Dr Peter Prinsley
MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am confused by the Opposition referring in their new clause to a requirement to “make regulations” in this respect, as the private sector is already widely used to reduce waiting lists where appropriate. However, we must also be aware of the problem we have with overuse of private facilities.”
“I wonder whether the hon. Member’s experience mirrors mine. Many years ago, it seemed to be easy for general practitioners to ring me up. I often received telephone calls from general practitioners asking for advice about patients.”
“I am listening carefully to what the hon. Member, who is a medical colleague of mine, has to say. Although I think that a fracture liaison service is an excellent idea, there are many, many aspects of medical care that require careful attention, such as the management of people with hearing loss—my own field—or the assessment of people wi…”
“I agree with everything that the Minister has to say—what a surprise—but particularly the fact that when the new Government came in, they did something about these 40 “new” hospitals that were not full hospitals.”
“I am interested in what the hon. Member has to say about strike action. I was involved in trying to get the resident doctors’ strike stopped, but was unsuccessful for many months. I think she is talking about the principle of whether people involved in medical care should ever go on strike.”
“Does the Minister agree that the single most effective thing that we have done for public health since we were elected is to get the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 passed? The gradual abolition of cigarette smoking will save more lives than anything else we could conceivably do in politics.”
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“We really can manage most clinical problems in the community, and investing in our brilliant GPs is truly the key to the crisis. Community hubs with diagnostic capabilities for larger populations would send to hospital only people who need to go to hospital. We must do something about productivity. I started my career with four workers in the theatre operating on eight children, only to reach a situation today of operating on four children with eight workers. As we reform and rebuild our NHS, let us bring the 1.5 million staff members with us on this great journey, for it is on them that we and the NHS depend. The measures announced today will surely help, but only if we find enough staff and invest in training. Let us look after those who look after us, with fair pay, fair conditions and a great deal of respect. That must be our mission.”
“May I carry on, as I have very little time? I am glad that the Prime Minister has made general practice and care in the community a central part of his plan. General practice is the front door to the NHS. Patients who have a genuine connection with one or two GPs are less ill and live longer. There is an illuminating article entitled “Closer to home” in this month’s Fabian Review by my Suffolk GP colleagues Drs Reed and Havard, who reimagine GP as a comprehensive community health service close to the patient, with multiprofessional teams of health workers and with mental health services and district nursing all in one place. Patients know who their doctors are and know that the community health centre is the place to go. Let us call them Bevan community health centres.”
“Previously in this Parliament, I said that amount was about the same as an F-35 jet, and we have 75 or so of those. As I said then, I ask whether some of us might agree that the vital soft power of the World Service is equivalent to at least one of our jets.”
“Abuse and state malfunction are called out, and the powerful are held to account. There are 318 million listeners every week. In 2022, the World Service announced 382 job losses and the complete loss of the Persian radio broadcast, which was so important in its coverage of the protests against the Government in Tehran. In Lebanon, Russian state-backed media are now using the frequency suspended by BBC Arabic. There is news and there is fake news, as we have all learned. While we debate the funding of the BBC, let us therefore remember the World Service, which Kofi Annan described as “Britain’s greatest gift to the world”. Presently, about three quarters of World Service funding comes from the licence fee and about one quarter—about £100 million—comes from the Foreign Office.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I, too, would like to speak up for the BBC World Service and the brilliant people who work there. The World Service describes itself as the world’s radio station. That is right: we are lucky to have it and must do whatever we can to support it. It offers 42 language services and is a beacon for democracy around the world. We know the truth when we hear it from the BBC. In a world of endless rolling information and disinformation, it is surely significant that the Arabic service alone saw a 9% audience growth to 35 million a week just last year. There are places in the world, especially where internet connections are restricted and local journalists are fearful, where conventional radio remains crucial.”
“Q13. We have in our NHS many brilliant émigré and refugee surgeons from the greatly troubled middle east, and I have been privileged to work alongside some of them from Iran, Iraq and from Syria, which we think especially now. What practical measures can the UK take to help ensure that Syria now has the best chance of becoming an open society and the second functional democracy in the region?”
“Let us not ignore deafness when we talk about disability. I read about a young person with hearing loss who said: “One of the worst things is when people say something I miss…they say ‘oh it doesn’t matter’. It probably didn’t matter to them at the time, but it makes me feel I don’t matter.” I think that matters to all of us.”
“The charity has mobile services for rural locations and can provide ear care in residential settings with one-stop provision of wax removal, audiology and hearing aids, keeping people communicating, connected and able to work. I also commend the work of many excellent larger charities set up to help people with hearing loss, some of which were here in Parliament this week. The RNID estimates that the cost of hearing loss to the economy is £30 billion a year due to loss of earnings, reduced quality of life and increased social care costs. The solution to much of the problem is obvious: hearing aids must be just about the most useful disability aid ever invented. Let us do what we can in this Parliament to support our NHS audiology and hearing aid services. After all, most of us will need them one day.”
“Many deaf people do not work because the adjustments that could and should be made for them are not made. Deaf awareness among employers is insufficient. I will talk a little about earwax. Occluding earwax, which causes hearing loss and is also caused by hearing aid moulds, is a huge issue for deaf people. The services in this country to remove it are very patchy. Before I became an MP, I was the chair of a deaf association in East Anglia, a charity that helped thousands of deaf people and had contracts from the NHS to provide ear care and hearing aids. I believe that charity is a model of community-based, not-for-profit NHS ear care to the population that could be widely copied.”
“It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. As many people know, I am an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, with a special interest in hearing loss and ear diseases. That has been my life’s work, so I declare a big interest in this subject. Deafness and hearing loss are invisible disabilities, but they are common—very common. They affect 70% of people over the age of 70, and 40% of people over the age of 40. Hearing aids are free on the NHS, but millions of people who could benefit from them do not have one, and many people who do have one simply do not use it—perhaps up to 5 million people. Perhaps a million of our fellow citizens cannot hear conversational speech, with many unable to contact their GP or use health services.”
“Does the hon. Member agree that the absolute early priority must be to sort out emergency dentistry? Everybody must be able to contact an NHS emergency dentist for terrible toothache or dental emergencies, and that will prevent so many children from being admitted to hospital for their abscesses to be drained, which I have had to do as an ear, nose and throat surgeon.”
“I am speaking here of people who are dying, not people living well who have chronic or terminal diseases. We are talking about people at the end of their lives wishing to choose the time and place to die. This is not some slippery slope. We are shortening death, not life, for our patients. This is not life or death; this is death or death. Coercion and manipulation have been spoken about and are no doubt feared, but the danger of no change to the law is a greater fear for those who are dying and wish to have choice. The very real fear of loss of dignity and control are at the heart of it. Do not underestimate that. There are strict safeguards in this tightly written Bill, and I fervently hope there will be the opportunity to refine them as it progresses.”
“I asked the ear, nose and throat nurse I have worked with for 20 years about assisted dying, and she said it is an essential change. There is no doubt in her mind. Like me, she has seen the unbearable distress that some head and neck cancers cause, and she knows of the very difficult deaths of some of our patients, despite excellent palliative care. It is this experience that has changed my mind. When I was a young doctor, I thought it unconscionable, but now I am an old doctor and I feel sure it is the right change. I have seen uncontrollable pain, choking and, I am sorry to say, the frightful sight of a man bleeding to death while conscious, as a cancer had eaten away at the carotid artery. It is called a carotid blowout. I know the terrifying loss of dignity and control in the last days of life.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that timely intervention. Some may say that we do not have the resources to introduce this change, and many may say that we must invest in palliative care, which of course we must. But I see assisted dying as complementary to, not an alternative to, palliative care.”
“I respect my hon. Friend’s report of the statistics, about which I have no further information. Colleagues know the gravity of the law that we are discussing and might feel that the moral weight of such a change is simply too great to bear; they may fear that our wisdom is insufficient. But I urge us to be brave today and allow the Bill to progress in this new Parliament. Finally, a prison chaplain told me only this week of a gentle old man he met in prison, serving life for agreeing against every instinct in a last act of love to suffocate his wife, who was dying in uncontrollable agony. We are a compassionate people and we can do much better than that.”
“As an ear, nose and throat surgeon, I can attest to the absolutely desperate trouble that cigarettes have caused over many generations. Implementing this measure is one of the best things that this Parliament could possibly do, and I expect that the measure will be widely supported all over the House. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for introducing it.”
“Emily is a British citizen who, as the Minister has said, has been held hostage ever since the attacks. Would the Minister explain what measures the Government are taking to make contact with those holding the hostages so that we can bring Emily home?”
“Will the Secretary of State explain what plans he has—if any—to limit the scope of practice of anaesthetic associates and physician associates, about whom there has been such publicity lately?”
“Does the Minister agree that the support that we will put in place for general practice and, in particular, the community health hubs that were recently announced, will be crucial to the improvement in the health service that we urgently need?”
“It will save millions of pounds and preserve NHS eye surgery services. As my ophthalmic colleague informed me, we can treat dental problems with false teeth, but false eyes do not work very well.”
“The generous tariffs for the provision of cataract surgery means that private cataract clinics, often owned and run by the same surgeons, are springing up everywhere. The number of cataract operations has shot up, and a relatively minor cataract, which is a cause of correctable visual difficulties, can be operated on within a few weeks by a choice of private clinics, generating annual profits of well over £100 million. Meanwhile, NHS eye surgery departments which are treating serious causes of irreversible blindness such as glaucoma and macular degeneration are in trouble, with long waiting lists. They cannot recruit surgeons and are struggling to survive. This is the next dentistry crisis. Just as in dentistry, a reform of the contracting system is now urgent, and I urge the Government to do that.”
“The Government have rightly emphasized the need for investment in the NHS to be accompanied by reform. With reform must come value for money. I would like to bring a serious matter to attention of the House: an example of a reform which, while at first sight appears to be of benefit, is neither value for money nor the right thing to have done. I am sorry that so few of the previous team are here to listen. NHS eye surgery services are in difficulty, and I am informed that we are in danger of creating ophthalmic deserts, just like the dental deserts familiar to us in the east of England. The last Government took their eye off the ball as cataract services were outsourced to private providers, taking with them the very same NHS surgeons and staff who were providing the service in the hospitals.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome the measures that the Chancellor has announced to support our NHS as we begin the enormous ask of repairing the damage caused by 14 years of neglect. I absolutely commend this imaginative and transformative Budget to the House. As the first ever Labour MP for Bury St Edmunds and a consultant ear, nose and throat surgeon, I welcome the specific commitment to replace the RAAC-infested West Suffolk hospital. My ears certainly pricked up when I heard that. We will see great investment too in medical research, and I welcome that. This country continues to be very proud of our amazing and historic contribution to discoveries and innovation, which are certainly the best way to ensure that we find cures for many mysterious afflictions.”
“Does the Minister agree that the way to stop this conflict is to get the hostages released? Can she explain to the House what connections have been made through diplomatic channels with those who are holding the hostages so that we can get them released, which I believe would end the fighting?”
“The BBC World Service is vital UK soft power. The Foreign Office’s contribution to its funding is about £100 million per year—about the cost of an F-35 fighter jet. The UK has plans to acquire 74 of these fighter jets. Would the Minister agree that we might consider acquiring only 73 of them, if that was the price of preserving the BBC World Service?”
“T3. In March 1974, a Turkish Airlines jet crashed while flying from Paris to London. More than 400 people were killed. Among them were 19 members of the Bury St Edmunds rugby club. It was the greatest disaster to befall the town in living memory. This year, 60 cyclists cycled from Paris to Bury St Edmunds, raising £200,000 in their memory. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating these bold cyclists?”
“GP services will expand to provide community investigations, facilities, specialist and surgical services, and much more, as we rightly adopt the new Government’s agenda of moving care out of hospitals. We must ensure that GPs have the very best IT and technology. We must connect the GP IT with the hospital IT, so that I can see the same record as the GP; the nonsense of typed letters and fax machines should end completely. I am, however, optimistic. Scientific advances continue to astonish us. We know what we have to do, and we have the determination to do it. Doctors and patients will support this. Let us get to work. General practice is the best of the NHS, and we must support it.”
“During my career, I have seen the number of hospital doctors and consultants increase many times, but we have seen very little increase in GP numbers, and now we live with the consequences: too many exhausted GPs, many leaving the profession altogether or retiring much too soon, and now the spectre of a two-tier GP system, as private GP services expand rapidly all over the place. We can, and will, do better than this. We already are doing better, with plans to recruit many qualified GPs without jobs into practices without doctors. Today, we must look after our GPs as never before. We will move much of our care out of our hospitals and into the community, but it is on GPs that we will depend to achieve that.”
“First, I must declare, as the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), reminded me last week, that I am a surgeon. I have, therefore, an interest in this matter, but so do we all. The last Government should be truly ashamed of themselves. I see but one remaining Member—a colleague of mine—sitting on the Conservative Benches. General practice has been badly neglected. The public could see that. Surely the Government must have known it. Certainly patients could see it, given their scramble on the phone at 8 o’clock, hoping not to be at the end of the queue for one of the very few appointments with one of the very few doctors.”
“That shows the breadth of concern about the lack of support across all levels of education, from primary schools to universities. The call for accountability is not just about individual cases; it is about making the system work for everyone. This debate is an opportunity for us to push for real change in the east of England. Without stronger accountability, we will continue to let down children and families we are meant to serve. We must ensure that local authorities are not only meeting their obligations but are in some way held responsible when they fail to do so.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for securing this debate. Despite councils losing about 98% of tribunal cases, there seem to be no real consequences of their failures to act in the first place. Families are left to navigate a tribunal system that is overwhelmed, delaying the help their children desperately need. There seems to be a failure of accountability. My constituents are frustrated and tired of fighting a system that should be working for them. The time has come for stronger enforcement mechanisms. Local authorities must surely face penalties for failures, particularly when they fall short of their legal duties. The public demand some change. My constituent Thomas Howard led a petition signed by more than 16,000 people calling for mandatory neurodiversity training in universities.”
“I am grateful that you have given way, and thank you for that. I have been sitting listening to you—[Hon. Members: “Shadow Secretary of State.”] I am sorry, I am getting the hang of this. To be honest, I am struggling to recognise what the right hon. Lady is talking about. The state of the health service is a disgrace; the Opposition, who I believe were the Government until quite recently, have totally messed the situation up over a period of 14 years. What Lord Darzi has had to say is a pretty accurate diagnosis of the situation we are in, so it is quite surprising to listen to the shadow Secretary of State talk as if everything was perfect over the last 14 years. That is simply not the case.”
“I know that our Government will develop bold plans to repair the embattled NHS, but on this day I urge our brilliant new Government to pledge to do their utmost to support vital NHS medical research, which carries such promise.”
“Members of a certain age, such as myself, will remember to get vaccinated. However, let us remember Jenner, who devised vaccination, Lister, who pioneered antisepsis, and Fleming, who discovered penicillin. These British scientists leading the fight against infection were probably responsible for saving more lives than any other people in the long history of medicine. Last week, we learned of the first successful trials from Oxford of vaccines for ovarian cancer, and we will see many amazing advances in the year to come. Today, we can be excited about molecular genetics, artificial intelligence and the huge power of our people’s NHS data to unravel so many of the mysteries of modern medicine.”
“Fixing the NHS is our great task and our solemn promise, for there is much to fix after 14 years of managed chaos and decline under the neglectful eyes of our mostly absent predecessors. The candid assessment of the state of the NHS from Lord Darzi is truly alarming, and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, it presents an accurate diagnosis of our difficulties. The report makes clear many of the problems of resources, management and structure, but today I would like to speak up for medical research, of which this country has such a proud record. We all know of the catastrophic potential of infection, witnessed so very recently during the covid pandemic. Indeed, like many of us new Members, I too caught covid right here in this House in the crush to hear the King’s Speech. I do hope that hon.”
“Hundreds of thousands of operations, including dozens of my own lists, were cancelled because of the strikes in the NHS over the past two years. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Conservatives’ refusal to negotiate with the doctors contributed to the terrible state of the health service, and that ending the strikes is the first step towards fixing the NHS?”
“I have been a surgeon for 28 years. In the first 14 years, we had a Labour Government and we saw the waiting lists more or less disappear, such that by 2010, a patient coming to see me in the clinic would be offered an operation. In the second 14 years, we have seen record waiting lists. I welcome the advice of Mr Alan Milburn, one of the most successful Secretaries of State and one of the architects of the fall in the waiting lists, and I support the Secretary of State in this.”
“Q7. As a surgeon from East Anglia, I welcome the measures the new Government have taken to fulfil their mission to fix the NHS. In my constituency of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, the West Suffolk hospital is badly affected by RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—just like the James Paget hospital in Norfolk, where I have worked for nearly 30 years. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that the RAAC hospitals must be priorities as the new Government undertake their review of the new hospital programme?”
“Already we are at last seeing effective treatments for dementia and neurological disorders, and genetic cures for haemophilia and other inherited problems. We will also have cancer vaccines and other marvels that we cannot yet imagine. I urge all my honourable colleagues in this brand-new Parliament to do whatever we can to support research and innovation with all our heart and all our soul, for as the great poet Seamus Heaney wrote, “once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.” I commend this King’s Speech to the House.”
“Right in my own region of East Anglia we have world-beating biomedical science and leading universities. Recently, we celebrated 75 years of the NHS. My father—who, if he were alive and here today, would be astonished—was an RAF medic who joined the RAF in 1948. My son is an A&E doctor right here in London. My sister is a nurse. My family has served the NHS continuously since it began. When the great Nye Bevan invented the NHS, a painful hip was treated with a walking stick, and a cataract with a thick pair of glasses. Now the miracles of joint replacement and cataract surgery are no longer regarded as the surgical miracles they are, but as an entitlement. Nye would have been amazed. I am sure we will see in our own time scientific and medical advances beyond our imagination.”
“Let us make the biggest employer in the land the very best employer in the land. There are things to do to sort out social care and to end the financial lottery at the end of life, which many families fear. The answers are political, and we can do this. Our hospitals are full of patients with a non-medical condition called bed block, because they cannot be discharged safely in many cases. I cannot begin to tell the House how many of my operating lists have been cancelled because of that problem. Whole surgical teams are waiting around for hours and operating theatres are lying empty. If we solve the problem of social care, we will not need to build ever bigger hospitals. But I am optimistic for our NHS. Britain leads the world in scientific advances.”
“In Bury St Edmunds, we urgently need to confirm the capital funding to progress the replacement of the West Suffolk hospital which, like my own James Paget university hospital in Great Yarmouth and our sister hospital in King’s Lynn, is supported by thousands of scaffolding poles and is literally falling down. Last week, it was reported that bird droppings had fallen through the roof on to sterile surgical instruments. My predecessor was a strong advocate for the replacement of our hospital, and I will aim to continue her work. Our brilliant new Government have much to do. Let us use our huge mandate wisely. Let us look after the staff who look after us, end the outrage of food banks for the nurses in many of our hospitals, and sort out the pay and conditions of all who work in our most precious of public services.”
“Let us think of them as the crucial services they are and support them. There are villages in my constituency that have two buses a day during the school term and no buses at all in the school holidays. How does anyone without a car get to the GP surgery or to the pharmacy in the nearby town? Very few surgeons are ever elected to Parliament and I will bring my experience of 42 years as an NHS doctor to this place to do something to help mend a service that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has described as broken. Many of our hospitals are indeed in poor repair and we have seen very little progress on the 40 new hospitals famously promised by the last Government.”
“My constituency of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket is a wonderful part of the world, with a rich tradition of agriculture and food production. We are home to Greene King and, according to the records in the House of Commons Library, one of my distinguished predecessors urged the House bars to stock the delicious beer created from Suffolk barley. I see that the present Greene King brew in the Strangers’ Bar is called Level Head—something we are all going to need in the years to come as we begin to rebuild Britain. We are also home to Silver Spoon, and the enormous Suffolk sugar beet production is key to the local economy. In Stowmarket, we have a brilliant food museum to showcase that most essential of national services, farming. I was delighted to see our new Government’s proposals to sort out our buses.”
“I thank my teachers at Guisborough grammar school in Cleveland. As a descendant of Jewish refugees, what a pleasure it was to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) deliver his maiden speech. I went to medical school in Sheffield, and I thank the many surgeons who trained me in the NHS. I thank the thousands of patients whom I have treated during my career, and who put their faith in me and are my lasting inspiration. Indeed, one of the first people I met as I walked into Parliament was one of my patients, Paul from Great Yarmouth, who works here in this place to keep us all safe. I thank my family and in particular my wife, Marian, the former sheriff of Norwich, who has been my greatest supporter and who first encouraged me in politics.”
“I am a surgeon from East Anglia, and it is an honour beyond my imagining to have been elected to Parliament to serve the people of Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket in the most beautiful county of Suffolk. I thank its voters for putting their faith in me and in Labour, and for giving us the chance to change Britain. I am the first ever Labour Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, which has been a Conservative seat for nigh on 150 years. I must thank my predecessor, Jo Churchill, most sincerely for her long service to her constituents. I am the first ear, nose and throat surgeon ever elected to Parliament. I am not, however, the first member of my family to be an MP. I recall my uncle, George Jeger, from when I was a small boy in the 1960s—he was the Member for Goole, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.”