Health Bill

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

The history of the NHS shows that there is no one way of securing improvement or accountability, and that a range of different mechanisms have a role. Patient voice, patient choice, performance management—including centralised performance management—planning, democratic challenge, competition and collaboration all have a place, and it is for the Government of the day to make a judgment about the right blend of mechanisms with which to pursue their objectives. Overall, I think that the Bill represents a good attempt to do that, given the NHS that this Government inherited and their ambitions, as set out in the NHS plan. There was undoubtedly duplication between the DHSC and NHSE, and returning to the situation before 2012, when there was direct departmental oversight of the NHS, is not a radical step.

There are, of course, costs to this transition. Unfortunately, in terms of morale, I think that these costs were somewhat exacerbated by the regretful manner in which the original announcement about NHSE abolition and ICB changes were made, which did not do justice to the commitment and professionalism of impacted staff. But that does not change the fact that the Government’s overall diagnosis is correct: since the 2012 reforms, accountability has been muddied, and a total reset of regulation is required to empower NHS providers to meet the urgent health needs of the population with the resources available. However, I agree that there are significant questions about the role of HSSIB, and I hope that this issue can be resolved in Committee.

The Government have been clear that they see the future role of ICBs as strategic commissioners. That capability needs to be developed, and I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) that it needs to be done with particular care in relation to specialist services. There also needs to be a resolution of how the development of neighbourhood health services will be strategically led. ICBs must retain the capacity to work at place level, and I join others in questioning the proposal to remove local authority representation on ICBs. Combined authority representation does not suitably replace that. Mayors’ responsibilities are entirely different and do not include anything to do with social care or public health that rightly sits with councils, and we need that to be hardwired into ICB membership.

I want to end on an area of healthcare that is the subject of a manifesto commitment that is not currently in the Bill: delivering parity of esteem for mental health. It is unconscionable that waits for NHS mental health services are significantly longer than physical health waits and that, as yet, there is no specific commitment to bring them down. The Health and Care Act 2022 introduced a duty on the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on NHS mental health spend. I wonder whether, as part of this Bill, there is scope to widen that duty to include reporting on the different waiting times for physical and mental health, and to make some progress on the very welcome cross-Government mental health strategy that has recently been announced.