Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Layla Moran and Wes Streeting(4 weeks ago)
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Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
What we measure is often what we end up improving, and one of the great assets of Lord Darzi’s report is the technical annex with its 330 analyses. It is incredibly useful; it is a baseline. Will the Secretary of State make sure that it is updated yearly?
Wes Streeting
That is a great constructive challenge. I am absolutely committed to transparency and to keeping that dataset updated in the way that the hon. Lady requests. We are not going to get everything right and sometimes we are not going to make progress as fast as we would like, but where that is the case we are never going to duck it or pretend that things are better than they are. The reason that we will succeed where the previous Government failed is that we are willing to face up to the challenges in the NHS rather than pretend that they do not exist.
NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation
Debate between Layla Moran and Wes Streeting(1 month ago)
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Wes Streeting
I must make progress. There are lots of speakers and little time.
Secondly, there will be a shift from sickness to prevention. It will mean that we take action to give our children a healthier and happier life, flattening the curve of rising pressures that threaten to overwhelm the NHS by building a healthier society, which will help to build a healthier economy.
Thirdly, there will be a shift from analogue to digital. Upgrading the NHS app will give patients real choice and control over their own healthcare, creating a single patient record owned by the patient and shared across the system so that every part of the NHS has a full picture of the patient that they are treating. Getting the NHS working hand in glove with our country’s leading scientists will put modern technology and equipment in the hands of NHS staff, and patients at the front of the queue for the latest treatments.
Wes Streeting
I must begin to conclude my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I see that the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care is seeking my eye. Given that I will be before her Committee soon and know where my bread is buttered, I give way.
Layla Moran
The Secretary of State is very kind indeed. I can take no credit for what I am about to say, which comes from reports on prevention and digital transformation published by the previous Select Committee, which he would do very well to look at. What those reports say is very much echoed in Lord Darzi’s report—particularly that the place-based narratives about embedding the NHS into our communities are key, as is reform of Government as a whole, and embedding health in every Department. Will he say a bit more about reform in Government, and not just reform in the NHS?
Wes Streeting
I strongly agree with the Chair of the Select Committee and commend the work of the previous Committee, to which she refers. She has certainly given me some revision for the first meeting that I will attend. To answer her question, she is absolutely right that digital transformation and place-based healthcare planning are key. This Government will have a much sharper focus on health inequalities than the previous Government did. In fact, if we consider the NHS over the past 30 or 40 years, even when it has performed well overall, and patients in every part of the country have received access to timely care, some health systems have still been more challenged than others. We need to be honest about the structural challenges in those areas. Secondly, she is absolutely right that, if we are serious about health and prevention, we need a serious cross-Government approach. That is why I am delighted that the Prime Minister’s mission-driven approach has already seen Departments coming together with a focus on prevention. That will deliver fruit.
This is the major surgery that our national health service needs over the next decade to make it fit for the future. There is no time to waste, so we have hit the ground running. We inherited a Care Quality Commission that is not fit for purpose. I was genuinely stunned to learn that one in five health and care providers has never been inspected; some hospitals have been left uninspected for a decade; and inspectors were sent to care homes when they had never met someone with dementia. The Conservatives did not think that patients would like the answers, so they stopped asking the questions. This Labour Government are different: we will be honest about the problems facing the health service, and serious about solving them. Our policy is radical candour.
Today I am delighted to announce that Sir Julian Hartley has been appointed the new chief executive of the CQC. He is a proven reformer with a track record of turning around large organisations, and I am confident that he will provide the leadership that staff in the CQC need to address this crisis, improve patient safety and restore confidence in the regulator. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so this Government are taking action to turn the regulator around. That is the difference a Labour Government make.
We inherited the farce of newly qualified GPs facing unemployment. Patients could not get a GP appointment, while GPs could not get a job, so we cut red tape, found the funding and are recruiting an extra 1,000 GPs. That is the difference a Labour Government make. We have tabled a motion to ban junk food ads targeted at children —our first step towards making our country’s children the healthiest generation that has ever lived. That is the difference a Labour Government make. Just this week, the Secretary of State for Science and Technology and I announced funding to produce new cutting-edge cancer treatments: a new blood test that can detect 12 different cancers. We are backing Britain’s scientists to save lives. That is the difference a Labour Government make.
Of course, strikes in the NHS have cost taxpayers billions. Patients saw 1.5 million operations and appointments cancelled. The Conservatives saw strikes as an opportunity to scapegoat NHS staff, so they let the strikes rage on. In fact, the shadow Health Secretary had not even bothered to meet the junior doctors since March. This Government do not exploit problems; we solve them. I called the junior doctors on day one and met them in week one, and in just three weeks, we had negotiated a deal to end the strikes. That is the difference a Labour Government make.
Those are just our first steps. Rebuilding the NHS will not be easy and it will take time, but we have done it before and we will do it again. Along with the millions of dedicated staff in health and social care across our country, this can be the generation that takes the NHS from the worst crisis in its history to build an NHS fit for the future—an NHS that is there for us when we need it, with world-class care for the many, not just the few. That is the change that Britain voted for; that is the change we will deliver together; and that change has already begun.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Layla Moran and Wes Streeting(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Wes Streeting
The Conservative party lauded that plan during the general election, when I think the public delivered their verdict on the progress that it had made. NHS dentistry is non-existent in huge parts of the country. We will stick with some aspects of the previous Government’s dental recovery plan because they are the right solutions, but there are gimmicks that we will not proceed with. We will come forward with a serious plan to reform the dental contract, which the Conservatives committed to in 2010 but failed to do in every single year of their 14 years.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I have a constituent who has been trying to get a dentist appointment for a year. They have painful abscesses, cannot sleep and cannot eat using the right side of their mouth. We need to get on with this. I note that a review of the NHS has been launched, but the British Dental Association is concerned that that review will delay the changes to NHS dentistry that are so desperately needed. Will the Secretary of State give us a timeline for when we will see change?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the hon. Member for her question and congratulate her on her re-election to the House. She is right to point to the detrimental impact that the Conservatives’ failure is having on people’s lives. In fact, in 1948, when the national health service was founded, Nye Bevan received a letter from a woman who had worked her entire life in the Lancashire cotton mills about how the dentistry she was given by the national health service had given her dignity and the freedom to associate in any company. What a tragedy that 76 years later, the Conservative party has squandered and destroyed that legacy to the point where people are suffering not just pain and agony, but the indignity of being unable to find a job and unable to socialise in polite company because they are ashamed of the state of their rotting teeth.
The hon. Member is absolutely right: Lord Darzi is conducting a review on the state of the NHS, and it will report in September. That is not preventing us from making progress, talking to the BDA and working within the Department and across the sector to get those 700,000 appointments up and running as a matter of urgency. I look forward to reporting the progress to her and other right hon. and hon. Members.
Access to GP Services and NHS Dentistry
Debate between Layla Moran and Wes Streeting(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will conclude my speech by talking about what a Labour Government will do, but let me answer his direct point about the range of options through which people should be able to access their GP. I value patient choice. Thinking back to my experience of accessing NHS services last year—as many people know, I did quite a lot of mystery shopping on the NHS—I had a range of interactions with GPs. Some were face-to-face. Some interactions at my GP surgery were not with my GP but with a nurse, which was entirely appropriate and much appreciated. Some of my engagements with my GP were over the telephone. I also had a video consultation with a dermatologist. I really valued that flexibility and range of approaches.
I think that the future for primary care has to be different courses for different horses. Of course, people should have a right to see their GP when they want to see their GP—I am clear about that—but there is also a range of ways in which we can offer more flexible access to GPs, particularly for working people who do not necessarily want to traipse down to the GP surgery in the middle of the afternoon if it is something that could be dealt with over the phone or on a video call.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The shadow Secretary of State is making a powerful speech. I commend in particular the point he made that people still trust their doctors. They are desperate to see them, even if it is online. A 74-year-old constituent of mine contacted me and said that he asked for an online appointment but it would take him 30 days to get there. He appreciates that the issue is not with GPs but with the Government’s lack of planning for the number of GPs who can provide that service in Oxfordshire.
Wes Streeting
The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. How is it that the NHS can be one of the largest employers in the world—it employs 1.2 million people—but does not have a workforce plan and strategy that says, “This is the workforce need that we have today, this is what the workforce need will be in the foreseeable future and, in the longer term, this is how we need to change the shape of the workforce to take into account advances in medicine and modern technology, and the changing demographics of our society”?
We gave the Government the opportunity to commission such a report when we debated the Health and Care Bill. It was supported on a cross-party basis, including by the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt)—sadly, he is not able to be with us at the moment—yet the Government voted against it. What is it about the ostrich mentality of the Secretary of State and his ministerial team—or, I suspect even more, that of the Treasury—that they would rather bury their heads in the sand, pretend there is no problem with workforce and not even count the numbers of doctors and nurses needed because they worry that the Treasury might face up to the reality of what they need to provide?