NHS Winter Pressures

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As I said at the outset, today’s announcement is part of the wider recovery programme that we discussed with health leaders at No. 10 on Saturday. That will have a number of components, one of which is the urgent and emergency care recovery. Work is ongoing with Home Office colleagues on the visa component. My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point that a number of clinicians on the frontline have raised with me, and I am discussing it with my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

More than 5,000 operations have been cancelled at Barnsley Hospital in the last year. What are the Government doing to reassure those in Barnsley who are waiting in pain for delayed operations? Will they ensure that any new staff are deployed first to the areas that need them most?

[Steve Barclay]

I share the hon. Lady’s desire to reduce the backlog in the electives programme, which is why the Government have invested a further £8 billion. To ensure that it delivers value for money, the key focus is on building greater resilience into that elective programme through surgical hubs and the better use of community diagnostic centres, in particular by having a distinction between hot and cold sites.

Too often in the past, as winter pressures have surged, elective operations have been cancelled to free up bed capacity. Having the surgical hubs and the hot and cold sites builds greater resilience. I pay tribute to the work of the Getting It Right First Time team, and to Professor Tim Briggs and Jim Mackey, who are leading that programme. We saw the progress that was made in the summer and we are very focused on the next stage, which is 78-week waits. We are working very actively on that.