Helen Morgan
MP for North Shropshire · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“In 2022, we welcomed the first women’s health strategy, which promised to “listen more carefully to women, close gaps in care, improve research and tackle inequalities.” Those were all vital goals, but three years on, the problems remain stubbornly in place: long waits for gynaecology treatment, patchy access to services, women reporting…”
“I thank the Minister for outlining the existing statutory framework. I agree that it ought to be sufficient, but there are high-profile instances where it has not been, so I look forward to hearing more from her on Report about how the cultural change will be implemented so that further legislation is not necessary.”
“There is significant vaccine hesitancy across some ethnic minority communities and in hard-to-reach places across the country. We must do more to support doctors, nurses and the NHS to fight fiction with facts, or the long-term health of the country will suffer. That is what new clause 77 seeks to do.”
“May I associate myself with the Minister’s comments and thanks to everybody who has been involved in working on the Bill? I have also enjoyed my time on the Committee, despite the heat.”
“Some pockets of the population have been left unable to get an NHS dental appointment. The action taken so far by the Labour Government has not been good enough, but the fault for this dire situation lies solely at the door of the Conservatives. Their years of neglect have left our dentistry in a shocking condition.”
“New clause 36 would introduce a mandatory individual duty for members of NHS trust and NHS foundation trust boards to escalate evidence of systemic medical malpractice to the Care Quality Commission, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Health Services Safety Investigations Body.”
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“(3) Where any significant risk is identified, the Secretary of State must set out the Government’s intentions to manage and mitigate such risks, including its intention to use or develop domestic technologies, systems or products in place of those provided under the relevant contract.”— (Dr Chambers.) This new clause would require the Government to publish a risk assessment of contracts between NHS organisations and suppliers based outside of the UK. Brought up, and read the First time.”
“(2) In conducting an assessment under this section the Secretary of State must— (a) pay particular regard to contracts which provide technology companies with access to confidential patient data; (b) consult national security experts on the risks posed to UK sovereignty by such contracts; (c) consider risks associated with the sharing of confidential patient data with organisations based outside of the UK; (d) assess public and NHS staff attitudes to relevant suppliers and any implications such attitudes may have on the use and effectiveness of products or services provided under the contract; and (e) consider the background of relevant suppliers, known contracts with other states and organisations, and any relevant ethical considerations.”
“I thank the Minister for her response. Given the commitments that she has made, I do not intend to press the new clauses, but I hope she will be able to come back to us on Report with some more concrete progress. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 3 Assessment of risks posed by contracts with non-UK based suppliers “(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must conduct and lay before Parliament a risk assessment of all contracts between NHS organisations and suppliers based outside of the UK.”
“The cultural point is really important because all the NHS scandals have this point of cultural failure, with cover-ups and defensiveness and people being badly let down. The Health Bill is going through Parliament at the moment, and one of our concerns is that the abolition of Healthwatch and the Health Services Safety Investigations Body will not help to progress that cultural change. Will the Minister urge his counterparts in the Department of Health and Social Care to reconsider those abolitions?”
“(6C) In preparing a risk assessment under subsection (6A) the Secretary of State must have particular regard for— (a) those without access to a suitable electronic device, (b) those without access to suitable broadband connectivity, (c) those with physical and/or mental disabilities, (d) those belonging to groups considered socially excluded, and (e) those considered lacking digital skills. (6D) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of the risk assessment under subsection (6A) before both Houses of Parliament.” This amendment would require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a risk assessment on the potential for digital exclusion under the establishment of a single patient record.”
“I beg to move amendment 70, in clause 47, page 34, line 38, at end insert— “(6A) Before making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State must prepare and publish a risk assessment on the potential for digital exclusion under the establishment of a single patient record. (6B) In preparing a risk assessment under subsection (6A) the Secretary of State must consult all stakeholders the Secretary of State considers relevant, including patient representation groups.”
“Although age is a predictor for a person not having access to the internet at home, especially if they are over 85, more than half of such people are younger than 75. Amendment 70 would ensure that the Secretary of State assesses the potential for digital exclusion with relevant stakeholders, including patient groups, and that the assessment is laid before Parliament. It would also ensure that the Secretary of State takes into consideration the risk of exclusion for those lacking access to a suitable electronic device or suitable broadband connectivity, including people who have disabilities, who belong to socially excluded groups or who lack digital skills.”
“Amendment 70, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell, would require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a risk assessment on the potential for digital exclusion under the establishment of a single patient record. I declare an interest as the current chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital communities. I hope that we Liberal Democrats have been clear that overall, we are supportive of the single patient record; it is important that every patient can access their own health records. Under the SPR, however there is a risk that people belonging to already vulnerable groups will be digitally excluded from accessing their health information. Research commissioned by Ofcom suggests that 2.8 million people—5% of the UK population—do not have access to the internet at all.”
“We have not seen a full design of the single patient record yet, but it is difficult to envisage what it would looks like for somebody who does not have access to the internet. It is not just older people; it is obviously a significant problem in deprived areas as well. Can the Minister elaborate on what that might look like for somebody who does not have a device or does not have broadband or mobile access? How will they be able to access their medical record? We might need to understand that before we move forward.”
“The importance of the amendment is that it requires this problem to be monitored in an ongoing way. Monitoring something usually makes the situation improve, so I will not withdraw the amendment. Question put , That the amendment be made.”
“The cross-border point is really important. A number of people will come into England from Wales to have their secondary care delivered, because that care is not available in Wales. The single patient record will presumably not be available to the clinicians in the hospitals in England who are dealing with the patients. I wonder whether we should consider how that will work when we get to the regulation stage, because other systems will clearly be needed to deal with the people who are coming from outside England to be treated in English hospitals and other settings.”
“The Government are dropping this key wider duty in a schedule entitled “Minor and consequential amendments”. We do not think it is minor. It holds major implications for patient safety and transparency. On a wider note, it seems counterintuitive that the CQC, as regulator, does not have easy access to the data collected nationally in the health service.”
“Challenges in this area are often cultural and rely on the subjective judgment of individual data controllers as to whether particular data sets can be shared, how these should be used and what the timeliness of sharing should be, leading to protracted piecemeal conversations and delays.” As we have harrowingly heard over the past week, there is often reluctance to share data, particularly when there is a defensive culture in certain NHS institutions. Our amendment seeks to address the gap. I hope that what I have outlined is an oversight from the Government, not a deliberate attempt to reduce transparency or reduce regulator access to key data. The wider changes in schedule 11 will omit section 288 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.”
“The CQC raised the issue in written evidence to the Committee, saying that the duty “has been an important mechanism” that has “supported receipt of patient safety incident reports…information sharing between regional teams, and the development of central data sharing solutions.” The CQC went on: “Without an equivalent duty, we would be reliant on there being sufficient capacity and willingness within DHSC to share information, with no statutory backstop. This could inhibit our ability to receive the information” needed “to keep people who use services safe.”
“I want to speak to amendment 6, which is tabled in my name, and amendment 7, which is consequential upon it. Amendment 6 would ensure that the CQC and NICE can “continue to make mandatory requests to the Secretary of State to establish an information system”, as they currently can with NHS England. At the moment, NHS England has a duty to co-operate with the CQC and NICE, and that is often enough for a collaborative approach that allows the CQC to access the data it needs. But the duty that applies to NHS England is not being passed on to the Department of Health and Social Care.”
“At the all-party parliamentary group on digital communities, which I chair, we often hear from mobile network operators that one reason they do not serve rural areas properly is that they cannot get planning permission. In Shropshire, the council has given planning permission to a passive infrastructure provider for three specific sites but it still cannot get the mobile network operators to put their equipment on their masts. What can the Secretary of State do to ensure mobile network operators give my constituents the coverage that they are paying for?”
“Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB has also been one of the most financially challenged ICBs. That is partly because of its small scale and its merging with Staffordshire—which, for the record, is unlikely to be the combined mayoral authority that Shropshire ends up in, as is my current understanding, although we are a long way off resolving that problem.”
“We heard Sir Andrew Dilnot say in evidence that we cannot deal with some of the challenges that arise in the NHS—particularly around flow through hospitals and long waits in corridor care in accident and emergency—without improving the discharge of patients into social care. Separating the organisations that deliver those things is clearly problematic. If we think about it, as the shadow Minister just outlined, we have lost the local authority representative on ICBs. The Bill also changes the way the better care fund is administered. With those changes, we are really concerned about the separation of these two responsibilities. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to an example in Shropshire. Shropshire council spends almost 80% of its budget on social care. It is an extremely challenged council because of those funding pressures.”
“I will raise some similar concerns about the abolition of integrated care partnerships and integrated care strategies, which clause 23 brings about. Before I do, I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The removal of integrated care partnerships, as well as the extension of ICBs to cover multiple local authorities, raises unanswered questions about the future of social care planning, which is very important to the Liberal Democrats, as the Minister knows. We feel that it removes the voice of charities and others in the voluntary sector who are crucial to meeting the range of needs in health and social care. Throughout the Bill there is a theme of separating social care and the NHS, at a time when greater integration and closer working are clearly needed.”
“We cannot see the resources allocated, so we cannot confirm that, but it is clearly a concern. We are not yet discussing the part of the Bill that deals with Healthwatch, so I should keep my powder dry, but we know that local authorities will get some additional funding to deal with their elements of Healthwatch, while ICBs will not. There is a concern that that streamlining is, in fact, slimming down.”
“The hon. Member will be aware that the new clause is a probing amendment. It is designed to push the Minister to describe how we will ensure that this range of expertise is taken into account when the plans are put together. We will not press the new clause to a vote, but we want to use it as a discussion point to probe how the range of expertise in the health service will be fully utilised, so that the plans are the best they can be.”
“We recognise that someone has to hold that power and appoint those people now that NHS England has gone. That is why amendment 36 proposes that in order to ensure there is not political capture of those decisions, they are taken by impartial civil servants who are given a set criteria of what a good leader looks like, rather than by Ministers or their special advisers. As I mentioned, new clause 59 broadly seeks to do the same thing, but uses a different mechanism for getting that into the Bill.”
“Their political views could heavily influence the make-up of trust and ICB non-executives across the country—who are themselves responsible for appointing the chief executive— and lead to the firing and hiring of those who suit their personal vision of what a leader should look like. From speaking to chief executives and other senior NHS leaders, I know that many already feel that chief executives are subject to the political whims of the day and are too easily scapegoated for wider failures. Holding poorly performing leaders to account is extremely important when there are failures, but sometimes those concerns and the blame culture that can exist in those organisations stops capable, impressive NHS leaders from taking the next step up the ladder to becoming a chief executive. We think a safeguard is necessary there.”
“In theory, the Secretary of State will be responsible for the appointment of 143 foundation trust chairs and roughly 1,000 foundation trust non-executives, who themselves will appoint the executive directors. Clearly, there is the potential for a bottleneck there. We also think that in the hands of the wrong Secretary of State—I cast no aspersions about the current one—there is potential for mass manipulation of the make-up of future NHS leadership. I think everybody here would agree that NHS leaders should be the best possible people for the job, not those who best fit the political agenda of the Secretary of State of the day. We are worried that future Secretary of States could abuse their power, intervening unnecessarily and for non-clinical reasons in hiring and firing decisions.”
“I wish to speak to amendment 36 and new clause 59, which are different ways of seeking to do the same thing. They are aimed at ensuring that “civil servants are responsible for the decision making and appointment processes for trust and ICB leaders, rather than Ministers or Special Advisers.” In earlier sessions, we spoke about the risk of political capture; the amendment and new clause intend to deal with that. The Government’s intention is to give providers more freedom to design services around local needs, but we are worried that giving the Secretary of State the powers to appoint trust chairs and non-executive directors will undermine that local flexibility and agency. It risks creating a bottleneck in the Department for Health and Social Care, leaving foundation trusts waiting for approval to make their arrangements.”
“As I mentioned in my previous remarks, one imagines that a Secretary of State would set out criteria to ensure that the best people for the job are appointed. We are in a situation where a current Parliament cannot bind a future one, but we do need to set a precedent that political capture of these important leadership roles is not an unintentional consequence of this legislation. I accept that it is unintentional; I think the Secretary of State and the Minister have drafted this legislation with the best of intentions, but this is something we should guard against.”
“Will the Government commit here and now to implementing all those recommendations and working with us to deliver the change we need?”
“I welcome the Government’s commitment to a national maternity commissioner—a long-standing Liberal Democrat campaign—and the other urgent and immediate actions that the Secretary of State has outlined in the last week. They are all urgent and are signs that this is being taken seriously. But we need to recognise that a commissioner alone cannot fix the broken system. I urge the Secretary of State to work with us and look at our maternity rescue package for inspiration for his action plan—it has a great degree of overlap with Baroness Amos’s recommendations. Our package would ensure one-to-one midwifery care for every woman in labour, additional senior midwives, an obstetrician on every ward, and mandatory updated annual training.”
“Four years ago, I spoke in this Chamber in response to the findings of the Shrewsbury and Telford review, which were devastating for my community. Last week, I stood here really distressed, actually, as we heard further traumatic reports from the Nottingham review. But anger is not enough. The Government must meet this moment now and implement Baroness Amos’s recommendations in full and without delay, or the families simply will not forgive them. To do this, we need genuine accountability through the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care, accompanied with the investment needed to make Britain the safest country in the world to have a baby.”
“May I also add my thanks to the Secretary of State, to Baroness Amos and her team, and to the families that have relived the pain of their experiences to bring about this report? But the Amos report tells us little that we did not already know—indeed, it confirms our worst fears. Maternity services in England are fundamentally broken with the cost of political neglect being paid in trauma, injury and lost lives. Figures revealed by the Liberal Democrats in the last week show that the first quarter of 2026 saw the worst rate ever recorded for maternity injuries. In fact, while the number of reviews into NHS maternity services has steadily ticked up, we have also seen rising maternal mortality rates.”
“May I raise my concerns about the site at Stoke Heath, which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard)? It is a really rural location, with the nearest town being Market Drayton in my constituency, and people there are very concerned about the appropriateness of the site, with it being 30 minutes’ walk from a bus stop and there being no shop. Shropshire council has raised its concerns about the site’s remoteness. Given that we have seen increasing far-right infiltration in Shropshire, with people beyond the constituency borders spreading misinformation and hatred on Facebook, I am concerned about the security of the people in the development at Stoke Heath. What measures are being taken to keep those people safe? Will he explain what the criteria are for a suitable location for dispersal accommodation?”
“There are excellent services located geographically by accident—for example, the orthopaedic hospital in my constituency and the veterans service that goes with it. Both are highly valued, but they need specialist commissioning at national level to be utilised properly and to provide the best outcomes for patients. I would be grateful for the Minister’s reassurance on those points.”
“The president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned earlier this month that the new commissioning structure lacks mental health experts, with only one senior mental health lead across the seven new regional commissioning hubs taking specialised services from NHS England. Equally, the chief executive of the Derby and Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB cluster has said that it does not look like there will be a requirement for senior mental health expertise in reorganising ICBs. Will the Minister reassure us that when the Department designs which specialist services will be pushed back down to ICBs and which will be retained centrally, it will be minded to listen to representations from experts in the sector?”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. In general, the Liberal Democrats support clauses 12 and 13. We think that local decision making and community empowerment in the NHS, including on commissioning decisions, is the right thing to be doing. However, I echo some of the concerns of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, particularly on specialist commissioning. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the spinal cord injury all-party parliamentary group. We are concerned that expertise in low-volume, very specialist concerns will be lost if the commissioning is pushed out to multiple ICBs. My understanding is that specialist commissioning sat with NHS England in the first place because of concern that multiple commissioning groups would struggle to deal with low-volume, complex issues.”
“Yes, we would support the amendment, which is a reasonable way to get there, but an assurance from the Minister that the Department will consider specialist commissioning and really think that through properly before the powers are delegated to ICBs would be sufficient.”
“Given the Government’s stated aim of transferring more care into the community, which we fully support, and given the observation in the Darzi report that more and more money is being spent on secondary rather than primary care, we think it is really important to confer the right on patients to be able to access primary care when they need to. As the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham pointed out, this measure would require a large number of additional GPs and would therefore not be achievable overnight, but over the course of a Parliament. The Liberal Democrat plan includes recruiting and retaining an extra 8,000 GPs, relieving pressure on the rest of the health service and enabling that shift into the community. When patients—”
“With permission, I will explain to the shadow Minister our votes on amendment 57, which she pressed to a vote. I was reassured by the commitment the Minister made to consult widely on those commissioning changes, so the Liberal Democrats switched our vote from support to abstain. I move on to new clause 2, our amendment in this group, which the shadow Minister was just discussing. It would require the Secretary of State to introduce a scheme to ensure patients have the right to see a GP or another appropriate clinician within their GP practice within seven days. The NHS constitution currently confers rights on patients when they are considered really important. There are, for example, rights within the NHS constitution around receiving cancer diagnoses and treatment. We felt that there was a gap on access to GPs.”
“We do not consider the right to achieve a cancer diagnosis and treatment to be burdensome on the secondary care providers of those treatments; we consider that important enough to enshrine that right within the NHS constitution, and this would be a similar level of right. I would not imagine that a GP would be worrying about somebody taking them to court, but it would confer upon the Secretary of State the duty to ensure that primary care is adequately resourced in order to be able to meet that commitment.”
“The right hon. Gentleman asks an extremely important question, and I am happy to clarify. It would be an appropriate clinician within the GP practice, and it could obviously be a telephone appointment, because that might be more convenient for the patient. Lots of patients are really happy with telephone appointments and we should be using them wherever that is the patient’s choice, because we want—I think we all do—to see an NHS that is patient-led and not politician-led.”
“Well, I will just move on a little bit. The important question is: can this be achieved this overnight? Clearly not; we need additional clinicians in the service. The Liberal Democrat view is that the extra—I think 1,000 or 1,500—GPs that the Government have recruited so far is a welcome step forward, but that does not go far enough over the course of a Parliament. As I was saying earlier, when patients cannot access their GP surgery, they end up, more often than not, in accident and emergency departments. That is no good for anybody. It overburdens the A&E department, leaves people who genuinely need urgent care getting a substandard level of care, and costs the NHS far more. We think it is really important that we put the resource in the right place.”
“New clause 52 is about our £750 million dental rescue plan to guarantee access to an NHS dentist for anyone needing an urgent or emergency appointment, which I hope would end that awful DIY dentistry. The plan needs to be achieved through bringing dentists back from the private sector, fixing the contract, using flexible commissioning wherever necessary and introducing an emergency scheme. For example, the emergency dental scheme in Shropshire, operated by the community dental practice, enables people who have urgent need and cannot register with an NHS dentist to get the care that they need when they need it. I urge the Minister to take our new clauses on board and to ensure that people get the care they need when they need it.”
“I am conscious of time, so I will move on to new clause 52, which is about dental deserts. Everyone is horrified by dental deserts and by “DIY dentistry”, a phrase that means—let us face it—people using pliers to extract their teeth and super glue to reattach crowns, and cavities filled with household adhesives. More than 5 million children did not see a dentist at all in 2025. That is a stark failure. Dental care is as important as care for other parts of the body, in particular when most of what goes wrong in dentistry is preventable. We should absolutely focus on prevention, and that is in line with the Government’s aims to move from sickness to prevention.”
“Yes, I have thought about where that responsibility lies. It clearly lies with the triaging process within the GP surgery. I do not think any of us envisage somebody phoning up about a child with a cold and saying, “I consider this to be urgent,” and getting an appointment within 24 hours, but I would imagine somebody from the surgery saying, “Please describe the symptoms to me,” and then, if they detected something more serious, saying, “That is urgent and you do need to come in within 24 hours.” The point of new clause 2 is to clarify in the NHS constitution that some services require parity with others. We have already established legal rights under the NHS constitution for certain types of treatment, and this puts GP access on the same level. We think that that is important.”
“I would like to clarify that point. We envisage that being at the GP with whom the patient is registered. Our broader policy, which is not included in new clause 2, is to have named GPs for people with complex conditions and complex comorbidities. Absolutely, we would envisage that as being a part of the continuity of care, which is so crucial.”
“Let me clarify. The new clause is about conferring a duty on the Secretary of State to provide that level of care. It would require a significant number of additional GPs, and that would cost a lot of money. The Liberal Democrats’ 2024 manifesto had a fully costed pledge to recruit and retain an additional 8,000 GPs within the course of a Parliament. I think we can all agree that the world has moved on since then, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that this week we proposed a significantly closer relationship with the European Union, which would grow our economy, increase our tax base and pay for a number of these things without having to subject people to additional, onerous tax hikes.”
“I am sure the right hon. Member has enjoyed reading the Liberal Democrat website. If he had delved a little further into the policy paper that sits behind that manifesto commitment, he would see that that is with an appropriate clinician and not with a GP. I appreciate that the wording of the new clause says a GP, but it does indicate a GP practice, and would require the Secretary of State to establish a scheme that would achieve that. I expect that clarification could be made at that point.”
“I am happy to clarify. Clearly, the world has moved on since July 2024 when we put together our manifesto, but this was a fully costed plan with a number of different changes to tax regimes, including a tweak to capital gains tax and changes to the way that banks were taxed and digital services tax. Since then, we have proposed a number of other alternatives, but the principle of changes to capital gains tax, to the way that windfall profits of the big banks are taxed and to digital services taxes still stands. Plus, we also have a fully fleshed-out plan to actually grow our economy and deal with this problem in the long term.”
“I beg to move amendment 28, in clause 15, page 11, line 26, at end insert— “(d) in the design of service and arrangement for service delivery (co-production).” The amendment would explicitly require the Secretary of State to make arrangements for the co-production of any health service commissioned by the Secretary of State.”
“The amendment would tighten up the clause to make some of its provisions more explicit, so that we can be confident that anyone involved in an individual’s care has the ability to influence it in an appropriate way.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I am moving this amendment on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), who is the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. She designed the amendment to explicitly require the Secretary of State to make arrangements for the co-production of any health service commissioned by the Secretary of State. The Liberal Democrats support clause 15 more broadly, and particularly the plans to involve affected patients, carers and representatives in planning and commissioning arrangements. Carers are a priority for our party, so it is really important to us that they have a meaningful say in the design and delivery of their care. I would be grateful if the Minister could elaborate on what that might look like in practice.”