Summer Health and Resilience

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

May I welcome the Secretary of State to her place? I look forward to working with her as I have done with her predecessors. May I draw her attention to our Committee’s work on corridor care, and the correspondence between the Committee and the Minister for Secondary Care, who is in her place? I thought it was a constructive session. In our correspondence with the Department, we raised the issue of staff fatigue. Staff will understandably have questions, such as whether summer is the new winter, what now happens to the leave they were planning to take and the training they must attend, which they often cannot attend during the winter, so can she be clear with staff about that? In the letter responding to the Committee, the Department said that there are new NHS staff standards and new occupational health and wellbeing support, which is all fine, but it then says that there will be

“a continued focus on workforce sustainability through the upcoming NHS Workforce Plan.”

Where is that workforce plan?

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the hon. Lady for her work and that of her Committee. The Committee, as a result of its extensive work, has highlighted many of the issues that the Government have needed to look at and have then responded to, so I welcome its work. I look forward to giving evidence to the Committee and responding to the inquiries it has under way. One of the issues that I have asked the taskforce looking at summer pressures to consider is staffing resilience. While there were all sorts of extremely good preparations in place for summer, meaning that many areas responded well, including in July, she is right to raise the issue of staff resilience and the impact of the pattern of staff holidays—all our holidays—on planning. I take that immensely seriously.

The hon. Lady is right to raise the workforce plan. We are continuing to work to complete the workforce plan, because it is needed. We are looking at how we ensure that we have a proper workforce plan around social care and what the links should be. One key area that we want to prioritise in response to Baroness Casey’s work is to develop a proper workforce strategy for social care, alongside the work being done for the NHS.