Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will do my very best.

I agree with one thing that the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said. He talked about the contaminated blood scandal, and I want to see that compensation moved forward as swiftly as possible.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on his excellent maiden speech and welcome him to his place. He is clearly a great local champion and I look forward to him delivering for his constituents. I apologise to colleagues if my speech slightly errs from the main topic of this debate on the NHS to focus on education, but as Chair of the Education Committee, there are important things I have to say and unfortunately we were in session while the education debate was taking place.

Touching on health, I welcome the focus in the Gracious Speech on supporting the NHS, cutting waiting lists and implementing the much-needed NHS workforce plans. In particular I welcome the change to that plan to allow the three newly approved medical schools to begin training doctors from next year rather than from 2025. That will make a huge difference in Worcester, and I am grateful to the Health Committee for having me as a guest when we were examining officials on that and pushing the case for it. I also raised it with the Prime Minister in the Liaison Committee. Allowing those doctors to train in Worcester will help with retention and recruitment, and it will support our local NHS.

I welcome more investment in mental health services, but I would observe from my work on the Education Committee that in child and adolescent mental health services that cannot come soon enough. I support the aim of creating a smoke-free generation, which I believe strikes a sensible balance between public health and individual freedoms. This Government have delivered a great deal for my local NHS, and a massive £15 million expansion of the emergency department at the Worcester Royal Hospital is only the latest stage of that investment, but we continue to suffer from a capacity challenge in our Worcestershire hospitals that has been in place since the last Labour Government closed Kidderminster A&E without properly planning for space in either Worcester or Redditch. I sincerely hope that the new emergency department, with its dedicated paediatric emergency department, will make a real difference alongside the pipeline of new and much-needed junior doctors through the medical school. The recent decision of the acute trust to declare a critical incident at the very start of winter pressures in November reflects the ongoing pressures that we face.

Turning to education, unlocking opportunity should be the very essence of any Government’s education and skills policy, and it is certainly a key mantra for the Education Committee, which I am privileged to chair. I welcome the commitment to apprenticeships in the Gracious Speech—I know that the Secretary of State and the Minister for Skills share my Committee’s passion for vocational learning and for people earning while they learn—and I am excited by the prospect of more detail on the advanced British standard, but I am concerned by the absence of long-promised and frankly overdue legislation on attendance. When I was schools Minister, the Department for Education accepted a recommendation from the Select Committee to implement a register of children not in school. When I discussed that with the chief inspector, the Children’s Commissioner, school leaders, multi-academy trusts, unions and councils, they were clear about both the urgency and the importance of this measure. I helped officials to draft legislation and to prepare handling for the register as part of the wider Schools Bill, and it was committed to both in the White Paper and in the House.

Although there have since been many—some would say too many—changes to personnel in the Department, I have been reassured by the excellent Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who was both my predecessor and my successor and whose ministerial career sadly ended today, and by the Secretary of State that they support the measure. The Secretary of State told the Select Committee that it was a top legislative priority for the Department, which was simply seeking the right vehicle to deliver it. This is why the Committee recommended in two reports that the legislation should be brought forward even in the absence of the wider Schools Bill.

We heard in this Chamber from the Opposition Front Bench and from Conservative members of the Education Committee the strong cross-party support for such a measure. We heard in the Lords debates on the now defunct Schools Bill a cacophony of opposition to other elements of the Bill but near unanimity on the importance of a register. The Centre for Social Justice called it “overdue” and “necessary”, and in my many discussions with school leaders and councils, most have been exasperated that this mechanism is not already in place. In July, the Secretary of State replied to my question on the matter:

“my Department remains committed to legislating for statutory local authority registers of children not in school and will do so at the next suitable legislative opportunity”.—[Official Report, 17 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 603.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) brought forward a private Member’s Bill in the previous Session, with cross-party support, that would have delivered the statutory register as a stand-alone measure. I can see no reason why the Bill could not have been adopted at once by the Government. Indeed, we highlighted this in our report on persistent absence and made recommendations to the Government, including the specific recommendation that the register should be brought forward, on a cross-party basis, as part of the King’s Speech. I am disappointed that opportunity has been missed.

Nevertheless, the legislation has been drafted. We have repeatedly heard about the strong support it enjoys on both sides of the House, and in the other place it has been championed by Cross Benchers and noble Lords on both sides of the House. I therefore repeat the Education Committee’s recommendation that the Government should adopt a private Member’s Bill on this matter at the first available opportunity. I will do what I can to ensure any such Bill makes rapid progress, and I am happy to work with Members across the House to make sure it has a prominent place in the business of this Parliament.

There are other measures in the late Schools Bill that I would also have liked to see resurrected. Among them are the delivery of statutory guidance on attendance, which the Children’s Commissioner spoke about in Parliament today, and fairer funding for our schools—the next step in delivering the fairer funding formula. I have campaigned throughout my time in Parliament for fairer funding in education, and this is vital for our mainstream schools—there are important changes to the funding mechanisms that I hope the Government will consider bringing forward—but it is even more vital for the specialist and high-needs sectors.

It was great to hear my new hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip talk about wanting to champion SEND children in his constituency, and that is something we all want to do. The high-needs formula is not working properly, and every local authority has a deficit in that space. I joined 40 MPs from both sides of the House in signing a letter calling for more investment.

I am pleased to welcome the aspiration for the advanced British standard to deliver greater parity between vocational and academic qualifications. I look forward to hearing more on this from the Department in due course. The past 13 years have seen England rise up international league tables for academic achievement, becoming the best in the west for literacy and improving our performance in maths. There are great challenges in the recruitment and retention of specialist teachers, and I hope the Government will listen closely to the recommendations in the Committee’s upcoming report on those challenges.

The aspiration for more children to study maths to 18, and for there to be a better mix of vocational and academic subjects, is good. If we are to achieve the full potential, however, it is vital that we do not just focus on A-level equivalent qualifications; we must also deliver for those who do not currently achieve a pass at GCSE. The schools White Paper set out a worthy aspiration to reduce the so-called “forgotten third” by raising standards in English and maths by the end of primary school. Whatever changes there are in personnel, I hope Ministers will stand by that worthwhile and ambitious aim.

We also need to look at GCSE resits. It is a fundamental problem in our system that in order to progress, whether to university or to an apprenticeship, people need a pass in maths and English GCSEs, and only around a quarter of those who take resits ever succeed in getting that vital qualification to move forward. We need to offer a wider range of qualifications to people who do not get a pass the first time round, so that we can see real progression and the removal of barriers.

Finally, I will touch on the international situation. Like MPs on both sides of the House, I want to see progress towards peace in the middle east, I have heard from hundreds of constituents with deep concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and I share the solidarity with innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories that the Prime Minister, among others, has expressed.

I very much understand the concerns that have been raised by members of both the Jewish and Muslim communities in Worcester about the importance of protecting civilians. We all want to see an end to the fighting and progress towards a two-state solution, but I am as appalled as anyone by the brutality of Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians. I recognise that any country facing such an assault has a right to self-defence, but I urge colleagues in government to be critical and clear-sighted friends of Israel and champions of a two-state solution, and to remember the full wording of the Balfour declaration:

“it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

We should continue to oppose antisemitism wherever it occurs, and we should continue to do all we can to get humanitarian aid to the innocent civilians in the Palestinian territories who are victims of Hamas’s atrocities as much as their intended targets.

In particular, as a key supporter and author of the millennium development goals, we should do all that we can to protect children. As I said the other day to the Development Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), if more humanitarian pauses or more humanitarian access and support can achieve this, I hope the UK will play a leading role in securing them.