Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Friday 4th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will carry on, because I want to say something about other hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) spoke as a recovering lawyer and talked about safeguarding issues. I found his scrutiny of the Bill’s clauses interesting and important, and we will obviously reflect on that. I wish the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) well as a new parent—I think he is the newest parent in the House, so all the very best with that. He talked about maximising the potential of every child.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Tracy Gilbert) talked about surrogacy and made passionate comments about the surrogacy laws, particularly in respect of international surrogacy. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon East (Natasha Irons) gave her personal reflections and talked about her community. The hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) talked with great skill and knowledge drawn from experience in her role on the APPG, and talked about the importance of support for mums. I add my best wishes to those of my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) to Hallie on her first birthday.

We heard about health inequalities. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) talked about how investing in babies will provide the fairer, stronger and more prosperous country that we all want to see. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) talked from the perspective of being a grandfather. My hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) talked about temporary accommodation. My hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) quoted one of my favourite Larkin poems—Philip Larkin was the librarian at the University of Hull for many years, and as a Hull MP, I know that poem very well—and talked about the importance of getting safeguarding right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) spoke passionately on behalf of her constituent, Ashley, and baby Chloe. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend and Ashley, and I am pleased to hear about the improvements that have been made at the Royal Stoke hospital. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones) brought her experience and knowledge as an NHS professional to the debate.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many Members were unable to contribute to today’s debate but have much to say, so will the Minister meet those Members to discuss further issues that were not raised during the debate?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I know that my hon. Friend has a great deal of experience in this area. My door is always open to Members of Parliament to discuss issues within my portfolio, so yes, of course I would be happy to meet those Members.

I want to say a little bit about the importance of the first 1,001 days. The Government have set out an ambition to raise the healthiest generation of children ever, and to give every child the best start in life. If we are to achieve that, we must begin at the very beginning. The 1,001 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday are a unique window of opportunity. During that short period, babies’ brains, bodies and relationships develop at extraordinary speed. The experiences they have and the care and support around them help to lay foundations for physical health, emotional wellbeing, communication and learning. I have seen that myself in recent weeks with the birth of my great-niece, Isabelle Diane.

A baby does not develop in isolation: their world is shaped by the adults who care for them. Supporting a baby therefore means supporting the whole family, helping parents and carers to build confidence, protecting their mental health, strengthening the parent-infant relationship and providing practical help with feeding and child development.

Vaccination Rates: England

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker, and I thank the Health and Social Care Committee for its work. It is a real privilege to be able to access vaccine programmes. They are the most effective public health interventions, and there are 15 vaccine-preventable infections against which we can be inoculated. Just this week, the winter flu vaccination programme started; I urge all those watching to take up the opportunity to protect themselves and their community.

In York, take-up is relatively high; however, we are not complacent. A particular challenge for us is the uptake of the second MMR vaccine. I would like to know what the Government are doing to support initiatives to improve that. York’s uptake is 86.2% against Yorkshire’s 85% and England’s average of 83.8%, but the World Health Organisation sets the ambition at 95% because that is the level for herd immunity, which will keep our communities safe. When will that target be reintroduced? It must be reintroduced, because we know that it is effective.

There are lessons we can learn about how to deliver vaccinations more effectively. If we think back to covid, many people—communities, schools and faith and community groups—were involved in getting the message out. We need to be able to communicate better to our communities, in this day of information overload, the importance of vaccines. Vaccine delivery mechanisms also need to be expanded—we have heard many examples today, such as health visitors visiting family hubs for the early years, the schools programme, and the places where people connect, including workplaces and elsewhere.

We need to ensure that we have a comprehensive system. I call on the Minister to look at the technology available to her to identify areas of low take-up. We know it is low in areas of deprivation and where ethnic minority groups, who are more hesitant to take up the vaccine, are concentrated. I ask that we have a proper, comprehensive vaccine passport that can be used by all clinicians who deliver the vaccine programme. I also ask the Minister to look at the issue of hesitancy in the round. We know that a small number of children, parents, carers and adults are hesitant about taking up vaccines. Sometimes that is about information, but sometimes it is simply a fear of needles. Can we look at different delivery mechanisms for vaccines so that people and communities are protected?

Patient Safety Review

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill]

Absolutely. I am very privileged to have patient safety in my brief. I know everybody across this House really cares about it, and I will make sure that officials do as the hon. Gentleman requests.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I want to concur with all of the remarks by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who has made a crucial point. But there is a wider issue, which the Health Bill completely misses and which I urge Ministers to look at, around the accountability systems within the NHS. The reforms are not going to deliver accountability. They are going to weaken it, and as a result we will see more requests for investigations into patient safety. I want the Minister to take that point away, because I am really worried that we are going to see a system that is more unsafe as a result of these reforms.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution—she is absolutely right. I take accountability very seriously and am going to talk about it in my remarks in this debate. Far too often, we see so many inquiries and so many recommendations but nobody taking responsibility for implementing the change. In the end, patients have to feel that things have changed, not that we are just having further reports and recommendations.

The Penny Dash review examined six organisations that are overseen by the Department: the Care Quality Commission; the National Guardian’s Office; Healthwatch England and the local Healthwatch network; the Patient Safety Commissioner; the Health Services Safety Investigations Body; and the patient safety learning functions of NHS Resolution. The review’s conclusion was clear. The problem is not that people working in patient safety lack commitment—we all know that there are dedicated people across the system doing important work every day—but that the system around them has become too cluttered, complex and difficult for patients, staff and leaders to navigate.

We inherited a landscape with more than 70 routes for patients and service users to raise concerns or provide feedback, and around 40 public bodies with a formal role in quality and safety. That complexity does not automatically make patients safer. It can make responsibility unclear, create duplication and make it harder to ensure that learning leads to improvement. A cluttered landscape, as we would all agree, is not an effective landscape.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex asked me about the expertise in HSSIB, the full-time job that it does and whether it could undertake investigations more cheaply and quickly than public inquiries. The investigation function within the CQC will be expert and full time, and it will be able to conduct investigations in the same cheap and quick way that HSSIB does now. In future, there will be the same opportunity to use the CQC investigation function instead of needing a public inquiry as there is currently with HSSIB.

The review also found that too many recommendations are generated through reviews, inquiries and investigations, as the hon. Member said, without enough clarity on ownership, prioritisation, implementation and impact. This is the fundamental point: recommendations alone do not make patients safer; change does. That is why the Government have accepted all nine recommendations of the Dash review.

The hon. Member asked how the CQC will provide the same confidence that the safe space is not being compromised. The criteria for disclosing protected information outside the investigative function are set out in the Bill. Those criteria set a high bar for any disclosure—as high as it is currently with HSSIB—and the CQC will publish further guidance setting out much more detail. As the Bill sets out, the CQC will appoint a responsible person who will decide whether the case matches the criteria and whether it warrants information sharing outside the safe space. That person is likely to be the CQC’s chief executive officer.

The hon. Member asked why the Dash review and the Government have ignored the whole question of HSSIB’s value for money. Let me be clear: the Dash reforms are not about saving money; they are about strengthening patient safety and patient voice across the system. The abolition of HSSIB and the transfer of its functions to the CQC play an important part in making the system of patient safety much more effective. Safety is the issue, not money.

Accepting recommendations is the beginning, not the end. Patients who have suffered harm, families who have campaigned for years and staff who have spoken up do not want another report sitting on a shelf. They want evidence that the system can listen, learn and prevent harm from happening again. I want to be absolutely clear: every organisation in the system has a responsibility to meet that challenge. Patient safety cannot be something we support in principle but resist when it requires us to change.

No organisation, however established or well-intentioned, should believe that learning and improvement only apply elsewhere. That is why we are streamlining and strengthening the patient safety landscape. The hon. Member mentioned the National Quality Board. We have revitalised the board by giving it a stronger role in providing a single, authoritative view of quality across the system. That will help reduce duplication, bring greater clarity to recommendations and ensure that effort is focused where it has the greatest impact. All hon. Members recognise that we need fewer recommendations because we know that they disappear into the system. More recommendations are needed that are owned, tracked and delivered.

I recognise the concerns raised by the hon. Member in respect of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body. We had a constructive conversation earlier today. On his point about the accusations that HSSIB had expanded the scope of its work beyond its remit, he explained to me in detail how HSSIB’s inception came about. The Government have accepted the Dash recommendation that HSSIB’s role as a centre of excellence for investigation should continue, and clarified the remit of any future investigations. I think that the investigation function with the CQC will perform the role of a centre of excellence for investigations.

HSSIB has developed important expertise in understanding why things go wrong and identifying system-wide learning, and I acknowledge that work. The question before us is not whether investigations matter —of course they do—but how we ensure that investigations lead to action, because learning without implementation does not improve patient safety. The Dash review recommended transferring HSSIB’s functions to the Care Quality Commission, while maintaining a dedicated investigation capability. I understand why colleagues will want reassurance on that, because, as the hon. Member said, independence, transparency and trust are essential in patient safety investigations, but so is impact. The purpose of these reforms is not to weaken investigation, but to strengthen the link between investigation, learning and improvement. We need a clearer route from identifying problems to making recommendations and ensuring that someone owns delivery and that patients see change.

The hon. Gentleman asked if I could explain who will conduct future investigations into safety in the NHS if the Dash review is implemented. The investigation function in the CQC will have autonomy to launch investigations into any part of the health system and will be able to make recommendations on any part of the system, just as HSSIB does now. There will be no barrier to an investigator finding out that CQC inspections are causing unintended harm. If they are, and if the investigator feels that a recommendation for change should be made, they will make it. There will be no need for litigation through the courts, and insights gained from investigations will continue to inform recommendations concerning the Care Quality Commission’s regulatory functions.

The Bill also allows for the investigation function to make recommendations to the CQC in its report, and the CQC would be legally required to respond to such recommendations. I hope that the hon. Member is assured that we will work carefully with colleagues, patients, staff and system leaders as these reforms are implemented.

The same principle applies to patient voice. Patients do not share their experiences simply for the system to record them; they do so because they want to see things change. Listening matters, but acting on what we hear is what makes patients safer. That is why we are ensuring that patient experience is closer to where decisions are made, with commissioners and providers responsible not only for delivering services, but for listening and responding. The Patient Safety Commissioner will continue to champion patient voice on medicines and medical devices and report directly to Parliament.

Department of Health and Social Care

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

This debate should have taken place long before a deal was signed, and the fact that we are having it months afterwards shows that there is still no transparency.

Last December, the pharma and health tech deal was signed, and it was made clear that money would have to be taken out of the Department of Health while the Government were trying to solve a Treasury problem. As we have heard, that problem was the trade deal with the US and the wider relationship. The big question that has not been answered is this: if we are going to take money out to fund this deal—we have heard that from 0.3% to 0.6% of GDP will be spent on pharma—where are the cuts going to fall? Research shows that excess deaths will result.

We also know that at the same time as paying more, we will get a lower rebate—down from 25% to 14.5%—so VPAG will be more expensive. As a result, we will be paying more for our drugs and getting less back. In developing countries, which benefit from the way the health system works, the toll will be even more significant. As NICE changes its relationship and its function, and of course does not have the independence it was set up to have, there will ultimately be more flexibility for Ministers to make determinations about drugs.

Not only will there be a cumulative cost of £2.6 billion by the end of 2028, but that is estimated to go up to £44.7 billion. That is why we need to see the impact assessment—so that the Government can prove to us that that is not the case. Of course, for every £1 billion cut from budgets, £118 million is cut from social care. That leads on to the excess deaths, which will depend on where those cuts fall. We obviously want the Government to be transparent with us, because this is about the lives of our constituents. The data shows that there will be 229,000 excess deaths by 2033. That is almost double the number of deaths during covid. However, putting everything together, the figure could be as high as 291,000 excess deaths. Exactly which of our constituents are going to pay the price for this deal?

NICE itself predicts that the benefit will bring only between two and five additional drug approvals annually, so for very little gain we could be paying an exceedingly high price. One of my biggest fears is that the ratchet of the focus of the US on the NHS, which it has always had, will draw the drug companies in even closer, and if another party gets control of our NHS, it could well fall into the hands of the US. We need that impact assessment, we need transparency and we need to protect lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting example of somewhere where local commissioners have failed to provide a service or recognise when a service disappears. They can do that by using very different voices, rather than outsourcing that responsibility. Through the Health Bill, we have to make sure that commissioners do their job properly, which includes taking account of patient voice at a very local level.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Replacing Healthwatch will mean that, ultimately, patients will not have confidence in the commissioners. We have just heard one example, and I can offer many examples from York. Healthwatch York, which is phenomenal and is led by Siân Balsom, has produced reports that have brought about change. I plead with the Government to review clauses 64 and 65 of the Health Bill to maintain Healthwatch. It should not be an either/or. We need commissioners to engage with the patient voice, but we also need Healthwatch to have the independence to advocate for patients.

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments about her local healthwatch. There are certainly examples of where this approach works well in local communities, and we need to understand those. However, it does not work well everywhere, and it means that local commissioners are not empowered and are not held accountable for their job of making sure that the patient voice and experience is held locally. There is also nothing to stop ICBs undertaking that role as they see fit in their local communities in the future, rather than our dictating how they should do it through one particular body.

Health Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The national must determine the “what”, and bringing NHS England into the Department is therefore the right decision. However, as many Members have said today, it is the “how”—how we do this at a local level—that determines the outcomes we see. Given the huge inequalities in our constituencies, which we have all spoken about today, the question of how we deliver, in particular, the third shift to prevention, is really important. The right integration, the right systems and the right focus will bring our health service together at a local level.

I agree that the accountability processes are not in the right place under the Bill, and I agree with the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) about the need to ensure that we in this place have that connection to the national and the local, while also integrating with those held publicly accountable in our councils and combined authorities. But the focus also needs to be there. It is because there is no coterminosity between commissioners and providers that people are looking in both directions in trying to bring about a system that cannot have the capacity to deliver in such ways. We need to see that bringing together of services to focus on a “population health” approach, but the Bill does not do that.

We need to think about what the outcomes that we want to see. I have lived through so many reorganisations, and I know that it is not reorganisations that ever deliver the satisfaction outcome. Given that ICBs have now been stripped back to such an extent—unable to communicate with us, as MPs, and not having the resources to make decisions—I fear that that delivering the “how” will become harder under this model. However, we also need to ensure that local accountability comes from our communities—and that leads me to the issue of healthwatch.

What we called community health councils were abolished in 2003. We replaced them with public and patient involvement forums, and replaced those with local involvement networks and then with healthwatch, which is soon to be scrapped. If it did not exist, we would invent it, because it has the independence that the new structures do not have, giving patients and people confidence in a system that enables them to raise their voices, and to be sure that their voices will be heard and systems will be held to account. I therefore oppose clauses 64 and 65, with the respective schedules 9 and 10, and ask the Government to reconsider and also to take on board the questions that have been raised about the systems that make it possible to hold investigations. HSSIB has done that well, and I think that its role should continue.

Given what has happened over a decade of raising concern in the House, I welcome the commitment of the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), to a public inquiry, but we do not have a chair and we do not have terms of reference. It is therefore really important that we put in place the right structures to hold the system to account.

NHS Federated Data Platform

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) for securing this excellent debate today. I agree with every word that has been spoken about this US spy tech company, which is now deep into our NHS data and our constituents’ patient data. We have got to take the example of the Swiss Government, who withdrew Palantir’s access to their data because of the risks of US intelligence gaining access to sensitive data, the potential loss of national sovereignty and the dependence on foreign specialists.

As has been mentioned, we know that Palantir has been used in the US to power up the ICE teams in targeting their actions. I fear what a future Government could do with this data. While I am sure that this Government would not even consider such measures, a future Reform UK Government might use it to target vulnerable people. We know that there are already significant health inequalities in our health system. We can just imagine minoritised groups not sharing vital health information with clinicians for fear of what may happen in the future. That would widen health inequalities and put those individual patients at risk. As a former clinician in the NHS, I know that trust is key. If a clinician does not have the confidence and trust of their patients, that will result in worse health outcomes. In the interests of our constituents’ health, I urge the Government to end this contract.

I note that the former Secretary of State for Health who signed the contract, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), has not turned up to this debate to defend his record. That says everything about the lack of accountability on the signing of these contracts. Palantir has eight major footprints across Departments and public services, to the tune of more than £800 million. Palantir is not the only company. Other clients of Global Counsel, such as with the pharma deals, have signed deals and are unaccountable to this House. It comes back to this question: how do we hold the Government to account for the contracts they sign? Often it feels like we are negotiating on legislation, but not on the big decisions, such as the signing of major financial contracts in the NHS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Ahmed]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I think I will answer his point shortly; in the interests of time, we have to be careful about interventions.

We live in a fast-paced technological world, and that means that we always look to the next possible provider to provide value for money, so it is right that there are break clauses in the contract to allow evaluations to take place. I can reassure all hon. Members that, as a clinician and a Minister, my north star is always patient safety and quality, and of course value for money. If, at the point of the break clause, we evaluate and find that there are other providers that can do the job better, then of course that needs to be looked at and reflected upon. More generally, as the Minister for Health Innovation, Patient Safety and Life Sciences, I would not be doing my job properly if I did not try to champion British business at every opportunity or to champion British small and medium-sized enterprises to become British plcs. I hope hon. Members will take that as read.

The contract has extension provisions and will be reviewed in line with standard contract management processes. We will decide later this year whether to extend it. NHS England will be transparent about the process and the evidence used, as we have been throughout our regular performance reviews for this contract and the FDP.

On digital sovereignty, our priority is to give patients the care they need. As Members will no doubt understand, for some essential IT services, it is simply not possible to develop in-house solutions, as we seek the best from the market. I reflect on my own practice in Glasgow, in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital, which the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seems to think has found a panacea of publicly delivered technology. I can tell him that when I walk into that hospital, I login through Microsoft Windows. Then I open a programme built by a North American tech company to order test results. Then I open another programme built by a North American tech company to look at the results of those tests. Finally, if I want to check X-rays, I open a fourth programme built by a North American technology company to evaluate CT scans, MRI scans and X-rays.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Ahmed]

In the interests of time, I will continue. I apologise to my hon. Friend.

In the future, our goal is to see a vibrant UK market in digital and technology, which would give the NHS more choices and help to improve standards. Of course, I would be unashamedly pro-British about my ambitions for that mix, because that is the way that we not only serve our NHS but also support economic growth. At the moment, what matters is who controls the data and how that is governed. I appreciate the sensitivities around that, I really do. Rightly for the FDP, this is a matter for the NHS and UK regulators.

I have also been asked about vendor lock-in and whether it is possible to remove companies like Palantir from the NHS. The answer is unequivocally yes, it is possible. Of course, it would take time and planning to safely transition from one supplier to another, as it always does in the NHS, when patient safety is the primary concern. At the moment, there are unfortunately only a small number of companies that can do what we genuinely need them to do at the scale that we need them to do it, but the contract has multiple measures built in to allow greater freedom of choice. That includes making sure that the NHS owns the intellectual property for all products and that it is possible to migrate them to other providers.

Data security is also at the heart of our health innovation programme. Protecting personal data is at the heart of the FDP and the health innovation strategy. Most importantly, we have separated church and state, in terms of service provision and data security. A separate company, IQVIA, provides the highest standard of privacy-enhancing technology for that data in the FDP, which means that we can remove personal identifiers from the data where they are not required, ensuring that privacy is maintained throughout. NHS England and NHS organisations retain full control as data controllers, including over decisions about how data is used, who can access it and which products are deployed. Palantir does not own the data, the products or the intellectual property, nor can it use the NHS data for its own purposes.

The FDP is a secure data environment. Security is built into its design and operation, and it has been through national, technical and cyber-assurance, with external oversight. It should also be understood that the FDP is only for health and care purposes; it cannot be legally used for non-health purposes such as immigration enforcement, as has been promulgated.

As Members will expect, my position on the owners and executives of Palantir is very much the same as that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—we are no fan of their politics. However, the FDP, and the principles that underpin it, are critical to the future of the NHS. Palantir operates strictly within a UK-regulated contract where the NHS controls all data, access is tightly governed and information can be used only for agreed purposes that benefit patients. I would expect any member of staff who did not in all conscience feel that they could work with Palantir to raise that with their employer.

[Rachael Maskell]

I raised the issue of patient trust. We know that over 50% of the public do not have confidence in this system, so they might not share vital health information with their clinicians. As a result, will the Minister include that point in the consultation? He has only 10 months until this first period ends, so can he say more about the public perspective on the Government consultation?

[Dr Ahmed]

My hon. Friend will know that no NHS system or pathway can ever work without the confidence of the public, and that needs to be reflected in any evaluations that take place. I have heard my hon. Friend’s concerns loud and clear, as well as those of Members across the House. It is right that we look to maintain the highest standards for our NHS. It is also true that the FDP has a role to play in delivering for the NHS and helping people get the care they need more quickly and efficiently. Those are real outcomes that will improve people’s lives, all through the better use of data.

Members on both sides of the House often rightly challenge me to go further, faster on rare diseases, rare tumours and rare cancers. None of that is possible in modern medicine without data, and the analysis of data. Just as I have a responsibility to ensure that we get value for money out of all contracts in the national health service, and that we evaluate them regularly, Members also have a responsibility to be careful not to aggregate different components of the NHS and present them as a monolithic technological solution.

The FDP is, and will continue to be, an important component of delivering patient care in the NHS in England. Of course, who contracts with the FDP will be open to question as we go forward and think about future contractual arrangements. It would be disingenuous to suggest that the FDP is somehow the only technological solution or database in the NHS; there are many others that do good work—whether that is the single patient record, the health data research service, the NHS app or clinical systems for NHS primary care providers. We must be careful not to conflate one technology with the next, and in doing so, alarm citizens and patients about what is happening with their data.

I can assure Members across the House that in my ministerial service—just as in my 20 years of clinical service—my north star is transparency, patient safety, quality and providing the best care to all patients up and down the country.

Women’s Health Strategy

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

Again, my hon. Friend raises a shocking case on behalf of her constituents, and I agree with her and her constituent. Access to diagnostics is a key part of our 10-year health plan, which is why, as we were able to announce this week, we are rolling out more community diagnostic centres to improve diagnostic capacity more generally. I am also working with the Minister for patient safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), to look at how clinical pathways can be streamlined. That work is informing how we are developing NHS Online and making sure that we shorten those pathways, as my hon. Friend has rightly called for. All those cases—including, unfortunately, her constituent’s experience—have informed that work. We are linking our work on the 10-year-plan with that work and putting women, gynaecology and menstrual health front and centre as trailblazers, because unfortunately, those are the areas in which this work is needed. That is what this strategy does.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Minister knows, I have long campaigned around mental health. The strategy highlights that women disproportionately have poor mental health, and I welcome that recognition. However, action 49 says:

“we will improve mental health support for women and girls”,

but it does not say what the Government will do. Will they produce a strategy for delivering on this, and how will progress against this document be measured, so that we can hold the Government to account?

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The document contains a long list of actions, with clear dates alongside them, so that she and others—including her constituents—can see what we are saying, and can measure progress.

National Suicide Prevention Standard

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist]

I thank the hon. Member for that question. I had great pleasure in working with his constituents on the quilt exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall; it was a tremendous experience, and they do tremendous work. Farming is indeed one of the industries most affected by these circumstances. I certainly commend the work being done on the agricultural side, by organisations such as Yellow Wellies, to ensure that those issues are addressed.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I really appreciate all the work that my hon. Friend does in this area. I was very moved when a constituent, a police officer, came to me to share the experiences from his force when somebody took their life. The force did not have the tools available to support him, leading to his own mental health challenges, and to those of his colleagues. Therefore, it is really important, as part of this standard, that employers are equipped to identify those pressures—often overwork and stress, or bullying at work and the culture set in the workplace—and to then address the challenges that people face with trauma. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need that holistic approach to people’s wellbeing at work?

[Liz Twist]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. Certainly I agree that we must do all that we can. I hope that, in this debate today, we will be able to take steps forward to implement the standard.

I want briefly to touch on the work that the British Standards Institution does. It plays a vital role in workplace standards of all kinds in this country. The BSI is 125 years old this year. I am sure the Minister will join me in congratulating the BSI on that achievement, and the enormous contribution it has made to businesses and the everyday life of people throughout the United Kingdom since 1901.

British standards have helped with everything from saving lives with medical devices to air raid shelters during the war, crash helmets and now addressing suicide. I thank colleagues from the BSI for being here in the Public Gallery today to raise awareness of their organisation’s hard work, particularly on the new standard BS 30480: “Suicide and the Workplace”. I know that the BSI has a positive impact on society through its work. As chair of the APPG on suicide and self-harm prevention, I am pleased to have supported work on that standard. I am also delighted that the House has endorsed the standard and is seeking to adopt it following internal consultation.

The publication of the world’s first standard on suicide and the workplace represents a significant milestone in supporting mental health and wellbeing at work across the UK and beyond. The BSI, acting as convenor, brought together many leading individuals and organisations to develop it. The standard itself calls for assigning a named senior leader to take responsibility for the organisation’s suicide prevention strategy and provide targeted training so that line managers are confident in spotting warning signs.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist) for securing this debate on a topic that is especially close to her heart and for her work more generally to promote action on suicide prevention. I am also grateful to hon. Members across the Chamber for their interventions.

Every suicide is nothing short of a tragedy. It has lasting and devastating impacts on families, friends and communities. Ensuring that the right care and support are available to someone who may be struggling when and where they need it can make all the difference in saving a life. That is why reducing the numbers of lives lost to suicide is a key priority for this Government, and we are committed to taking forward the suicide prevention strategy for England. The strategy focuses on harnessing efforts across civil society to help identify and support people at risk.

Standards such as the one produced by the British Standards Institution play an important role in raising the profile of suicide prevention in England and in supporting employers to play their part. I take this opportunity to congratulate the BSI on 125 years of tireless work, ensuring quality not only in British society, but across the world. The British Standards Institution is the UK’s national standards body—an independent organisation that develops standards that shape and encourage best practice across myriad professional sectors. The Government’s relationship with the BSI is through a memorandum of understanding, primarily to support the UK standards system, rather than to direct or enforce implementation of standards by businesses.

Decisions on adoption and implementation remain with individual organisations, although the Government may play a role in encouraging awareness of those standards to support best practice. In November last year, as we heard, the BSI launched a new voluntary standard entitled “Suicide and the Workplace”. That standard was particularly notable, given that it was not just the UK’s but the world’s first national standard supporting suicide prevention efforts in the workplace—a truly commendable achievement. My ministerial counterpart, the Minister with responsibility for mental health and women’s health, Baroness Gillian Merron, was particularly pleased to speak at the launch of that standard.

As with other BSI standards, this voluntary British standard is published as guidance; it is designed to support organisations of any size and across all sectors in strengthening their approach to suicide prevention, intervention and bereavement support in the workplace.

On uptake, I was pleased to hear that the standard has been well received so far, with more than 11,000 downloads since its publication in November. It is overwhelming to hear that businesses across the country are putting the standard into practice, including Heathrow airport and Inclusion Education, which have publicly adopted it.

The standard is advisory and is intended to be integrated into existing organisational policies and health, safety and wellbeing arrangements, and therefore to be flexible. In terms of supporting its implementation, decisions on how to use it rest with individual organisations, but the Government recognise that some employers may choose to use it as a reference point or benchmark alongside their existing workplace mental health and wellbeing policies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett knows I am not a Department for Business and Trade Minister, but I am committed to making sure that she is linked in with the appropriate Minister in that Department, particularly around her asks on how smaller and medium-sized enterprises can access and implement the standard and overcome the regulatory and financial hurdles to doing so, and I would be delighted to try to organise that meeting for her.

[Rachael Maskell]

In 2003, the last Labour Government introduced a programme called Dignity at Work. It looked at bullying in the workplace, which we know is significant, and there are a lot of parallels we can draw on. A partnership was formed between trade unions, Government, businesses and public sector bodies to implement a programme of work to address bullying in the workplace, and it was incredibly successful. Will the Minister look at the Government being more interventionist on this standard and perhaps adopting a similar programme of work?

[Dr Ahmed]

My hon. Friend is always knowledgeable about these matters and she tempts me to egress across the confines of my departmental portfolio. I am happy to cite her recommendations in my correspondence with colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade when I try and set up a meeting for my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett.

The role of employers generally cannot be understated. As the suicide prevention strategy clearly sets out, by improving support practices and conversations employers can and do save lives from suicide. Almost three quarters of people who take their own lives are not in contact with NHS mental health services. That points to the importance of public and private sector organisations—well beyond the confines of what we see as the traditional NHS—that are well placed to reach those vulnerable people most at risk. Workplaces provide the perfect opportunity to signpost people to the support they need. Employers should support practices and conversations that help to prevent suicides—for example, by having employment assistance programmes, line manager training and support networks in place for employees. Every employee should feel supported, and every employer should ensure that support is known of and available to their staff.

As has been highlighted, we know that some sectors are disproportionately affected by suicide. For example, suicide rates in construction are four times higher than in other business sectors. The Construction Leadership Council’s mental health project has focused, through the lens of prevention, on identifying the primary root mental health causes impacting construction workers. The project, in partnership with Mates in Mind and the University of Warwick, held a series of regional focus groups with on-the-ground workers and identified those causes as including late payments, a lack of stable work, and workers having to travel and stay far away from family and loved ones. The Department for Business and Trade consulted on those issues and received around 3,000 responses. An action plan, together with a joint code of practice setting out how employers across the sector can provide a more supportive environment to address and prevent those issues specifically, will be published this summer.

With suicide prevention, we often talk about the importance of meeting people where they are. Ensuring that people are supported by their workplaces is one valuable way of doing that, and the Government are committed to finding more opportunities to ensure that every person requiring support can access it readily. For example, my counterpart Baroness Merron, alongside co-chairs Money and Mental Health, convened senior stakeholders from financial services to discuss the role they could play in supporting people at risk—both their customers and their employees. I understand there was a great appetite in the room to take further action on this matter, and Baroness Merron is working closely with officials to progress this work at pace.

I encourage all workplaces and employers to familiarise themselves, and align their work practices, with the Government’s suicide prevention strategy and to consider how they can best support their staff. I would also encourage them to consider drawing on the BSI standards as an exemplar tool to help embed suicide prevention in working practices.

Finally, as the BSI standard highlights, the importance of community, both inside and outside the workplace, cannot be overstated. That is why so many of the Government’s ambitions surrounding suicide prevention, and indeed wider prevention, hold community at their core. With our 10-year health plan, we are shifting care and support from traditional institutions into the community, and our focus is more firmly on prevention. Through the new community-based mental health centres that are being piloted, people and families can receive care and treatment when they need it, in their community, 24 hours a day, and in a much calmer environment than one finds in traditional A&E departments.

GP Contract

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the GP-related questions, for which I was grateful when he finally got to them.

On clinical evidence for advice and guidance, I think that the evidence speaks for itself. We introduced advice and guidance in the last contract with an £80 million investment, and it has been a stunning success. Take-up across the country has been huge, and—this is the statistic that matters most of all—1.3 million referrals that would otherwise have gone to electives have been dealt with by GPs. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman, who is chuntering from a sedentary position, seems not to care about what actually matters for patients, but through advice and guidance they are able to get a response from their GPs within about 48 hours. I can assure him that it takes a great deal longer to secure an out-patient appointment. If he is looking for statistics on advice and guidance, let me give him that one again: 1.3 million referrals have been taken off electives and dealt with by GPs. That is part of the hospital-to-community shift.

The hon. Gentleman asked for a definition of “urgent”. We trust our clinicians. We know that general practitioners are experts in their field. They know when they see an urgent issue, but they also know that that the symptoms might be a more acute manifestation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or that a child’s rash suddenly looks more dangerous than it did the day before. We trust our GPs to make those decisions, and it is a real pity that Opposition Members do not seem to do the same.

The hon. Gentleman also wanted a statistic in relation to access. In July 2024, patient satisfaction with access to a GP was languishing at a miserable 60% after 14 years of Tory neglect and chaos. Today it stands at 76%, which is a 16 percentage point improvement. The hon. Gentleman asked for statistics; perhaps he should take that statistic and deal with it.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the Carr-Hill formula. York had the lowest funding under the primary care groups, the primary care trusts and the clinical commissioning groups, and it now has the lowest funding under the integrated care boards. It is because it is not the most affluent place that it is really important that the new funding formula works for areas such as York. Could the Minister say a bit more about how that will be determined, so that my community gets the health spending that it deserves?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Carr-Hill review is happening as we speak, and I expect to get a submission from officials on the first round of analysis that is being conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. That will be the first step towards agreeing on how we make the formula work, with a view to implementing the new Carr-Hill formula from 1 April 2027.