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 would add that it is important that we make sure that these children and young people have access to good-quality mental health support, and I am working with NHS England to make sure that this is the case. This area is one in which all Members should tread carefully when engaging in debate.”
“His paper, published on 19 July, concluded as follows: “The data do not support the claim that there has been a large rise in suicide in young gender dysphoria patients at the Tavistock. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide. The claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet basic standards for statistical evidence. There is a need to move away from the perception that puberty-blocking drugs are the main marker of non-judgemental acceptance in this area of health care. We need to ensure high quality data in which everyone has confidence, as the basis of improved safety”.”
“Very heavy consideration—of all the considerations, it is the one that has weighed most heavily. As I said in my statement, trans people too often find themselves at the wrong end of the statistics on mental ill health, self-harm and suicide. I take those issues very seriously indeed. What I would say to my hon. Friend, Members of this House, and campaigners—particularly online actors—is that a number of claims have been made about the data that are not borne out by the facts. In fact, I asked Professor Louis Appleby, the Government’s suicide prevention adviser, to examine the evidence for some of the claims made that there has been a large rise in suicide.”
“The only thing worse than a Member not knowing the answer to their own question is the Minister not knowing the answer. Happily, in this case, I can say that surgical intervention for trans people does not apply to children and young people.”
“Any young person in Great Britain and Northern Ireland who had a valid prescription for these medicines in the six months prior to 3 June and 27 August respectively can seek continuation of their prescription from a UK-registered clinician. Guidance has been issued to general practitioners setting out prescribing scenarios. It remains the case that continuation of puberty-supressing hormones can be considered where the GP feels competent to do so, and where confirmation in the form of documentary evidence that treatment had been under way is available. The guidance also makes clear that GPs should consider what further support should be offered, including assessing whether referral to the children and young people’s gender service or, indeed, for mental health support is required.”
“As I say, any young person in Great Britain and Northern Ireland who had a valid prescription for these medicines in the six months prior to 3 June and 27 August respectively can seek continuation of their prescription from a UK-registered clinician. More broadly, it is my intention to ensure we start bringing down those waiting lists, to make sure that children and young people and their families receive access to the wide range of support, information, advice and guidance that they need in order to navigate their pathway and to make sure they feel safe, respected and included in discussions about their own healthcare.”
“The study remains on track to commence recruitment in the spring, and I will issue further updates in early 2025 to keep my hon. Friend, the House, and young people and their families informed.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. We are trying to proceed at pace with the clinical trial. I share the urgency that she brings to her question. I have had to temper my own urgency with the need to make sure that the clinical trial that is established is as robust and ethically sound as, if not more robust and ethically sound than, any other clinical trial. The worst thing I could do at this stage, especially when the NIHR and NHS England are working at pace to establish a trial, would be to interfere politically in what must be an independent approach. The planned pathway study, which includes the clinical trial component to build the evidence of the relative benefits and harms of puberty-suppressing hormones, is in the final stages of the commissioning process, subject to a robust ethical approval process.”
“I thank the hon. Member for her question. On the cases of young people who have been on a gender identity pathway and later regret those interventions, whatever those interventions may have been, they are small in number, but they are addressed in the Cass review. It is important that we do not lose sight of those young adults and older adults who may well need the support of health services if they feel they were inappropriately placed on a gender identity pathway or undertook medical interventions that they have later come to regret. We will keep that and other evidence under close review.”
“That has been the challenge: people with a lived experience saying that this has been positive, while none the less—at the Tavistock clinic, in particular—not only puberty blockers but a whole range of medical interventions were delivered with the best of intentions, but in ways that were inappropriate and clinically unsound. That was the genesis of the Cass review, and it is why I think it is so important that we proceed in an evidence-based way. To do the contrary risks real harm to people and also a lack of trust in the medical profession that will be damaging for our entire country, and particularly for this group of patients.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. This lies at the heart of the dilemma that has plagued clinical leaders and political leaders, particularly since the scandal at the Tavistock clinic was brought into the public eye. There are many people in our country—young people, and young and older adults—who will say, and some have certainly told me in my office, that having access to puberty-suppressing hormones has been completely life-changing and affirming, and has led to a positive outcome for them. Yet we know that the prescription of that medication to this particular group of patients for this particular medical need has not been supported by underpinning evidence in the way that the use of other drugs has been underpinned by effective trials and an evidence base.”
“It breaks my heart, actually, because I want this country to be one where everyone, whatever their background, feels safe, included and respected, and there is much we can do across this House to build that kind of country.”
“There are plenty of things we can disagree about in this House and contest elections on, but especially in an area such as this that involves vulnerable children and young people, the more we can try to build consensus and create an environment in our country where these children and young people and their families feel safe, the more we will be doing a really good job. Far and away the hardest part in this process for me personally has been spending time with these children and young people and their parents, many of whom have spoken in genuinely heartfelt terms about the fear they feel living in our country. Some are looking to live in other countries, and doing so quite sincerely.”
“I thank the hon. Member for her question. In case she worries that she is going soft on the Government—or, worse still, in case I worry that I agree with her—we should just remind each other that even a stopped clock is right twice a day. For those watching our proceedings this afternoon, it is true to say that politics in our country has been quite divided on a wide range of issues, certainly in the nine and a half years that I have been in this House. However, that is not to say that, on a wide range issues, we do not have consensus or work together to build it. I actually think that is a good thing in our politics.”
“I know that I speak for the Government as a whole in saying that whether it is access to healthcare as in my case, access to a wide range of public services, or indeed safety on our streets, this Government are committed to improving the lives of trans people so that they can live with the freedom, dignity and respect that any of us in our country would expect for ourselves.”
“I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. We want all trans people, in fact all people in our country, to receive timely access to safe and effective healthcare. We want to improve services for trans people specifically, because we recognise the extent to which they have been let down. I emphasise that young people who have been in receipt of puberty blockers with a valid prescription for the six months prior to 3 June and 27 August respectively can seek continuation of their prescriptions. There are risks that would be associated with an interruption of those prescriptions, which is why we have taken that approach.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said. These issues weigh heavily on my conscience. On what he says about the safety and efficacy of puberty blockers, the simple fact is that we just do not know enough. That is why building the evidence base and research is important. I want to ensure that young people with gender incongruence and dysphoria are receiving the best quality healthcare to improve their safety, welfare and wellbeing as children, and that they live long, healthy and happy lives as adults. That is the basis on which we are taking decisions, and we are approaching the issue with care and sensitivity, as I know my counterpart in Northern Ireland also does.”
“It is why headline writers and editors in our media have a responsibility to think carefully about how they exercise their freedoms in the media responsibly—freedoms I strongly support—and create a culture where we are not adding to the harms of that group of children and young people. That is for the exact reasons that my hon. Friend describes with that utterly heartbreaking case.”
“My hon. Friend demonstrates powerfully why waits of the length that she describes in that case are simply unacceptable and unjustifiable. She also details the real pain that is being experienced by young people who are not being seen by the NHS, and not receiving the care and support they need. That is why I am determined to improve waiting times and quality of care. It is also why those of us in positions of influence or power, or those who have access to the microphone or the pulpit, need to think very carefully about the way that we talk about this group of children and young people, and trans people more generally.”
“If we were able to navigate those issues in a much more thoughtful, considered way, listening to different perspectives and experiences, I feel confident that, despite all the challenges, as a society we could find a way through that not everyone loves, but everyone can live with. We have done that before on same-sex marriage, on sexual orientation and religious freedoms, for example. It is possible, if we are willing to listen, to engage in good faith and to not shout down people raising heartfelt concerns. Perhaps if we engaged in the conversation in a much better way, we would find a better way through as a country.”
“I pay particular tribute to Hannah Barnes, whose “Newsnight” investigation took some of these issues to a wider audience, and whose journalism on broadcast media and in print showed how we can expose failure, and expose the risks to a wide range of children, young people and adults, in a thoughtful, evidence-based way. Finally, the right hon. Gentleman talked about the treatment of other people who have raised concerns in a wide range of contexts in this debate. He mentions Kathleen Stock, and there are others, too. I do not think that has been helpful; in fact, I think it has been actively harmful to having the kind of national conversation we should have more broadly about gender identity and how some women fear their sex-based rights are at risk.”
“That was not only a disgraceful way to treat good colleagues who were raising legitimate concerns in the right way, but ironically—I have no doubt that many of the people behaving in that way did so with the best of intentions towards that vulnerable group of children and young people—they set back the national conversation about that group of children and young people and undermined confidence in gender identity services. That cannot be a good thing. I also pay tribute to those journalists who were willing to report on this issue.”
“As the report into the failures of the Tavistock clinic shows, a whole range of individuals and organisations did not discharge their duty of care appropriately to an extremely vulnerable group of children and young people. I pay tribute to the whistleblowers of the Tavistock and Portman who laid their careers on the line. They were subjected to the worst kinds of attempts to silence whistleblowers, and in some cases to bully them out of the organisation or vilify them.”
“Members that all child deaths, whatever the circumstances—suicide has been mentioned—undergo a multi-agency review by a child death overview panel, and that information is reported to the national child mortality database. There is a monthly exercise by NHS officials to check the waiting list against NHS records, so we do monitor the situation closely, and the mental health and wellbeing of this particular cohort of children and young people is both very close to my heart and very close to my gaze.”
“The hon. Member points back to the waiting list, which currently has 6,237 people on it. I do not think it is too much to expect the NHS to have a relationship with each of those young people and to make sure that they are receiving some support and care while they are waiting. I have been given assurances that support is offered to young people on the waiting list, and I continue to monitor that like a hawk. I am grateful for representations I receive from across the House from right hon. and hon. Members’ casework, and I am happy to pick up individual cases. As for the most catastrophic failures of children and young people, I reassure all right hon. and hon.”
“The details of the trial are still being worked through. They will be and are subject to a robust ethical approvals process. Only once final ethical approval is granted is the final study design set in stone. As such, I cannot comment on the finer details at this time, but I just reassure the hon. and learned Member that the issues he raises are very much under consideration in the design of the trial.”
“The trial will be uncapped, and I reassure the hon. Member and the House that all NIHR-commissioned research must go through robust scientific and ethical approval processes, both of which can influence final study design. In terms of the design of this trial, ethics is an integral part of the trial’s approval.”
“The challenge that the hon. Member mentions relates not just to these drugs, but goes more generally, too, and it is something we are looking at closely. More broadly, I want to acknowledge the first part of his question. I am grateful, not just to my counterpart Mike Nesbitt in the Northern Ireland Executive, but to the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and all parties involved in the Northern Ireland Executive for the collaborative way and the spirit in which they have engaged in discussion about this issue for Northern Ireland, and also for their willingness to work in partnership with the UK Government. That is to their credit and to the benefit of all citizens across every part of the United Kingdom.”
“They are a giant leap in this Government’s mission to build a healthy society and, in doing so, they will help to build a more healthy economy too.”
“The Bill before the House will raise the legal age of the purchase of tobacco by one year every year, creating the first smokefree generation and, eventually, a smokefree nation. The Bill will enable the Government to extend the current indoor smoking ban to certain outdoor settings, and we will consult on banning smoking outside schools and hospitals and in playgrounds, protecting children and vulnerable people from the harms of second-hand smoke. The Bill will come down on the vaping industry like a ton of bricks, to prevent a new generation of children and young people from getting hooked on nicotine. Taken together, these measures add up to the most significant public health intervention in a generation.”
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. Today, across the UK, 350 young people aged 25 and under will take up smoking. It is a decision that the vast majority will later regret. They will try to quit again and again, but most will not be able to break their addiction. They will suffer strokes, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stillbirth, dementia or asthma as a direct result of smoking. For two in three of those young people, the habit they are beginning today will eventually kill them. Smoking takes 80,000 lives a year and causes one in four deaths from cancer in England, a hospital admission almost every minute and 100 GP appointments an hour. It is the leading cause of sickness, disability and death in our country. And today, Members of this House can consign it to the history books.”
“Young people growing up in our country today will not be smokers, because we will have stopped the start. We will do everything we can to support adults who are currently smoking, because the vast majority want to break the habit but struggle to do so.”
“I can not only imagine it, but I recently experienced a similar situation. There I was in Barkingside Sainsbury’s one evening, only weeks ago, buying a bottle of wine to have with dinner and, to my surprise, I was asked for my ID. I am afraid it is just a burden that those of us with youthful vim and vigour in our early 40s have to bear, and it is a price I am willing to pay—for good moisturiser. However, there is a serious point. Along with many others that I am sure we will encounter during the passage of the Bill, this is one of the cynical arguments being deployed by the mendacious smoking lobby, which would have us believe that, decades hence, there will be people who are at the margins—one aged 41 and one aged 40, for example—being asked for ID on the sale of cigarettes. The point is that the Bill will create a smokefree generation.”
“I accept that rural pubs face a big challenge, but even high street pubs in towns and cities are struggling. Our approach to public health always has to weigh up the upside benefits to public health against the downside consequences elsewhere. It is not in the national interest to see our high streets further suffer, so I reassure the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and the hospitality industry—although I think it feels reassured on this already—that we will not be consulting on extending the powers to outdoor hospitality spaces. I hope that reassures people, as we embark on consultation on the measures that I am outlining today, that the Government listen, engage and consult seriously. Consultation is genuine with this Government.”
“I was going to address that point later in my speech, but let me address it now. It is not often that a Government comment on leaks or welcome the events following a leak; I do not want to encourage future leaks, either. However, it is well known and a matter of accurate reporting, in this case, that we were considering an extension of the ban on outdoor smoking to include outdoor hospitality, including pubs, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Because of that leak, representations were heard from Members from across the House, including the hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) and others. We took those representations very seriously because we know the hospitality industry has been through a torrid time, and not just in rural communities.”
“Brits now live shorter lives than people in any other country in western Europe, and we spend fewer years living in good health, becoming sicker sooner. Those are huge costs, borne by all of us as individuals. It means less time in which we are able to live our lives to the full, to do all the things we love and to spend time with the people we love. Sickness is forcing many of us out of work long before retirement age, leaving us dependent on welfare, ridding us of the purpose and belonging that work provides, and for everyone else, it means higher costs to us as taxpayers. Our sick society is holding back our economy, and that is why we should act.”
“The Darzi investigation into the NHS set out the twin challenges facing me, my Department and this Government. The national health service is broken; it is going through the worst crisis in its history. At the point we came into office, waiting lists stood at 7.6 million. We had worse cancer survival rates than most comparable countries, ambulances not arriving on time, the number of GPs falling and dentistry deserts across the country. Some of the most shocking findings in Lord Darzi’s report, however, were about not the sickness in our NHS, but the sickness in our nation. Children are less healthy today than they were a decade ago. Life expectancy was extended by three and a half years over the course of the last Labour Government, but in the past 14 years, it has grown by just four months.”
““And when we have the tools at our disposal…to do for our children what we all, in our heart of hearts, know is right, we must act, we must lead…we must put the next generation first.” In that spirit, I pay tribute to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), for picking up the proposal and running with it despite opposition from his own party. That took courage. While we have taken steps to improve this Bill compared with the one put forward by the previous Government, I hope that hon. and right hon. Members on the Conservative Benches will follow his lead, showing that the one nation tradition still has a constituency in the modern Conservative party, and vote for this Bill in the national interest.”
“I never imagined, in a million years, that I would tune into a Conservative party conference speech by a Conservative Prime Minister announcing his intention to legislate for such a ban. I will do something I do not often do with Conservative party conference speeches and quote extensively—and approvingly—what the then Prime Minister said. “As Prime Minister I have an obligation to do what I think is the right thing for our country in the long term. And as Conservatives, we have never shirked that responsibility.” I say that bit through gritted teeth. “We have always been at the front of society, leading it—” Who wrote this?”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am really proud of the impact that the last Labour Government made in reducing smoking harms and the prevalence of smoking in our country. That brings me on to the next point that I wanted to make. President Truman famously said that it is amazing what you can accomplish “if you do not care who gets the credit.” When I first sat down with Rachel Sylvester of The Times in January 2023 and flew a kite to start a debate that a Labour Government might introduce a ban on children and young people today ever buying cigarettes, of the type introduced by our sister party in New Zealand, I was not necessarily convinced my own side would buy it, but I thought it was a debate worth having.”
“The rising tide of ill health, coupled with our ageing society, presents an existential challenge to our health service. If we do not act now, ever-increasing demands for healthcare threaten to overwhelm and bankrupt the NHS. That is the choice that we face.”
“I recognise that there are people who have the freedom and the liberty to smoke today, the vast majority of whom, by the way, want to stop and struggle to do so. That is why we are announcing support to enable people to do that, with £70 million of investment in smoking cessation services. That is important, but for a future where people are no longer able to smoke, a phased approach is the right thing to do. It is also essential for the health of the individual, the nation and our economy. Since 2018, our productivity has dropped by £25 billion due to worsening health alone. Some 900,000 more people are off work than would have been on pre-pandemic trends. That is more people than are employed by Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda put together. Smoking alone accounts for more than £18 billion in lost productivity.”
“I am grateful for the intervention, because I anticipate that there will be similar arguments made from the Opposition Benches, particularly from a right-wing libertarian perspective. I want to engage seriously with those arguments.”
“I will just respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell). There is no liberty in addiction; there is no freedom in addiction. The logical extension of the libertarian argument the hon. Gentleman puts forward would be the end of the ban on indoor smoking. If we should take a live and let live approach, why not legalise cannabis? Why not legalise cocaine? We prescribe certain harmful substances, and there is, I think, an unanswerable case on tobacco because it is uniquely addictive and uniquely harmful. That is why we will take a tougher approach with this harmful substance than we would with something such as alcohol, or other harms such as gambling.”
“Britain can break out of this cycle, but only if we are serious about tackling the causes of ill health, and shift our focus from treating the symptoms to preventing them. Plugging the hole in the ship is how we get back to growth, how we reduce the burden of taxation, and how we ensure that this Government can intrude more lightly on people’s lives.”
“Smoking could cause 300,000 patients to be diagnosed with cancer over the next five years, including 3,000 for whom that is the result of exposure to second-hand smoke. That is what happens if we only ever treat the symptoms of ill health. We end up spending more on the NHS than ever before, but with worse care for patients, a ballooning welfare bill due to more and more people being out of work, stagnant economic growth, and the heaviest tax burden in 70 years. In short, we will be paying more, but getting less. Britain is like a ship with a hole. We are constantly battling to chuck enough water overboard to keep us afloat, as more and more floods in. We must break out of this cycle.”
“I will certainly come on to the action that we are taking on vaping, and the case for it. I welcome the contribution that my hon. Friend has made in his first few months as a Member of this House. He brings enormous expertise and experience, particularly on health, which we very much value here in the Chamber. One choice would be to continue paying an ever heavier price for failure. That is the road that we were heading down, under the previous Government. Our NHS already takes £4 for every £10 spent by the Government day to day. We are on course to go from being a nation with a national health service to a health service with a nation attached to it. It is projected that by the end of this Parliament, 4.3 million people will be on sickness benefit if we fail to act.”
“I know that he does not agree, but he must accept the trade-off—the choices that he is making for the Opposition. First, he is accepting that people will pay a higher price for their healthcare, either through taxes, if he still believes in the national health service, or through the cost to the individual of their healthcare. Secondly, he must concede that, through the harm caused by smoking, he is fuelling welfare dependency. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions had a point when she said earlier that Labour is the party of work, and the Conservatives are the party of welfare. That is the logical conclusion of the hon. Gentleman’s opposition.”
“I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was not accusing me of misleading the House. The argument that he puts forward is used against all sorts of laws and prohibitions. Most people in this country are law-abiding citizens who follow the law. In my constituency today, there will be people dumping fridges and mattresses on street corners—fly-tipping—because they are irresponsible and not law-abiding citizens. We will not always catch them, either through closed-circuit television or local authority enforcement, but that does not mean that we should not tackle them when they do those things. By phasing in a generational smoking ban, we are taking a measured and reasonable way of creating a smokefree country. That is the right way to proceed, and it is sensible.”
“We should not forget for a moment the impact of this cruel addiction and the harms caused by smoking on people’s quality of life, family life, and memories.”