Hospice Funding

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady join me in commending Compton Care hospice in my constituency? The hospice, which I visited recently, does great work raising funds, and it really welcomed the £100 million support provided by this Government. However, the hospice emphasised to me that if it was not there to provide social care, therapy and respite care for patients and their families, the NHS would need an extra 100 beds. Hospices provide invaluable services to our communities, which makes it so important for us to continue to support them as much as we can.

[Joy Morrissey]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about the pressure that hospices take off the NHS. The wonderful work of the hospice the hon. Gentleman mentions is the reason the NHS can function in the way it does. The cost savings on palliative care—both in hospital and out-of-hospital care settings—are invaluable. The hospices in our constituencies are a model that already works, and they are trusted by the community. I think we should be funding that model, instead of allowing hospices to die on the vine because of a lack of funding and changes to the funding model. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point.

Prevention of Drug Deaths

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing a debate on this serious and important topic.

Across England and Wales, there has been a 113% increase in drug-related fatalities in the last decade, and the impact of illegal drugs costs the Government around £20 billion a year. The number of deaths has been rising steadily since 2012, in line with the austerity measures introduced by the previous Government that resulted in a reduction in funding for treatment services. The National Audit Office reports that, between 2014 and 2022, real-terms funding for drug and alcohol treatment in England fell by 40%.

Deprivation leads to more drug deaths, but even in Wolverhampton West, which is not as deprived as some areas in the north-east of England, the number of drug- related deaths has risen sharply since 2021 to reach levels above the national average. What funding will be made available to deal with drug addiction? Public Health England recently found that 50% of those dying from opioid use had not been in contact with any support services in the previous five years.

We need a holistic approach to the problem of drug misuse that invests in our mental health services, reduces levels of deprivation and encourages those who use drugs to engage with services. Reducing the number of drug deaths would be incredibly cost-effective, resulting in a reduction in drug addiction and crime associated with drug usage. Dame Carol Black, who has already been mentioned this afternoon, found that every £1 invested in harm reduction and treatment services produces a £4 return to the health and justice systems.

We must continue to support and fund the amazing work of organisations that focus on the issue of drug abuse. Wolverhampton Voluntary and Community Action provides a service user involvement team in my constituency and throughout Wolverhampton. The SUIT is a peer-led service, led by people with first-hand experience of drug and alcohol abuse. It supports not only addiction recovery, but mental and physical health, wellbeing, homelessness, employment, welfare and housing, and tackling the stigma and discrimination around drug use. We need to invest in and support such organisations.

Hughes Report: First Anniversary

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Before I became an MP, I specialised exclusively in dealing with compensation claims on behalf of women who had suffered from the use of vaginal mesh. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the mesh was sold to patients as a gold standard, and they were misled. Does she agree that a proper Government-backed compensation scheme will save the NHS money in the long run? As a solicitor, I was always conscious of the fact that, in pursuing these claims, it was ultimately the NHS that had to pay out the compensation and legal costs.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which perhaps nobody else but him would have been able to make in this debate, so I thank him for it, and I do agree.

The people harmed by mesh and valproate did nothing other than trust a medical professional’s judgment. The very least we should do is offer them compensation to help them navigate their now damaged lives, which they have had inflicted on them, most horrifyingly, by our very own NHS.

The fact that the victims of these scandals are mainly women is no coincidence. I have recently spoken in this place about medical misogyny in our healthcare system, and some colleagues here were in that debate. I said then—and I say it again—that had the thousands of women impacted by these scandals been men,

 “I do not believe that dismissal on such a scale would have occurred.”—[Official Report, 27 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 499WH.]

We hear stories of women seeking advice from medical professionals, only to be told it is all in their head—that it is just their menstrual cycle or the menopause—or being gaslit into believing it must be anything other than the devices or medication they were prescribed.

Women not being listened to by medical professionals not only perpetuates structural misogyny; it endangers lives. It is so heartening to see so many male colleagues in this debate, because it proves that we can change things and that it does not have to be this way. Issuing compensation to these women would, at least and at last, confirm that they were right to be concerned and that they were not being hysterical—we know why it is called a “hysterectomy”—which is something women have been accused of for many hundreds of years when it comes to our health.

As well as medical misogyny, part of the defensiveness and dismissal stems from the huge sums given to the healthcare system by the industry, which creates bias. Knowing that that is the case is not enough: the UK needs to adopt sunshine legislation to ensure that this information is fully declared, in the same way that all of us in this room, as MPs, have to make declarations. That information should be presented via a centralised public database that is totally independent of industry. As we all know, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we need to act now to prevent future scandals.

I am conscious of time, and colleagues will have a lot to say and experiences to share, so I will end my remarks by leaving the Minister with a few quick questions—sorry, Minister. Will she provide Members and campaigners here today, and the no doubt many victims of these scandals watching at home on the internet, with a timeline for when we can expect a Government response to the excellent Hughes report? If she is unable to do that today, will she commit to writing to Baroness Merron to ask for a timeframe?

Will the Minister explain what scope there is for the Government to implement a sunshine-style piece of legislation to ensure the transparency of payments made by industry to our healthcare sector? In the spirit of cross-departmental working, which I know the Government are committed to, will she write to the Work and Pensions Secretary for reassurance that victims of the valproate and mesh scandals will not be subject to reassessment and forced into work, given their physical and mental complications? Finally, in her new role, will she commit to meeting campaigners, many of whom are here today, to hear at first hand about the valproate and mesh scandals, if she did not do that in her previous role as a Back-Bench MP?

I thank the Minister in advance for her consideration, and I look forward to her answers. I will end with this: we have rightly seen compensation for the infected blood scandal, which I mentioned at the start of my remarks, the Post Office scandal and the Grenfell disaster. Those all involved innocent people whose lives were turned upside down, whether physically, mentally or worse, through no fault of their own. I fail to see how the mesh and valproate scandals do not meet the same criteria, and I encourage anyone opposed to compensation to consider that.

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[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for securing this important debate and for all the work she does on this issue.

As I mentioned earlier, I specialised in pursuing clinical negligence claims on behalf of women who had had mesh implants, and I have seen many examples of the type of life-changing injuries described by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). As the Hughes report confirmed, these women were in debilitating pain after the implants; they were forced to stop working and faced a lifetime of uncertainty. The implants had a major impact on their relationships. My hon. Friend’s client was lucky in the sense that she had a supportive husband, but I had many clients whose marital relationships had broken down because of the inability to have intimate relationships following the mesh implant.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said that 10,000 women had been affected by pelvic mesh implants, but the campaign organisation Sling the Mesh has argued that that figure could be as high as 40,000. Before the Hughes report was published in February 2024, we had Baroness Cumberlege’s report in July 2020. She said that there should be a Government apology, a scheme to meet the cost of providing additional care and support to those affected, and a network of specialist centres.

A patient engagement survey carried out by the Patient Safety Commissioner found that more than half of those impacted by pelvic mesh or valproate said that it had had a very negative impact on their ability to work, and that it affected their financial situation. More than three quarters said that it had a very negative impact on their mental health.

It is essential that the Government provide a redress scheme. The right hon. Member for New Forest East said that delay will not help matters, and we have all heard the phrase “Justice delayed is justice denied.” The clients that I dealt with just wanted to move on with their lives. It is essential that we have a redress system that works quickly, so that these women can try to rebuild their lives and move on. The redress scheme must provide not only financial compensation but non-financial compensation.

The right hon. Member mentioned PIP. Lots of these women struggled to apply for PIP and other benefits after they had been injured. They had little or no access to mental health services, and they were exposed to an inaccessible and adversarial legal system that was complicated to navigate. There are often delays in legal claims, and we need to move away from that. We need a Government-backed compensation scheme that is similar to the infected blood compensation scheme that this Government are properly pursuing. Only with such a scheme will we have proper redress for these women and ensure that justice is given to those impacted by this tragedy.

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[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) on securing today’s timely and important debate on the first anniversary of the Hughes report. She has been a tireless champion for those harmed by pelvic mesh and for children born with birth defects as a result of sodium valproate. I commend her work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on first do no harm, mesh, Primodos, valproate—that is a mouthful and could have been a bit shorter—of which I am also a member.

In 2024, the Patient Safety Commissioner estimated that at least 10,000 women in England have been harmed by vaginal mesh implants, some involving the mesh slicing into their bladder, bowels or vaginal wall, leaving them in permanent pain, sometimes unable to walk, work or have sex, leaving their lives changed profoundly. As multiple hon. Members have mentioned, including the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), the campaign group Sling the Mesh believes that the true number could be closer to 40,000 women.

When Dr Henrietta Hughes agreed to produce this report, she made one thing very clear: this was not to be another review that just gathers dust—this report must lead to action, not just words. We are now a year on and the people affected are still waiting.

The Hughes report makes the case plainly: there is a clear need for redress. These women were, in most cases, not failed by a single doctor or a one-off error. They were failed by the system, by healthcare structures, by regulators and by Governments who did not listen when they should have. The redress we need is not about blame but about restorative justice. It should be co-designed with the patients, and it should be distinct from adversarial court proceedings where, as other hon. Members have mentioned, women have to relive their experience and their trauma, time and again.

The Hughes report recommended establishing an independent redress agency. The lack of clarity on creating a bespoke redress scheme has left patients in limbo, which is deepening the harm—on that point, the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) shared his useful insight and learnings from the infected blood scandal. Several women in my constituency of Chichester have shared their stories with me: stories of being dismissed by clinicians, of medical records being incomplete, inaccessible or not reflecting the true circumstances that these women are in, and of suffering through chronic pain and ill health even after the mesh has been removed. I have met two of those women in person. I met one at her home because she is so profoundly injured and traumatised that she no longer leaves her property for any reason. With no access to social media or the outside world, my constituent had no idea that there were others like her, or that there is a national campaign for justice. She felt alone, embarrassed and broken by her circumstances, so I promised to stand by and with her, and with the thousands of others, up and down the country, who have been failed.

I take this opportunity to mention Paula Goss: a national campaigner, and a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young). Paula was affected by a mesh procedure that was not covered by the original Cumberlege review. The surgeon involved was found guilty of serious misconduct but only suspended for six months. Of the 462 patients harmed at the Spire private hospital and the Southmead hospital, just five were called as witnesses to the General Medical Council. When Paula tried to complain, she was—as many hon. Members, from both sides of the House, have noted in this debate—told that she was out of time, and that it was not in the public interest to waive the deadline. How can we call that justice? It is not justice or accountability. Cases like that of Paula, and those raised by my constituents in Chichester, are why we Liberal Democrats believe that the entire set of recommendations in the Cumberlege report must be implemented without further delay.

This scandal is not limited to mesh and sodium valproate. The same approach must be extended to other medical scandals, such as Primodos. We cannot continue to treat each crisis as an isolated issue, and need a system-wide approach to patient safety and accountability. That means a duty of candour on public officials. The Liberal Democrats would achieve that by establishing an office of the whistleblower so that safety concerns can be raised without fear or delay. It also means embedding patient voices in the heart of our healthcare system, not as an afterthought but as a fundamental principle. Earlier this year, 100 women secured a financial settlement from mesh manufacturers, but that is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of women who deserve redress. Every single woman affected by this scandal deserves proper compensation, not just those women able to pursue lengthy and difficult legal claims.

[Warinder Juss]

The Hughes report actually recommends that women affected by pelvic mesh should receive an initial interim payment of £25,000, followed by a main payment. Does the hon. Member agree that that interim payment would be of some comfort to the women she has mentioned, and mean that they could at least begin to try to get redress, and make some improvement in their lives?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

The hon. Member says that from a place of experience and knowledge. Who am I to speak against anything he says as the expert in the room? I totally agree that that would provide those women some reassurance that their cases have been heard and recognised by the Government.

Finally, we are still waiting for a formal response from the Government to the Hughes report. In August, that response was promised “in due course”, but “due course” has come and gone. These women have waited long enough. People who have already suffered for years should not be forced to wait any longer for the compensation and recognition that they deserve. Let us end this culture of delay, disbelief and denial and do what we should have done years ago: listen, apologise and act.

Ambulance Response Times

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine.

NHS England has set ambulance response time targets since 2018. As the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) indicated, there are four categories of severity for ambulance calls, each with a different response-time standard. In my Wolverhampton West constituency, ambulance response times are managed by the West Midlands Ambulance Service. The Care Quality Commission�s 2023 inspection of the West Midlands Ambulance Service resulted in a regulation 12 notice for response times.

I pay tribute to ambulance workers, who work very hard. When the ambulance was called for my parents, before they passed away, the ambulance workers were very diligent. They worked very hard and did their best for my parents.

I wish to address an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal): mental health among ambulance workers. Sadly, it has come to my attention as the MP in Wolverhampton West that there have been cases of bullying and harassment among ambulance workers, with whistleblowers then being targeted by management. Although I appreciate that this is probably a discussion for another time, I want to emphasise that we need to protect whistleblowers in our health service. The wellbeing of ambulance workers will have an impact on ambulance response times.

The Black Country integrated care system covers my constituency of Wolverhampton West. On the four categories for ambulance response times, although the ICS�s response time for category 1 was found to be within target, the response times for categories 2, 3 and 4 were under target.

In January this year, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care acknowledged that patients have been let down by ambulances that do not arrive on time, and that there is variation in performance across different parts of the country. He also mentioned the urgent and emergency care improvement plan, which is currently in production and will be published before spring 2025. I look forward to seeing the results.

The Government�s mandate to NHS England this year includes an objective to reform and improve urgent and emergency care. The mandate describes ambulance response times and A&E waiting times as unacceptable. NHS England�s priorities and operational planning guidance includes a national priority to improve A&E waiting and ambulance response times.

As a Government we have made excellent strides in reducing hospital waiting lists and making more hospital appointments available, and we have improved accessibility to GP appointments. In the same way as we have made strides in reducing hospital waiting lists and increasing hospital appointments, we must now make similar strides in improving ambulance response times.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Welfare of Doctors

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Peter Prinsley]

I will speak of general practice shortly. My son is an A&E doctor here in London, and I am therefore one of three generations of doctors who have served the NHS continuously since it began; the welfare of doctors is personal for me. This Government have already done much for doctors, who are on the frontline and not the picket line for the first time in several years, but burnout, fatigue and stress are still very real problems that threaten to undermine the efficacy of our NHS.

Today’s new doctors graduate into the profession with debts of nearly £100,000. They immediately enter a lottery to be appointed to their first jobs as pre-registration doctors, sometimes ending up miles away from family and friends in places they have never visited before. Now that reminds me of another job that I just started. Young doctors are left immediately responsible for life-and-death decisions, sometimes with insufficient support. They are left scrabbling at the very last minute for somewhere to live—the on-call accommodation that my generation remembers has disappeared—and I have known several of them to sleep in their cars.

It has not escaped my notice that the new name for junior doctors is “resident doctors”. Resident doctors? That is the very last thing they are. If they are lucky, there is a place for them to rest, but many a time I have arrived to find a young doctor fast asleep from exhaustion at an office desk.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Given the desperate need for more doctors in the NHS, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to be looking after doctors’ welfare to encourage more people to enter the medical profession?

[Peter Prinsley]

I agree with my hon. Friend, as he will see.

There are odd shifts, night duties without hot food, and days and weeks that go by without an opportunity to meet supervising consultants. Short clinical attachments mean that the relationships previously created with senior mentors are rare. Just last week, I received an email from a surgeon who was my consultant in 1986. He had noticed in a surgical journal that I had become an MP, and I remembered him as the brilliant surgeon that he was. These are the relationships that make people feel as if they belong within a wider profession, but I doubt whether the young trainees of today would have the chance to make such lasting connections.

There is little security of employment, because doctors are obliged to apply every year or two for another post, probably in another place. The doctors’ mess used to be a place where young doctors could find a sort of surrogate family in an unfamiliar place, but that is now sadly a thing of the past. According to research from the British Medical Association, fewer than 10% of UK trusts or health boards offer hot food after 11 o’clock at night.

The demands of the job affect relationships. Many young doctors are in relationships with fellow doctors, but lucky indeed are the couple who can work and live in the same place, or even contemplate raising a young family together. Sadly, relationship difficulties and breakdowns are commonplace. Holidays must be taken at odd times, and rotas are inflexible. Doctors are left unable to take a day off to attend a wife’s graduation, a sister’s wedding or even their own wedding—all true.

Progression in a chosen career depends on a multitude of competitive interviews and hugely costly professional exams. There is no security of employment. In a survey called “Fight Fatigue” conducted by the Royal College of Anaesthetists, 50% of respondents said that they had had an accident or a near miss when driving home after a night shift—I recall fatalities like this in my own hospital; 84% were too tired to drive home after a night shift; and only 64% had access to any rest facilities. What would we say if the same were true of airline pilots, to whom anaesthetists are sometimes compared?

Hospice and Palliative Care

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Let me first pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) for bringing this debate to the House.

Hospices such as Compton Care in my constituency provide invaluable palliative care, not only in terms of pain and symptom control but in providing psychological, social and spiritual support, support for people who wish to die at home, and rehabilitation, financial advice and support for family members, including bereavement support. However, the funding that hospices receive from ICBs across the country is inconsistent, and often does not reflect the cost of the services that they provide. As has already been mentioned, only a third of hospice funding comes from the Government, with the rest coming from charitable donations. As of May last year, at least a fifth of UK hospices had either cut their services in the previous year or were planning to do so.

When hospices cut services the need for care is still there, but it has to be met by the NHS. If they are given the long-term support they need, that can ease the pressure on the NHS. Sector leaders estimate that the need for palliative care in the UK will increase by 25% over the next 25 years. However, I welcome the £100 million that the Government have provided, which will improve buildings, equipment, accommodation and digital upgrades, as well as the £26 million revenue funding for children and young people’s hospices that will be provided in 2025-26.

There has been a lot of discussion about assisted dying this evening and when we discussed the assisted dying Bill, there was a lot of discussion about palliative care. Now we have an opportunity to take action, and we need to seize it to improve palliative care. If the assisted dying Bill does become law, we need to make sure that people in the future do not have to make a decision between assisted dying and palliative care.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, but hospices face a range of pressures. The capital expenditure injection that we have provided will help them in the round. Clearly, anything that helps a hospice with its budget in the round, be it capital or revenue, will help the hospice.

We are supporting the hospice sector through a £100 million capital funding boost for adult and children’s hospices, to ensure that they have the best physical environment for care. There is also £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices. The £100 million in capital funding will deliver much-needed improvements—from refurbishments to overhauling IT systems and better facilities for patients and visitors—during the remainder of 2024-25 and throughout 2025-26. The investment will help hospices to improve their buildings, equipment and accommodation, so that patients continue to receive the best care possible.

Hospices for children and young people will receive a further £26 million in revenue funding for ’25-26 through what was known until recently as the children’s hospice grant. That investment demonstrates the Government’s recognition of the importance of integrating services to improve the treatment that patients receive. Furthermore, through our plans for neighbourhood health centres, we will drive the shift of care from hospitals to the community, which will bring together palliative care services, including hospices and community care services, so that people have the best access to treatment through joined-up services.

[Warinder Juss]

Money is not always the only solution, so will my hon. Friend confirm how the commission on palliative care that the Government announced last month will improve end of life care?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Government announced a commission on the future of adult social care. A separate commission was announced by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) on palliative care. We will certainly monitor the findings of that commission very closely.

We will set out details of the funding allocation and distribution mechanisms for both funding streams in the coming weeks.

Hospice Funding

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

What beggars belief is that person after person—man after man—on the Opposition Benches still feels able to get up and defend their record in government. Not once have we heard that they agree with Lord Darzi’s diagnosis, or that they welcome the extra investment that the Chancellor found by choosing to support the health sector in the Budget. I am afraid that, until they reach that conclusion, they are destined to be on the Opposition Benches for a very long time.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Merry Christmas to you and your team, Mr Speaker.

Compton Care hospice in my constituency provides specialist palliative and bereavement care, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Having previously discussed the lack of funding with the hospice, I am sure that it will welcome the extra funding that has been announced today. Will the Minister please join me in thanking Compton Care hospice and its incredible staff for the care that they will continue to provide throughout the Christmas period?

[Karin Smyth]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments, and I am very pleased to thank Compton Care hospice for all its work. He is right to highlight that the care is 365 days a year, around the clock.

Income Tax (Charge)

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

The Chancellor’s Budget last week finally ended the Conservative party’s austerity. It is a Budget that fixes the foundations to deliver real change, by fixing the NHS, cutting hospital waiting lists, reforming public services and rebuilding our country.

As the Chancellor said, this Budget is about “investment, investment, investment”. This Labour Government are investing over £25.5 billion over two years in the NHS. That will cut waiting times, so that patients do not have to wait longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment; provide 40,000 extra appointments; put in place new surgical hubs and diagnostic scanners, building capacity for more than 30,000 additional procedures and over 1.25 million diagnostic tests; and provide new radiotherapy machines to improve cancer treatment.

We are investing in NHS technology and digital, to run essential services and to drive NHS productivity improvements, freeing up staff time. We are providing a dedicated capital fund to deliver upgrades to GP surgeries, boosting productivity and enabling the delivery of more appointments.

We are investing £26 million to open new mental health crisis centres. At last, we have a Government who are committed to tackling the root causes of mental health problems and to supporting people to remain in work and to return to work.

We are supporting social care through at least £600 million of new grant funding to be able to increase local Government spending, alongside an £86 million increase to the disabled facilities grant to support more adaptations to homes for those with social care needs, thereby reducing hospitalisations and prolonging independence.

This Government are cutting down barriers to opportunity for all by increasing the core schools budget by £2.3 billion, supporting the recruitment of 6,500 teachers in key subjects and tackling retention issues, to prepare our children for life, work and the future.

We are providing a £1 billion increase to improve SEND provision and to improve outcomes and an additional £300 million for further education to ensure that young people are learning and developing the skills they need to succeed in the modern labour market, which will help the City of Wolverhampton college in my constituency. We are increasing investment in children’s social care reform, and it is great to see a real-terms funding increase for local government spending.

We are taking all of these decisions, while also taking tough decisions on spending and welfare, eliminating fraud and error in the welfare system—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call Baggy Shanker.

Oral Answers to Questions

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

17. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of patient access to primary care services.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

20. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of patient access to primary care services.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

As identified in Lord Darzi’s review, primary care is broken. Satisfaction with GP services has fallen from a peak of 80% in 2009 to just 35% last year—a truly damning indictment of 14 years of Tory failure. We will rebuild general practice. We have invested £82 million to recruit 1,000 new GPs, we have launched our red tape challenge, and we are committed to improving continuity of care and ending the 8 am scramble. On primary care more broadly, we are committed to boosting the role of community pharmacies, enabling patients to be treated for certain conditions by their local pharmacists, without the need to see a GP.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

We are absolutely committed to the challenge of cutting red tape and reducing the administrative burden for staff to help patients get the care that they need. An important element of our plan will be streamlining access to registration in order to move it online, and we are working at pace to make online registration available in all practices. I am very happy to come back to my hon. Friend on the constituency issue that she raises.

[Warinder Juss]

Lord Darzi’s report on the NHS states that people are struggling to see their GPs. Prevention is better than cure, and interventions to protect health tend to be far less costly than dealing with the consequences of illness, both financially and in terms of outcomes. Early and quick access to primary care is therefore crucial. I accept that it is not always necessary to see a GP—an appointment with a nurse may suffice—but what steps are being taken to ensure that patients in my Wolverhampton West constituency have quick, easy and direct access to GP surgeries?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I note that Wolverhampton West has seen a decrease of 28 full-time equivalent GPs since 2018, which of course massively exacerbates the issues to which my hon. Friend refers. We will introduce a modern booking system to end the 8 am scramble and make it easier for patients to contact their GP. In particular, we are committed to increasing the use of the NHS app to view patient records and order repeat prescriptions. All of that will take pressure off the booking system.