NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Evans]

rose—

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will give way to the doctor behind me, and then I will give way again.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend, who brings his clinical experience and expertise to this debate. I say frankly to the Secretary of State that I wish he had taken the approach of the Defence Secretary, who has set up a cross-party commission on defence spending. Indeed, he has invited my former colleagues to sit on that review, because he understands that we bring an enormous amount of knowledge, experience, and—dare I say it?—some hard knocks from working in those massively complex Departments.

The right hon. Gentleman knows me. We have done good-humoured battle over the Dispatch Boxes for a long time now, and had he come to me and asked me to help him, I genuinely would have. [Interruption.] The public are hearing this. They want politicians to cut all the flim-flam and the bluster and work together, and had the right hon. Gentleman been serious about the Darzi report, he would have done exactly as his colleague around the Cabinet table has done and conducted a cross-party review of the NHS to ensure that we can make real progress. It is interesting that the Health Secretary does not appear to agree with the approach that his Cabinet colleague has taken.

[Peter Prinsley]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will listen to the hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] I am very generous with interventions, and I know that he brings expertise and experience to the House as well.

[Peter Prinsley]

I am grateful that you have given way, and thank you for that. I have been sitting listening to you—[Hon. Members: “Shadow Secretary of State.”] I am sorry, I am getting the hang of this. To be honest, I am struggling to recognise what the right hon. Lady is talking about. The state of the health service is a disgrace; the Opposition, who I believe were the Government until quite recently, have totally messed the situation up over a period of 14 years. What Lord Darzi has had to say is a pretty accurate diagnosis of the situation we are in, so it is quite surprising to listen to the shadow Secretary of State talk as if everything was perfect over the last 14 years. That is simply not the case.

[Victoria Atkins]

I will help the hon. Gentleman, because I appreciate that he is new to this place. If he had been listening carefully to me, he would have heard that I am and have always been—in fairness, I hope the Health Secretary would acknowledge this as well—very open about the fact that the NHS needs reform. In fact, I said as Secretary of State that I wanted to reform our NHS to make it faster, simpler and fairer.

By the way, I speak with personal experience. I know there are some Members on the Back Benches who are new to this place and perhaps have not quite moved on from the natural competitiveness of a general election campaign, but I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of three. I have seen the very best of the NHS, but I have also seen some of its darkest corners. The NHS is genuinely one of the reasons why I came into politics, and one of the most damaging things about political discourse and the healthcare system in this country is when people seek to attribute to others a lack of care or commitment to our healthcare system, just because we have different ways of tackling these challenges and different solutions.

This is why—I will say this again, because I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman is listening—I will work constructively with him to improve the health service, but we have to do this on the facts. Some of the suggestions he made in the debate today and in his discourse during the general election campaign and so on are not accurate, and this is where I will pull him up. For example, he has not mentioned the introduction of Pharmacy First or the 160 community diagnostic centres. Just to help him, those were backed by the largest central cash investment in MRI and CT scanning capacity in the history of the NHS. Those, as well as the new surgical hubs that we introduced, are not only putting healthcare into the community but, critically, helping to improve the numbers of chest checks and scans going through the system, which means speedier diagnosis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

Fixing the NHS is our great task and our solemn promise, for there is much to fix after 14 years of managed chaos and decline under the neglectful eyes of our mostly absent predecessors. The candid assessment of the state of the NHS from Lord Darzi is truly alarming, and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, it presents an accurate diagnosis of our difficulties. The report makes clear many of the problems of resources, management and structure, but today I would like to speak up for medical research, of which this country has such a proud record.

We all know of the catastrophic potential of infection, witnessed so very recently during the covid pandemic. Indeed, like many of us new Members, I too caught covid right here in this House in the crush to hear the King’s Speech. I do hope that hon. Members of a certain age, such as myself, will remember to get vaccinated. However, let us remember Jenner, who devised vaccination, Lister, who pioneered antisepsis, and Fleming, who discovered penicillin. These British scientists leading the fight against infection were probably responsible for saving more lives than any other people in the long history of medicine.

Last week, we learned of the first successful trials from Oxford of vaccines for ovarian cancer, and we will see many amazing advances in the year to come. Today, we can be excited about molecular genetics, artificial intelligence and the huge power of our people’s NHS data to unravel so many of the mysteries of modern medicine. I know that our Government will develop bold plans to repair the embattled NHS, but on this day I urge our brilliant new Government to pledge to do their utmost to support vital NHS medical research, which carries such promise.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Thank you so much, but you must not continue speaking when I am standing. I call the shadow Minister.