Health Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Peter Prinsley and Laura Kyrke-Smith

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Laura Kyrke-Smith]

Q I come from a county with really significant health inequalities—people in the wealthy parts of the county live 10 or 12 years longer than people in some of the more deprived parts of Aylesbury, which I represent. I would love to hear your thoughts on how we ensure that local authorities, ICBs and the voluntary sector continue working well together through this, and specifically how we do that in a way that drives the reduction we need in health inequalities.

Maria Higson: I think we are all agreed that working at the neighbourhood level is absolutely the right way to go about that. That is where health inequalities can best be addressed, because that can be most nuanced and tailored. Working on that smaller footprint is really important. You mentioned voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations, and I think that is a hugely important part that has broadly been missed out from the conversation around these changes. We work closely with VCSE partners and we know they deliver huge amounts for the communities and understand the communities in which they are embedded very well, so making sure that the VCSE voice is part of those neighbourhood teams will be important for that nuance and tailoring in the local element.

Councillor Wright: I agree entirely. Local authorities are in a good position to engage the voluntary and community sector. But again, we are fighting for a voice with the NHS and they are fighting for a voice with us, so we need some honest conversations with ICBs, and a real strategy looking at those health inequalities and what is driving them. It will not purely be access to hospitals; it will also be access to meaningful employment, housing, transport, mental health or social isolation—there will be so much driving those wider determinants of health that are affecting healthy life expectancy. Local authorities are in a prime position to do that, and they need to be listened to. I think the challenge will be how we collectively say, “What needs to be done, other than implementing the Bill? How do we look at the whole health inequality picture and address it?”

Sally Burlington: I would agree with the others: tackling health inequalities is really difficult. Doing it the same way in every area would not work, particularly in a world where there is not enough resource to do everything we would all like to do. You have to tailor how you approach local service delivery and what is needed locally according to local needs, the local community capability, how people work and what their preferences are locally, and the neighbourhood health agenda is our best shot at tailoring in that way.

I think you will come on to Healthwatch, but we would have concerns that, in separating the Healthwatch duties to look at NHS and social care, we risk missing some of those who are most likely to need both, and that that could exacerbate health inequalities rather than make them better.

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

Q Which organisations or people do you envisage running the neighbourhood health centres? Will they be run out of general practice organisations, or will the local authorities themselves be best placed to run them, so as to join up hospital care with community services?

Councillor Wright: That is quite interesting; I was at a session this morning looking at communities, and there was a comment that for the NHS communities are about buildings, whereas for the local authority they are about people. I think it would be the ICBs and whoever they commissioned to provide neighbourhood health centres. I hope there would be enough input from the voluntary sector, the local authority, adult social care and public health—from everyone—but I see the ICBs as the commissioners and the people who organise them.