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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“Given the state of the Opposition, I bet they would love to see what policy discussion papers we are putting forward in the Department of Health and Social Care. The hon. Gentleman is right: papers have been shared with my right honourable friend on Privy Council terms. The Opposition will, in time, be able to judge the fruits of the labour, in terms of my decisions and the decisions of this Government when it comes to fixing the mess that they created.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. We know that the NHS is broken, and is going through the worst crisis in history. We will shortly hear from the noble Lord Darzi about the outcome of his investigation into the true state of our national health service, but against that bleak backdrop of political failure are stories across the country of triumph against the odds, and of some outstanding public servants doing extraordinary things, showing what the future of our health and care services could look like with a Government on their side. I am pleased that such a Government is here—this Labour Government—and I would be delighted to hear more about my hon. Friend’s constituency.”
“They can see the state that the Conservative party left our country in, and are willing once again to roll their sleeves up to get our country back on its feet, turn the situation around and ensure that everyone in our country can look forward to the future with optimism and hope after 14 years of abysmal failure.”
“The important thing is that Ministers take decisions on the basis of the best possible advice available, that they weigh up carefully the evidence and arguments in a fair and proper way, and that advisers may advise but Ministers ultimately decide. This Government are aware of the deep crisis in trust in our politics. That is why, on his very first day, the Prime Minister talked outside Downing Street about restoring Government to service. It is why it should be no surprise whatsoever that many people who have given outstanding public service to this country, such as my right honourable friend Alan Milburn—and the same is true of Patricia Hewitt, Alan Johnson, my noble Friend Lord Reed, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and many more—want to roll up their sleeves and help the Government.”
“I strongly agree with the hon. Member. In the short time that I have been in post, I have been delighted to have had virtual meetings with the current Northern Ireland Minister of Health, as well as with his predecessor, the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), who now sits over there on the Opposition Benches—I am delighted to see him in his place. Ministerial meetings attended by third parties are declared in our quarterly transparency publication. People will want to lobby and influence Government, and Members of Parliament, all the time. Members of Parliament regularly receive correspondence—let alone the deluge of advice that we receive in government.”
“During the general election campaign, I pledged to meet the British Dental Association immediately to start conversations on contract reform, and I did exactly that. I look forward to working with dentists and others from across the sector to reform the dental contract and rebuild NHS dentistry.”
“First, may I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) to the House, and say what an absolute privilege it is to have been appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care? We have our work cut out for us, with not only the worst economic inheritance since 1945, for which the Conservatives should show more humility, but the worst crisis in the history of our national health service, which we see reflected particularly in NHS dentistry. Some 13 million people in England have unmet need for NHS dentistry, or 28% of the country, and it is disgraceful that rotting teeth are the most common reason for children aged between five and nine being admitted to hospital.”
“It is appalling that Norfolk and Waveney are so poorly served in terms of dentistry. There are only 36 dentists per 100,000 people, compared with the national average of 53, so when my hon. Friend says that her community is a dental desert, Members should know that it is the Sahara of dental deserts. We will work with partners to ensure that patients across the country can access a dentist when they need one. I am aware, not least thanks to her advocacy and the advocacy of other Labour MPs across Norfolk, of the University of East Anglia’s proposal, and I would be delighted to meet her and my colleagues.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend; he certainly has big shoes to fill in Sunderland Central and is a worthy successor to his predecessor. He is absolutely right that alongside contract reform we need urgent action. That is why we committed to providing 700,000 additional urgent appointments and recruiting dentists to where they are most needed, and I am delighted to report that dentists stand ready to assist. We are working with the BDA urgently to get those appointments up and running as soon as possible, and we will keep the House informed on progress as we do.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend to the House. He is absolutely right to point out that these challenges have been 14 years in the making, and it will take time to fix the damage that the Conservatives have done to our national health service. We will start with 700,000 urgent appointments, as we promised, and we will continue with contract reform, which is essential. I reassure him that as we do, we will have the needs of all communities in our country at heart, especially rural communities such as his that have particular challenges. I look forward to involving him and keeping him up to date on progress as we make it.”
“The Conservative party lauded that plan during the general election, when I think the public delivered their verdict on the progress that it had made. NHS dentistry is non-existent in huge parts of the country. We will stick with some aspects of the previous Government’s dental recovery plan because they are the right solutions, but there are gimmicks that we will not proceed with. We will come forward with a serious plan to reform the dental contract, which the Conservatives committed to in 2010 but failed to do in every single year of their 14 years.”
“Member is absolutely right: Lord Darzi is conducting a review on the state of the NHS, and it will report in September. That is not preventing us from making progress, talking to the BDA and working within the Department and across the sector to get those 700,000 appointments up and running as a matter of urgency. I look forward to reporting the progress to her and other right hon. and hon. Members.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for her question and congratulate her on her re-election to the House. She is right to point to the detrimental impact that the Conservatives’ failure is having on people’s lives. In fact, in 1948, when the national health service was founded, Nye Bevan received a letter from a woman who had worked her entire life in the Lancashire cotton mills about how the dentistry she was given by the national health service had given her dignity and the freedom to associate in any company. What a tragedy that 76 years later, the Conservative party has squandered and destroyed that legacy to the point where people are suffering not just pain and agony, but the indignity of being unable to find a job and unable to socialise in polite company because they are ashamed of the state of their rotting teeth. The hon.”
“I welcome the hon. Member to the House—it is a rare thing to welcome new Conservative Members, and he is welcome. He is absolutely right to touch on the workforce issues in NHS dentistry, and to say that we need to incentivise dentists, on two fronts: we need them to commit to and do more work in the NHS—we are looking at a range of things in that regard—and we need to ensure that we get more dentists to the areas in which they are most needed. We will certainly support incentives to that effect.”
“Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), on his appointment, but he sat behind Secretaries of State as their Parliamentary Private Secretary year after year, week after week, looking at the utterly abysmal failure of their record. When it comes to criticising this Government on the actions that we will take, the Conservatives do not have a leg to stand on.”
“I could not have picked a better example of the previous Government’s desperately low ceiling of ambition than the fact that, after 14 years, they laud their triumph of dental vans roaming the country in the absence of actual dentists and dental surgeries. What an absolute disgrace. I accept that the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was just the last in a very long list of Health and Social Care Secretaries who had the chance to fix the problems. It was not all on her, and it is important that I say that—not least because of the Conservative leadership election that will be taking place soon. I congratulate the shadow Minister, the hon.”
“It is painfully clear that the previous Government’s new hospital programme—they said that they would deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030—is not deliverable in that timeframe. I want to see the new hospital programme completed, but I am not prepared to offer people false hope about how soon they will benefit from the facilities they deserve. That is why I have asked officials as a matter of urgency to report to me on the degree to which the programme is funded along with a realistic timetable for delivery. We will not play fast and loose with the public finances, nor will we play fast and loose with people’s trust as the previous Government did.”
“I was about to say, Mr Speaker, that the good people of Lancaster and Wyre will be delighted to have sent my hon. Friend to Parliament, because she is second only to you in collaring me about a local hospital project—you are the holder of that record. There is a serious point: thanks to her determined efforts to collar me around the parliamentary estate, I know the particular urgency around land. A scheme will be put to me shortly, which I will consider carefully, and I will look at the programme in the round and ensure that I am able to come back to this House and to the country with promises that we can keep and that the country can afford.”
“Hospitals with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete are at the top of my list of priorities. I am extremely concerned about the dire state of the NHS estate. Once again, I think that is a bit rich from Opposition Members, whose party was in government only weeks ago. They had a Prime Minister local to that hospital, and they did not do anything when they had the chance, but they should not worry—we will clean up their mess.”
“First, I welcome the hon. Lady to her new post. I must say I preferred her much more as a Back-Bench rebel than a Front-Bench spokesperson, but I have enormous respect for her years of contribution to the NHS and the experience that she brings to this House. I always take her seriously. However, on this one, once again I say to the Opposition that they handed over an entirely fictional timetable and an unfunded programme. The hon. Lady might not know because she was not there immediately prior to the election, but the shadow Secretary of State, who is sitting right next to her, knows exactly where the bodies are buried in the Department, where the unexploded bombs are, and exactly the degree to which this timetable and the funding were not as set out by the previous Government.”
“In fact, backlog maintenance, the direct cost of bringing the estate into compliance with mandatory fire safety requirements and statutory safety legislation, currently stands at £11.6 billion. That is the legacy of the last Conservative Government.”
“I welcome the hon. Lady back to her place. We worked constructively on the Opposition Benches together and, regardless of the size of the Government’s majority, we intend to work constructively with her on this side of the election, too. By extension, I congratulate her colleagues on their election. I have discovered that I have 72 new pen pals, all sitting there on the Liberal Democrat Benches, and they have been writing to me about a whole manner of projects. My colleagues and I will get back to them. The hon. Lady is right that this is not just about the new hospitals programme, important though that is; the condition of the whole NHS estate is poor.”
“Our NHS is broken. This Government have been honest about the problems we face because we are serious about fixing them, and we have not wasted a moment. We have appointed Lord Darzi to carry out an independent investigation of the state of our NHS, we are resetting the relationship with junior doctors with negotiations starting today, and we are laying the foundations for the delivery of 40,000 more appointments a week to cut waiting lists. The Gracious Speech kick-started a decade of national renewal, with modernisation of the Mental Health Act as well as the smoking reform, which will ensure that this generation of young people is the first smoke-free generation, and will be the first step towards ensuring that that generation is the healthiest in history.”
“I am delighted to see my hon. Friend back in the House. She campaigns relentlessly on this vital issue, and it would be very risky for me to do anything other than agree to meet her, because I share her view that progress needs to be made on it.”
“May I welcome the shadow Secretary of State to her new position? She has behaved in her typically graceful and decent way. I enjoyed working with her on that basis, and will continue to do so. Although, I must confess that when I heard about the “abominable” behaviour of the shadow Health Secretary, I thought, “What on earth have I done now?” Then I remembered that our roles have swapped, and that it was not me they were referring to. What I said was that the doctors were making a reasonable case that their pay had not kept in line with inflation, but we were clear before the election that 35% was not a figure we could afford. We are negotiating with junior doctors in good faith to agree on a settlement that we can deliver and that the country can afford.”
“Obviously, there is a judicial review of the former Secretary of State’s decision, which I am defending. The matter is sub judice, so I will steer clear of it. To go back to first principles, we are wholeheartedly committed to the full implementation of the Cass review, which will deliver material improvements in the wellbeing, safety and dignity of trans people of all ages. I think that is important. I want to reassure LGBT+ communities across the country, particularly the trans community, that this Government seek a very different relationship with them. I look at the rising hate crime statistics and trans people’s struggles to access healthcare, and I look at their desire to live freely, equally and with dignity. That is what we will work with them to deliver.”
“I am proud that the Deputy Prime Minister will be delivering the commitment to build 1.5 million new homes. It is absolutely vital that the infrastructure needed is delivered alongside those new homes, and we and other colleagues across Government will be working very closely with the Deputy Prime Minister to make sure that the social infrastructure is also provided.”
“I warmly welcome the hon. Member to her place. She is absolutely right to raise the plight of unpaid family carers. They are part of the team, as far as this Government are concerned, so as we set out our 10-year plan for social care as part of our ambition to build the national care service, we will make sure that unpaid family carers are very much at the centre of our thinking, in no small part thanks to her representations.”
“Of all the issues that keep me awake at night, maternity safety is top of the list. We have already heard about the staffing shortages and the actions we will take to address that, but I also want to reassure people that, as we build our 10-year plan for the NHS, patient voices, including those of recent and expectant mothers, will be part of that process.”
“I would not rely on anything the former Prime Minister said— [ Interruption. ] Oh, our Prime Minister? I thought the right hon. Gentleman was talking about the former Prime Minister. In that case, I can reassure him that we are absolutely committed to the new hospitals programme. On the budgets and the timescales, as I have said, we will come forward with an honest appraisal of what we have inherited from the last Government and what we will be able to deliver within reasonable timescales.”
“I am delighted to welcome my hon. Friend to his place. I am personally grateful to the Royal Free hospital for saving my life when I went through kidney cancer. NHS waiting lists stand at 7.6 million, which was still rising as this Government took office. Our 40,000 extra appointments, scans and procedures and our doubling of the number of diagnostic scanners will make a real difference to getting that backlog down to where it should be.”
“Despite my best efforts, the hon. Gentleman is back. I congratulate him through gritted teeth. I was very impressed by what I saw at King’s Mill hospital, and I am proud of the last Labour Government’s record of delivering the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. As I said during the election campaign, we will build on that success and learn from some of our shortcomings, too.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend to his place. Better late than never, as they say. I have been to Hillingdon hospital, which has amazing staff and appalling buildings. That is why the people of Hillingdon, and people right across the country, deserve honesty, clarity and certainty about the new hospitals programme. This Government will provide it and stick to it.”
“The World Health Organisation is an intergovernmental arrangement. It is of vital importance that, first and foremost, we agree only to things that are in our national interest, but we should not lose sight of the fact that there are lots of things that we need to do together in pursuit of our national interest, from tackling antimicrobial resistance to preventing future pandemic threats. That is exactly what we will do.”
“I would be delighted to do that. As my hon. Friend knows, we visited Specsavers during the election campaign. There are lots of high street opticians, and they can make a real difference to cutting the backlog. The Conservatives should have gone to Specsavers, and this Government will.”
“I have every hope that our country will do just that.”
“More than that, unlike the Conservatives, we have a record on the NHS to be proud of: a record of the shortest waiting lists and the highest patient satisfaction in history. We did it before, and we will do it again. That is why representatives of the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland know, and even admit in private, that a Labour Government in Westminster will be a rising tide that lifts all ships across our United Kingdom. I say to people that it is not enough to send MPs to Westminster to oppose the Conservatives; they need to send Labour MPs to replace the Conservatives. If they are given five more years, nothing will change. The chaos will continue, and the NHS crisis will get worse. As we approach this general election, be in no doubt: the only way to deliver the change our country needs is to vote Labour.”
“[Interruption.] Conservative Members ask what it is: give the people what they want—40,000 extra appointments a week at evenings and weekends to cut waiting lists; double the number of scanners, with AI-enabled scanners diagnosing patients faster; 700,000 emergency dental appointments and reform of the contract to rescue NHS dentistry; double medical school places and train thousands more nurses, GPs and midwives, delivering Labour’s workforce plan; bring back the family doctor so patients can see the same GP for each appointment; 8,500 mental health professionals to treat people on time, with mental health support in every school and hubs in every community, alongside landmark reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. That is Labour’s plan, and that is just the start.”
“This election is the country’s chance to turn the page on 14 years of failure, to end the chaos in the NHS and to rebuild our NHS. No part of our country is crying out louder for change than our health service—not just investment but reform, because if the NHS is to be there for us free at the point of use for the next 75 years, as it has been in the last, it must change. Only Labour can deliver that change. Our damp squib of a Prime Minister is dripping into this election with a puddle not a plan. In contrast, Labour has a plan to get our NHS back on its feet and make it fit for the future.”
“They hold people in this country in such contempt: the Conservatives think the public are so stupid that they will fall for the same recycled soggy promise all over again. Vast swathes of the country have been left without a single NHS dentist, forcing people in Britain, in 2024, to perform DIY dentistry on themselves. After 14 years, the fundamental promise of the NHS has been broken: people can no longer be sure the NHS will be there for them when they need it. Listening to the Prime Minister’s interviews this morning, it is clear he has given up on the NHS. He has called this election with no plan to cut waiting lists, no plan to end the strikes, and no plan to reform the service. The Conservatives have taken the NHS to breaking point; if they are given five more years, they will finish the job.”
“The Government cut 2,000 GPs and now it is impossible to get an appointment. They wasted billions of pounds on top-down reorganisations, recruitment agencies and crony contracts for useless personal protective equipment instead of training the workforce the NHS needs. They forced nurses out on strike for the first time in history; and now the Prime Minister shamelessly tries to blame them for his own failures, sending the country into an election with strike action still looming. He promised to cut waiting lists; they are up to 7.5 million. Even their claim that waiting lists have fallen in the last six months has been achieved only by excluding the community figures—fiddling the figures. He promised to build 40 new hospitals and the Government have failed to build a single one.”
“Let me start with a few points of genuine consensus. First, I associate myself and my party wholeheartedly with the right hon. Lady’s remarks about the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay) and the extraordinary courage and strength he has shown. I greatly welcome her reassurance to victims of the contaminated blood scandal and the emphasis she placed on the cross-party commitment to continue at pace to deliver justice, whatever the outcome of the general election. I also welcome what she said about the justifiably cautious and responsible approach she is taking in relation to puberty blockers in the light of the Cass review. That is the end of the consensus, however, because after 14 years of Conservative incompetence, neglect and vandalism, the national health service has never been in a worse state.”
“Happy St George’s day, Mr Speaker. Westminster is awash with rumours that the Prime Minister will call a July general election, presumably to avoid giving his Rwanda gimmick the time to fail. I have a very simple question for the Minister: will he repeat the pledge that the Prime Minister made last year and promise that NHS waiting lists will be lower at the time of the general election than when the Prime Minister came to office?”
“The Health Secretary has promised that the Government will provide an extra 2.5 million dental appointments this year, but the dentistry Minister, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), says the figure has “a high likelihood of not being reliable”. Which one of them is wrong?”
“The last Labour Government delivered the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history, which is a record that the right hon. Lady’s Government cannot begin to touch. Back to dentistry, the chief dental officer says the announcement is “nowhere near enough.” The British Dental Association says: “This ‘Recovery Plan’ is not worthy of the title.” It also says that the recovery plan will not stop the “exodus” of dentists and will not meet the Government’s targets. Who should the public trust, and why should they trust the Health Secretary to deliver when her own adviser, her own Minister and, crucially, dentists all say that she is brushing the truth under the carpet?”
“Well, we happily align ourselves with big health in defence of the nation and we are only too happy to defend the Health Secretary against the siren voices of big tobacco that we see gathered around our former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in the corner of the Chamber today.”
“It has been widely reported, and we have seen indications of it today, that there are still Members on the Conservative Benches—as many as 100, if we believe rebel Tory briefings to the media, although in our experience these Tory rebellions tend to evaporate when the moment comes—who resist the new interventionist consensus, who continue to fly the flag for small-state libertarianism, and who believe that the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister have surrendered to the lobbying of big health and those tyrants in Action on Smoking and Health, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Diabetes UK, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Mind, Asthma and Lung UK, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Medical Association.”
“Of all the policies that the Conservatives have adopted from the Labour party in the past few years, nothing shows our dominance in the battle of ideas more than this latest capitulation. Where Labour leads, the Conservatives follow. Indeed, when I first floated this proposal, Conservative MPs called it “nanny state” and “an attack on ordinary people and their culture”, and I was accused of “health fascism”. What irony, when Conservative MPs are overseas today in Brussels, lining up with the European far right. Anyway, it is water off a duck’s back to me. I am delighted that just a few months later the Prime Minister announced this policy at the Conservative party conference, and that a Conservative Health Secretary has brought this progressive ban before Parliament today. However, it seems that not every Conservative Member got the memo.”
“In an interview with The Times in January last year, I said that it was time for a New Zealand-style smoking ban. I argued that a progressive ban would have a transformational impact on the health of individuals, the health of the nation as a whole and the public finances. After around two and a half years in this job, I am getting used to the Government nicking Labour’s policies. In the last year alone, the magpies opposite have swooped in on Labour’s NHS workforce plan, Labour’s plan to recruit dentists in the most under-served areas, Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, and Labour’s plan to abolish the non-dom tax status. Even so, I was shocked when I saw that the Conservative party—the party of Ken Clarke—is nicking the Labour party’s plan for a progressive ban on tobacco.”
“What more motivation could this House need for once again taking seriously the health of our nation? Today, smoking remains a scourge on our society. Some 75,000 GP appointments every month are to deal with the impacts of smoking. The cost to our economy, after taxes, is £10 billion. Around 80,000 of our friends, neighbours and colleagues lose their lives to smoking every year. It is a lethal addiction, a scourge on society, an enormous burden on our NHS and a drag on our economy, and it is time to consign it to the dustbins of history. Let us act today so that the next generation of young people can live healthier, happier and longer lives than the generations before them. Labour will give our wholehearted support to this Bill. In fact, we needed no persuasion.”