NHS 10-Year Plan

Leigh Ingham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend and her constituents. She held—I think—four events across her community to feed into this plan, and we really valued that feedback. I hope people feel that their fingerprints are on this plan. It sets out our ambition to make this the healthiest generation of children who ever lived, whether that is through better access to mental health support and services, recognising the importance of meeting neurodiverse need, or the focus on physical activity, good diet, nutrition and access to sport, media and culture for everyone, especially children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. I hope the plan reflects the ambition we heard from my hon. Friend’s constituents.

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State and his entire team on their hard work—this document is outstanding, and I look forward to implementing it across Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages. My constituents participated in three consultation events to feed into this project, so it is really important that patient voices are all over it. A specific concern that came through was that 450 systems are used in Stafford hospital for digitisation and patient records, and they do not talk to each other, which is leading to discrepancies in patient care. Can the Secretary of State give me more information about how the improvement in digitisation will improve patient care on the frontline?

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend for her support, and her constituents for giving up their time to take part in those events, which fed directly into the plan. I hope they see their input reflected in the results. She is quite right that we need to fix those basic systems and make sure that people across different parts of the NHS are able to interface and join up care around the patient. The capital and tech investment ringfenced by the Chancellor will have a really big impact, and I hope my hon. Friend’s patients and NHS staff will begin to feel that impact.