Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Gentleman should not believe everything he reads in the newspapers. I make no apology for trying to cut unnecessary bureaucracy in large national organisations to redeploy savings to frontline services. His Government really should have taken a leaf out of our book.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State need look no further than Homerton university hospital in Hackney for good performance: it has managed to increase productivity by over 11%. What is he doing to support great leaders who deliver great progress and to make sure that they have the funding they need to continue with that?

[Wes Streeting]

I was delighted to meet my hon. Friend only recently to hear about the really impressive productivity gains being made at her local trust. I am keen to learn more. We need to incentivise and reward leaders for that kind of outstanding performance and we also need to get some of that best practice to some of our poorest performing trusts.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the timeliness of decision making and the need to release funding when it is allocated. I shall make sure that my Department looks into that, and write to him with an answer.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his work on reducing waiting lists, but at the Homerton in Hackney, because of a system-wide funding failure, deficit reduction money was removed three months into a 12-month agreement, which reduced the opportunity to drive down waiting lists still further. Will he or one of his colleagues meet me to discuss this issue and see what we can do to drive down those waiting lists?

[Wes Streeting]

We are taking action to deal with the over-running of budgets and the reckless spending across the NHS and to bring deficits under control, but I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 13th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me my first opportunity to speak in the Chamber on this most important of issues. As I do so, I think of all those who were killed in the horrendous plane crash in India yesterday. I think of their families, their friends and the lives they have left behind. May their collective and individual memories be a blessing.

I rise to speak to amendment 42, tabled in my name and those of more than 60 colleagues from the majority of parties in the House, representing constituencies in all four nations of our United Kingdom. It would remove the automatic commencement of the Bill’s provisions in England. It is a safeguard, good and proper.

As it stands, the entire assisted dying process will commence automatically in England four years after the Bill is passed. Notwithstanding some of the comments we have heard, that will happen regardless of how far along the plans and preparations are—plans for the manufacturing and supply of the drugs that will be used to end the life of anyone who chooses this step; for the identification and training of those on the panel; for the impact on the national health service in England and Wales and its budgets; and all the rest.

Colleagues will know that, as the Bill was originally drafted, the process would have commenced two years after it was passed. I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) amended that period from two years to four. That was a genuinely welcome acknowledgment that such a serious and consequential change to every aspect of our country, from our healthcare system to our legal system, should not, must not and cannot be rushed. Therein lies the basis of my amendment. If this change is going to happen, let us do it properly. Let us not impose a timeframe that puts us in a bind—one that means we are driven by timing over purpose, and the pressure that comes with a ticking clock, rather than by the need to do it properly.

People living in Newcastle-under-Lyme and York Outer, in Buckingham and Bletchley and Pembrokeshire, are counting on us parliamentarians—those of us who are concerned about assisted dying and those who passionately support it. The Bill’s supporters have won every single vote, apart from on this issue in Committee. Our people are counting on us to make sure, if the Bill passes, that it is a success, that it will be consistent and, most importantly, that it will be safe. If the Bill passes, it will introduce assisted dying in the biggest jurisdiction yet by population. These are uncharted waters; this will not be like anything else. The last thing we should do is rush this process.

In Committee, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), who spoke excellently earlier today, tabled an amendment to remove the automatic commencement deadline for Wales. It provided that assisted dying could be rolled out only once Welsh Ministers deemed that everything was ready for a safe roll-out. The Committee voted by a majority to give that extra safeguard to the people of Wales. If it was good enough for the people of Wales in Committee, it is good enough for the people of England today. We face a situation in which assisted dying may proceed in England months or even years before it does in Wales. The provisions and systems may look different. The process of organising the English system to meet the arbitrary four-year deadline would almost certainly lead to rushed decision making.

My hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley has sought to remedy the disparity, but her solution is not to extend to my constituents in England the safeguard that the members of the Bill Committee—members that she appointed—voted for. No, her remedy is to allow for automatic commencement to happen in Wales as well, removing the safeguard that the Committee voted for. The answer is not to fast-track the roll-out of assisted dying in both England and Wales, potentially putting the lives of some of the most vulnerable at even greater risk due to rushed decisions that are not fully thought through.

I have not been on these Benches for very long, but I know that arguing for the automatic commencement of legislation is generally, in the kindest interpretation, unusual. For legislation of this magnitude it is, I am afraid to say, reckless, and reinstating automatic roll-out in Wales when the Committee explicitly voted against it borders on the undemocratic.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I visited the Isle of Man and met the sponsor of the Bill there. The House of Keys, which has only 24 Members, took three years to get to this point, and the sponsor of the Bill thinks it will take at least five years to implement the Bill in that much smaller jurisdiction.

[Adam Jogee]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

NHS England Update

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I will take the more serious questions from the shadow Minister first. On timeframes, we will work immediately to start bringing teams together, as we have done with the one-team culture we have been building over the past eight months. I want the integration of NHS England into the Department to be complete in two years.

The shadow Minister asks about the reduction in the number of officials. NHS England has 15,300 staff; the Department of Health and Social Care has 3,300. We are looking to reduce the overall headcount across both by 50%, which will deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of savings. The exact figures will be determined by the precise configuration of staff, and we will obviously keep the House updated on that.

The shadow Minister asks about clinical leadership. One change we will be making with the transformation team is to have two medical directors succeeding Professor Sir Stephen Powis, whose departure from NHS England was planned long before these changes. There will be one medical director for primary care and one for secondary care, underpinning our commitment to the shifts we have described. I must say, there are enormous improvements to be made in clinical leadership for patient outcomes, patient safety and productivity, and I am demanding stronger clinical leadership to drive those improvements to productivity. Frankly, many consultants and clinical teams on the frontline will welcome that liberation—they are hungry for change.

The shadow Minister asks about the workforce data and complains that we have not been able to give her the precise answers. I agree: it is frustrating not having that precise information at my fingertips. I would gently remind her, though, on this as on so many things, that her party was in power for 14 years. She cannot very well complain eight months in given that they left us a woeful, embarrassing data architecture and infrastructure.

The shadow Minister asks about efficiency. Once again, she refers to the resident doctors deal as if it was a failure. The actual failure was leaving doctors on the picket line, not on the frontline, and wasting huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, with cancellations and delays to patients’ appointments, operations and procedures. We stopped that within weeks of coming into office. The deal does include reforms to improve productivity—if she is any doubt about the results, she should look at the fact that despite winter pressures, NHS waiting lists have fallen five months in a row.

Once again, we get the facile points about my right hon. Friend Alan Milburn, who is the lead non-executive board member for my Department. I honestly do not know why he bothers to pay for a mortgage; he lives rent-free in the Conservatives’ heads. They need to move on. By the way, just for the record: Alan Milburn has a record on the NHS that the Conservatives cannot even begin to touch.

The shadow Minister asks about confidence. I am delighted to be introducing a new transformation team. Different leadership challenges require different leadership skills. As I say, I have been really pleased to work with Amanda Pritchard for the past eight months, including on this transition; people should have no doubt about the confidence I have in her skills, talents and abilities, and I think she has a lot still to contribute to our NHS. We do not need to ask about confidence in the Conservative party; it is reflected in the scarce numbers on the Opposition Benches.

What is the lesson from Wales? The lesson is that when there is a Conservative Government in Westminster, the national health service suffers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That is why we are creating a rising tide to lift all ships. I am sure we will see improvements across the United Kingdom. SNP Members, who are not in their place, do not have any excuses now. As I said before the election, all roads lead to Westminster, and the biggest funding settlement since devolution began is going down the road to Holyrood. There are no hiding places there for the SNP. If people want real reform of the NHS in Scotland, they should vote for Scottish Labour under Anas Sarwar and Jackie Baillie.

People can see here in Westminster the difference that new leadership provides. The shadow Minister laughably referred to new leadership in the Conservative party. Well, it is certainly leaner and meaner, but it is the same old Conservative party. The only thing that the Conservatives have shrunk is their own party. The only jobs that they have laid off are those of their poor party staff. The only thing that they are capable of changing—[Interruption.] Well, come to think of it, I do not think that there is anything they are capable of changing. Instead they look over their shoulder at a party leader who cannot even manage a five-aside team, let alone a country. The Conservatives are just so diminished as a party. I appreciate that it must be so painful for them to watch a Labour Government doing the things that they only ever talked about: reducing bloated state bureaucracy; investing in defence; reforming our public services; and bringing down the welfare bill. The public are asking: “What is the point of the Conservative party?” I bet they are glad that they chose change with Labour.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I applaud my right hon. Friend for his leadership and for the reduction in waiting lists, which we so desperately need. We all know that there is still a struggle with budgets in the health service—my excellently run Honiton hospital is facing a deficit for the first time in its history—so can he give more detail about how he will reform NHS procurement, so that we can use the purchasing power of the NHS to get more bang for our buck?

New Hospital Programme Review

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

If the hon. Gentleman is disappointed with this Government, he will be absolutely furious when he finds out who was in power before. In fact, he is a dead ringer for the guy I used to see on the Conservative Benches cheering on and voting for every calamitous decision the Conservative Government took, including crashing the economy and supporting the now Leader of the Opposition when she rejected appeals to fund RAAC hospitals. We are prioritising those hospitals and going as fast as we can. The rebuilding will happen under a Labour Government, but it did not happen under the Tories, did it?

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the honesty with which my right hon. Friend is approaching this matter, because Governments should not make false promises. I had the chance to visit a couple of the RAAC hospitals, and the Public Accounts Committee, which I used to chair, examined Hospital 2.0, the standardised approach he talked about. It contained some quite startling assumptions, so will he assure me and the House that he has looked into those in detail and that we are absolutely sure about the dates of delivery?

[Wes Streeting]

I reassure my hon. Friend that the approach we are taking, particularly the steps in the coming weeks on the outline for key delivery and the appointment of a partner, give me the confidence and assurance to know that the timetable we have set out is affordable and credible. I am always happy to receive advice and representations from my hon. Friend, who knows a huge amount about what she speaks about.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

I have given a flavour of the four different reforms we are making. To give the wider picture, there are more pharmacies in England than there were in 2010, there are 24,000 more pharmacists in England than there were in 2010 and we are putting in £645 million to provide a bunch of services that were not there when Labour was in office. We are very happy to take lessons from the pharmacy sector, but not from the Labour party.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What steps he is taking to help improve the effectiveness of brain cancer treatments.

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)]

We are working closely with research partners, and although I am pleased to say that more research is being funded, we want to see more research in brain cancer treatments. We continue to encourage more researchers to become involved in what remains a challenging scientific area, with a relatively small research community, but I am confident that the Government’s continued commitment to funding will help us make progress towards effective treatments.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for that answer, and I am sure—and I know—he will take this very seriously. I have had three constituents in the last year come to see me who have suffered serious brain tumours, and they have had a very similar pathway, which is basically that after a certain point there is little the NHS can do for them. In particular, there is a shortage of neuro-oncologists, and one has spent their life savings on private treatment, even though that was difficult to find. Is there any hope, in the NHS workforce plan, that there will be more oncology training and more support for neuro-oncology, because the survival rate for this cancer is still woefully low?

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and I am sorry to hear of the experience of her three constituents. There certainly is hope within the long-term workforce plan. As she rightly alludes to, we are reliant on researchers to submit high-quality research proposals, and that requires clinicians specialising in this area. It is something I take very seriously, and I would be very happy to work with her on it.

Hospice Services: Support

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Paul Holmes]

The hon. Lady tempts me to come to content that I will cover later in my speech, but for now she can take it that I wholeheartedly agree, as do many Members here, I suspect.

No one will contest that our health and care staff deserve to be well paid for the incredible work they do, and in an ideal world we would see our life savers and carers never have to worry about their finances and pay, but it would be deeply irresponsible to facilitate pay rises without giving due consideration to the dramatic impact that rising wage costs have on these essential services. To give some specific context, Mountbatten Hampshire took over management of the hospice from the NHS in 2019. It has a contract with the NHS for roughly 35% of its costs, of which about £3.8 million comes from the local NHS commissioners in the form of an outcome-based contract. The hospice follows the NHS pay award each year to remain competitive and to retain and hire staff for its services, which means that the hospice has seen a 4.8% rise in costs this year and will see a further 5% next year, with no corresponding change in its NHS contract, leaving an increasing and worrying financial gap that the charity will find very hard to reconcile without public funding.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Paul Holmes]

I am spoilt for choice! I give way to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier).

[Dame Meg Hillier]

It is interesting to hear about the Mountbatten, which I spent many years at when it opened, when I was a child. The hospice in my constituency, St. Joseph’s Hospice, is really cutting-edge, but the retrospective payment for nurses will cost it £470,000, and it cannot apply that yet because it has no certainty from commissioners about its funding. To keep it up will be another half a million a year, and it cannot afford that without certainty of funding. I am sure the hon. Member agrees that we need to press the Minister for some clarity on this.

[Paul Holmes]

I agree with the right hon. Lady; we do. In my experience, the uplift that has been given to local NHS commissioning groups is simply not making it through to those end of life services. I hope we will see some recognition of that from the Minister, and I am sure she will enforce this, to ensure that the funding to local commissioning groups gets through to these services.

Oral Answers

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent had emergency surgery for a brain tumour, but this was after six months of going to the doctor repeatedly with problem headaches. Brain cancer causes 9% of cancer deaths but accounts for only 1% of cases. Sadly, my constituent is terminally ill, but he is in a position to explain his experiences. He has asked me to raise with the Secretary of State the issue of what work is being undertaken on genome sequencing, which could have a major impact on better treatment for brain cancers. It would be helpful if the Secretary of State not only answered this today but wrote to me in more detail on it.

[Steve Barclay]

The whole House will send their best wishes to the hon. Lady’s constituent. She raises an important point about genomics, which is why we have invested in Genomics England and 100,000 babies are being screened—that is a key programme of work. The Minister for Health and Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) recently hosted a roundtable with key stakeholders on that, but I am happy to write to her with more detail, because the prevention and capability that is offered through screening is a great way of getting early treatment to people.

NHS Winter Pressures

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue about getting flow into the system, not least because delays in ambulance handovers lead to the highest risk in what is a whole-of-system issue where the patient is not seen and treatment is delayed. That is why flow through discharge is so important, because, while that often concerns the back door of the hospital, it is actually the pressure at the front door that is most acute. The Government recognised that in the autumn statement and that is why there was additional funding with the £500 million for delayed discharge. That has taken some time to ramp up, but we recognise that because of the flu there is an immediacy in the pressure on A&E that we need to address.

My hon. Friend’s point speaks to one of the key lessons from the covid period. It is not simply about releasing patients from hospitals who are fit to discharge; it is also about the wraparound services provided for those patients so that they do not get stuck in residential care for longer, and they are still able to go home and get the domiciliary care packages. NHS England is focused on that so that they have the wraparound services alongside that discharge.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have seen this year in, year out: money thrown into the NHS at a winter crisis point, too late to spend it sensibly, yet this Government have been in power for nearly 13 years. I could not identify anything new in the Secretary of State’s speech. We have talked about discharge before, and picking up on the point made by the Select Committee Chair the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), without proper funding for local councils for domiciliary care and for funding care homes, this will never work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

May I thank my hon. Friend for all her hard work during her time as a Health Minister? We are going through the responses to the call for evidence right now; as I have indicated, we will update the House shortly. I will very much take her points on board.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent Jesse, who is 24, was diagnosed with grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain cancer. It has been devastating to her. She has had a very difficult year of treatment; crucially, after her initial round of treatment, there were delays in accessing a scan because of the backlogs in the NHS. There is a real need for a proper cancer care plan to make sure that she gets her scans as regularly as necessary. Other patients need them as well, but her scan was two months later than it should have been under the standard of care, leaving her in absolute terror that her cancer would come back. The fear is almost as bad as the disease itself. What plans does the Minister have to make sure that the 10-year cancer plan really gets to grips to the backlog, which is devastating people’s lives?

[Maria Caulfield]

I am sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Lady’s constituent. I am sure that she will welcome the 91 community diagnostic centres that have already been set up to provide a range of tests, including CTs, ultrasounds and MRIs. We are expecting to deliver up to 160 community diagnostic centres in total, with the capacity for up to 9 million more scans per year when they are fully operational. That will not just deal with the backlog, but future-proof our diagnostic services.