Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

I fear that many will have found the Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) disappointing. He highlighted that the previous Government committed to the headline recommendation of the cross-party birth trauma inquiry led by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and the former Member for Stafford, Theo Clarke, who has recently written about her experiences in a book, and in the Daily Mail called for a national maternity improvement strategy. No equivalent commitment has been made by this Government. Let us try again: will the Minister commit without any equivocation to implementing the inquiry’s recommendation to produce a national maternity improvement strategy?

[Karin Smyth]

To be clear for the shadow Secretary of State, the Secretary of State is continuing to look at all those recommendations and consider how best to respond.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

The Health Service Journal reports that officials have acknowledged that the first draft of a high-level plan for merging NHS England and DHSC has been delayed. When we ask any written question about the merger, the standard answer seems to be:

“Ministers and senior Department officials will work with the new transformation team at the top of NHS England, led by Sir Jim Mackey, to determine the structure and requirements needed to support the creation of a new centre for health and care.”

Even when we ask a question specifically about the size of the transformation team, the answer is virtually identical. The Government either wilfully decide not to answer, or simply do not know. As with so many things, the Government go for the headline-grabbing announcement and talk the talk on reform, without having done the actual work to deliver it. My question to the Secretary of State is simple: when will that first high-level plan for the merger, with a full assessment of costs and savings, be published?

[Wes Streeting]

Honestly, the right hon. Member had his chance—he was the Minister who took forward the last reform Act, under the Conservative Government. He failed in that task, and now he turns up without a shred of remorse or a shred of humility, attacking this Government for cleaning up the mess that the Conservatives left behind. They are not a party of government—they are not even a party of opposition any more. They are a total irrelevance.