NHS England Update

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

We have to deliver improved services for patients in every part of the country. Her constituency and mine, which is on the London-Essex border, will have different needs, contexts and set-ups, and services may need to be shaped differently in order to meet those needs, but the standards should be consistent, the quality should be good and the safety should be guaranteed at all times. That is a far cry from where we are, and I genuinely think that decisions about services for her constituents will be far better taken much closer to her constituents and her community than here in Whitehall. That is why, as we are delivering month by month and year by year improvements in services for patients in every part of the country, we will also deliver the biggest devolution of power in the history of the national health service.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

I really welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, and I am particularly keen that he looks at the multiple layers of sign-off and the bureaucracy that sometimes forgets patients are at the other end of it. Hospitals in England have had to rely on charitable fundraising to buy some of the most cutting-edge radiotherapy machines because of NHS England’s policies and bureaucracy. This year, highly advanced machines such as the CyberKnife, which have treated thousands of NHS cancer patients over the past 10 years, will need upgrading, but NHS England is refusing to include them in this year’s funding because they were all bought by charities. The Secretary of State talked about giving people the tools to do the job. Could he change that policy, so that our hospitals do not have to continue relying on charities for the latest technology?