Karin Smyth
MP for Bristol South · Labour · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) for securing this debate and for her well-informed and considered set of proposals about a contract of which I am aware. I will try to address most of her points.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In addition, we are developing a modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care, which will be a clinically led, evidence-based framework to support sustained improvement in outcomes for patients and carers, including identifying, measuring and reducing health inequalities, and reducing unwarranted variation in access, exper…”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is why this Government are taking action to reduce unwarranted variation, cut waits and improve access to high-quality community services. That is where we want to get to.”
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“I will come on to some of that, because it is also tied up with the Health Bill and the things that we are proposing to do for the future. The hon. Lady also touched on one of my favourite subjects: the accountability of local health systems.”
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“Lady said, now we need to make sure that what was promised is delivered. That is what we all want to see for the people of her community and across the wider ICB. I want to be clear on our general expectations of community services: they are really vital to the left shift, particularly in rural areas.”
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“Lady is saying from her position in Chippenham, and that may be different from other positions—it is a large geographic area. That is one of the issues that we need to get right.”
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“She is absolutely right in her assessments of history, but this issue is not a failure of oversight and accountability. Good co-operation, collaboration and management are the responsibility of the services locally. The oversight has worked. We know that this is a problem. We and her constituents can see that. We very much want the services to work together to resolve that flow so that the ambulance handover works much better. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) highlights, sadly, her constituency’s downward improvement trajectory. She asked to meet me, and I am very happy to do that. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) did the incredibly difficult job of raising the terrible distress for women in her constituency.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We absolutely understand that across the country, there are different issues with regard to rurality. I will not talk about Kent, because it has not been raised, but again, it has very different issues. That is why those areas have been chosen. They have long-standing and deeply entrenched problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) raised ambulance handover delays. I did not know she was going to raise that today, but to assure her, the continued problem with the ambulances was raised with me in my oversight meeting with the team yesterday. Those issues are flagged by NHS England and its operational management across the country. They are long-standing issues, as she knows, but I gently disagree with her.”
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“The clinical strategy will make greater use of neighbourhood and community care in line with our 10-year plan and focus on maternity and planned care treatment. This is backed by £80 million for Southend hospital’s long-standing structural estate problems and support for a neighbourhood health centre in Maldon. [ Official Report, 20 October 2026; Vol. 791, c. 9WC.] (Correction) I will touch on North Cumbria because, for the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) and for Yeovil (Adam Dance), the work going on there really highlights what can and needs to be done in rural healthcare. I remind hon. Members that hospitals in some of those areas are additionally funded to cope with some of those rurality issues. We highlighted that in our 10-year health plan.”
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“The trust has long-standing performance problems linked to how demand is managed across the wider health system in that part of Essex. Work is under way to improve the long waits, improve patient flow, strengthen governance and make better use of the estate. I shared the analysis in productivity packs with everybody earlier in the year, and I am sure that everybody looked at them in detail, but I am very happy to go through them again. It identified more than £122 million of productivity opportunities. It is not simply about saving money. Better organisation across sites and stronger clinical integration should improve patient experience, reduce delays and raise quality for patients.”
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“In Hull, the focus is on strengthening core hospital services, making the best use of specialist services, improving productivity and reinforcing clinical leadership and accountability. For Northern Lincolnshire and Goole, the priority is to move more care into neighbourhood and community settings, reflecting the demands in those areas. There are good signs of progress. The hon. Member for Chelmsford and others who intervened highlighted Mid and South Essex. The 2020 merger of those three trusts has not delivered the planned benefits for 1.2 million people. Staff culture and morale remain a serious concern, with little improvement, as was highlighted in those terrible survey results over the past five years. We have heard those.”
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“That is also part of our wider devolution agenda. I think I outlined that in my letter to the hon. Member for Chelmsford in September, but I am very happy to meet again and go through that in more detail if that is helpful. The first IRP cohort includes Hull, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole, East Kent, North Cumbria and Mid and South Essex. Each faces very different circumstances, so there is not a one-size-fits-all response. I will touch on some of them, for hon. Members have raised their own issues with them. There is interest in Hull and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole. Following an independent review, the decision has been taken to dissolve the Humber health partnership arrangements.”
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“I will move through some of these points for the moment. For providers with the most entrenched financial, operational, leadership and structural challenges that impact patient care—that is what these trusts are about—we are taking a more holistic approach to that enhanced support because, as the shadow Minister asked, how do we choose? They are the most challenged long-term systems. At a national level, the intensive recovery programme is providing short-term, intensive support for organisations to help strengthen their immediate operational and financial stability while developing an organisation-owned plan for long-term sustainability. We cannot keep going round in this circle; at the end of the day, these organisations need to be well run and well led, and local systems need to own that problem.”
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“This set of amendments establishes the statutory foundation for a future medical device licensing regime, applying to Great Britain only. EU medical devices legislation will continue to apply in Northern Ireland. Such a regime would require medical devices to be licensed and certain persons operating within the supply chain to hold a licence. By placing the detail in the regulations, the amendment allows us to work with patients, healthcare professionals and the medical device sector to create a regulatory framework that protects patients, supports innovation and strengthens the UK’s life sciences sector.”
House of Commons8 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I know that many hon. Members want to talk about the provisions in the Bill covering many important issues. I will therefore speak briefly about two Government amendments relating to medical device licensing and information sharing. I will first address new clause 94 regarding medical devices licensing, and consequential amendments new clauses 99 to 101 regarding medical devices disclosure. These amendments are about ensuring that Great Britain’s medical devices regulatory framework remains fit for the future. As we know, medical technology is evolving rapidly, particularly in areas such as software and artificial intelligence, while our current framework was designed for a very different technological landscape.”
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“Importantly, these reforms do not weaken existing safeguards. Patient information will not be shared internationally without consent, and domestic protections under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation remain unchanged. These new clauses and amendments will act in the interests of patients, and I commend them to the House.”
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“They provide a clearer legal framework for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to share information with UK health systems, organisations and trusted international partners. The current legislative framework does not always provide the MHRA with the powers or clarity it needs to share information quickly and effectively, and this creates barriers to collaboration, including with the NHS. The new clauses will address these challenges, providing a clear statutory basis for information sharing. There is currently no explicit statutory domestic information-sharing power for medicines, whereas there is for medical devices. The new clauses bring information-sharing powers about medicines in line with those for medical devices and updates the list of statutory purposes for which the MHRA may share information.”
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“As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows—we have spent many long hours in this place discussing the arrangements with regard to our leaving the European Union—there are different regulations, as a result of Brexit, between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As is currently the case, due to the Windsor framework, that results in Northern Ireland following the EU device regulations. This has been discussed with the Northern Ireland and Windsor framework taskforce in the Cabinet Office, and we are content that the provisions are right, given the framework’s application. I know and understand the point that the hon. and learned Gentleman makes, and I am sure that he will pursue it with the Government in other areas. New clauses 95 and 98 update and clarify the Secretary of State’s information-sharing powers for medicines and medical devices.”
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“However, we have heard the strength of feeling in this place and in Committee, and as the Bill moves to the other place, I can commit to working closely with colleagues across this House and in the other place in order to review these provisions and ensure that our approach sufficiently empowers and devolves to local populations. We all want to ensure that the changes deliver for patients and service users, building public trust and ensuring that their voice is embedded in the care they receive.”
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“Our ambition is that this is done effectively everywhere. It is about strengthening the power of patients’ voices inside the NHS, where decisions are taken, not silencing criticism of those decisions. Within our approach, integrated care boards and local authorities will be expected to engage with people in their areas and will have a statutory duty to obtain their views. That is a core part of the new strategic role of ICBs, and it involves transparency about what people have told the system, what the system has done in response and how learning is shared across partners. ICBs will be held to account if they do not demonstrate those elements.”
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“Instead, we are committed to devolving responsibility and to empowering leaders in the NHS, while also holding them directly accountable, so that the NHS is focused on delivery and improving care. I will begin with Healthwatch. I think there is broad consensus that we want to see patient voices heard strongly at every level of the healthcare system—it is something that all MPs feel strongly about, dealing with constituents as we do. Hearing the patient and user voice results in better decisions in a system that is designed around them—a system that is better able to correct when things go wrong. Our ambition is to ensure that insight and experience from patients, service users and communities is part of commissioning and service planning decisions, rather than being held at arm’s length and outsourced.”
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“We have genuinely had a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate, and I want to try to address all the points that have been raised. I think there is broad agreement across the House on the goals that we are seeking to achieve with the Bill: safer care, better outcomes and a stronger voice for patients. Every patient deserves safe and high-quality care, every community deserves to have its voice heard, and everyone should be able to access the care they need, when they need it. The question before us is how best to deliver those ambitions. In general, we do not believe that the current landscape works, and that better outcomes are always achieved through new reporting requirements, additional layers of statutory process or more bureaucracy.”
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“We recognise the importance of ensuring that the investigation arm has the autonomy to investigate the qualifying incidents that it deems appropriate free from interference, and I can give the House the assurance that we will work with the executive of HSSIB and the CQC to ensure that their operating model upholds this operational independence. In response to the Chair of the Health Committee, who is not in her place, let me say that there is obviously no one single metric by which to judge the suitability of the CQC. It is usual in the Department’s oversight of arm’s length bodies and independent regulators to look at things like stable leadership, IT capability, governance and operational effectiveness. This is something I am sure the Select Committee can help with.”
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“We all know, from our experience with patients and families, about the importance of creating a culture in which concerns can be raised without fear and lessons are learned effectively. The Government fully agree with those objectives. Our view is that patient safety, in line with the Dash review, is best served by clear lines of accountability, effective independent scrutiny, and a relentless focus on learning and improvement. We are therefore transferring HSSIB’s functions to the CQC to ensure that learning from investigations can more readily inform improvement activity across the system.”
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“It will not be a surprise to the hon. Gentleman that I do not agree with his proposition, although I commend the work that many people have done in Healthwatch. We want to work with people in the other place to make sure that this is the right way forward. I am sorry that we do not have more time to debate HSSIB, because it requires more discussion, although we had a good debate in Committee. We have heard many discussions today. I have met the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), and I hear what he is saying; I will ensure that he gets a response to his letter from the new Minister for Patient Safety—asap, as they say. It is an issue that we need to get absolutely right.”
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“We are also committed to delivering the national cancer plan and focused on driving improvements, including on diagnostic capacity, which is key to addressing waiting times and tackling variation in access to better treatment, as we have heard today from my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame Morris), whose work in this area I commend, and for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist).”
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“I apologise, but I am going to press on. There is a lot to get through. We are committed to tackling health inequalities wherever they arise. There are strong duties on both ICBs and the Secretary of State to tackle these inequalities, and we remain firmly committed to doing so. We continue to drive forward improvement plans including the national cancer plan and the mental health strategy, which will transform mental health care into a system that responds and intervenes early, reduces waiting times for support, and ultimately supports people to participate fully in education. I note in particular that the Government are already making record investment in mental health. All ICBs are expected to meet the mental health investment standard over the next three years, and all are forecast to meet it for 2026-27.”
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“We are improving patient flow, strengthening discharge arrangements, investing in urgent and emergency care services, and providing targeted support to the systems and trusts facing the greatest challenges from corridor care, so that improvements can be delivered where they are needed most. To ensure that we can understand where these challenges are, we have already introduced a national definition of corridor care, and strengthened reporting and oversight arrangements.”
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“The Government have been consistently clear that corridor care is not an acceptable standard of care and should not be normalised, and it is our intention to reduce and ultimately eradicate it. I think it is worth reminding the House that corridor care does not occur everywhere; some places have made huge steps to avoid it, and we want to share that learning. I particularly commend Barnsley foundation trust, South Warwickshire foundation trust and the Dudley group foundation trust, where there have been zero incidents in the last reporting. We must recognise that corridor care is one of the most visible and distressing symptoms of systemic pressures across the urgent and emergency care pathway, and our focus is on taking action now to tackle those underlying pressures.”
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“I am going to press on a little bit, if I may. I remind the House that we are doing this within the existing legal structures, and that our approach is not to put in place additional duties and layers of detail and specificity in primary legislation. I think we should avoid the temptation to create separate statutory obligations for each condition or patient group, particularly in an age where people are living longer and very often with more than one health condition. Instead, we should commit ourselves to tackling inequalities for everyone, everywhere. We have again heard from the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), about corridor care.”
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“Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has directed the Department to make maternal and child health central to its work. We know that a child’s health has ramifications for the wellbeing of the whole family, and there must be better solutions to join up support for parents of unwell children. The new cross-Government mental health strategy will also address how we better support parents and families, and the Government intend to work closely with parents, families and campaigners to identify workable solutions and make available more proactive support. I turn now to the Opposition amendments, starting with new clause 142, in the name of the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson).”
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“It is vital that all these families feel supported, informed and cared for, and I wholeheartedly recognise that the support that they are offered now is often not proactive or joined up, with the onus, as he said, being on families to navigate the system and seek support themselves. With that in mind, the Government commissioned a report on the mental health impacts of life-threatening childhood illness on families, named in the memory of Hugh Menai-Davis. I pay tribute to Hugh’s parents for their campaigning and offer them my deepest condolences. The report process is progressing well, and I can commit to the report being published in this Parliament, with a full Government response issued within three months of publication. For too long, children’s health has not been a priority, which is why my right hon.”
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“I thank my hon. Friend for her best wishes and commend the work that she and many other Members are doing directly with their trusts to understand the impact of the work that we are doing to bring down those waiting lists and improve access for patients. As I have said, corridor care is a sign of systemic failure in the system and is unacceptable. I think we have all witnessed it in our local trusts, but it is coming down in places, and we want to continue to see it eradicated. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for his championing of the families of children suffering from life-threatening illnesses. I know that Members on both sides of the House recognise the profound impact that receiving a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition has on a child and their family.”
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“We will begin sharing proposals shortly, and I am very happy to include hon. Members in the discussions.”
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“Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), who spoke powerfully on behalf of the whole House; I commend the work that she has done. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy) has spoken to me in great detail about this issue, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). The Government were appalled by the offences committed by Robert Bush and the profound harm caused to bereaved families. Every deceased person must be treated with care, respect and dignity. We are undertaking urgent work to develop comprehensive proposals, including formal regulation of the funeral sector to drive out rogue operators and strengthen protection for bereaved families. As the hon. Member for Gosport said, operators that work well will also want to see this.”
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“I would also like to address new clause 143. As the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham knows, the EHRC’s updated code of practice for services, public functions and associations commenced on 5 August. It provides guidance on how sex-based distinctions in the Equality Act can be applied, including in the NHS. This new clause is unnecessary. This legislation is the law and the law is clear. The NHS will obviously follow the law. New guidance has been drafted and will be published imminently. For the record, I am due next week to meet the Darlington nurses who she spoke for. I agree that they were brave; they should not have had to go through what they went through. I want to address new clauses 41 and 42 on funeral regulation in the name of the hon.”
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“I will carry on. As the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham knows well, provisions are already in place to appropriately control access to puberty-suppressing hormones for children and young people presenting with gender incongruence or dysphoria. Children and young people with gender incongruence deserve evidence-based care. The Cass review recommended a clinical trial to provide high-quality comparative evidence on the potential benefits and risks of the medicines. That is now under way. I agree with the comments from the hon. Member for North Shropshire, but I have to disagree with the view of the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham that, uniquely, access to these types of medicines must be subject to the scrutiny and approval of Parliament. I think that, as a clinician, she understands that.”
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“A number of hon. Members tabled amendments on issues with their local infrastructure. We have already published the capital plan and improved long-term capital planning to improve local infrastructure. I think that I have addressed most things—”
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“Absolutely, and I am committed to working with my hon. Friend and many other hon. Members across the House. I was pleased to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Withington (Jeff Smith) to discuss his amendments concerning medicines. I hope that I reassured him—from his speech, I think that I did—that the Government do support well-designed research into innovative treatments using controlled drugs, where this is conducted safely and appropriately. We also understand the complexities involved, including the need to minimise the risk of harm and misuse. That is why we are working across government to consider how to implement the recommendations from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to reduce barriers to research with schedule 1 controlled drugs. I committed to write to my hon. Friend to set that out further; I will do.”
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“I am so sorry; I will to talk to my hon. Friend later. The debate has been wide ranging. If there are things that I have missed, I commit to getting back to hon. Members. I know that my noble Friend Baroness Merron is committed to working co-operatively with all Members as the Bill proceeds through the other House.”
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“The question of who is required to sit on ICBs has raised comments from all across this House. I am grateful to all Members who have raised the importance of local government having a voice in ICBs, including my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) and the other members of the Health and Social Care Committee, who have continually advocated on this issue. We agree. It was never the intention to weaken the voice of local government in the NHS. We recognise that local authority board members are an important voice for commissioning on the ICB, and often provide helpful challenge and a very different perspective on commissioning decisions.”
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“New clause 96 explicitly places duties on integrated care boards to promote opportunities for visiting and accompaniment, while new clause 97 builds on local authorities’ existing wellbeing duties by emphasising the importance of involving other people in decision making, receiving visitors and maintaining opportunities to take trips outside the care home. Maintaining meaningful contact and connection with family, friends and carers is critical to the health and wellbeing of so many people in our health and care settings. They provide invaluable practical help, emotional support and advocacy for their loved ones in accessing care and treatment, and commissioners should do what they can to support these relationships. I turn to Government amendments 60 to 62.”
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“For our part, we remain committed to working with MPs and peers across the House and other stakeholders to ensure that the end result is a Bill that strengthens the NHS. I know that we have a large number of amendments on a variety of topics, so I will keep my remarks short. New clauses 96 and 97 relate to visiting rights. They strengthen the role of integrated care boards and local authorities in promoting visiting, supporting people to have someone with them and ensuring the involvement of family, friends and carers in decisions. They complement the existing legal requirements and the work already under way to drive a change in culture and practice by embedding visiting at the heart of the responsibilities of commissioners.”
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“I wish at the start to take a moment to thank the Members on both sides of the House who served on the Public Bill Committee during what was a very hot end of June and July—if we can remember back that far. As part of that process, the Committee scrutinised every clause of the Bill and debated over 195 amendments, and we on the Government Benches are grateful for their diligence. The implementation of the Bill is better for all that hard work. I also welcome the spirit of collaboration that has greeted the main provisions of the Bill from both sides of the House, most notably on Second Reading but also in Committee, and I hope that we can continue in that spirit at this stage.”
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“For too long, too many women, babies and families have not received the care and support they deserve. The establishment of a commissioner represents a significant opportunity to strengthen accountability and champion their interests across the system. I hope that will give the hon. Member the reassurance she needs not to press her amendment.”
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“I should also note that ICBs can appoint other people to their boards if they would benefit from their expertise. That is a decision to be taken locally. Finally, let me briefly pre-empt the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) by making a few comments about new clause 1. I thank her for the way she worked with me in Committee on the issue of a maternity commissioner—an issue that I think unites the House. As the hon. Member knows, we have accepted the recommendation from Baroness Amos’s national investigation into maternity and neonatal care. I can announce that, to deliver on this commitment, we will table an amendment to the Bill in the other place to establish a statutory maternity and neonatal commissioner. We are determined to get this right.”
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“In relation to the ICBs and local authority voice, it was particularly significant over the summer to have heard from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about his commitment to rewiring the state and our ongoing reform to social care. With that in mind, I am pleased that amendments 60 to 62 will re-establish a requirement for ICBs to have at least one board member jointly nominated by local authorities in their area. That will sit alongside the existing duty to have a member nominated by the mayor of each mayoral strategic authority, as well as duties on ICBs and local government to work together, including on health and wellbeing boards. In Committee, we had a useful discussion about health and wellbeing boards, neighbourhoods and local accountability.”
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“I thank the Chair of the Select Committee —I can assure her that I am Karin, not Claude. She tempts me to go further on the rest of the Bill, but I genuinely thank her and the Committee; I hope she would agree that I spent a lot of time over the past months, before Report stage and Committee stage, meeting her, members of the Committee and many hon. Members from across the House. We have some provisions—we might call them simple provisions—in the Bill to democratise the NHS’s accountability, to reinforce the single patient record, and to improve the patient experience and patient safety landscape. We recognise that there is a lot of complexity within those simple propositions, and we will continue to listen to hon. Members. We want to ensure that the NHS is strengthened.”
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“I thank Members across the House for their contributions. As we would expect for a Bill of this size, it has been a wide-ranging debate, and I will not be able to address every single amendment, but I will try to cover them all in the time I have. If necessary, I will get back to people afterwards. As a Government, we know that what we have set out to do through this Bill is ambitious. We do not resile from that; we want to be ambitious. We are determined to make a real and positive change for people up and down the country who use the NHS, and throughout the Bill, we have remained focused on the key objectives. Those are to strengthen democratic accountability, strip back bureaucracy and empower patients.”
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“It will look at evidence of delivery and the impact of the platform, and that should be the basis on which a contract continuation is decided.”
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“We are also committed to tackling digital exclusion. We have considered that as part of the single patient record equality impact assessment, and work is already under way to help address barriers around connectivity, skills and confidence. I heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East said about the need to engage him and others about the single patient record as we go forward. On the federated data platform, decisions about public contracts must be made through fair, open and non-discriminatory processes. That is governed by UK procurement law, which recognises certain international treaty obligations. NHS England is reviewing the federated data platform contract to determine whether it should continue with standard contract management processes.”
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“On new clause 32, I can assure Members that the SPR will be designed to protect personal data by default, with the highest standards of cyber-security and information governance ensuring that only the right people can access the right information at the right time and only for the right reasons. Finally, I have heard how important it is that the single patient record is accessible and inclusive. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for amendment 87 and the important work she is doing to publicise this hugely important area. I assure her and Members that we are confident that the Bill is drafted to enable information related to support needs and reasonable accommodations to be included in the SPR. The Department will have regard to the accessible information standard as the SPR is developed.”
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“The single patient record is fundamental to the Government’s mission to create a modern, joined-up NHS that puts patients at the centre of their care. On amendments 26, 42 and 43, I assure Members that the overarching purpose of making regulations to create and operate the single patient record is limited to the direct care of patients, and clause 51 is already explicit about that. Crucially, the clause does not create any new data sharing gateways for secondary purposes such as planning and commissioning, so these amendments are not necessary. On data safeguards, the security and privacy of people’s health and social care data are paramount. As Members would expect, we will build the strongest safeguards into the record.”
House of Commons7 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) is right that we will say that he could have dealt with the issues he raises while he was in power, but we do not always say that, and he is absolutely right about continuity of care. I have also visited the practice he talks about in Horfield in Bristol, and not just because I was on the primary care trust board when the 2004 changes happened. Broadly, Bristol does have different standards on some of these issues, and that highlights our point. We do not need to put some of these provisions in legislation. Exactly this sort of good practice can be shared in local systems through neighbourhood care plans, neighbourhood work and the work in primary care networks.”
House of Commons7 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There was a lot of discussion on primary care, and dental access across the country in particular. We are committed to rebuilding dentistry in England, but actions speak louder than words. We are making great strides in improving access, ensuring an urgent care safety net across the country, reforming the dental contract and developing a 10-year workforce plan. More broadly, we think it is right that under this Bill, primary medical services become the responsibility of ICBs. They have the right knowledge of their areas to make commissioning decisions, and that includes on eye care. They have responsibility for all primary medical services, but rightly they will be accountable to the Secretary of State for their performance. The right hon.”
House of Commons7 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) says that they were about to do it before the election, but that is not what we found when we came into power. The Conservatives left us a lot of work to do in this and many other areas, but we are committed to doing it. Fertility services and reducing inequalities in maternity services has been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), who has been a tireless advocate in this area, as have many others. I have recently written to him. NICE guidelines inform how ICBs should commission in this area, but I know that things are not uniformly implemented. We will continue to work with ICBs to evaluate the next steps.”
House of Commons7 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗