Health Bill

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

I declare my interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cancer and the donations made by trade unions to my constituency Labour party.

I welcome a Bill to modernise the NHS, but our local hospital in Stockport, Stepping Hill, needs a lot of modernisation. The building is quite old and lots of problems have presented themselves over the years. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting me a few weeks ago to talk about Stepping Hill. The former Health Secretary and I had several conversations about the Stepping Hill estate. I urge the Government to work with me and other Stockport MPs on a long-term solution for Stepping Hill. I am very grateful to all the doctors, nurses and volunteers at Stepping Hill hospital.

I want to mention ICBs, as they feature quite a lot in the Bill. My experience of the Greater Manchester ICB has been quite poor. I thank the British Fertility Society and the charity The Fertility Alliance for all they have done on protecting access to in vitro fertilisation. I also thank in particular my local councillor Karl Wardlaw and his late wife Jodie, and place on record my gratitude to them for all the work they did on protecting access to IVF.

The Greater Manchester ICB consulted on levelling down the offer for NHS-funded IVF treatment across Greater Manchester to just one cycle in each borough, including Stockport; 74% of respondents completely disagreed or disagreed with that proposal. The ICB did the consultation—I am not sure how much time and money it wasted on it—but then proceeded with the levelling down offer of just one cycle of IVF. My experience of the ICB is therefore very poor.

Many constituents have written to me about their concerns about Palantir and access to their data. I know that Unison has also raised significant concerns about the damage done to public confidence by Government data initiatives and the use of organisations such as Palantir, the spy tech firm.

I have limited time. On a more positive note, as we are talking about the NHS, I am always keen to encourage more people to donate blood; I have been donating blood myself for almost 10 years. I place on record my thanks to everyone at the Plymouth Grove donor centre in Manchester. In particular, I thank Connor, Phil, Vivian and Dorcas, who always look after me. May I ask the Government to do more to promote blood donations?

I welcome the Government’s reforms to bring more democracy and accountability to the NHS, but we must ensure that health inequalities are addressed and reduced. In the richest part of my constituency, people can expect to live almost nine years longer than those who live in the most deprived part.