Health and Social Care: Winter Update

Debate between Wes Streeting and Sally Jameson

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I will take that as another representation from the hon. Gentleman on the new hospital programme, and I reassure him we will be setting out our review and its conclusions shortly.

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As part of making the NHS fit for the future, moving some patient care from hospital to the community will be pivotal. In Doncaster, mayor Ros Jones and the council are already well on the way with this and they are setting up “Health on the High Street”, which is good not just for patients but for footfall in the city centre. Will my right hon. Friend set out what his Department is doing to support areas such as Doncaster in delivering on this strategy?

[Wes Streeting]

I am delighted to hear of the work Ros is doing as mayor to support health and care services and to take health and care to where people are. I hate hearing that there are hard-to-reach communities; there are no hard-to-reach communities. There are underserved communities and, in our determination to tackle health inequalities, to get care closer to people’s homes and indeed in people’s homes, to do earlier diagnosis and to provide faster access to treatment, we need to make sure that we take health and care services to where people are rather than expecting people to always come to us.