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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“I am really proud of the contribution that overseas workers make to health and social care services across our country. If they all left tomorrow, the services would simply collapse. But I think there is an overreliance on overseas staff in health and care services, and that is contributing to levels of net migration that are simply unsustainable. I have a responsibility to help the Home Secretary bring those numbers down and to give opportunities, through better pay and career progression, to home-grown talent, and that is what we will do.”
“As the hon. Gentleman knows through bitter experience, that rotten industry always finds a way, and we have to keep on top of it and tackle the scourge of nicotine addiction. He knows about this issue better than most, he having campaigned so assiduously on it, and he is right to raise it, so let us look at what we can do to strengthen the Bill, if we can, as it goes through Parliament.”
“I was in the Chamber to hear the hon. Member’s question. Obviously we are led by clinical advice when it comes to decisions on screening programmes, but I understand the case she makes. I would be delighted to ensure that she gets a meeting with the relevant Minister.”
“I know that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will have noted, through his representations as a constituency MP, that he could not have fought harder to save that service. We devolve these sorts of decisions to ICBs, in order that they make decisions closer to the communities that they serve, with the conviction that those sorts of decisions are better taken locally than centralised in Whitehall. I understand the case that he makes, but having given ICBs a challenge, resources and freedom, we Ministers must resist the temptation to meddle every time they make decisions that they believe are right for the community, even if those decisions are controversial.”
“Making sure that women are giving birth safely is the ultimate priority and the least that women deserve. I understand my hon. Friend’s anxiety about this reconfiguration, and she is right to raise that with the ICB in the first instance. We are happy to meet her as Ministers, too. The crucial thing is that the services are configured and delivered in a way that prioritises the safety of women and their babies.”
“I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. She is right to highlight the importance of funding following inequalities to redress that imbalance. I think she will be pleased with where we are with the 10-year plan for health, and I would be delighted to meet her to discuss it.”
“That has been a running theme this morning, which will not be lost on Ministers. We will ensure, as we deliver neighbourhood health services, that people can receive care closer to home, wherever they live. We have heard that message loud and clear today, and I think the hon. Member will see that priority reflected in our 10-year plan for health.”
“We do want to put GPs at the heart of neighbourhood health services, and we want people to have care close to home. There are benefits to primary care working at scale, so I would not want to criticise them for doing that. The important thing is different courses for different horses. Some of us are much more mobile, more active and more online and would welcome that flexibility. For others, continuity of care that is close to home, or indeed in their home, is important. It is important that people get the right care, in the right place, at the right time, wherever they live, and that is what we will deliver.”
“I reassure the right hon. and learned Gentleman, the constituents of his I have met and other campaigners that I am having discussions with the Cabinet Office about how we deal with that and other issues that have been raised this morning, including the sodium valproate scandal. He knows the complexities involved, and I have been grateful for his advice as a former Attorney General. I do not have specific progress to report now, but I reassure him and campaigners that this issue has not gone off the boil and we are working to find a resolution.”
“May I respectfully say that that was part of the problem with Conservative thinking? They thought that the answer to the NHS crisis was more quangos, and they measured success in the number of ICBs, not the number of appointments and the size of the waiting list. We are taking a different approach, slashing bureaucracy and reinvesting in the front line. We are not centralising but decentralising, and cutting waiting lists—a record that the Conservative party cannot begin to touch.”
“First, on behalf of the NHS I apologise to my hon. Friend’s constituent. That is an intolerable situation, but sadly not rare or exceptional. There is too much of that happening, and a culture of cover-up and covering reputations, rather than being honest with patients about failures. We are changing the culture. Safety is at the heart of the 10-year plan, and I would be delighted to talk to my hon. Friend further about his constituent’s case.”
“I am sure my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton), who is the Minister responsible for cancer, would be delighted to meet campaigners, particularly as we put together the national cancer plan. We want to ensure that we capture every type of cancer, and genuinely improve cancer care for everyone in our country.”
“Patients are denied the basic choice and agency that is awarded to NHS patients with physical illnesses. People from ethnic minority communities, especially black African and Caribbean men, are more than three times as likely to be sectioned. Although they are very different conditions, people with a learning disability and autistic people are often lumped in with those who have mental illness, reflecting an outdated lack of medical understanding.”
“In doing so, we are providing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to profoundly transform the way in which we view and support people with serious mental illnesses. The measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, and when it comes to the treatment of people with serious mental illnesses, we are falling well short of the humane, compassionate society that we aspire to be. Patients live 15 to 20 years less than the average, and they are often accommodated far away from their families and loved ones. The facilities in which they are housed can be completely unsuitable. During his investigation last year, Lord Darzi found nearly 20 patients in a mental health facility who were forced to share two showers and live among an infestation of rats and cockroaches.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I want to place on record my thanks to Baroness Merron for her leadership of the Bill’s progress in the House of Lords, and to thank Members on both sides of that House for their contribution to scrutiny of it. I particularly thank Baroness May of Maidenhead for the constructive way in which she has engaged the Government, and for commissioning Sir Simon Wessely to undertake the review of mental health that underpins so much of the Bill. At the general election, Labour stood on a manifesto commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983, and I am proud to say that we are delivering on that promise in the first Session of this Parliament.”
“We will continue that engagement throughout the passage of the Bill, and see if there is a workable way in which we can improve it to ensure that others do not have to go through the unimaginable heartbreak that Fiona is living with every day.”
“I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I place on record my thanks to Fiona for her campaigning work in circumstances that are completely unimaginable for those who have not walked in her shoes and experienced the kind of grief that she is experiencing. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards) has been campaigning assiduously on this issue; similarly, we have had representations from the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan), who is in his place, and the right hon. Gentleman. We are carefully considering the arguments that have been made, and looking at what we can do in this Bill to advance things in the way that Fiona and others like her would like to see.”
“This was echoed in Lord Darzi’s investigation into the NHS, which uncovered some hard truths: a dramatic rise in the use of restrictive interventions on children; and 345,000 patients waiting more than a year for their first appointment with mental health services—more than the entire population of Leicester—of whom 109,000 were under the age of 18. This Bill does not solve every problem in our mental health services, but it marks a vital step in our plans to improve the quality of care, combat long-standing inequalities, and bring about a stronger focus on prevention and early intervention in mental health.”
“Sadly, as a result of being sectioned I developed PTSD”— post-traumatic stress disorder— “as the direct result of the way I was treated”. Sir Simon’s review was published seven years ago. It shone a light on a group of people who had been hidden, ignored and forgotten. In the time that has passed since, the case for change has only snowballed. The Bill now takes forward Sir Simon’s recommendations. The review stressed that legislation alone would not fix the system; culture and resources matter too.”
“There is a serious point here: whereas attitudes to mental health have come on in leaps and bounds in the past four decades, the law has been frozen in time. As a result, the current legislation fails to give patients adequate dignity, voice and agency in their care, despite the fact that patients have consistently told us that being treated humanely, and making decisions about their own care, plays a vital role in their recovery. When patients are detained and treated without any say over what is happening to them, it can have serious consequences for their ongoing health. To quote one of the many patients who bravely shared their experiences with Sir Simon Wessely’s independent review: “Being sectioned was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.”
“I wish I could correct my hon. Friend and say that I have already read in detail the feedback from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, but he is right: I have not yet had a chance to do that. However, I can assure him that I and my hon. Friend the Minister for Care will look at the Committee’s report. We would be very happy to meet members of the Committee to discuss in further detail their findings and recommendations. We want to ensure that the Bill is as strong as it can be, given the length of time that has passed since the Mental Health Act was reformed. Indeed, the Mental Health Act is as old as I am. [ Interruption. ] Thank you for those interventions. I assure Members heaping compliments across the Chamber that it will not affect investment decisions in their constituencies, but I am none the less very grateful.”
“Not only should the health service treat all its patients with dignity and respect anyway, but giving people a say over their own care means that their treatment is more likely to be successful. In the foreword to his independent review, Sir Simon Wessely said: “I often heard from those who told me, looking back, that they realise that compulsory treatment was necessary, even life-saving, but then went on to say ‘why did it need to be given in the way it was?’” Another patient in the 2018 review said: “I felt a lot of things were done to me rather than with me”. We need to get this right. We need to give these patients a voice.”
“I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. As he has heard many times from this Dispatch Box, we want to see a shift in the centre of gravity in the NHS out of hospitals and into the community as one of the three key shifts that will underpin our 10-year plan for health, which we will be publishing in the not-too-distant future. The Mental Health Act is designed to keep patients and the public safe, but it is clear to anyone who has seen how patients are treated that it does so in an outdated and blunt way that is unfit for the modern age. It is too easy for someone under the Act to lose all sense of agency, rights and respect. It is sometimes necessary to detain and treat patients, but there is no reason why patients experiencing serious mental illness should be denied the choice and agency they would rightly expect in physical care.”
“The current legislation has left many people with a learning disability and many autistic people in mental health hospitals, when they could receive much better care elsewhere. Around four in 10 people with a learning disability or autism could be cared for in the community. The Bill aims to improve the care and treatment people receive when detained, while keeping patients and the public safe. Through the Bill, we are: strengthening and clarifying the criteria for detention and community treatment orders to better support clinicians in their decision-making; introducing increased scrutiny and oversight for compulsory detention and treatment; and providing patients with a clear road to recovery by introducing statutory care and treatment plans for all patients detained under the Act, except if under a very short-term section.”
“I am happy to reaffirm that we have a really strong working relationship with Minister Mike Nesbitt and the Northern Ireland Executive, and we are keen to share insight wherever we can. The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, which refers back to the remarks I made about the limitations of the legislation. Reform of the statute book is important in terms of how the law treats people. But as well as reforming the model of care, clinical pathways and looking at new treatments, innovations and technologies, we also need to focus on prevention, attacking the social determinants of ill health, including mental ill health, of which poverty is a key driver of stress, anxiety, depression and worse. That is why the Government will keep such a focus not just in our 10-year plan for health, but more broadly across public policy.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am very glad that my Department is working closely with other Departments across a range of issues, in particular with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the link between employment, welfare and health, and with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education on the reform of special educational needs and disabilities, and the interface between health and education services—I could go on. The point is that a wide range of factors have an impact on people’s health and wellbeing. Indeed, people’s health and wellbeing can have an impact on a wide range of aspects of their lives, which is why we have to work in a mission-driven cross-Government way.”
“It requires clinicians to involve patients and those close to them in decisions affecting their care, while retaining the power to treat individuals compulsorily where absolutely necessary.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention and for raising the very serious issue—an issue of increasing prevalence—of the impact of parental mental ill health on children and young people. We are very happy to look at the Carers Trust proposal, and to take representations on that and other issues as the Bill progresses through its Commons stages. We want to ensure that we get not just the legal basis of mental health provision in the right place, but practical care. As we think about children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, we also need to take into account their parents’ mental health and wellbeing through that lens, too. Patients’ choices and needs will always be taken into account, thanks to the introduction of a new clinical checklist.”
“To ensure that their voice is not lost and that professionals are working with patients, the Bill introduces duties to encourage people to make an advance choice document while they are well. This document provides a record of their wishes for use by mental health professionals, should the patient later experience a crisis that renders them incapable of making their own decisions.”
“My hon. Friend’s question raises two key issues with the provision of mental health services. First, we must ensure that the bar is set in the right place for compulsory treatment. Secondly, we must ensure that both compulsory and voluntary treatment in a hospital setting is within a reasonable distance of family, friends and loved ones. My hon. Friend powerfully describes the impact of such cases, where there is not just a deprivation of liberty, but an impact on an entire family. We need to do much better on both sides of the border when it comes to the appropriate placement of people in mental health settings. There will always be times when patients hit crisis points and lack the ability to express what they want.”
“People listened to my advocate.” We are also extending advocacy services to patients who come to hospital voluntarily and making changes to improve advocacy uptake among those who are detained, as well as working to change the culture of our health and care services so that everyone is listened to and so that patients do not have to rely on an advocacy service to get their voice heard.”
“One patient explained: “My mother used to perform this role, but she now has Alzheimer’s and she lacks capacity. Under the current system, I cannot specify who I wish to serve as my nearest relative. The responsibility would automatically go to my oldest sister—a sister I do not get on with”. Our reforms will ensure that this statutory role is not chosen for the patient, but is rather the choice of the patient. Advocacy services are often a lifeline for those who find themselves in the vulnerable position of being detained, giving a voice to those who may otherwise feel voiceless. Patients have reported that an advocate can ensure that “their voice and opinion is valued and listened to. They came to my meetings, valued my opinion and put my views across to other people.”
“I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for sharing such personal lived experience of the issues we are debating this afternoon. I encourage her to take every opportunity to share those experiences directly with Ministers or through the passage of this Bill, which others in a similar situation will also have had, so that we can provide the best possible support for people experiencing a mental health crisis and for their loved ones, who also experience an enormous amount of pain and anxiety in supporting someone going through acute mental illness. We are also updating the outdated nearest relative provisions to allow patients to choose someone to be their nominated person, which gives that individual important powers to represent the patient’s interests when they cannot represent themselves.”
“Many of the changes we will be looking to make under the auspices of our 10-year plan are about better joining up of data, information and patient records, better care planning for patients and designing services around patients so that everyone—whatever their age or stage of treatment—receives joined-up services, with clinicians having a full picture of that patient’s experience. Hopefully, that will also help to deal with some of the cliff edges and bumps in the road that people can often experience when transitioning from one part of the NHS to another, whether that is from youth and adolescent services to adult services or the interface between primary and secondary care.”
“I am grateful for that intervention. The hon. Gentleman raises what is, frankly, the depressingly familiar issue of the transition from youth and adolescent services to adult services, which applies across such a wide range of public services. It is so frustrating that we are still, in this decade of the 21st century, describing a problem that was prevalent in the ’90s and noughties. None the less, we are working to improve not just the law, but the performance in this space.”
“We will also introduce a new requirement for the responsible clinician to consult another person when deciding whether to discharge a patient, putting in place robust safeguards against the release of potentially dangerous people. Finally, as I have said, legislation alone will not fix the wider issues of increasing mental health needs and long waiting times. To do that, the Government are investing in earlier intervention to meet patients’ needs and prevent them from reaching crisis point.”
“As the independent investigation into the murders found, both he and his victims were failed by the health service, and their families have been left to live with the consequences with a level of pain the rest of us can scarcely imagine. I would like to place on the record my thanks to all four families for meeting me as my team and I worked on the Bill. Thanks to the amendments that we are making to the Mental Health Act, decision makers will have to consider the risk of serious harm when making decisions to detain. That will ensure that any risks to the public and patients are considered as part of the assessment process.”
“The vast majority of people with mental illness, including severe mental illness, present no risk to themselves or others, and, for the majority of people, treatment can be provided without compulsion. However, there are some people whose illness, when acute, can make them a risk to themselves, and sometimes to others. No one knows this better than the families of Ian Coates, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, the victims of Valdo Calocane’s violent rampage in Nottingham, whose campaign for justice and accountability has been truly awe-inspiring, or indeed the family of Valdo Calocane, with whom I have also spent time, listening to their experience of feeling badly let down by health services.”
“To help to plug the flow of inappropriate admissions to hospital, the Bill places a duty on integrated care boards to improve monitoring and support for people with a learning disability or autism who may be at risk of future detention. The Bill will introduce statutory care, education and treatment reviews to ensure that patients are safe and receiving the right care and treatment when detained, and that a plan to discharge them to the community is being worked up. We will also remove prison and police cells from the definition of “places of safety”. Police cells are for criminals, not patients in desperate need of medical help. Throughout the development of these reforms, we have maintained the central purpose of the Mental Health Act—to keep individuals and the wider public safe.”
“It is a shameful truth about our society that people with a learning disability or autism are detained, sometimes for years, with little or no therapeutic benefit. The Bill will put an end to that injustice, limiting detentions so that people with a learning disability and autistic people are no longer detained beyond 28 days unless they have a co-occurring mental health condition that would benefit from treatment in hospital. This will require the necessary community provision in place to support people with a learning disability or autism, and we are working to set out what strong community services look like and on the resources required to implement them, so that there are robust alternatives to hospital care.”
“I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. The Bill deals to an extent with cases that would fall under the category she describes, in particular through reforms to community treatment orders. However, it would not necessarily cover the full extent of the sorts of people who might find themselves in that position, which is where I think we can use technology—which is not the answer to every problem in the health service, by the way. However, through better use of data, patient records and analytics, we will be better able in the future to predict risk and prevent tragedies as in the case the hon. Lady describes, which are a tragedy not just for those whose lives are cut needlessly short, but for those who live their lives with that intolerable grief and loss for the many years that follow.”
“Mental health reform is not just about changing laws; it is about changing lives. The action we are taking will provide support and care to people at their most vulnerable, modernise our mental health services to keep us all safe, and create a safety net that any of us might need one day. I commend the Bill to the House.”
“I am just coming to my conclusion, I am afraid. In the past 10 months, we have met the mental health investment standard for 2025-26; invested an extra £680 million in mental health services this year, which is a real-terms increase; funded mental health support teams in schools for almost an extra 1 million pupils; invested an extra £26 million to build new mental health crisis centres; funded NHS talking therapies for an additional 380,000 patients; and begun recruiting the 8,500 mental health professionals we promised in our manifesto. That is all part of the additional £26 billion this Labour Government are investing in health and care services—investment that was opposed by every party on the Opposition Benches; investment that is happening only because we have a Labour Government.”
“I should point out for the record that mental health spending has increased in real terms this year, thanks to the decisions the Government have taken. As a proportion of spend on health services overall, it is true to say that it has decreased by 0.07%, but that does not take into account the fact that as well as investing heavily in our elective backlog and in clearing waiting lists, we are investing in general practice, which will benefit enormously people with mental ill health.”
“Our 10-year plan will set out how we will continue to transform the NHS into a neighbourhood health service.”
“Despite my best efforts, may I welcome the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) to her place? Being a Member of Parliament is a privilege, and I know how special it is to sit on these Benches having been sent here by constituents. Regardless of our political differences, I wish her well personally. As part of our 10-year plan for health, we want to deliver a real shift in the centre of gravity in the NHS, so that people get more care closer to home and, indeed, in their home, too. The NHS is as much a neighbourhood health service as a national health service. We have already made progress in shifting care to the community: providing more than £889 million in funding for GPs; agreeing the GP contract for the first time since the pandemic; and recruiting more than 1,500 GPs on to the frontline.”
“The founding mission of the NHS was to be there for people whenever they fall ill, so that they never have to worry about the bill. Unfortunately, thanks to the disaster and the failures of 14 years of Conservative Government, too many people in our country today experience the fear that Nye Bevan sought to eradicate. As my hon. Friend would expect, tackling health inequalities for homeless people and other vulnerable groups is central to the values of this Labour Government. Those values will be reflected in our 10-year plan for health. I would be delighted to hear from her further on what we can do to improve services in her area.”
“I wholeheartedly join my hon. Friend in thanking Pam and everyone at Compassion in Action for the work that they do. At the heart of our approach to health is a recognition that Government action is essential for improving health outcomes in the country, and that Government acting alone will not be sufficient. That is why working with the voluntary sector, employers, trade unions, community groups and all of us as individual citizens is vital for tackling health inequalities and improving care in our country. I would be delighted to ensure that one of the team pays a visit to the charity as soon as possible.”
“At the heart of this Government’s approach is investment in, and reform of, the NHS to ensure that we deliver better outcomes for patients. That means the biggest devolution of power in the history of the NHS with more decisions taken closer to patients and to their communities, and more power in the hands of patients, too. Community hospitals have a vital role to play, and thanks to this Government’s decision to deliver £26 billion more into our NHS—opposed by the Conservative party—we will no doubt be able to make further and faster progress.”
“The hon. Member will be delighted to know that only last week I met with my counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to talk about how we can work together to improve health and care throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She will know that health is devolved, but thanks to the decisions taken by this Labour Government, the Scottish Government have just been delivered the biggest financial settlement since devolution began. That might mean that they finally make some progress on their waiting lists in Scotland, where one in six Scots are on a waiting list and the SNP is on its fifth NHS reform plan in four years.”