Health and Social Care: Winter Update

Richard Tice Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

When I was sitting on the Opposition Benches at the tail end of the last Parliament, I saw my predecessor at this Dispatch Box telling us all the wonderful things that she thought the Government were doing and achieving. It was like hearing about a completely different national health service and social care system in another country. I arrived in July and was honest on day one that the NHS is broken but not beaten, and that these are crises of historic proportions that we will never sweep under the carpet, nor will we hide problems to spare political blushes. In the coming months and years, I will continue to be honest about where we have not yet fixed problems, and clear about the action that we are taking to get the NHS back on its feet and fit for the future and to build a national care service worthy of the name.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

I think we all share the Secretary of State’s aspiration to move healthcare out of hospitals and into the community. However, the two GP surgeries that I visited in Skegness just before Christmas are concerned that the impact of the national insurance increases on their staffing budgets will be around £100,000 per surgery, which will force them to reduce staffing capacity and, therefore, appointment capacity. What will the Secretary of State do to help those GP surgeries in that situation? There seems to be a conflict between the sensible aspiration and the practical reality.

[Wes Streeting]

There are 889 million reasons why GPs should be reassured about their financial sustainability for the year ahead—the £889 million allocation for general practice that I spelled out before Christmas, to provide reassurance to GPs when planning for the financial year ahead. I have been heartened by the response from GPs to that announcement, and I gently say to people who criticise the means of raising it that without the decisions that the Chancellor took in the Budget, we would not be able to invest £26 billion in our health and care services. We cannot have people welcoming the investment but criticising the means of raising it. If people do not support the Chancellor’s decision—a perfectly reasonable political position to take—they will have to spell out what services they would cut or what taxes they would raise.