Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Bonavia Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

9. What plans he has to reform NHS health and social care services.

[Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)]

22. What plans he has to reform NHS health and social care services.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

Before the election, we made it clear that investment and reform were needed in the NHS. The Chancellor announced the investment in the Budget, and since the general election we have confirmed the introduction of new league tables of NHS providers, with high-performing providers being given greater freedom over funding and flexibility. We are sending turnaround teams into struggling hospitals, giving the best performers greater freedoms over funding to modernise technology and equipment. We are creating a new college of executive and clinical leadership that will help to attract, keep and support the best NHS leaders. We are banning NHS trusts from using agencies to hire temporary entry-level workers in bands 2 and 3, such as healthcare assistants and domestic support workers. We are sending crack teams of top clinicians to areas with long waiting lists and high economic inactivity to improve the productivity of their clinics, and we are running a GP red tape challenge to slash bureaucracy. I could go on, because this is a Government who are walking the talk on NHS reform.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and other Members from across Medway to discuss the challenges that their part of the south-east faces, and to explain why our predecessors made promises they could not keep, with timetables that were completely fictitious and funding that runs out in March. I am really sorry for the way that communities were let down by the previous Government. This Government will not make the same mistakes.

[Kevin Bonavia]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his earlier answer. Last week, I spoke to one of my constituents, Norman Phillips, who has been an unpaid carer for his wife Ros for the past 18 years. Like many unpaid carers across Stevenage, Norman has been put through absolute hell by the previous Tory Government’s complete inaction on social care for over 14 years. Does the Secretary of State agree that unpaid carers such as Norman play a vital role in providing care, and that unpaid carers need to be at the heart of any reforms to the social care system—reforms that are much needed?

[Wes Streeting]

I, too, pay tribute to Norman and to family carers like him, who play such a vital role supporting loved ones. Through the carer’s allowance uplift in the Budget, the Chancellor announced the largest increase to the weekly earnings limit since the introduction of carer’s allowance in 1976. As well as that investment, we will have a 10-year plan for social care, and I see the care workforce, care providers and family carers as all being important partners in building that plan.

Income Tax (Charge)

Kevin Bonavia Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)]

I want to start by saying that we cannot and should not ever underestimate the power and strength of the message that having our Budget delivered by the first female Chancellor in history sends to young women and girls across the country. There should be no limit to their ambition.

In Stevenage and across the country, 14 years of Conservative rule have left a crippling cost of living crisis, record NHS waiting lists, rapidly reducing school funding and worsening public transport. I could go on, but I represent a town of aspiration. The people of my town have had their ambitions and hopes dampened by decline and held back by a broken Britain. However, this Budget sends a clear signal that Labour has started the work of getting politics to work for working people again.

One of the Labour manifesto’s most fundamental promises was to fix the foundations of our broken public services. I recently attended a local older persons day hosted by Stevenage borough council, where we talked about pensioners’ priorities. The Budget maintains the triple lock, which will be worth an extra £470 for pensioners next year, on top of the more than £900 they are receiving this year from the same commitment.

I spend a lot of time speaking to carers in my area who are looking after loved ones in testing circumstances. This Budget delivers the largest increase in the carer’s allowance since its introduction, starting the work of recognising the huge sacrifice they make. However, I know that this work will be complete only when we fundamentally reform our broken social care system, and I very much look forward to that.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kevin Bonavia]

I am afraid not.

I represent a constituency with multiple borough and district councils that have borne the brunt of 14 years of Government cuts. This Budget delivers £1.3 billion extra for local councils to provide essential services that are vital to our communities.

Fifty per cent of patients in my local NHS trust wait longer than the target treatment times, and 31% wait over four hours to be seen in A&E. Despite the heroism and hard work of NHS staff, something simply has to change. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has made the brave decision to stand up and fight for our NHS, boldly supported by our Chancellor. I greatly welcome the shift in focus from sickness to prevention, from analogue to digital, and from hospital to community. This crisis cannot be fixed in one Budget, and it may even take a few Budgets, but at least now there is hope where there was none before.