Gregory Stafford
MP for Farnham and Bordon · Conservative · United Kingdom
“As I have mentioned before, the spanking new dental surgery in Haslemere hospital has sat entirely unused since it was built, and, as far as I am aware, there are no plans to use it.”
“My first point can be summarised as: “Don’t repeat a mistake to find out whether it was a mistake.” Thousands of children have already received puberty blockers through the former Tavistock pathway, and my view is that, before exposing a whole new cohort, the Government should complete the long-promised data linkage study to establish wha…”
“I declare that I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on patient safety. Patient safety cannot be something that is discussed only after a tragedy has occurred. It requires a culture of accountability, transparency, and most importantly, action.”
“That is a complete contradiction of the ban. Thirdly, clinical equipoise does not exist in the evidence if the evidence already points to significant risk and uncertain benefit. The Cass review concluded that the evidence base for puberty blockers is weak and that concerns remain over bone health, fertility and neurodevelopment.”
“Such a process and principle are closely connected with new clause 98 and the Government response to the Hughes report on those harmed by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. Those are deeply serious issues involving people who have suffered life-changing consequences and have spent years seeking recognition and redress.”
“When the Secretary of State appeared before the Health and Social Care Committee last week, I questioned him on that issue directly. While he confirmed that the Department remains committed to meeting that 2030 target, which was first established by the previous Conservative Government, no plan—or indication of when a plan would come—was…”
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“It is therefore difficult to understand why the Government now seek to move away from the model that other safety-critical industries continue to regard as fundamental. Clause 59 would abolish that independent body and transfer its functions to the Care Quality Commission. In doing so, it would bring together two organisations with fundamentally different statutory purposes, different powers and, perhaps most importantly, different cultures. HSSIB investigates and the CQC regulates. One exists to ask why the system failed; the other exists to ask whether the organisation complied with required standards—those are not the same questions. Nor do HSSIB and CQC require the same relationship with those from whom evidence is obtained. An investigation depends on trust; a regulator depends on compliance.”
“Learning from failure depends on the confidence of patients, clinicians and families that they can speak openly and without fear that the information that they provide will later be used for regulatory or enforcement purposes. That is precisely why HSSIB was created. Its purpose was never to attribute blame but to understand why systems fail, identify the underlying causes of patient harm and ensure that lessons are learned before similar tragedies occur again. That philosophy represented a deliberate shift away from a culture of blame and towards one of learning. It was modelled consciously on the air accidents investigation branch, whose success over many decades has demonstrated that independent, no-blame investigations produce better safety outcomes than investigations driven primarily by enforcement.”
“Government expenditure is examined independently by the National Audit Office, citizens complain to independent ombudsmen rather than to the organisations about which they are complaining, air accidents are investigated independently by the Civil Aviation Authority, and rail accidents are investigated independently of the regulator. In each case, Parliament has recognised that organisations charged with investigating failures should not also be responsible for regulating, inspecting or enforcing against those they investigate. Healthcare should be no different. Indeed, if anything, healthcare should demand an even greater degree of independence.”
“However, when one examines the evidence presented to the Committee, and that given to the Health and Social Care Committee, of which I am a member, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the problem that this merger is intended to solve. Instead, what emerges is a remarkable degree of consensus among those with the greatest expertise in patient safety that this proposal carries significant risks while offering little measurable benefit. The question before us is therefore not whether HSSIB’s statutory functions can be transferred to another organisation, but whether Parliament should abolish an institution that it deliberately created to be independent. That distinction matters. Across public life, we recognise that effective scrutiny depends on institutional independence.”
“Before I address the clauses, I say for the record that 21 years ago this morning, 52 people were murdered and 784 injured by Islamist terrorists in London. I pay tribute to all the medical professionals who treated those people in such difficult circumstances. I will speak to clauses 59 to 63 together because they all concern one of the most significant structural changes proposed in the Bill: the abolition of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body as an independent statutory organisation, and the transfer of its functions to the Care Quality Commission. At first glance, that may appear a relatively modest machinery-of-government change. The Minister argues that HSSIB’s functions will continue, its statutory safe-space protections will remain and operational independence will somehow be preserved.”
“Given the enormous human and financial cost of avoidable harm in healthcare, Parliament should be extremely cautious before weakening one of the few mechanisms specifically designed to prevent it.”
“It must command the confidence of patients, families and healthcare professionals. The Government say that the protections will remain, but the evidence we have heard overwhelmingly demonstrates that confidence in those protections is precisely what is at risk. Once institutional independence is removed, it simply cannot be recreated through internal guidance or assurances. The structure matters, the culture matters and the trust matters. For those reasons, I urge the Minister to reconsider clauses 59 to 63. If the Government believe that improvements can be made to co-ordination, accountability or implementation, discussions on that should absolutely continue and the Opposition would welcome them. However, the clauses go much further. They remove the independent status, which is so important.”
“It lies in whether recommendations are being implemented, whether organisations learn quickly enough and whether staff feel safe enough to speak up. The answer to those problems is not to remove independence, but to strengthen it. The creation of HSSIB represented a recognition by Parliament that healthcare needed the same principles of independent safety investigation that serve aviation, rail and other high-risk industry so well. Those principles exist for a reason: when something goes wrong, society needs an organisation that people trust to ask what happened, why it happened and what must change to prevent it from happening again. That organisation must be separate from those responsible for regulating the system. It must be able to investigate without fear or favour.”
“They will remove the independence of the investigator, while leaving untouched the failure to act on what investigators discover. After considering the evidence presented to this Committee, the evidence that we heard in the Select Committee and my conversations with my constituents and others, I remain unable to support clauses 59 to 63. That is not because I oppose reform or believe that the patient safety landscape cannot improve—of course it can. The NHS must continue to learn, adapt and improve, but improvement requires honesty about what is working and what is not. The evidence suggests that HSSIB’s independent investigative model is one of the things that is working and that failure lies elsewhere.”
“He identified what I believe to be the central weakness in the Government’s argument: “the Bill does not do anything to address the bit that is not working well, and that bit is that the NHS is still very poor on acting on recommendations that are made”. –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 30, Q52.] That is the point that Ministers need to answer. If recommendations are not being implemented, strengthen implementation; if accountability is weak, strengthen accountability; and if learning is not embedded, create mechanisms to ensure that learning happens—but do not weaken the independence of a body responsible for identifying those lessons. The risk is that the Government solve the wrong problem.”
“Initially, the argument appeared to focus on streamlining and reducing duplication; increasingly, however, it appears to be about reducing the number of safety recommendations being made. That misunderstands the problem. As I have pointed out before, the challenge is not the existence of recommendations but ensuring that those recommendations lead to action. Indeed, I was informed that HSSIB has already been developing a recommendations monitoring system, specifically designed to improve implementation and oversight. In other words, the organisation is already working to address the very issue now being used as justification for restructuring it. That brings me back to the evidence given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash.”
“If we weaken confidence in that environment, we risk making the wider culture of candour even harder to achieve. The irony, of course, is that the Government argue that the merger will strengthen patient safety, and yet the evidence suggests that it could weaken one of the most important ingredients of patient safety: openness. I also want to express concerns shared with me directly by people working within HSSIB. During a meeting with some of my constituents who work in the organisation, individuals involved in patient safety investigations raised significant concerns about the proposed move. They believe that bringing HSSIB into the CQC represents a backward step for patient safety. They also expressed concern that the rationale for the merger has shifted.”
“Those concerns sit within a wider challenge on candour in healthcare. The statutory duty of candour was introduced following the Francis inquiry into the failures of the Mid Staffordshire health trust. The duty’s purpose was straightforward: when something goes wrong, patients and families should receive an honest explanation. Despite that legal duty, however, evidence remains of a defensive culture within parts of healthcare. Legal advice can sometimes encourage organisations to think first about liability, rather than about learning. Administrators can understandably become concerned about litigation risk—and where fear dominates, openness suffers. That is precisely why the safe space matters. HSSIB was created to provide an environment where the priority is not defending an organisation, but understanding what happened.”
“A regulator may look at whether an organisation has complied with standards; an independent investigator may ask a different question: why did the system make it possible for failure to happen? The questions are complementary, but not interchangeable. Dr Benneyworth made precisely that point when discussing national failures. She explained that some problems cannot be solved by regulating an individual organisation, because the underlying issue sits elsewhere in the system. She said that is not something that can be changed by a regulator—a fundamental distinction. Regulation can identify whether standards have been met and independent investigation can identify whether the system itself needs to change. Both functions are necessary, but combining them risks weakening both.”
“Dr Benneyworth explained that HSSIB is unique because it can investigate every part of the healthcare system, including national bodies. She told the Committee: “At the moment, we have the ability, being an independent organisation, to investigate any part of the system where there is a concern.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 23, Q38.] That includes looking at how national systems operate, how regulators function and how different parts of the health service interact. That independence is important, because sometimes the problem is not the provider delivering care; sometimes the problem is the system around it.”
“She explained: “There needs to be a legal duty on the CQC to protect the safe space.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 25, Q41.] That is a remarkable admission. The organisation whose functions are being transferred to the CQC is telling Parliament that the Bill, as drafted, does not provide that sufficient certainty. The Government’s response cannot simply be that everyone involved will act in good faith. Good governance requires more than good intentions; it requires a structure that protects independence, regardless of who happens to lead an organisation in future, who is Secretary of State or who is in government. That is why Parliament creates these independent bodies in the first place. There is also a practical issue that cannot be dismissed.”
“She explained that, at present, the clauses related to connected individuals could create uncertainty about who in the CQC might have access to protected material. She said: “The legislation needs to be much clearer around the protection of protected disclosure materials, to give the system confidence in our ability to hold and not share confidential information.” — [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 25, Q41.] That is the crucial point: the success of HSSIB depends on confidence that information provided in confidence will remain within the investigation process. If there is uncertainty about whether information could move elsewhere in the organisation, the very existence of that uncertainty risks undermining safe space. Dr Benneyworth went further.”
“In this case, the structure matters enormously. Those concerns become even more significant when we consider the legal framework around protected information and the practical operation of safe space. The Government’s argument appears to rest on the belief that if the right protections are written into legislation, the independence of HSSIB can be preserved, but the evidence we have heard suggests that the challenge is much more fundamental. The question is not simply whether information is legally protected but whether staff, patients and families will continue to believe that it is protected. That distinction matters. During our evidence session, Dr Benneyworth highlighted a very specific concern about the drafting of the legislation.”
“The Government’s response cannot simply be that they intend to be careful. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), said that the integration would be approached with “enormous care”, but we have to ask what that actually means in legal terms. Where are the enforceable safeguards? What prevents a gradual erosion of independence once HSSIB is part of the regulator? History tells us that institutional safeguards matter precisely because they protect against future changes in culture, leadership or priorities. A body can begin with the best of intentions, but still drift over time—that is why Parliament creates independent institutions in the first place. It is not because Ministers are untrustworthy; it is because good governance recognises that structures matter.”
“The Government’s case depends on trust surviving that merger, but the evidence tells us that trust is precisely what is at risk. Dr Benneyworth made a similar point from HSSIB’s perspective. She told this Committee: “There needs to be much more clarity about governance and how that will work in the legislation to protect independence.” She went further and suggested that if the Government proceed, there would need to be much stronger safeguards, including “a legal duty on the CQC to protect the safe space.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 26, Q44.] That evidence is significant because it is not a witness arguing that change is impossible; it is the organisation at the centre of this proposal telling this Committee that the legislation, as drafted, does not provide sufficient reassurance.”
“When people are deciding whether to disclose something that may have consequences for themselves, their colleagues or their organisation, perception matters. As my right hon. Friend said, “we have to be really careful that people still have confidence in the safe space function if this merger goes ahead.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 34, Q59.] A similar point was made by Professor Carl Macrae from the University of Nottingham. While giving evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, he said that it is difficult to conceive how legislation alone could overcome the fundamental conflict created by merging an independent safety investigation body with a regulator, given that the two organisations perform inherently different functions.”
“His concern was this: “If a staff member is talking openly to HSSIB about a failure of governance in their organisation, and that is the same organisation that could decide whether they get stripped of their ‘outstanding’ rating and downgraded to ‘good’ or ‘requires improvement’, my concern is that some people may worry and say, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be open, because this could affect my hospital’s rating.’” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 33-34, Q59.] That is the practical problem: the Government’s argument relies on the assumption that staff will distinguish perfectly between different parts of the same organisation, but the concern is that a frontline clinician may not see those internal distinctions. They may simply see that the investigator and the regulator now sit under the same roof.”
“That is the opposite of what the Government say they want to achieve. The Government’s second argument is that safe space can be protected through legislation. I accept that Ministers intend to preserve those protections; however, the evidence we have heard demonstrates that the issue is not simply one of statutory wording but of culture and confidence. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash gave a particularly important example: he explained that the CQC plays a vital role because it rates healthcare organisations. Hospitals and GP practices care deeply about whether they are rated “outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement” or “inadequate”.”
“He told the Committee that “Ideally, when something goes wrong, what you want is for there to be an investigation and for lessons to be learned, so that grieving families can say, ‘Well, at least we are confident that this wouldn’t happen again.’” However, because families often lack confidence that lessons will actually be learned, they understandably seek public inquiries. My right hon. Friend explained: “families still think the only way they can get real change is through a public inquiry” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 32, Q56.] That is an important warning. If confidence in HSSIB is reduced, the unintended consequence may be more public inquiries, not fewer—more cost, more delay and, most importantly, more time before lessons are learned and acted on.”
“He explained that “What there needs to be is a formal system with a legal obligation on the Government.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 30, Q53.] He warned that too often recommendations disappear into what he described as “agree in principle”, which allows organisations to acknowledge a problem without committing to a timetable for fixing it. The Government are proposing structural change because recommendations are not always acted on, but the problem is not the existence of HSSIB; it is the absence of sufficient accountability when recommendations are made. The Government appear to be addressing the wrong failure. There is another important point from my right hon. Friend’s evidence. He explained that one of the long-term purposes of HSSIB was to reduce the need for expensive public inquiries.”
“He said: “the Bill does not do anything to address the bit that is not working well, and that bit is that the NHS is still very poor on acting on recommendations that are made”. –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 30, Q52.] That is the crucial point. The Government’s justification for the merger appears to be based on a concern that there are too many recommendations, too many reviews and too much duplication, but the evidence of my right hon. Friend highlights a different problem. The issue is not that we do not know what needs to change but that we too often fail to act on what we already know. The answer to that problem is not fewer independent investigations but stronger accountability for implementing recommendations. Indeed, my right hon. Friend made that point powerfully in his evidence.”
“I may touch on that in a bit more detail in a moment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash was clear on this topic when he gave evidence to the Committee: “My concern was that the NHS and actually health systems across the world are not very good at learning lessons when there are tragedies.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 29, Q52.] That is the problem that HSSIB was created to address and why I struggle with the Government’s argument. If the problem is that the NHS does not learn lessons effectively, the answer should be to strengthen the organisation designed specifically to help it to learn, not to weaken the independence of that organisation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash identified the precise part of the system that remains broken.”
“My hon. Friend makes several key points, and he is absolutely right: what problem are the Government trying to solve here? If we believe in independence, believe in an investigatory body and believe it is working well—and it demonstrably is working well—why on earth would we change it? That goes to a further point: these clauses not only potentially provide for a transfer of HSSIB into CQC but add risk and failure in that procedure. My hon. Friend asks how we can be confident that the system is going to work if a patient or a clinician does not want to put their head above the parapet because they are frightened that there will be regulatory consequence. That is a fundamental problem with the Government’s proposal. As I have said several times in this speech, we have not had the answer to that and no answer seems to be forthcoming.”
“As I said throughout my speech, I am against this proposal whatever the nature of the CQC. However, does it strike my hon. Friend, as it strikes me, that the problems of moving the functions of HSSIB into the CQC are compounded given that the CQC, as he alluded to, is not functioning well and does not have the confidence of patients and clinicians?”
“I hesitate to intervene on the hon. Gentleman, because he seems to be straying into the next grouping and I do not want to encourage him down that route, but now that he has raised it, I share his concern. I do not know what it is like in his area, but the ICB areas that local branches of healthwatch will be absorbed into are even larger than counties. In my area, Surrey and Sussex make up three administrative counties. That is an even larger area. The provisions are clearly not the solution to the problem that the hon. Gentleman is outlining.”
“That is a fundamental problem, and while I accept that there may be ways to improve Healthwatch England, as Members have outlined, this simply will not do it.”
“As soon as we were brought into NHS England, into a governmental structure, the recommendations that we put forward were looked at and scrutinised and we were told often, “We do not have the money to afford that”, or, “That is not in our plan.” And that is precisely what will happen if recommendations are put through the director of patient experience. As others have said, when this director of patient experience arrives at a Select Committee, he or she will be there to represent and defend the Department and Ministers, understandably, because that is who he or she will work for. They will not be able to stand up, go on television or the radio, do the broadcast interviews or make representations, because they will be a creature of the system rather than a scrutineer of the system and an advocate for patients.”
“Friends have said, the removal of Healthwatch England and the introduction of a director for patient experience simply does not work because the independence—which is so fundamental to the HSSIB that we talked about— of local healthwatches, which we will talk about, and of Healthwatch England is fundamental to the ability of that organisation to do its job. In a previous career I worked for the Getting It Right First Time programme in the NHS. When that programme first started, it sat outside the structures of what was then NHS Improvement, latterly NHS England. At that point we could make recommendations to the NHS— I do not mean this flippantly —in a way that was unrestricted.”
“16, Q24.] We already know from the evidence that we received, unprompted, from National Voices and the King’s Fund that the abolition of NHS England will not solve the problems that the Minister, the Government and the Department think are there, and indeed it could be done in a different way. I listened closely to the hon. Member for Lichfield. He seemed to be presenting a number of problems, but the solution that the Government have come up with does not hold water. As right hon. and hon.”
“15, Q23.] She gave me an answer that essentially said it could all be done without the need for the reorganisation that is in the current NHS Bill. I then asked Mr Jacob Lant, a representative from National Voices, whether he would agree with that and, unprompted, because I did not mention Healthwatch in my question, he replied: “Yes. I kind of think, as the debate goes on, that—with the changes to Healthwatch in particular—you could achieve so much without legislation. You could beef up the internal functions for listening to a patient and engaging with them without legislation—there is no requirement for that. You could invest more resource in that, and you could do the same with Healthwatch.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms Lewell. I think right hon. and hon. Members will be disappointed to know I am not going to speak too long on this, but they need not worry: in the next grouping, usual service will resume. I want to pick up a few points on the abolition of national Healthwatch. When we took evidence from Sarah Woolnough of the King’s Fund, I asked her a fairly open-ended question about when she gave evidence at the Health and Social Care Select Committee. I put it to her that she “seemed to suggest that the Government could achieve what they needed to in the 10-year plan without this reorganisation.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c.”
“Throughout our proceedings, I have become increasingly convinced that that is the question that Ministers have not answered adequately.”
“Indeed, what struck me throughout the oral evidence sessions was not simply that witnesses disagreed with Dr Dash’s conclusions but that they challenged the central assumptions on which they depend. Dr Dash’s recommendations assume that independence is desirable but not essential. The overwhelming weight of evidence presented to this Committee suggests precisely the opposite. That distinction matters, because this debate is not fundamentally about patient experience. No member of this Committee disputes that patients should influence the design and delivery of services; Healthwatch already exists to help to achieve precisely that. The issue before us is different: it is whether those speaking on behalf of patients should remain institutionally independent of the organisations whose decisions they are expected to scrutinise.”
“Once again, the Government’s case rests largely on the recommendations of Dr Penny Dash. Dr Dash argued that patient engagement should sit much closer to those responsible for planning and delivering services, that providers and commissioners gather and respond to patient experience themselves, that integrated care boards already possess engagement functions capable of undertaking that work, and that the variation between local healthwatch organisations means that the current statutory model is no longer justified. Those are interesting arguments, but they were examined by this Committee and, in my view, were not sustained by the evidence that we subsequently heard.”
“I want to address this clause because I believe that the Government are making a significant mistake by abolishing Healthwatch England, as they have just done with the group of amendments, and local healthwatch organisations. The Government have sought to reassure the Committee that the functions currently carried out by Healthwatch will continue; however, that is not the question before us. The question is whether those functions can continue with the same degree of independence, credibility and public confidence once they are absorbed into the organisations that they currently scrutinise. Having listened carefully to the witnesses who appeared before the Committee, and having reflected on the debate on Second Reading, I do not believe that the Government have demonstrated that they care.”
“Obviously, I have sympathy for what the hon. Member is trying to achieve—ensuring that our data systems are free from potential hacking by either state or non-state actors is very important—but I cannot see anything in new clause 4 about the size of contracts. Does his suggestion relate to any contract, however small, that was given to a non-UK-based company? It is not clear what he means by a non-United Kingdom company. Is that one that is headquartered here, one that is listed on our stock exchange, or one that has a CEO who is a British citizen? I am not quite sure what he means by a UK-based company, but if we can define an outside-based one, is he saying that any contract of any size given to such a company will have to come to Parliament?”
“T6. During the election, the Government promised to cut bills by £300; in fact, they have gone up by £300. With that level of financial acumen, the Secretary of State will fit right in, in his new job at the Treasury, but my constituents and local businesses want their bills cut now, not at some nebulous point in the future. When he gets to the Treasury, will he remove the taxes on our energy industry, to ensure that bills actually come down?”
“I currently have 11 unresolved cases in my constituency and the numbers are going up. My constituents deserve certainty about these unacceptable delays. During Cabinet Office questions on 25 June, I raised these failures with the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Southampton Test (Satvir Kaur), who assured the House that “all…levers” were being used to ensure that Capita met its end of June deadline. Can the Minister tell us what those levers were, given the fact that they appear to be attached to nothing—Capita has still failed to meet that deadline—and what levers he will pull when the August deadline is, inevitably, not met either?”
“But there are some unintended consequences of the two amendments, which at least need more exploration before I could vote for them.”
“Member for Winchester said that the proposed standard would be similar to the mental health investment standard, but I believe that the Government—I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—have relatively recently changed the mental health standard to be in line with inflation rather than overall total spending. Therefore, if the amendment were to pass, primary care budgets would increase in line with total overall spending, whereas mental health budgets would increase in line with inflation. If those two things were out of sync, there would be a problem. I totally accept what the hon. Member is trying to achieve. We all want to see more spent on primary care. The Government’s stated intention is to bring healthcare closer to home, and that can only be delivered, in my view, through primary care services.”
“Member for Winchester puts it, would be mandatorily enforced with a potential financial penalty. That takes away from what I think the Government are trying to achieve, which is local flexibility. As far as I can tell from the amendment, it makes no distinction between revenue spending and capital spending. I am still hopeful that my ICB is going to build a brand-new GP surgery and health hub in my constituency—it has been promising that for eight years and it is not here yet, so this may be hope over experience—and that would be a significant capital investment. Would the ICB be able to include that as spending on primary care services and get around the potential financial penalty? I also worry about pitting one part of health spending against another. The hon.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. My right hon. Friend the Member for Melton and Syston and my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham have covered a lot of the points I wanted to make, so I will keep this relatively brief. Like them, I entirely sympathise with what the hon. Member for Winchester is trying to achieve with the two amendments. I think we would all want to see more investment in primary care. As my right hon. Friend—a former Health Minister—knows all too well, we need to see growth in primary care. The fact that there is not a single dentist’s practice in my constituency taking new NHS patients is a real concern, as are the waiting times for GPs in my constituency. However, I do have some concerns. The first is that the standard, as the hon.”
“There is also a question as to whether the health service already collects much of this information in other ways, and whether a new statutory review would add significant value beyond the existing reporting arrangements. Better evidence about the scale and geographic distribution of mental health treatment delays could support more targeted interventions and help to ensure that patients are not disadvantaged simply because of where they live. The challenge will be ensuring that the findings of any review actually lead to meaningful action, rather than just becoming another reporting exercise or inquiry.”
“Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, I represent a semi-rural seat, so I know that understanding delays in accessing mental health treatment is essential if we are to have services that meet patient needs and ensure greater transparency on waiting times. All this can help identify inequalities and inform better policymaking. The requirement to examine the disparities between rural and urban areas is particularly welcome given the challenges that rural communities can face in accessing specialist mental health services. However, it should be noted that the new clause would primarily deliver a reporting mechanism rather than a solution to the problem. Although annual reviews might improve our understanding of treatment delays, they do not in themselves guarantee improvements in access, workforce capacity or service provision.”
“Over some years, I would like the amount to increase as a total proportion from the current figure of 8% or 9% to 20%, which is the real cost or burden of mental health care in this country. I think new clause 27 is a much more fair and appropriate way of achieving that. I accept the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham about a potential loss of local flexibility, but I think the new clause is written in a way that gives ICBs at least some flexibility to decide how they spend that money. Also, unlike amendments 9 and 10, there is not a financial penalty if for some reason they do not manage to do so it. In principle, I see merit in new clause 33. Like my hon.”