waiting lists. While it is welcome that gynaecology waiting lists have fallen in the past year by 1.9%, for those requiring some sort of procedure or admission, waiting lists are 4.5% higher than they were a year ago. One way to make waiting lists shorter is to not start counting until someone has been waiting for a few days already—more targets can certainly be hit that way—so will the Minister clear something up for me? The Government have decided to prevent GPs from directly referring patients to consultants, insisting that they request advice from consultant-led teams instead. If the consultant then decides to offer an appointment, the clock starts, but that will be a few days after the original request is received, making the waiting time a few days shorter. This is where it gets really confusing: the Minister for Care said that the rules are going to change so that the clock will start when the advice request is received, so that patient waiting times are accurately reflected, but the Minister for Secondary Care has said that that will only happen from October.

Who is right? Do the Government intend to try and fiddle the figures by making people’s waits look shorter between now and the autumn? Given that we have heard different answers from two different Ministers, do they not know what is going on? Or can they confirm that with their new process and with immediate effect waiting times will be calculated from the moment that the advice and guidance request is received, in the same way as happens with referrals now?

The first chapter of the strategy is about acting on women’s voices and listening to women, which of course is welcome, but the Government plan to abolish Healthwatch in favour of listening to organisations. Why are the views of organisations that may or may not accurately represent the voices of women more generally being prioritised, and the voices of women themselves being somewhat deprioritised?

In the strategy, the Government commit to increasing capacity for surgical—in other words, later—abortions. They commit to making the morning after pill available free from pharmacies; they have made the oral contraceptive pill available from pharmacies too, and they have said that they will improve workforce capacity to provide long-acting reversible contraception. At a time when sexually transmitted infections are on the rise, with potential significant short-term and long-term consequences for women, there is no mention of condoms in the strategy. Given that some men can be reluctant to use condoms and there is discussion of eliminating misogyny throughout the document, will the Minister explain the choice not to include those too?

Another issue I want to raise is that of fracture liaison services. On entering Government, the Secretary of State said that one of his first jobs would be to establish universal fracture liaison services by 2030, yet that is moving at such a slow pace that he will not meet his target. Will the Minister set out how many of the dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry—DEXA—scanners are new, how many are replacements and how many will be used to set up new fracture liaison services?

There are many more questions that I can ask, but I understand that I have run out of time. In summary, while there are a few good points, it has taken a long time to produce a strategy that is rather disappointing. Women deserve much better.

[Karin Smyth]

It is hard to know where to start. I heard the word “welcome” somewhere in the hon. Lady’s remarks, so thanks for that.

In launching what we call a “renewed strategy” we have given credit to the previous strategy, which we welcomed when we were in opposition. However, on issues where there could be cross-party agreement, from going to war to the women’s health strategy, the Conservatives’ modus operandi is now to give nothing for us to work on together on behalf of the people who we represent. It is disappointing that they choose to start on a negative and really they could have done better.

In opposition, we welcomed the initiative to have a women’s health strategy and we supported that work going forward, which has led to the publication of this renewed strategy, because the diagnosis of many of the issues was right. However, as I have made clear, we are upending the system because for decades the health service was built around the work and health needs of men and the predominance of men working in the system, despite the fact that 77% of our nursing staff are women. We are upending that to put women’s voices and choices front and centre, including control of the budget and through NHS Online. Those are the game changers.

The Conservatives do not recognise the total game-changing nature of NHS Online in facilitating services for women wherever they live across the country, whether they live near highly specialised centres, such as those that I am privileged to have in my city of Bristol, in the coastal and rural communities represented by Members from across the House, or near tertiary centres. Any woman, from any part of our country, can access NHS Online and have that specialist service. We are trialling that with gynaecology. They will then get support from our rapidly expanding community diagnostic centres, about whose expansion we made an announcement this week, in order to get quicker diagnosis and the support that they need, closer to home in their neighbourhood health services.

I am happy to respond to the other issues that the hon. Lady raises, including the For Women Scotland judgment, and to set out the work that we have had to do to clear up the mess that the Conservatives left. Everything that happened to women under that system happened on the watch of the Conservative Government, from self ID to the issues at the Tavistock and everything else. There was a lack of rules, a lack of governance and a lack of clarity, and they did not take control. That is the mess that we inherited from the Conservative Government.

The Minister for Women and Equalities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), is doing an excellent job: she is made of steel and good experience, and she has had to navigate a difficult landscape. The Conservatives understand the rules of purdah like the rest of us, so let us not pretend that they do not. My right hon. Friend will be laying that guidance as soon as she can after the election.

I will go on to talk about the DEXA scanners that we are investing in and fracture liaison services bringing people together, which were promises in our manifesto. This strategy is about specialists coming together and working together in fracture liaison services and women’s health hubs. Those have led the way among clinicians about how we can work better for women. That is why we are building on and expanding them, and it is disappointing that the Conservatives do not want to work with us on that.

[Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the women’s health strategy. I recently visited the Navigating Our Womanhood Together bus in Dudley, which supports women’s health from menstruation to menopause, and I look forward to more such initiatives being delivered as part of the strategy in my constituency. Will the Minister set out how the strategy will harness allied health professionals, including specialist physiotherapists, to support pelvic health, such as incontinence, prolapse and post-natal care?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion in this area. We are so pleased to have her clinical experience and no day goes past without her representing her own speciality of physiotherapy and AHPs more generally. She is absolutely right that those professionals have led the way in looking at women’s care and it is important that women feel confident with that physiotherapy advice. I think that she will be pleased to see the developments that will come from the women’s health strategy and those that will come when we bring forward our workforce plan, which will have AHPs front and centre working in women’s neighbourhood healthcare.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome the strategy, and its specific recognition of the socioeconomic and racial disparities in women’s healthcare, which it is important to put front and centre. We also appreciate the specific recognition of endometriosis and similar conditions. My partner, Emma, suffers from endometriosis, and on many occasions I have seen her unable to stand up or barely get off the sofa, having been told for years that her symptoms are completely normal and that there is nothing wrong with her. Given that at least one in 10 women suffer from endometriosis and there are over 500,000 people on gynaecology waiting lists, clearly her experience is not unique.

The picture around maternity safety is deeply troubling. Maternal mortality has increased by over 20% in the past 15 years, and there have recently been some high-profile media discussions about women and babies being let down, sometimes with devastating consequences. That is why the Liberal Democrats have been calling for one-to-one midwifery care and specialist doctors on every unit.

I welcome the Government’s specific commitment on treatments for morning sickness. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) has campaigned on that issue for a long time, and it is right that we end the postcode lottery for these medicines. The condition can be debilitating for some people, and it is not fair that women have different experiences simply because of where they live.

Given that this is not the first women’s health strategy to be brought to this place—the previous Government brought one through in 2022—and the fact that many women we speak to do not feel that there has been any meaningful change, a lot of people are saying that we cannot just keep announcing strategies while women are waiting for basic care. Given the failure of the last Government to deliver meaningful change, can we have reassurances that this will not simply be another strategy announcement and that women will feel a difference in the care that they receive?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the Liberal Democrat representative for his comments—frankly, that is the way it is done.

Let me turn to some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. May I take the opportunity to mention endometriosis in particular? There have long been campaigns on that issue in this place from many women and men such as him talking not on behalf of their partners, but for them about the suffering. That is all very welcome.

I commend the work of Sir David Amess, a former Member of the House whose plaque is behind us, and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) in chairing the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis. When in opposition in 2017 or 2018, I had a member of staff—I hope she does not mind my saying so—who opened my eyes to this issue. Persistence works. We have got to where we are by supporting women’s voices across the country, and that is front and centre in this strategy.

On the hon. Gentleman’s wider point, I am sure that when he gets all the way through the strategy, he will see that there is a list of 102 actions—if I remember rightly—with dates aligned to them. I am sure that all hon. Members will look at that. I notice that my friend Baroness Merron is in the Gallery; she will be keeping everybody’s feet to the fire, including the Secretary of State’s, to deliver on this work. That list is in the strategy, and we wanted to set it out very clearly. We are waiting for the roll-out of NHS Online during the summer, and seeing how that works will be a litmus test for us, so I very much welcome the hon. Gentleman’s challenging us on that.

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome the women’s health strategy, and I congratulate both Baroness Merron and my hon. Friend the Minister on their work on it. Since its publication yesterday, my inbox has received a number of emails from women in my constituency who suffer from endometriosis.

I wanted to highlight that, because it is very rare that constituents contact us on the publication of a Government report to comment on its contents so quickly. That shows what an absolute hotbed this issue is and how profoundly it affects people. They speak of sometimes having decades of debilitating pain, going into debt while looking for treatment, losing housing, and suffering from relationships being impacted, their jobs being undermined and experiencing a loss of income, but overall they talk about how the condition is just not recognised and how their pain goes unheard.

One of my constituents said that women need better understanding, better support and better options, and seeing that set out in black and white in a Government report has really meant so much to women. Will the Minister join me in thanking these women for their bravery in continuing to raise their voices despite their continued experience?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is unusual to receive emails saying good things. There will be challenges in this work, but it speaks to a wider issue. Many of us as women experience much of this ourselves, and we have women in Parliament who are able to articulate that. There are some fantastic women clinicians whom we have been pleased to work with and who have really pushed forward those voices as they have become more senior in the medical and clinical professions to help us with those clinical pathways. We have been able to build on all that in bringing this strategy forward.

May I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State? He was on various media yesterday and he has been working with people such as influencers to give voice to those women. I think that this is an important part of our democracy. It is worth emailing MPs—I am sorry if that elicits more emails to other Members and to my staff—because we listen and we are engaged. It matters when people raise these issues in our surgeries and come forward with them. Sometimes policy development and getting action is a struggle for all of us; it is tough and takes a long time. The process of politics sometimes takes too long, but those women have made this happen, and I thank them for it.

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

I want to ask the Minister about a particular area of women’s health and how this strategy might impact on it. This is a very personal issue for me and my wife, regarding the pathways and support for women who have colostomies or ileostomies and have lifelong stoma care. I place on record my thanks to Mr Arnab Bhowmick, who is my wife’s very long-term consultant and has performed two major surgeries on Caroline—he is known as “the fantastic Mr B” in our house and to many of his patients. We know that on those pathways and in the decisions leading up to making the decision to have a stoma, putting it off can put people’s lives at risk. How people cope with a stoma afterwards has very unique elements for women—that can be around periods, fertility and pregnancy, or around the menopause later in life. How does the Minister think the strategy will help women like my wife, the friends she has met in hospital and others on those pathways?

[Karin Smyth]

I really thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the sometimes taboo subject of stoma and stoma care and for highlighting the complexity of that for women. I send my best wishes to his wife. I did not get the name of her clinician, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for getting their name on the record; that matters when people are dealing with such an intimate sort of care.

Again, bringing voices forward is a key part of this work. The thing to bear in mind in the development of this strategy is that it is predicated on the 10-year plan and on bringing care closer to home. For example, people who have stoma and stoma care sometimes have quick questions and do not need to make an appointment to go and see somebody else, with lots of rapid appointments to and from a hospital, and all the parking, travelling and so on.

There are ways in which we can use online services and particularly neighbourhood services, where people are closer to home, to facilitate the management of care of things like stoma after people have come through or are in ongoing care. That is the sort of place where we have voices and experience informing local care, which will look different in different geographies depending on the other facilities available. I ask the hon. Gentleman to keep working with us on how that experience works out.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I welcome this strategy, having worked on maternity and medical misogyny on the Health and Social Care Committee. I will bring up the thorny issue of sexual health. In a recent sitting of the Committee, we heard that a third of sexual health doctors are set to retire in the next three years and that there are only 14 training places. The key to ensuring that we are looking after women’s sexual health is to have a pathway for new doctors. Will the Minister look at that issue and at what we can do to resolve the training blockages?

[Karin Smyth]

Yes, of course. The retirement age is a constant issue that we need to look at across a number of professions, and I am happy to come back to my hon. Friend on that. As part of our workforce plan, we are looking in particular at retaining the expertise that we have, as well as at recruiting people into new roles.

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

On behalf of the newly established APPG on urinary tract infections, which I am proud to co-chair alongside the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), I warmly welcome the Minister’s statement and this strategy. The APPG welcomes the acknowledgement that women’s health has been neglected for far too long, and we cautiously welcome the commitments to redesign urogynaecology pathways and fund a specialist centre in each region.

On behalf of the many women and, heartbreakingly, children who suffer from chronic urinary tract infections, can the Minister confirm whether those commitments cover the treatment of acute, recurrent and chronic UTIs? Will she consider our requests for support to establish agreed clinical definitions for the different types of UTIs so that we can inform long-overdue updates to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and finally end the scandal of sufferers being ignored and gaslit by medical professionals, which has happened for far too long?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), who I know cannot be here today. She has used her expertise to drive forward recognition of UTIs and incontinence—another taboo subject. We have previously had a very good debate in this Chamber on that issue, and that has all informed what we are saying.

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to move into some clinical definitions and clinical pathways. I am not going to do that, but I am very keen to hear about the work that the APPG is doing and its expertise. We will continue to hear from it and about the work that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South are leading to ensure that we make this work in reality. That is absolutely central to the strategy.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s renewed women’s health strategy and their efforts to tackle the ethnic disparities that still exist in the healthcare system. Placing women’s voices at the heart of the strategy is absolutely the right approach, but does my hon. Friend the Minister recognise that there are still persistent gaps that will require robust, targeted interventions if we are to truly address some of the racial barriers that black women still face within the healthcare system, and can she say a little bit about how the strategy will seek to address those gaps?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work she has done, both on maternity and on sight loss, and for people generally. She is a great advocate for making sure that those voices are heard, both from her own experience and through her advocacy. We are bringing together a voices group—apologies, I cannot remember exactly what we called it in the end—so that there is direct representation in Whitehall at a national level. That is one of the things we wanted to make sure was included in the strategy, and my hon. Friend Baroness Merron has worked assiduously with stakeholder groups and their representatives to ensure that we make that work, as well as on the development of online services and the work to bring things into neighbourhoods. I am very committed to working with her to make sure that that happens.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I commend the Minister on this women’s health strategy, and particularly on action 59, which is to invest in the women’s maternity and neonatal estate. I am also grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet me next week about power cuts at Eastbourne district general hospital, which have knocked out the maternity unit at various times. I am really disappointed, though, that although the invitation was originally extended to me and two guests—who included our chief executive—that has been withdrawn. Can the Minister confirm that those guests can attend, so that we can discuss how to put this strategy into action in Eastbourne?

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Member is referring to a meeting as part of my ministerial surgery, which is for Members. I will be happy to see him next week.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister and the noble Lady Merron on bringing forward this renewed strategy. My constituent Jodie Goodwin has recently been refused a hysterectomy for reasons of funding, despite the medical and surgical advice that that is what she requires to deal with her health issues. Can the Minister advise me on whether the strategy will deal with matters like this and with Jodie’s issue in particular, and would she perhaps make some time available to discuss this case in detail?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the case of her constituent Jodie and many others—such cases will be familiar to many people, and they are of course unacceptable. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that case further.

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement and the strategy. I want to speak specifically about one constituent who has contacted me, who has waited over 200 days without receiving the results of a gynaecological test—200 days of anxiety, uncertainty and delays to her treatment. Please forgive me while I read her actual words:

“this complaint is not simply about one patient having an unfortunate experience. It concerns what I believe to be a broader and deeply concerning failure in the way menstrual and gynaecological pain is recognised, assessed, investigated, and acted upon”.

I completely agree with her. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that yesterday’s renewed women’s health strategy allows us to commit to streamlining and improving gynaecological care, and can she tell me more about how she believes this will make a real difference for my constituents?

[Karin Smyth]

Again, my hon. Friend raises a shocking case on behalf of her constituents, and I agree with her and her constituent. Access to diagnostics is a key part of our 10-year health plan, which is why, as we were able to announce this week, we are rolling out more community diagnostic centres to improve diagnostic capacity more generally. I am also working with the Minister for patient safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), to look at how clinical pathways can be streamlined. That work is informing how we are developing NHS Online and making sure that we shorten those pathways, as my hon. Friend has rightly called for. All those cases—including, unfortunately, her constituent’s experience—have informed that work. We are linking our work on the 10-year-plan with that work and putting women, gynaecology and menstrual health front and centre as trailblazers, because unfortunately, those are the areas in which this work is needed. That is what this strategy does.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Minister knows, I have long campaigned around mental health. The strategy highlights that women disproportionately have poor mental health, and I welcome that recognition. However, action 49 says:

“we will improve mental health support for women and girls”,

but it does not say what the Government will do. Will they produce a strategy for delivering on this, and how will progress against this document be measured, so that we can hold the Government to account?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The document contains a long list of actions, with clear dates alongside them, so that she and others—including her constituents—can see what we are saying, and can measure progress.

[Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)]

Ignored, humiliated and misdiagnosed—these are the experiences of far too many women, and far too often, those experiences have tragic consequences. There is no more depressing example of this than the women who were prescribed the banned anti-miscarriage drug diethylstilbestrol, or DES, and the struggle that they, their children and their grandchildren have had in accessing the care and support that they need and deserve. I welcome the steps this Government have taken to improve women’s health outcomes. Will the Minister consider meeting DES campaigners to ensure that their voices and experiences are part of this strategy?

[Karin Smyth]

As we know, and as is documented in the strategy, there is sadly a long list of issues that particularly affect women that have been ignored, and it has taken far too long for women to draw attention to those issues. I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister for patient safety has met DES campaigners, and we will continue to listen to and learn from their experiences as we develop the strategy.

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, I thank the ministerial team and my honourable Friend in the other place, Baroness Merron, for the focus that they have placed on that condition in the strategy, and for putting women’s voices front and centre; too often, they have been ignored. I also commend the sterling efforts and work of the late Sir David Amess and my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) to establish the APPG in 2019 and put endometriosis firmly on the parliamentary agenda. I am delighted that a new programme to improve menstrual health education for girls is included in the strategy, but does the Minister agree that there must also be menstrual health education for all clinicians, so that symptoms can be recognised at the earliest opportunity, and women and girls can get the care they need, when they need it?

[Karin Smyth]

Again, I put on record my respect and thanks to Sir David Amess and my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar for the work that they started. I could not remember the exact year—I thought it was 2017, but my hon. Friend says that it was 2019. They raised awareness of what was a taboo only a few years ago. Many of us, including me, accepted it as normal to feel pain, whatever we did. Now, we are saying—that includes clinicians—that it is not normal. We look forward to joining in the great work that my hon. Friend and others are doing to make sure that this strategy becomes a reality, and that women see that happen very quickly.

[Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I so welcome this strategy. I am quite ashamed to say that before being elected to this place, I did not know enough about women’s health issues, and in particular the issues with pelvic and vaginal mesh—the wait for treatment and the struggle to be heard—and endometriosis; people with that condition face a wait for diagnosis and a struggle for recognition. Since I was elected, I have been contacted by tens of women across Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield, who are fighting the fight for recognition of these topics on behalf of women across the country. It is because of that that I am educated enough to stand here today. Those women feel ignored and abandoned by a health service that does not care enough about women’s health issues. Will the Minister give a commitment to campaigners such as the women in Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield who have approached me that because of this strategy, they will now be heard?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He should not apologise for not knowing before; my generation of women, and many before us, were told not to talk about this. We were told not to tell anybody, and to put up with it. We were told that every month, whatever happened to us was normal, and we should crack on. A generation of men, and all of us mothers, need to talk about this, too. We welcome all allies and spokespeople. Learning is a key part of being in this place, and my hon. Friend and others are bringing the experiences of women to this campaign. The proof is in the pudding, and we will make sure that what my hon. Friend has asked for happens.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her announcement of this strategy. In particular, I welcome the fact that the strategy says that it will be made simpler and faster for women to access the care that they need the first time they ask for it. More than eight in 10 women say that there have been times when healthcare professionals did not listen to them. One such woman was my constituent Daizy Bing, who, at the age of 17, came to me to raise her concerns. She had been told by her GP that she was too young to have an endometriosis diagnosis. Thanks to my intervention, she got a gynaecological appointment, but we all know that an MP’s surgery should not be the gateway to decent healthcare. Daizy has turned her experience into academic research. Will my hon. Friend meet her, so that her insights can inform the delivery of this ambitious and game-changing strategy?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend again raises younger women’s voices; we want to continue to hear from them. Part of this strategy is about working with the Department for Education to ensure that girls—and indeed boys—are made more aware of some of these issues. The women’s voices partnership—my apologies for not quite being able to remember its name earlier—will bring women together, including younger women and girls. If her constituent is keen to be one of those advocates, we would welcome that. We are talking about having new patient-reported experience measures and patient-reported outcome measures; we will develop those pathways over the years. Through that, women will have clear ways to navigate the system, and to put their voices forward.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I thank the Ministers for this renewed women’s health strategy for England. Two of my constituents in particular—Evie Solomon, who founded HER Circle, and Shelly Lynn—will welcome the focus on medical misogyny, and they will be watching to make sure that we deliver. It was great to hear that there were influencers at the launch of the strategy yesterday. I met one of them, Milly Evans, who is a sex educator. Is there space in the women’s health strategy and the men’s health strategy for the provision of lifelong sex education, so that we have consistent, relevant and appropriate sex education for everyone who needs it? Frankly, women who have health issues still want a fulfilling and happy sex life.

[Karin Smyth]

As I said, part of this strategy is about educating girls and boys on health and bringing together all parts of education. We are keen to work in new ways with new media, and with influencers who are positive about women and women’s health, and we will continue to do so.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for her statement, and for her ongoing commitment to ensuring that women’s health is at the heart of this Government’s agenda, which is hugely important. A bit like my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan), I was shocked by the number of women from my constituency of Harlow who came forward to tell me about their terrible experiences of being gaslit, ignored and disrespected, particularly when it came to endometriosis and the pelvic mesh scandal. My constituent Belinda, when she was 36 years old, went to the GP complaining of head pains. She was told that it was nothing and was sent home. She had actually had a stroke. She was told by the GP that she could not possibly have had a stroke at the age of 36, which was obviously incorrect. What would the Minister say to women in my constituency who have long felt ignored, disrespected and gaslit because they are women?

[Karin Smyth]

Belinda’s story is shocking, and I hope that she is doing better. This strategy is, as I said, a total game changer. In particular, the renewal of this strategy, based on the previous strategy, sends a signal to the system that we will look at the experience of women and take it into account. We will look at the budgets and the return of money to the service to improve things. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday, there is nothing quite like seeing chief executives and chief finance officers suddenly notice—perhaps they had not noticed it before; they are busy sometimes—women’s clear dissatisfaction with gynaecology. The strategy sends a positive signal to improve the service, and that puts power in the hands of women.

The other real game changer is the online service. As I said, women, wherever they live, be it in Harlow, Bristol, rural Lincolnshire or coastal areas like Thanet—I have heard from Members from so many places this afternoon—will have access to online specialist treatment. There will be a further roll-out of diagnostic services, to get that diagnostic record back into neighbourhood healthcare, so that people can be treated closer to home. Building an NHS around women, women’s needs, women’s experiences—that is the game changer promised by this Labour Government.

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

As a trained science teacher, I welcome the Minister’s news that through the strategy, the Government are launching a new programme to improve education for girls about their menstrual health, with additional funding from this year to support targeted work in schools and community settings. Does the Minister agree that this programme will support girls’ knowledge of menstrual health, and when to seek healthcare?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for his expertise, and I agree that the programme will do that. When I was first told about menstrual cycles as a young girl, I was told to hide what happened, even from my father and my brother in the household, let alone my peers in school and so on. We have come a long way, and it is good to have so many good advocates to help us. Education in school is central to that.