Future of Health and Care

Steve Brine Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course. The figures out today demonstrate the scale of the challenge when it comes to cancer treatment. Of course the pandemic has had a challenging impact on cancer treatment. We are supporting cancer alliances to improve outcomes as much as possible, and to work through the backlog that has inevitably built up because of the pandemic. Cancer alliances are a very important part of the future of the delivery of care. In many cases, they will be bigger geographically than an ICS. For them and for other specialist treatments, of course some cases will have to be at a larger scale than an ICS. Alongside putting these reforms in place, we are absolutely determined to do everything we can to ensure that people get the treatment for cancer that they need as soon as possible.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con) [V]]

I very much welcome the White Paper. I urge my right hon. Friend to “think workforce” at every stage, but to ensure that prevention is the golden thread that runs through all future legislation and plans. Given that the last 12 months has very much laid bare the impact of inequalities on our public health outcomes, will we be truly bold and return to our prevention Green Paper, which the Secretary of State knows well, when it comes to facing the obesity crisis, smoking prevalence, alcoholism, diabetes and stroke prevention, to name just a few?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. There are measures in this White Paper that precisely pick up the work of the prevention Green Paper that my hon. Friend did so much to shape when he was in the Department with me. In fact, many of the proposals in the White Paper are built from conversations that he and I shared. I want to put on the record my gratitude for the work that he did in shaping this agenda, because ultimately a population health agenda is an agenda about the prevention of ill health. Of course we must—and we will—treat those who become ill, but it is far better for everybody to support people to take a shared responsibility, including their own personal responsibility to stay healthy in the first place. The population health agenda that will be at the heart of the integrated care systems is ultimately a preventive agenda, and one that I am very glad to hear that he supports so wholeheartedly.