Government Policy on Health Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Peter Prinsley
Main Page: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)Department Debates - View all Peter Prinsley's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Government Policy on Health
Peter Prinsley Excerpts(4 days, 7 hours 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.
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Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the hon. Member for her serious contribution. She is right to say that transparency matters. That is why meetings in my Department, and their attendees, will be published in the right and proper way on a quarterly basis.
It is also right to draw a distinction between those areas of business and meetings in the Department that are about generating ideas and policy discussion, and those that are about taking Government decisions. It is right that people from outside government come into the Department for Health and Social Care, or any Department, to lend their expertise and share their views, and it is right that Ministers make decisions absent of those outsiders. That is the distinction I would draw. The hon. Member raises a specific point about the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser. This is a Prime Minister who does take ethics seriously and will not behave in the way that his Conservative predecessors did. As for individuals, that is a decision for the Prime Minister, but I will ensure that the hon. Member gets a more fulsome reply.
Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)
I have been a surgeon for 28 years. In the first 14 years, we had a Labour Government and we saw the waiting lists more or less disappear, such that by 2010, a patient coming to see me in the clinic would be offered an operation. In the second 14 years, we have seen record waiting lists. I welcome the advice of Mr Alan Milburn, one of the most successful Secretaries of State and one of the architects of the fall in the waiting lists, and I support the Secretary of State in this.
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I am delighted to see him here, bringing his experience to the House, sharing it with the nation, standing up for his constituents and being part of the team that will do what the last Labour Government did, which was to ensure that our NHS is back on its feet and fit for the future.