NHS 10-Year Plan

Debate between Roger Gale and Paulette Hamilton

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

As the acting Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, I am delighted that the 10-year plan was finally launched today. I thank the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for presenting it to the House.

The plan represents a major opportunity for constructive reform of the health and social care system, and I am delighted that the Secretary of State will come to the Committee on 14 July to be scrutinised on it. Many organisations have waited patiently for the 10-year plan to be published. Will the Secretary of State explain how the plan will help restore the promise of a first-class service in the NHS?

[Wes Streeting]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for the leadership she is showing to the Select Committee while the substantive Chair, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), is off on mat leave. What a delight it was to see the Committee Chair on the Terrace this week with her new baby. That was really delightful and we wish her well.

One of the exciting things for me about today’s launch is just how widespread the support has been from across a range of different organisations that we will need to work with to deliver the plan. Whether it is the royal colleges and the trade unions, the organisations that represent patients, the wide range of healthcare charities or, crucially, frontline staff, everyone is up for this change and everyone is desperate for it to succeed.

We will not get everything right and we will make mistakes along the way. We will listen and always learn and reflect. We know in the Government that we cannot do this without effective leadership from Ministers, but nor can Government do this alone. It is now our responsibility to mobilise the more than 1.5 million people who work in the NHS, the more than 1.5 million people who work in social care and our whole country behind a national mission to get our NHS back on its feet, to make sure it is fit for the future and to make sure, fundamentally, that we attack the injustices that lead to ill health, so that we have a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer.

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Debate between Roger Gale and Paulette Hamilton

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I was a nurse for 25 years and I returned to the frontline during the pandemic. I know at first hand that after 13 years of Tory mismanagement, our NHS is in crisis. Many health workers who have dedicated their lives to caring for others day in, day out are still living with the after effects of having worked flat out during and before the pandemic, all while trying to do the work of three or four people due to staff shortages. It is soul destroying for people to go on duty knowing that there will be inadequate staffing levels for nine or 12-hour shifts. Tory cuts have reduced A&E departments to shells of what they were under the last Labour Government—they are now so busy that staff feel that they can seem, at times, like a zoo.

Social care needs fundamental reform that truly brings together health and social care. People in Erdington, Kingstanding, Castle Vale and across the UK are finding it almost impossible to get a GP appointment, an ambulance or an operation when they need one, but the implications of stress on the health of staff can be tragic. The ongoing failure of the Government to address staffing levels can be a matter of life or death for patients. It breaks my heart to say that I just could not face the prospect of working in nursing right now.

In November, 140,000 people had to wait more than four hours to be admitted to A&E, and unfortunately my husband was one of them. If we add all that time together, collectively, the British public waited almost 65 years for emergency treatment, but the real question is: how much longer will they have to wait for a competent Government—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I know this is difficult, but we have to keep to the time. We will now not get everybody in.