Steve Barclay
MP for North East Cambridgeshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I speak to my brief exchange earlier with the Minister. As the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, said, the draft regulations are fairly benign and very welcome to help people who are struggling with their bills.”
“The issue is not the lack of will; the issue is the alignment between procurement, regulation and clinical leadership, particularly in the colleges, as well as the ability to scale innovation—it is not about having more ministerial pilots.”
“Just to localise it to my own constituency, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB alone paid out £14 million in redundancies last year. It merged with a number of other ICBs to form the Central East ICB, yet we know hear from the Government that it should align with metro mayors, which means going back to exactly what it was before: the…”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Government are spending millions of pounds and there is no plan. The measure was announced without working that out, it came as a surprise to many within the system, and it has had a chilling effect on many decisions. That is not isolated.”
“I rise to speak to clause 1 on the abolition of NHS England and clause 6 on promoting innovation. What characterises the first of those is an announcement without any clear plan. That is what has driven the cost and confusion that a number of Members across the House have spoken about.”
“All this is around 18 months on from the actual announcement. The confusion seems to extend to the Government themselves, because they seem unable to answer pretty straightforward written parliamentary questions. Given the time limit, I will give just a few examples.”
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“Will the Minister clarify how many people are within scope of benefiting from the regulation and what the total cost will be, in terms of the savings they will get?”
“They are just about affording their bills, but they will not be covered by the protections in the draft regulations; quite the reverse—they will be the ones who bear the cost. One assumes that the Minister has not brought in a change in the law without being clear about what the cost of that change is or what the impact might be on some of those struggling to pay their bills. In her wind-up, will she clarify those two figures? What is the cost of the amount of debt that is going to be written off, and how many people are potentially within scope of being pushed into that cohort because their bills will go up? We did not have those figures, but I hope she now has the inspiration from the Box to answer those points.”
“Therefore, for the Minister to make the claim that it is helping—as she did—one assumes that she will know what the cost is of the change to the law that she has brought to the Committee. Given that, it also behoves us to understand who will pick up the cost of the measure. I was therefore surprised that in the Minister’s remarks, she did not touch on that cohort just above the other one—some people who can pay the addition to their energy bills without any difficulty whatever. We all represent constituents—indeed, the Government frequently talk about the pressure of the cost of living on them—who are just struggling. Indeed, they are those who, to coin a phrase, need some breathing space.”
“I speak to my brief exchange earlier with the Minister. As the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, said, the draft regulations are fairly benign and very welcome to help people who are struggling with their bills. Fundamentally, however, when changing the law, it behoves us to understand who is within the scope of that change and what adverse impacts there might be as a result. A cohort of people will be just about managing to pay their bills, yet there will be a cost to this measure, welcomed though it has largely been by the Committee in the speeches so far. What is unclear to me, however, is the cost. For this measure to substantively help people with their energy debt in a meaningful way, one assumes a significant cost as a result of being able to share the data in order to write off those bills.”
“When I was reading the draft regulations, I was confused, because I thought they mentioned a Department that had been scrapped. It seems odd to bring in a change in the law for a Department that the Government have already scrapped.”
“Less than two months ago, the right hon. Lady’s predecessor rushed to the House on the last day before recess, to say how essential these measures were, and Conservative Members warned that it was gerrymandering. It is not that the Secretary of State has listened; she has been told by her lawyers that it is gerrymandering. The warning signs were there two months ago when plans for Cambridgeshire were paused. When again announcing a pause for Cambridgeshire, will she tell my constituents how long the pause will be, and how much it will cost?”
“Is it not bizarre that just a few hours after the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government came to the House to pause local government reorganisation on the basis of legal risk, so that she can have more consultation, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said, “We will bring an end to consultation culture and, with guidance from the Attorney General on legal risk, give Ministers the confidence to make decisions”? Will they have a greater appetite for legal risk, or will they pause to have more consultations? The two Ministers are saying opposite things.”
“I also asked how many people had accepted voluntary redundancy, another written parliamentary question that has passed the deadline without answer. The process is characterised by a lack of transparency.”
“All this is around 18 months on from the actual announcement. The confusion seems to extend to the Government themselves, because they seem unable to answer pretty straightforward written parliamentary questions. Given the time limit, I will give just a few examples. I asked how many people have been hired to NHS England since the announcement of its abolition, not least given the huge cost—over half a billion pounds—of voluntary redundancies. Despite the deadline passing, the Minister has not answered the question. We know from another written parliamentary question that more than 1,000 jobs have been advertised. It is relevant to know, in an organisation that is paying people to leave, how many people it is hiring.”
“Just to localise it to my own constituency, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB alone paid out £14 million in redundancies last year. It merged with a number of other ICBs to form the Central East ICB, yet we know hear from the Government that it should align with metro mayors, which means going back to exactly what it was before: the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB. That is just one of many confusions around the announcement. The hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) spoke about confusion over the timetable and what was described to the media as now an impossible timetable. We also saw reports in the media this weekend about the destination of staff in NHS England. Can they actually go into the Department, or will another body be set up because of the pay disparity between the two?”
“I rise to speak to clause 1 on the abolition of NHS England and clause 6 on promoting innovation. What characterises the first of those is an announcement without any clear plan. That is what has driven the cost and confusion that a number of Members across the House have spoken about. Those in any doubt about that can just look at NHS England’s own 2025-26 annual accounts, which show that the costs are already more than £100 million higher than forecast and now sit at above half a billion pounds. I do not recall seeing that on election leaflets. Indeed, just six directors at NHS England are being paid over £800,000, and that points to the cost. Sometimes such big figures are hard for constituents to get their heads around.”
“The issue is not the lack of will; the issue is the alignment between procurement, regulation and clinical leadership, particularly in the colleges, as well as the ability to scale innovation—it is not about having more ministerial pilots. Finally, because I am almost out of time, I will pick up on the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee’s good points around data. When I was in the Department, my frustration was that I often had to go on open-source dashboards to get information that should have been available to me as a Minister, and I suspect that that is still the case. We should make data dashboards a common theme—the CSV files that the Department publishes are extremely difficult to access. Make data more transparent; it will help the debate in Parliament and, I dare say, it will help Ministers get more support.”
“There is confusion across Departments, and the issues with clause 1, which a number of Members have spoken to, illustrate that. Given the time limit, I will turn to clause 6. I do not doubt for a minute that the Health Minister and the Secretary of State—anyone in the Department—want to promote innovation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) spoke a lot about capital to revenue switches in his book, and the pressure that takes away from innovation. As Health Secretary, I used to have a wry smile at the battles I had with him, when I was pushed by the Treasury to do exactly the same thing.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the Government are spending millions of pounds and there is no plan. The measure was announced without working that out, it came as a surprise to many within the system, and it has had a chilling effect on many decisions. That is not isolated. Just today, we had the complete shambles of local government reorganisation. On the last day before the summer recess, the then Secretary of State rushed to the House to push through an announcement, which the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government is now reversing, while the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is contradicting her by saying that the Government want to have a higher legal appetite for risk and fewer consultations.”
“When a Minister comes to the House on the last day before summer recess to announce proposals that his own MPs describe as “utterly unacceptable”, “sacrificing their communities” and “a disgrace”, and other proposals such as those for Cambridgeshire are put on hold, it is a clear sign of a flawed process. He has given no detail as to how long the delay is for Cambridgeshire or what the additional information he is now seeking is. Will he publish that today, or will residents in Cambridgeshire be left in the lurch over the summer, not knowing for how long this farce will go on, or what further information is being sought?”
“When I put that to Members of the Lords, they were completely unaware of that figure. I am almost out of time, but the point I want to make to the House is that these are huge numbers, and it is ridiculous that there has been so little transparency and debate. R&R is going to be a national scandal; I keep raising it, but nothing is changing. It is time that we had a debate in this House, made this issue transparent and brought some clarity to it, including a defined budget and a time limit, which I would set as one Parliament.”
“This is happening because, bluntly, there has been a breakdown in trust between officials—who are deeply frustrated with Members and peers because they feel that we have not set a clear budget or a clear timeline, and that the goalposts are being moved regarding the options—and Members and peers, who are frustrated because they feel that officials are not responding to concerns. In 2021, the Leader of the House said that this scheme was massively gold-plated, but the trade-offs are still not being addressed. Let me give just one example—that of the Lords roof. Although the Finance Committee does not cover R&R, we had a proposal this week on the Lords roof, which is work outside of R&R. An extra £1 million of costs was being incurred just because the Lords would not agree to finish at 10.30 pm.”
“As the headline figure is so large, however, the proposal is to commit £3 billion, but to lock in the next Parliament so that, in essence, it has no choice but to sign off a figure that this Parliament knows it will be highly reluctant to sign off. All of this is being done with no debate in this House, despite more than half the Parliament being new Members. This is not a new issue—I raised this point in the exact same debate last year, the Sir David Amess debate, and have raised it multiple times in the House. There has been no debate about these gigantic figures, despite the level of debate we have on other topics. The Government might say that this is a parliamentary matter, but it is not; it is the Government who will provide the money, and it is the Government who have the majority in the House.”
“In a nice sleight of hand, though, all the works on the northern estate—which are essential to the restoration and renewal programme—are excluded. That is more than a further £5 billion over the next 10 years, and that is excluding the half a billion we have spent over the past five years just on preparatory work, before building anything. After spending half a billion on preparatory work, the National Audit Office said last month that the £3 billion that is being brought forward is to allow the programme to progress from four options to two. When the legislation was passed, it was with one option; after seven years and half a billion pounds, we have gone from one option to four, and it is now proposed to spend a further £3 billion to go from four options to two.”
“Labour Members will recall the political pain that I am sure many of them faced when the winter fuel proposal was announced. It was put forward to save around £1.3 billion to £1.5 billion a year. They will also recall the angst, the ministerial resignations and the delay that occurred around the defence investment plan, which cost about £15 billion, less than half of which is actually new money—about £6.9 billion. It is very surprising that the Government propose to spend more on this building and this estate than they are spending on the defence investment plan. As a deposit, they are planning to spend more than half of what was put forward as a saving on winter fuel. If colleagues are surprised to hear that, I can tell them that of the four options being brought forward, even the cheapest is more than £10 billion.”
“Is £4.7 billion over four years on cycling and walking really this Government’s priority if we are to boost national resilience?”
“Can he give any colour on that, and can he explain why the reserves are not being prioritised more than they are? My next point speaks directly to the issue of national resilience that the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak correctly identified. Looking at the Red Book, £310 million has just been agreed for a digital campus in Manchester, and there is £1.196 million—£1.2 billion—on boiler upgrades over four years. But that is not enough, so the Government are extending that by £400 million this year, £600 million next year, and over £600 million the year after. I am not saying that those programmes are not useful—I am sure they are—but if the Prime Minister’s Munich speech is correct, and given comments from colleagues in the House, is this really the priority?”
“The main point I wish to highlight—I say this as someone who has spent time in the Treasury, and I keep raising this point with MOD colleagues—is that I continue to be baffled as to why the Department is not highlighting and prioritising the reserves more than it is. Again, I think an area of consensus is the value of the reserves in delivering scale, and the fact that they are value for money as an option. Page 61 of the DIP just states £4.2 billion for reserves over four years—there is no breakdown, no detail, and no information, and it is not even clear if the training days and reserve service days for this year are secured. Can the Minister give us an assurance? Can he say what equipment will be funded for the reserves over the next four years?”
“It is stated on page 10 of one of its most recent reports, from December 2025, that the accounts were qualified in a number of areas and that: “Lack of effective departmental oversight of a number of these arrangements has meant that the MOD did not have appropriate information nor assurance to ensure that transactions and balances”— blah-de-blah. In other words, the Department itself does not have a grip. Quite rightly, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak pointed to the scale of challenge, but we have a set of efficiencies in a 10-year plan that fundamentally contradict the Secretary of State’s own assurances just a year ago.”
“Those are figures in the Government’s own annex, yet just last year on page 5 of the strategic defence review, the Secretary of State said, in no less than his own foreword: “We will unlock nearly £6 billion of new savings”. In a year we have gone from the Secretary of State saying, “We’re going to unlock £6 billion” to “We’re going to unlock over £10 billion.” As the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells alluded to, there is no clear plan and confidence is low. Confidence is not just low because the defence investment plan states that it is low, although indeed its working states “of which remaining plans at lower maturity” with £5 billion on RDEL and £3.4 billion on CDEL—£8.4 billion of low confidence. Let us look, too, at the independent findings of the National Audit Office.”
“Of the £15 billion announced, £6.9 billion over four years is new money, with £4.7 billion for the next budget, and £3.4 billion from asset sales and moving liabilities around. As he said, that is in addition to £10.7 billion of efficiencies. In addition to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, I want to illustrate how the Government’s narrative contradicts itself with regard to the efficiencies; three Government documents, which the Government agree with, actually contradict each other. For example, on page 79 of the DIP we see the total resource departmental expenditure limit of £7 billion, from savings on staffing, and a capital departmental expenditure limit of £3.4 billion.”
“The hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) has highlighted a number of pertinent questions that collectively pointed to the increased threat that we face. I also very much agree with the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca). There is a lot of common ground in the Chamber today. One example of that is that I agree fundamentally with the comment from the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) that we “must not underestimate the level of change that is required.” None of that detracts from the point that the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) highlighted in his opening remarks on the structural flaws in the funding allocated through the defence investment plan. The hon. Gentleman elaborated in more depth but, for example, less than half the headline figure announced is new money.”
“Member for Dunfermline and Dollar said regarding the answer to his written question, the MOD is often reluctant to answer on national security grounds, and there is very little detail on how other Departments will prioritise their budgets and what the key performance indicators are, particularly when new Ministers are likely to be coming in. Will the Minister clarify whether there will be KPIs relating to the defence investment plan for those Departments, and if so, when will they be set out?”
“My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the broader point, which is the lack of detail on reserves, other than to say that it is all being parked until the next Parliament. That is a wasted opportunity. Reservists also need clearer communication from the Government, including on the training days and reserve service days this year. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will say a bit more about that. Finally, we know that a Government reshuffle is coming, and if issues such as national resilience are to be addressed, they quite rightly require an all-of-Government response. Yet there is very little detail. As the hon.”
“Could the Minister clarify why the efficiency target has gone up over 73% in a year compared with the strategic defence review? Was the SDR just too unambitious?”
“I very much support the desire for the west midlands, like other places, to have consistency with mayoral authorities—but that is not what the Government are doing elsewhere. Take Cambridge: we have a metro mayor in Cambridgeshire and the Government have just announced a Greater Cambridge Development Corporation. That is on top of the Greater Cambridge Partnership, which also looks at roads, and on top of the county council, the district councils and the Oxford to Cambridge railway, which is another arm’s length body. Yes, it is right for WMCA to have clarity on what it is responsible for, but why is there so little consistency in areas such as Cambridgeshire, where residents find it very difficult to understand who is responsible for what, because more tiers of Government keep being added?”
“If this is an issue of practicalities, as we have heard, can we not assume that there might be common ground on the idea of withdrawing visas from those countries that will not take back their offenders? That would lessen the pressure to release as many prisoners as are projected to be released.”
“The Minister was just talking about metrics. Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden), will she say a little more about organised crime? In assessing the effectiveness of these changes, what key metrics would she apply to prosecutions relating to organised crime?”
“The strategic defence review highlighted the importance of the active reserve, but the defence investment plan shows that there is no increase in reserve numbers this Parliament. Remarkably, the reserve is not mentioned in the land section. Even the commitment on cadets, made less than a year ago in August, has been shelved. Can the Secretary of State at least confirm to the reservists watching this debate that their reserve service days this year will be fully protected?”
“My reading last night suggested that it was just £50,000. It is interesting that the Minister does not know what the fine actually is. What does she think the cost of complying with the EIA requirement would be for a company?”
“I fear that I may have read the legislation a little more closely than the Minister. Some media reports suggest what compliance with this regulation would involve for a company. We are talking about conducting an environmental impact assessment beyond national jurisdiction and significant further work. The cost of complying with the EIA requirement could run to a couple of million pounds. For me, the question is not the international ambition—of course everyone in the House wants our marine environment to be protected—but why the Minister is today introducing legislation the cost of compliance with which will be 10 or 20 times the cost of the fine for non-compliance.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. I will take your steer, Sir John, and make this my last intervention. The Minister has tempted me to intervene once more, because the exact justification that she gave for the cost of compliance being 10 or 20 times the cost of the fine relied on enforcement, but the reason why there have been only two licences granted in the period she cited is that there is so little enforcement because this is beyond national jurisdiction. The Marine Management Organisation has no vessels in the Pacific. There is no impact assessment with this regulation. How will it be enforced in areas beyond our jurisdiction if there is no impact assessment and no additional funding for that enforcement?”
“If the Government have changed their policy and are no longer prosecuting the most serious category 1 water incidents, should that change of policy not be notified to the House, or is it that Ministers simply, despite repeated requests, have no idea what is happening in their own Department?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker, as long ago as September 2024, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was notified of a category 1 incident, the most serious category of pollution incident, which occurred near Whittlesey in my constituency. When no prosecution occurred following the incident, I raised the issue on the Floor of the House in March and the Minister promised to write to me. When no response was received after a number of weeks, I escalated it to you, Mr Speaker, in a letter at the end of April. The Department committed to a reply by 8 May. We are now a further month on from that date and still there has been no reply.”
“That is in addition to the Greater Cambridge Partnership, which leads on housing, the metro mayor, who leads on housing, and the county council and district council, which also lead on housing—and if that is not enough, there is also Cambridge Ahead, which is the voice of civil leadership on issues such as housing. Why should having so many duplicate bodies, which cost taxpayers in my constituency so much money, give anyone confidence that this Government can deliver growth?”
“When Lord Mandelson WhatsApped one of the Government’s most senior Ministers to say that growth plans were in the hands of the Chancellor, the now Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister replied: “It doesn’t fill you with confidence”. A good illustration of that can be seen in Cambridgeshire. Just last year, after spending £80 million of public money and securing planning permission for the largest brownfield site for 8,500 homes, the Government cancelled the scheme. This week, the Government announced yet another unelected quango, the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation, to lead on housing.”
“For my part, I focused on giving families a stronger voice in the NHS—through Martha’s rule, for example, and increasing data transparency. It is clear from the Government’s response this morning that the current ministerial team is also focused sincerely on how to enhance patient safety, but that does require a regulator that is fit for purpose, and there are significant concerns about the GMC. I hope that the Minister will use legislation before the House, alongside the current consultation, to address some of the concerns I have raised today.”
“I hope that I am correct in my understanding that Ministers are minded to give the Professional Standards Authority greater powers, including to ensure that it has the information necessary to make decisions on exercising its right to appeal fitness to practise decisions, and to enable a more agile approach to regulatory performance monitoring. If the Minister confirms that in her response, I would welcome that. How we protect patients better is a long-running issue. I know a number of my predecessors as Secretary of State for Health were focused on this—indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) worked extensively on patient safety when I was his deputy in the Department.”
“Indeed, I think back to the 2011 case of Dr Bawa-Garba, where I think a lot of the backlash to that and concerns of the wider profession were about the sense that clinical reflections made in good faith as part of learning were being used in legal proceedings, as well as the extent to which a trainee was possibly being scapegoated. I hope the House can see the marked distinction between the grave cases that I have highlighted today and the case of a clinician who, in the heat of a high pressure situation, made a genuine mistake and where the case is addressed in a spirit of openness and transparency. I am sure the Minister can draw that distinction.”
“Further, in October last year it came to light that the GMC had allowed doctors with restrictions regarding their overseas practice to practise without restrictions here, which clearly can put patients at risk. It is notable that even the Medical Defence Union has called for new legislation so that the GMC can overhaul its processes. Will the Minister use the Health Bill as an opportunity to table amendments for that? If not, which legislation will she use to address some of these issues regarding the GMC? In a spirit of balance, when dealing with regulatory bodies I want to be clear about the important distinction to draw between the sort of cases I have highlighted and those of medics who have made a genuine mistake—often in a highly pressured environment—where indeed we want to encourage a culture of openness and learning.”
“The third issue that I want to highlight regards the wider poor performance of the GMC. This is an organisation that spends north of £100 million on staff costs—it has got more than 1,700 staff—yet doctors’ fitness to practise hearings are taking, on average, almost two years to process, with a recent increase in cases open for three years or more. That time matters because the NHS must continue to pay suspended doctors in full until they are formally found to be guilty of misconduct or incompetence. It just adds to the grievance that families feel when they see a doctor being paid for years even though there are very serious concerns regarding their fitness to practise—never mind the fact that if they do continue to practise during that time, there may be ongoing risk to patients.”
“Time and again doctors who spew antisemitic bile online and in the streets are being allowed to continue practising medicine”. Again, that is a flavour of Lord Mann’s report from this morning. There are other examples. I will not go through them all, but I will give just one example. Dr Rehiana Ali, a consultant neurologist who was reinstated just last year, said that the architect of the 7 October attacks was a “legend”, called for Israel to be “dismantled” and claimed that 9/11 was conducted by Mossad. I have no doubt that such examples horrify the Minister, given her good reputation in the House, as well as Members on all Benches. But they do point to why the consultation is timely and why, in response to Lord Mann’s report, we need to see action in respect of the GMC.”
“In another tweet, he said: “Ahaha you thin skinned babyman. How are you still so prominent at the BBC? Did you and Tony Hall kill a prostitute together or something?” Another tweet talked of “Jew banker goblins”—that gives a sense of the character we are dealing with. Obviously, I had a sometimes challenging relationship with the British Medical Association during my time as Health Secretary, but interestingly even it, which Dr Whyte unsuccessfully tried to sue, said that he was someone who could never return to represent it in any elected office. The BMA found him unpalatable—but not, it seems, the GMC. That is not an isolated case. The Campaign Against Antisemitism has said: “Britain’s regulatory bodies are failing the Jewish community.”
“Let me give a specific example that illustrates the current gap between the GMC and what I see as the Government’s response to Lord Mann’s report. Just a few weeks ago, the NHS clinician Dr Martin Whyte was seen as fit by the GMC to join the GMC specialist register—a senior role within the NHS. Yet when I was Secretary of State for Health, I reported Dr Martin Whyte to the GMC following abhorrent social media comments. While it is distressing to read them out, I think it is important for the House to hear exactly what this doctor—who has just been put on the GMC specialist register—had to say. For example, he said: “hahaha zeig heil hahaha gas the jews hahaha just kidding but have you seen these youtube videos about the holohoax they’re pretty convincing imo”. That is from a doctor.”
“The Minister will have noticed her own Department’s response just this morning to Lord Mann’s recommendations to tackle what he describes as “routine ostracism of Jewish people” in the NHS—that is the description from the Government’s adviser. Indeed, Ministers quite rightly have said that all racism in the NHS is abhorrent, yet current GMC practice, to me, falls significantly below the expectations set out in Lord Mann’s report. Given that his recommendations have been welcomed and accepted by the Government in full, there must be an expectation that the consultation, and indeed reform of the GMC, will reflect that. Will Health Ministers require the GMC to change the current threshold for what it sees as a standard compatible with an NHS clinician?”