International Men’s Day
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Wes Streeting(2 days, 7 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
What a pleasure to follow the spokespeople for the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Members for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) and for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray), whose contributions were very much in the spirit of what we have heard this afternoon. I can reassure both of them that the suicide prevention funding is not gone; it is devolved. This will be a challenge that we have to work through during this Parliament as we embrace devolution and set local authorities and health trusts free to spend as they choose. We will need to keep a focus to ensure that the emphasis on suicide prevention is not lost. I really welcome the challenge the hon. Members have brought and the spirit of it. I can confirm that we will be appointing a new men’s health ambassador, and I will keep the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield updated on that.
It is customary when beginning these debates to thank the Backbench Business Committee, as well as the hon. Member who opened the debate for their outstanding contribution, whether the speech was any good or not. I can honestly say, though, having been in this House for 10 years, that it is a rare moment to hear such a courageous speech as the one we heard opening this debate. We can be truly proud of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury). I hope his constituents know how diligently he fights for them every single day here. He is a conviction politician; he is prepared to speak truth to power and use his influence to get things done for his community. Just through his words today, he will have had such an impact on so many people he will never meet, but who will none the less draw strength from his courage.
I do not think anyone listening to the powerful contributions from right hon. and hon. Members today could fail to be moved by what we have heard—nor could they be anything but truly appalled by all the terrible dad jokes. I think the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) was truly the worst. I would like to get involved, Madam Deputy Speaker, but as is well known, I have absolutely no sense of humour—less sense of humour than Downing Street has for tolerating my jokes. I am not a fan of political jokes anyway, as too many end up getting elected. However, I did once hear of a Canadian politician who was popular with everyone—it’s probably not Trudeau. [Laughter.]
As I listened to the debate, two broad themes emerged. The first is how every day, many boys and men make wonderful contributions to our families, schools, communities and workplaces, and not just in jobs, roles and behaviours that are associated traditionally with masculinity and men, but in roles such as nurses, carers and primary school teachers. They have embraced a genuine commitment to equality—that no matter who someone is and where they are from, and whatever their background, sex or gender, they can grow up to be whoever they want to be.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) said so powerfully, the role of men and boys as allies, advocates, mentors and role models and their capacity for love, laughter and empathy inspire others, lift up our society, change lives and bring joy to those around them. I pay tribute particularly to two of the most important men in my life: my dad and his father, my grandad. For those who follow my family history, that is not the armed robber; it is the working-class east end Tory. I have to say that I have that in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore), with his family heritage and political leanings.
Without those two men, I would not be standing here today. They have been a rock of stability and inspiration in life. My grandad was my closest friend and moral compass; my dad has been the rock of stability I needed, particularly when things were hardest in my childhood. I am lucky that both of my parents have always been in my life, but I must say that when I talk about being brought up by a single parent, the shorthand too often used in newspapers is “single mum”. As my dad often points out, he was the one who got the terrible teenage years and had to move out of the area to get me to move out before I hit the age of 30. I am very grateful to my dad, whom I love and admire very much.
We have heard powerful contributions today. I could not help but notice that almost everyone endorsed the Dad Shift campaign for greater paternity rights and leave. This Government are legislating for day one rights, but I know that the advocacy and representation that we have heard across the House will have been heard by my colleagues in Government. There will be a consultation, and I am sure that we have not heard the last of that.
None the less, for all the positivity, the second theme we have heard about today is an altogether less positive one. It is a startling reality that being and growing up as a man in today’s society can be very tough, especially for those from working-class backgrounds such as mine. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) spoke powerfully about the economic injustice in our society, the poverty and inequality that add up to the pressures and strains, the educational disadvantage and the lack of security and opportunity that too often hold back people, and especially men and boys from backgrounds such as mine. Though I am proud to stand here today, proud of my working-class roots and proud of having beaten the odds that were stacked against me, the object of this Government—the object of the Labour party—has always been to change the odds for everyone and not just to have the exceptional few beat the odds. That is at the heart of this Government’s agenda.
I want to pay tribute to those who have brought this agenda to the mainstream. This debate is 10 years old, but I must remember and recall, back when it started, an awful lot of eye-rolling about whether it was necessary—including, I suspect, by me and others who wondered whether this was truly relevant. How wrong that sentiment was and how much of a brilliant riposte we have heard.
I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) who spoke so powerfully at Prime Minister’s questions about the “dark cloud” that hung over him following the difficult birth of his and his wife’s first child. As he said, the strength of a man is about being open about his emotions. Sometimes, as we have heard so painfully today, those struggles become so overwhelming that men feel that the only way out is to take their own lives. When that happens, it is not just an individual, personal tragedy; it is like a nuclear bomb and the fallout hits everyone around them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West and Leigh (David Burton-Sampson) spoke of so powerfully.
We know that that impacts men in different ways, from different backgrounds and in different sectors. During an interview on Fix Radio: The Builders Station yesterday, I was told that men in the construction industry are four times more likely to die by suicide. One of the biggest causes of stress and anxiety for tradesmen is tool theft. That is why I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin), who has been like a dog with a bone on that issue, with her campaign already delivering tougher punishments for the perpetrators of tool theft. Indeed, I promised Clive Holland, the host of Fix Radio, that I would pass on this message to the House. He said:
“I would love to stand up at that Dispatch Box and speak to all the people in Parliament…and I would grab them by the lapels and say, ‘Get it through…Just get it through. It’s crucial. We all need this industry. We’d still be living in caves without the skills of our industry’.”
He is absolutely right and that is why we are lucky to have my hon. Friend championing that issue on behalf of that industry.
The Government’s response to many of the issues raised in today’s debate is the country’s first ever men’s health strategy. It covers physical and mental health, and I am most proud that it was drawn up in partnership with men themselves, experts, men’s groups, charities and campaigners. We are all aware that politicians today are about as popular as tax collectors and traffic wardens, so we need wider allies and advocates, groups such as Movember, Men’s Sheds and Everton in the Community, which I had the pleasure of visiting last week. There are also campaigners such as Stephen Manderson, better known as Professor Green, and Clarke Carlisle, the premier league footballer, who use their own experiences with suicide and mental ill health to spread awareness and prevent that from happening to others. I also pay tribute to the journalists, such as the LBC philosopher king Tom Swarbrick, for talking about modern masculinity, the importance of male friendship and keeping the ties that bind us.
There are a number of ways in which we will act. First, by expanding access to support services; secondly, by helping men to take better care of ourselves; and thirdly, by ensuring that stigma is challenged and every man feels empowered to reach out for help. This is not just a plan; it is a call to action. It is not just about changing services and laws; it is about changing hearts and minds and culture, particularly in an online world of harms and radicalisation, as pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Matt Turmaine), as well as many positives, as identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis).
Half the battle for men and boys is to have the conversation in the first place, opening up the space to utter what are often the most challenging words: “I need help.” That is why our strategy meets men on their own terms and their own turf—partnering with the Premier League’s “Together Against Suicide” initiative; investing £3 million in community-based men’s health programmes; workplace pilots with EDF to support workers in male-dominated industries; support for minors; and new research to help us tackle the biggest killers of men, including rising cocaine and alcohol-related deaths, as well as taking action on gambling, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) exhorted us to. On prostate cancer, I will keep the House updated as we await the recommendations of the National Screening Committee. I heard the representations today, particularly from the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey).
Our aim is to create a society where men and boys are supported to live longer, healthier and happier lives, where stigma is replaced by understanding and where every man knows that his health matters. As we heard so powerfully, including from some of this House’s most outstanding feminist campaigners, like my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), this is not an either/or. This is not a choice between men and women; it is the recognition that while women’s health inequalities have sexism and misogyny layered on top of them—something that we as men must take responsibility for tackling, too—men and boys do face challenges when it comes to our education, employment, health, wellbeing, life chances and opportunities.
As we heard so powerfully, especially from my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North, it is not as if the women out there do not care about their sons, dads or brothers—quite the opposite. Similarly, we care about our mums, sisters, daughters, nieces, friends and colleagues. There are differences between the sexes—there are differences in how we are impacted by and contribute to the society around us—but we are born equal, and we have a responsibility to stand together to make sure that we create a rising tide that lifts all ships. A healthier, happier, more equal and more just society is what this strategy will help to bring about, and it is why this debate has been so wonderfully powerful.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
As the Secretary of State mentioned brothers, it would be remiss of me not to mention my five brothers—this will give Hansard a run for its money—Basharat, Nasim, Rasalat, Nazir and Imran, and obviously my husband David. Those wonderful men in my life have enabled me to be in this Chair today. I call Josh Newbury to wind up.
NHS 10-Year Plan
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Wes Streeting(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement to the House on “Fit for the Future”, the Government’s 10-year health plan for England.
There are moments in our national story when our choices define who we are. In 1948, the Attlee Government made a choice founded on fairness: that everyone in our country deserves to receive the care they need, not just the care they can afford. It enshrined in law, and in the service itself, our collective conviction that healthcare is not a privilege to be bought and sold, but a right to be cherished and protected.
Now it falls to our generation to make the same choice: to rebuild our national health service, and to protect in this century what Attlee’s Government built for the last. That is the driving mission of our 10-year plan.
In September, Lord Darzi provided the diagnosis: the NHS was broken by 14 years of Conservative under-investment, and by their catastrophic top-down reorganisation. In the past year, Labour has put the NHS on the road to recovery. We promised 2 million extra appointments; we have delivered more than 4 million. We promised 1,000 new GPs on the frontline; we have recruited 1,900. We have taken almost a quarter of a million people off waiting lists, cutting them to their lowest level in two years. And we have launched an independent commission, chaired by Baroness Casey, to build a national consensus around a new national care service to meet the needs of older and disabled people into the 21st century.
Today, the Prime Minister has set out our prescription to get the NHS back on its feet and make it fit for the future. Our plan will deliver three big shifts. The first is from hospital to community. We will turn our national health service into a neighbourhood health service. The principle is simple: care should happen as locally as it can—digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and in a hospital where necessary.
We will put neighbourhood health centres in every community, so people can see a GP, nurse, physio, care worker, and therapist, and they can get a test, scan or treatment for minor injuries, all under one roof. The NHS will be organised around patients, rather than patients having to organise their lives around the NHS. It will be easier and faster to see a GP. We will train thousands more, end the 8 am scramble, provide same-day consultations, and bring back the family doctor. If you are someone with multiple conditions and complex needs, the NHS will co-create a personal care plan, so your care is done with you, not to you.
Pharmacies will play an expanded role in the neighbourhood health service. They will manage long-term conditions, treat conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure, screen for disease and vaccinate against it. We will also reform the dental contract, to get more dentists doing NHS work, rebuilding NHS dentistry.
Over the course of this plan, the majority of the 135 million out-patient appointments done each year will be moved out of hospitals. The funding will follow, so a greater share of NHS investment is spent in primary and community care.
The second shift is from analogue to digital. No longer will NHS staff have to enter seven passwords to login to their computers, or spend hours writing notes and entering data. Our plan will liberate frontline staff from the parts of the job that they hate, so they can focus on the job that they love—caring for patients. For the first time ever, patients will be given real control over a single, secure and authoritative account of their data. The single patient record will mean that NHS staff can see medical records and know a patient’s medical history, so they can provide them with the best possible care.
Wearable technology will feed in real-time health data, so patients’ health can be monitored while they stay in the comfort of their own home, with clinicians reaching out at the first signs of deterioration. The NHS app will become the front door to the health service, delivering power to the patient. You will be able to: book and rearrange appointments for you, your children or a loved one you care for; get instant advice from an AI doctor in your pocket; leave feedback on your care and see what feedback other patients have left; choose where you are treated; book appointments in urgent care so you do not wait for hours; and refer yourself to a specialist where clinically appropriate. Of course, patients can already do all that, but only if they can afford private healthcare. With Labour’s plan, every patient will receive a first-class service—whatever their background and whatever they earn.
The third shift is from sickness to prevention. Working with the food industry, we will make the healthy choice the easy choice to cut calories. We will roll out obesity jabs on the NHS. We will get Britain moving with our new NHS points scheme, and we will update school foods standards so that kids are fed healthy, nutritious meals. We will tackle the mental health crisis with support in every school to catch problems early, 24/7 support with virtual therapists for those with moderate need, and dedicated emergency departments for patients for when they reach crisis point.
The science is on our side. The revolution in artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data offers a golden opportunity to deliver better care at better value. New innovator passports and reform of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency will see medicines and technology rapidly adopted. Robotic surgery will become the norm in certain procedures, so patients recover from surgery at home rather than in hospital beds. The NHS will usher in a new age of medicine, leapfrogging disease so that we are predicting and preventing, rather than just diagnosing and treating. It is therefore the ambition of the plan to provide a genomic test for every newborn baby by 2035. Thanks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, this plan is backed by an extra £29 billion a year by the end of the spending review period, as well as the biggest capital investment in the history of the NHS.
Alongside investment comes reform. This plan slashes unnecessary bureaucracy and devolves power and resource to the frontline. It abolishes more than 200 bodies, because listening to patients, guaranteeing safety and protecting whistleblowers is core business for the NHS and should never have been outsourced. The plan commits to publishing league tables to rank providers. We will intervene to turn around failing providers, and we will reinvent the foundation trust model in a new system of earned autonomy. Pay will be tied to performance, so that excellence is recognised and failure has consequences. Tariffs will be reduced to boost productivity. Block contracts will end, with funding tied to outcomes. The plan gives power to the patient, so hospitals are financially rewarded for better service. It closes health inequalities by investing more in working-class communities, and it establishes a national investigation into maternity and neonatal services to deliver the truth, justice and improvement that bereaved families deserve.
I am sometimes told that NHS staff are resistant to change. On the contrary, they are crying out for it. They suffer the moral injury of seeing their patients treated in unfit conditions. They are ones driving innovation on the frontline, so their fingerprints are all over this plan. The public are desperate for change too. Each of us has our own story about the NHS and the difference it made to our lives. We also know the consequences of failure. To succeed, we need to defeat the cynicism that says that nothing ever changes.
We know that the change in our plan is possible because it is already happening. We have toured the length and breadth of the country and scouted the world for the best examples of reform. If Australia can effectively serve communities living in the outback, we can surely meet the needs of rural England. If community health teams can go door to door to prevent illness in Brazil, we can certainly do the same in Bradford. We know that we can build the neighbourhood health service, because teams in Cornwall, Camden, Northumbria, and Stratford—where I was with the Prime Minister and Chancellor this morning—are already showing us how to do it. We will take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. We will apply to best examples of innovation from around the world to benefit people here at home. Above all else, we will give power to the patient. This plan fulfils Nye Bevan’s commitment in 1948 to put a megaphone to the mouth of every patient. It will restore the founding promise of the NHS to be there for us when we need it.
Of course, we know that there are those on the right who are willing us to fail. They will exploit the crisis in the NHS in order to dismantle it. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) and his cronies argue that universal healthcare could be afforded in the 20th century but not in the 21st. Labour rejects their declinist pessimism and so do the public. But that is the choice—it is change or bust, and we choose change.
We know that the British people are counting on us. It falls to us to ensure that the NHS not only survives but thrives, and we will not let our country down. Of course, if we succeed, we will be able to say with pride that will echo down the decades of the 21st century that we were the generation who built an NHS fit for the future and a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer. I commend this statement to the House.
Health and Adult Social Care Reform
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Wes Streeting(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Wes Streeting
I am grateful for that thoughtful question. Let me say two things to the right hon. Gentleman. The first relates to the wider fiscal pressures on the Chancellor. I find it difficult enough to manage the different choices and trade-offs to be made between different parts of health and social care and the competing challenges that I hear from Members in all parts of the House, so I am always thankful that I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has to balance demands from the NHS alongside the demands of education, a rising welfare bill, rising child poverty and the threats to our nation. These are enormous challenges, which is why I am determined to ensure that every penny that goes into the health service is well spent.
My second responsibility, in addition to ensuring that patients are treated at the right time, in the right place and in the right way, is ensuring that we have a sustainable healthcare system in which there is reduced demand. That means doing more on the prevention side, so that we can keep people out of hospital and not needing to knock on the door of their GP surgery, so that they do not achieve the frequent flier status in the NHS that so many people do achieve—the one frequent flier status to which they do not aspire. We can deal with this only through both health service reform and public health reform, and I want very much to build cross-party consensus on the latter.
Government Policy on Health
Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Wes Streeting(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) (Lab)
The sheer brass neck of the Conservatives to turn up on the very day that Transparency International UK published its report showing that £15 billion of contracts were red-flagged during the covid epidemic—[Interruption.] I am not reading. Those contracts have been red-flagged and are worthy of further investigation, and £500 million of them were given to companies that had not even lasted 100 days. Should the Conservatives not have taken that into consideration before coming here with this urgent question?
Wes Streeting
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Frankly, every single contribution from the Opposition Dispatch Box should begin with a grovelling apology for the way they conducted themselves in government, but they will not apologise: they have learnt nothing and they show no humility. To my hon. Friend’s point, when it comes to covid corruption and crony contracts, the message from the Chancellor is clear. We want our money back and the covid commissioner is coming to get it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesperson, Sarah Olney.
Wes Streeting
I strongly agree with the hon. Member. In the short time that I have been in post, I have been delighted to have had virtual meetings with the current Northern Ireland Minister of Health, as well as with his predecessor, the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), who now sits over there on the Opposition Benches—I am delighted to see him in his place.
Ministerial meetings attended by third parties are declared in our quarterly transparency publication. People will want to lobby and influence Government, and Members of Parliament, all the time. Members of Parliament regularly receive correspondence—let alone the deluge of advice that we receive in government. The important thing is that Ministers take decisions on the basis of the best possible advice available, that they weigh up carefully the evidence and arguments in a fair and proper way, and that advisers may advise but Ministers ultimately decide.
This Government are aware of the deep crisis in trust in our politics. That is why, on his very first day, the Prime Minister talked outside Downing Street about restoring Government to service. It is why it should be no surprise whatsoever that many people who have given outstanding public service to this country, such as my right honourable friend Alan Milburn—and the same is true of Patricia Hewitt, Alan Johnson, my noble Friend Lord Reed, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and many more—want to roll up their sleeves and help the Government. They can see the state that the Conservative party left our country in, and are willing once again to roll their sleeves up to get our country back on its feet, turn the situation around and ensure that everyone in our country can look forward to the future with optimism and hope after 14 years of abysmal failure.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
That is the end of the urgent question. I thank all Members who participated. In reference to the Secretary of State earlier, the privilege of choosing UQs is down to the Chair and is based on merit and the urgency of the point being raised.