Wes Streeting
MP for Ilford North · Labour · United Kingdom
“We hope for the best and plan for the worst in terms of the continuation of this war, but we are also actively working to prepare for conditions in which a ceasefire has been agreed by Ukraine, with Ukraine and, from our perspective, for Ukraine.”
“The threats we face are not only evolving; they are getting closer to home. Every day, the UK and our allies encounter espionage, cyber-attacks and military posturing by hostile states.”
“One discipline I have to bring to the Ministry of Defence, drawing on my experience at the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS, is to ensure there is no culture of routine overspending, that we are improving productivity, that we deliver value for money and that we recognise that the money we are investing in defence comes wi…”
“With permission, I will make my first statement to the House as Secretary of State for Defence on Ukraine, the ongoing threat from Russia and the Government’s approach. It is not yet clear whether freedom or tyranny will define the 21st century. What is clear is that the United Kingdom will not be a bystander in that struggle.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that very serious and important issue. She will understand that, as a matter of policy, I will not comment on intelligence, but I will address the reports she has raised.”
“We know that this Prime Minister and this Chancellor are both fully committed to funding our nation’s defence, including meeting our NATO commitment of 3.5% by 2035 and setting out an earlier 3% commitment at the next spending review.”
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“However, I am also committed to ensuring that, as we improve the flow of patients through our hospitals and deal with the scourge of delayed discharges, we are a lot better at thinking about how we use the taxpayer pound to best effect to deliver the right care, in the right place and at the right time. That will often mean using NHS resources to commission social care to help tackle delayed discharges, and we will be keeping a close eye on that. Finally, I thank the hon. Member for joining the voices of reason in this Chamber. I hope it is not lost on the BMA and resident doctors watching that this is not a case of an intransigent Government unwilling to work with and support them who are trying to face down, for political and ideological purposes, a trade union speaking up for its members.”
“I am sure there will be moments when that might cause Ministers and NHS leaders to blush, but frankly, until corridor care is consigned to history, so we should. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and by publishing the data we will hold ourselves to account, and I am sure this House will hold us to account to ensure that we deliver the conditions that staff and patients deserve. I also reassure the hon. Member that, while the Casey commission is under way, work on social care goes on, whether that is the £4 billion increase in investment in social care through the decisions taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, or other improvements such as to carer’s allowance, the disabled facilities grant and uplifts in funding for local authorities.”
“I am grateful to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, and I think I can reassure her on a number of fronts. First, she is absolutely right to call out the disgrace that is corridor care. Despite the best efforts of staff, who suffer the moral injury of treating patients in that situation, in too many parts of the NHS we have patients being treated on trolleys in corridors. In this decade of the 21st century, I think that is unacceptable, as is the emerging nomenclature that has started to describe these as “temporary escalation spaces”, because we are in danger of normalising what should be considered unacceptable practice. That is why this Government will shortly begin transparently publishing corridor care data showing the number of patients being treated on trolleys in corridors.”
“In my experience, the vast majority of trade unions and trade unionists are interested in constructive engagement, striking good deals and moving forward the interests not just of their members, but of our whole country. I urge the BMA resident doctors committee to stand in that proud tradition of British trade unionism and in the proud traditions of the wider Labour movement, but I am afraid I do not see those traditions or behaviours reflected in the current approach of the BMA RDC.”
“I strongly agree with my hon. Friend—he is absolutely right. I am happy to stand corrected, but there is genuinely no historical precedent in the history of British trade unionism for a trade union to have successfully negotiated with the Government of the day a 28.9% increase for its members and then go out on strike. I think that undermines the BMA, and the more reasonable voices in the BMA with whom we continue to work constructively. It certainly undermines our NHS. It also reinforces the grossly unfair caricature, which is often thrown at trade unions by the Conservatives, that they are all unreasonable, do not want to work with the Government of the day and are only interested in combat and agitation.”
“We have far too much doctor unemployment and far too many specialty bottlenecks. We have what I think is a really unreasonable set of behaviours towards resident doctors in terms of placements, rotations and the ability to take time off work to attend weddings and other important life moments. The tragedy of the position we find ourselves in is that I recognise that and I want to address it. We can do that together without the need for strike action, and those are not reasons for strikes. Worse still, especially at a time when I am prioritising dealing with doctor unemployment, they are inflicting further costs on the NHS, patients and the taxpayer. That makes my freedom and flexibility and my resources to deal with those issues more limited—that is the tragedy of their tactics.”
“First, I think that the right hon. Member’s opening statement and the response across the House underline to the BMA and the resident doctors committee that they do not have support across this House—from the left across to the right, with maybe one or two noises off—and that is not typical in my experience of being in this House for the last decade. I think the career of resident doctors and the prospects they can look forward to, which the right hon. Member described, have worsened. That is one of the things that is at the heart of the dispute they have taken up with the previous Government and now with this one. Many of the things doctors used to be able to look forward to—guaranteed jobs and progression into consultant roles or general practice—have steadily eroded.”
“That is why I say clearly and unequivocally to the BMA that if this strike action goes ahead, with all the costs, pain and misery that will follow, it will not just be patients—or, indeed, this Government—who suffer, but the BMA.”
“In all honesty, I am afraid I cannot give my hon. Friend that assurance. NHS finances are precariously balanced. We have been relative winners across the Budget and the spending review set out by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but we are asking a lot of the system. As well as the progress and improvements we want in the NHS, we inherited a lot of mess to clean up, and that will take time and resource. Every penny spent on the price of failure through strike action is a penny that could have been spent on driving improvements in the service—improvements for patients and for staff—and on creating the jobs and opportunities that mean doctors do not graduate into unemployment and that mean resident doctors can progress into specialty training posts.”
“I assure the House that we will do everything we can to mitigate the impact of the strikes on patients and the disruption that will follow. What I cannot say to the House, however, is that we can offset or cancel the impact or detriment felt by patients. We will look carefully at the data on the experience and impact of the strikes that occurred during the previous round of negotiations. I will ensure that that information is published so that the House can see the impact of the previous strikes, so that we can brace ourselves for what may lie ahead.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He is that rare beast: a Tory trade unionist. He raises the serious point of the consequences of strike action. I will, of course, keep the House updated, but I want to reassure the House that we are taking every step possible to mitigate the disruption that these strikes will cause. That will come at a financial cost and a cost to patients because of the disruption that will follow. It will also come at a cost to other staff, many of whom are paid less than resident doctors, who will be left at work with more pressure and in harder conditions, picking up the pieces because of the actions of their colleagues who were given a higher pay rise, but who will be stood outside protesting the 28.9% pay rise that they received.”
“Of course, I will do everything I can to resolve the resident doctors strikes, but what I cannot do is reopen this year’s pay award.”
“Friend: I feel a considerable degree of discomfort when I look back at a whole number of deals and pay awards, under this Government and our predecessors, where the “Agenda for Change” workforce have been left further behind. I will be honest with the House: at this moment, I have to resolve the immediate action that is being proposed by the BMA, but I am not going to allow the reform we have committed to with the “Agenda for Change” unions to be deprioritised —we owe that to them. We owe it to the nurses and to all the “Agenda for Change” staff to ensure that they are paid fairly, are given a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, and receive the terms and conditions that they deserve. My priority at this stage is the “Agenda for Change” reform.”
“I strongly agree with what my hon. Friend says. I have been personally invested in our relationship with resident doctors and in the deal we struck—not just because it was one of the first things we did when we came into office, and because I am very proud of what we have achieved together, but because I had and still have a huge amount of support and sympathy for resident doctors and a determination to address the issues they are raising. However, I reassure my hon. Friend and the House that resident doctors are one part of the NHS workforce—a valued part—but I have responsibility for the entire workforce. We set ourselves the task of building an NHS fit for the future, but we cannot do it on our own as a Government; it requires the whole team to pull together. I will be honest with my hon.”
“I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I will obviously engage with my counterparts in the devolved Administrations. While health is a devolved matter, the decisions that we take in this place, and what is going on in the English health system, have a bearing on other health systems, and vice versa. I am almost tempted to call back the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), who is still a Member of this House, to remind the BMA what it went up against twice before; indeed, I could call back any of my Conservative predecessors to remind the BMA that the grass is not greener on the other side of this House. It currently has a Secretary of State who has shown through actions, not just words, a willingness to work together, and I hope that it rediscovers the spirit of partnership that we had last year.”
“Quite aside from the fact that I offered to meet the entire resident doctors committee back in January, although it has never taken me up on that offer—I would definitely be outnumbered in that meeting— I can reassure the House, in all seriousness, that I met its co-chairs on Tuesday afternoon, immediately after the publication of the ballot result. I followed up in writing yesterday morning to reaffirm what I said in person, which was to express our willingness to meet immediately, without preconditions, to avert this strike action. That offer remains, and I am very happy to meet them on that basis.”
“I urge the BMA to keep all that under consideration before its next public intervention, which I hope will be to accept the offer to get around the table to avert the strike action that I think the whole House agrees is unnecessary, unreasonable and unfair.”
“We will not be reopening this year’s pay award because we simply cannot afford to, and it would not be fair on others in the NHS workforce, regardless. I honestly do not regret the deal that we struck last year, without which we would not have made the progress that we have on NHS waiting lists, which are now at their lowest level in two years. We have made that considerable progress by working together. I do not think that the staff themselves are the drain on productivity; instead, the obstacles we face are the systems and pathways in which staff work and the conditions in the NHS—we are in real agreement on those things.”
“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It will be patients who suffer the most. I also urge the BMA to consider the impact on its whole membership, because it is other staff who are left picking up the pieces, and other staff who are tired—literally tired—of working in an NHS that is far from its best. To resident doctors in particular, I say that the cost of this will also be borne by them. There are choices and trade-offs in politics, especially when resources are tight. We can and we will act to deal with specialty bottlenecks. We can and we will act to tackle doctor unemployment, but our ability to do so is undermined, if not diminished, if we are instead paying the cost of this unnecessary, unreasonable and unfair strike action.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely reasonable point. Pay is important—people have to be able to pay their bills and lead a good life—but so too are their working conditions. I am absolutely determined to work with resident doctors to make progress not just on pay, which we have already done, but on the conditions in which they are working. Given where we are with both of those things—the improvement on pay and the willingness to work together to improve conditions—they are not grounds for strike action.”
“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Looking back at all the contributions this morning, I have been struck by the fact that, quite extraordinarily, the entire House, on both sides of the Chamber, has spoken with one voice. There has been total unanimity across this House during these exchanges that the proposed strikes are unreasonable, unnecessary and unfair. For the avoidance of doubt, let me tell the BMA and the resident doctors committee that this House has spoken with one voice to say: abandon this rush to strike, get around the table and work with us to rebuild resident doctors’ working conditions and to continue rebuilding our national health service. I thank the House for its support.”
“Of course, if we succeed, we will be able to say with pride that will echo down the decades of the 21st century that we were the generation who built an NHS fit for the future and a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer. I commend this statement to the House.”
“This plan fulfils Nye Bevan’s commitment in 1948 to put a megaphone to the mouth of every patient. It will restore the founding promise of the NHS to be there for us when we need it. Of course, we know that there are those on the right who are willing us to fail. They will exploit the crisis in the NHS in order to dismantle it. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) and his cronies argue that universal healthcare could be afforded in the 20th century but not in the 21st. Labour rejects their declinist pessimism and so do the public. But that is the choice—it is change or bust, and we choose change. We know that the British people are counting on us. It falls to us to ensure that the NHS not only survives but thrives, and we will not let our country down.”
“We have toured the length and breadth of the country and scouted the world for the best examples of reform. If Australia can effectively serve communities living in the outback, we can surely meet the needs of rural England. If community health teams can go door to door to prevent illness in Brazil, we can certainly do the same in Bradford. We know that we can build the neighbourhood health service, because teams in Cornwall, Camden, Northumbria, and Stratford—where I was with the Prime Minister and Chancellor this morning—are already showing us how to do it. We will take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. We will apply to best examples of innovation from around the world to benefit people here at home. Above all else, we will give power to the patient.”
“It closes health inequalities by investing more in working-class communities, and it establishes a national investigation into maternity and neonatal services to deliver the truth, justice and improvement that bereaved families deserve. I am sometimes told that NHS staff are resistant to change. On the contrary, they are crying out for it. They suffer the moral injury of seeing their patients treated in unfit conditions. They are ones driving innovation on the frontline, so their fingerprints are all over this plan. The public are desperate for change too. Each of us has our own story about the NHS and the difference it made to our lives. We also know the consequences of failure. To succeed, we need to defeat the cynicism that says that nothing ever changes. We know that the change in our plan is possible because it is already happening.”
“It abolishes more than 200 bodies, because listening to patients, guaranteeing safety and protecting whistleblowers is core business for the NHS and should never have been outsourced. The plan commits to publishing league tables to rank providers. We will intervene to turn around failing providers, and we will reinvent the foundation trust model in a new system of earned autonomy. Pay will be tied to performance, so that excellence is recognised and failure has consequences. Tariffs will be reduced to boost productivity. Block contracts will end, with funding tied to outcomes. The plan gives power to the patient, so hospitals are financially rewarded for better service.”
“Robotic surgery will become the norm in certain procedures, so patients recover from surgery at home rather than in hospital beds. The NHS will usher in a new age of medicine, leapfrogging disease so that we are predicting and preventing, rather than just diagnosing and treating. It is therefore the ambition of the plan to provide a genomic test for every newborn baby by 2035. Thanks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, this plan is backed by an extra £29 billion a year by the end of the spending review period, as well as the biggest capital investment in the history of the NHS. Alongside investment comes reform. This plan slashes unnecessary bureaucracy and devolves power and resource to the frontline.”
“We will roll out obesity jabs on the NHS. We will get Britain moving with our new NHS points scheme, and we will update school foods standards so that kids are fed healthy, nutritious meals. We will tackle the mental health crisis with support in every school to catch problems early, 24/7 support with virtual therapists for those with moderate need, and dedicated emergency departments for patients for when they reach crisis point. The science is on our side. The revolution in artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data offers a golden opportunity to deliver better care at better value. New innovator passports and reform of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency will see medicines and technology rapidly adopted.”
“The NHS app will become the front door to the health service, delivering power to the patient. You will be able to: book and rearrange appointments for you, your children or a loved one you care for; get instant advice from an AI doctor in your pocket; leave feedback on your care and see what feedback other patients have left; choose where you are treated; book appointments in urgent care so you do not wait for hours; and refer yourself to a specialist where clinically appropriate. Of course, patients can already do all that, but only if they can afford private healthcare. With Labour’s plan, every patient will receive a first-class service—whatever their background and whatever they earn. The third shift is from sickness to prevention. Working with the food industry, we will make the healthy choice the easy choice to cut calories.”
“No longer will NHS staff have to enter seven passwords to login to their computers, or spend hours writing notes and entering data. Our plan will liberate frontline staff from the parts of the job that they hate, so they can focus on the job that they love—caring for patients. For the first time ever, patients will be given real control over a single, secure and authoritative account of their data. The single patient record will mean that NHS staff can see medical records and know a patient’s medical history, so they can provide them with the best possible care. Wearable technology will feed in real-time health data, so patients’ health can be monitored while they stay in the comfort of their own home, with clinicians reaching out at the first signs of deterioration.”
“If you are someone with multiple conditions and complex needs, the NHS will co-create a personal care plan, so your care is done with you, not to you. Pharmacies will play an expanded role in the neighbourhood health service. They will manage long-term conditions, treat conditions such as obesity and high blood pressure, screen for disease and vaccinate against it. We will also reform the dental contract, to get more dentists doing NHS work, rebuilding NHS dentistry. Over the course of this plan, the majority of the 135 million out-patient appointments done each year will be moved out of hospitals. The funding will follow, so a greater share of NHS investment is spent in primary and community care. The second shift is from analogue to digital.”
“Our plan will deliver three big shifts. The first is from hospital to community. We will turn our national health service into a neighbourhood health service. The principle is simple: care should happen as locally as it can—digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and in a hospital where necessary. We will put neighbourhood health centres in every community, so people can see a GP, nurse, physio, care worker, and therapist, and they can get a test, scan or treatment for minor injuries, all under one roof. The NHS will be organised around patients, rather than patients having to organise their lives around the NHS. It will be easier and faster to see a GP. We will train thousands more, end the 8 am scramble, provide same-day consultations, and bring back the family doctor.”
“In September, Lord Darzi provided the diagnosis: the NHS was broken by 14 years of Conservative under-investment, and by their catastrophic top-down reorganisation. In the past year, Labour has put the NHS on the road to recovery. We promised 2 million extra appointments; we have delivered more than 4 million. We promised 1,000 new GPs on the frontline; we have recruited 1,900. We have taken almost a quarter of a million people off waiting lists, cutting them to their lowest level in two years. And we have launched an independent commission, chaired by Baroness Casey, to build a national consensus around a new national care service to meet the needs of older and disabled people into the 21st century. Today, the Prime Minister has set out our prescription to get the NHS back on its feet and make it fit for the future.”
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall make a statement to the House on “Fit for the Future”, the Government’s 10-year health plan for England. There are moments in our national story when our choices define who we are. In 1948, the Attlee Government made a choice founded on fairness: that everyone in our country deserves to receive the care they need, not just the care they can afford. It enshrined in law, and in the service itself, our collective conviction that healthcare is not a privilege to be bought and sold, but a right to be cherished and protected. Now it falls to our generation to make the same choice: to rebuild our national health service, and to protect in this century what Attlee’s Government built for the last. That is the driving mission of our 10-year plan.”
“All I would say to people watching our proceedings today is this: in our first year, we promised 2 million more appointments to cut waiting lists—we doubled that; we promised to deliver 1,000 more GPs—we have almost doubled that; and we promised that people would see the NHS moving in the right direction—waiting lists are at the lowest point for two years. We know that there is more to do, but I hope that the progress people have seen under this Labour Government reassures them that, when it comes to our national health service, if anything, we under-promise and over-deliver. We know that people will see and feel the change. I say respectfully, given the shadow Secretary of State’s constructive tone, that that will be the difference between a Labour Government and a Conservative one.”
“On neighbourhood health, social care has to be part of it. In the context of this plan, social care features because it has a role to play on admission avoidance and speeding up delayed discharges. However, we know that social care is important in its own right and that is why it is important that it has its own commission. Finally, the shadow Secretary of State asked about whether people will see and feel these improvements. We know on the Government Benches that we will be judged by results and by whether people can feel the change that we are delivering.”
“However, I am committed to making sure that as we devolve more power, more responsibility and more resource closer to the frontline, to system leaders and to provider leaders, we also make sure that we have in place democratic accountability, so that Members of Parliament, local councils and metro mayors can influence and shape healthcare where they live. The right hon. Gentleman also asked about social care. We are not waiting for Casey. The spending review gave an additional £4 billion to social care. We are delivering the biggest expansion of carer’s allowance since the 1970s and a significant increase in the disabled facilities grant. The Deputy Prime Minister and I will also shortly set out how we will deliver the first every fair pay agreements for the care workforce, building real social care progression.”
“HSSIB has been a really effective body, but we cannot justify the duplication of back-office functions and the inefficiency that comes with that. However, the CQC, when we came into office, was in such a dire state that we had to replace the leadership and we have in place an improvement plan. The House therefore has my assurance that we will not roll HSSIB into the Care Quality Commission until we are assured that the CQC is back to the standards that we expect for it to perform its core duties today, let alone the work it will do with HSSIB housed within the CQC. On ICBs, I will not measure success through the number of bodies in the NHS; I think that has led us to where we are.”
“NHS England is in the third year of the three-year plan put in place by the previous Government and we have sought to support that progress and not to interfere. Yet as we have seen, even with the most recent CQC report into the trust in Nottingham, we have so much more to do and an entire change in approach and culture is needed, let alone a change in practice and behaviour. I am committed to working with all parliamentary party groups across this House and to making sure that the expertise and insight that we have right across these Benches, on both sides of the Chamber, help us to drive maternity improvements. He asked about us rolling HSSIB into the CQC. Let me provide him with this reassurance.”
“That is why, as set out in the Government’s infrastructure plan, with care and caution, and keeping in mind the mistakes that were made by the private finance initiative, we are looking at alternative private sources of investment to make sure that we can go further and faster on capital improvement, particularly in the neighbourhood health service. The right hon. Gentleman asked me to commit again to fracture liaison services. Those services have a demonstrable impact on keeping people well and providing both better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers. That is why we want to see them rolled out across the country. On maternity, I welcome his support for the investigation.”
“They will be NHS providers and we will have a combination of new builds and the refurbishment and rejuvenation of underutilised existing estate, both in the NHS and in the public sector. Therefore, the cost of each neighbourhood health centre will vary, from the low millions to around £20 million, depending on whether it is an upgrade, a refurb and expansion or a new build. Given the undercapitalisation of the NHS that we inherited, even the record investment from public sources that the Chancellor has provided will not be enough to deal with the capital backlog.”
“In fact, so implausible were the assumptions in that plan that if we had continued with the rate of growth that they had set out, by the end of the century 100% of our entire country would be working in the NHS. I know we love the NHS and we love the people who work in it, but I do not think that everyone in our country can or should be working in the national health service. To reassure the right hon. Gentleman, we will, this autumn, set out a new workforce plan that aligns with this 10-year plan. The shadow Secretary of State asked about neighbourhood health centres. We aim to go for 250 to 300 new neighbourhood health centres by the end of this plan and 40 to 50 over the course of this Parliament.”
“If, for example, we roll out, as we will, ambient AI to all GPs, and we make sure that in their interactions with patients we liberate them from being glued to the screen, filling out the forms and drafting the letters, because that is all done automatically before the GP spends a few moments checking over to make sure it is right—if we can just save 90 seconds in every GP appointment—we will save the equivalent time of 2,000 more GPs. That is how we get more bang for the buck, that is how we drive productivity improvements and that is how we deliver better care and better value. That is why the previous Government’s workforce plan was not right. It assumed that the NHS just needed growth at the same rates and in the same way as always.”
“The technology coming down the track, and indeed the technology we already have, will drive the big productivity gains in the system that have eluded us. In recent years, the previous Government invested in more staff, but they put all those staff in hospitals to work in an undercapitalised NHS. If there are more inputs but not the enablers to deliver the service, we do not see the responding improvements in output and impact. That drives poorer productivity, poorer value for money and poor outcomes for patients, and that is the approach that we are changing.”
“The Government are providing a £29 billion real-terms increase—a £53 billion cash increase—in annual NHS day-to-day spending by 2028-29. That funding will support the first steps towards delivering the reforms, the service improvements and the new technology set out in the plan. But investment alone is not enough. One of the reasons we are paying more and more for worse and poorer outcomes is that we have the wrong care in the wrong place at the wrong time. Contrary to what we read in some newspaper columns—on the radio this morning I heard the hon. Member for Clacton once again attacking the NHS’s equitable principles and funding model—the problem is not the model of funding; it is the model of care. That is why the shift to neighbourhood health is essential for delivering better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers.”
“I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his constructive approach to what does need to be a successful plan for the next decade, to get our NHS back on its feet, to make it fit for the future and to make sure we improve the health of the nation. Aside from the lines that he was no doubt given to trot out at the beginning—he almost said them with conviction—we know that we can count on him to be rather more serious and sensible than the display we saw from the Opposition yesterday. I turn to the shadow Secretary of State’s points. He was right to say that investment needs to go alongside reform. That is why the spending review only a matter of weeks ago set out the Chancellor’s commitment to the NHS and NHS reform.”
“We will not get everything right and we will make mistakes along the way. We will listen and always learn and reflect. We know in the Government that we cannot do this without effective leadership from Ministers, but nor can Government do this alone. It is now our responsibility to mobilise the more than 1.5 million people who work in the NHS, the more than 1.5 million people who work in social care and our whole country behind a national mission to get our NHS back on its feet, to make sure it is fit for the future and to make sure, fundamentally, that we attack the injustices that lead to ill health, so that we have a fairer Britain where everyone lives well for longer.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for the leadership she is showing to the Select Committee while the substantive Chair, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), is off on mat leave. What a delight it was to see the Committee Chair on the Terrace this week with her new baby. That was really delightful and we wish her well. One of the exciting things for me about today’s launch is just how widespread the support has been from across a range of different organisations that we will need to work with to deliver the plan. Whether it is the royal colleges and the trade unions, the organisations that represent patients, the wide range of healthcare charities or, crucially, frontline staff, everyone is up for this change and everyone is desperate for it to succeed.”
“They are some of the most tech-savvy people, and we have to ensure that those skills are enjoyed by all, in keeping with the NHS’s principle of ensuring that healthcare is available universally to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.”
“Those patients who want to pick up the phone or who want to be seen face to face must be given that choice and control, and we will give it to them. Secondly, working with the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary, we will deal with the fundamental problem of digital disconnection in our country. I knocked on the door of one of my party members when I was canvassing down her street because I had heard she was ill. She opened the door, and I asked if she was okay and if she needed anything from the shops. She looked me up and down as if I had just said the most ridiculous thing and said, “Oh no, dear. Thank you very much, but I do my shopping online with my iPad.” We should not assume that because people are older, they are naturally digitally disconnected.”