Spending Review: Health and Social Care

Chris Webb Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming the extra support for GP and primary care. I am sure he understands from our urgent and emergency care plan that we have a number of arrangements for making sure that people are seen urgently in local community settings. It is for local ICBs to decide on the best way, within that urgent emergency care plan, for people to be seen locally and treated within the available resources. I am happy to meet him, perhaps at an upcoming surgery, to discuss that further.

[Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

My constituents in Blackpool South will never forgive or forget that the previous Government left us with the worst health outcomes in the country. We have an ICB having to make £350 million of cuts. The hospital that my son and I were born in has been left inadequate and one of the worst in the country. We have dental deserts. People cannot get access to mental health counsellors or GPs. I welcome the millions of pounds allocated to Victoria hospital and to health outcomes in my constituency by this Government, and we are seeing waiting lists finally coming down. Does the Minister agree that we need to continue on this path and give deprived areas, such as Blackpool, more support to get our waiting lists down to an acceptable level?

[Karin Smyth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that his constituents and constituents across this country will not forgive the Conservatives for the state in which they left the NHS. That is clear from Lord Darzi’s diagnosis. We have still had no comment from the Conservatives on whether they acknowledge that. We are determined to be about the future, and that is what this settlement and the Chancellor’s announcement yesterday are about. It is about putting that extra funding that we raised last year into services and into a reformed system that reaches all parts of this country. We will tackle health inequalities, making sure that people who have not had that access and people who suffer worse health than others are raised up. We must take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS.