Children of Alcoholics

George Freeman Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the children of alcoholics.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris, particularly on this day, when there are other events going on in Parliament. I am grateful to colleagues from all parties who have come to support this debate, and to the Minister on what I know is a very busy day for his Department.

Today is a chance to speak on behalf of the children of alcoholics. They are the children who suffer in silence around our country, and sadly there are now many of them; nearly 2.5 million children live with one or both parents suffering from serious alcohol dependency or abuse. It is my great privilege, standing here today as chairman-elect of the all-party parliamentary group on children of alcoholics, to introduce this debate and formally launch our campaign across both Houses and all parties for this Parliament to take forward the work of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics.

The APPG has been brilliantly and ably led by my colleagues Jon Ashworth and the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), who have passed the baton to me now that I am no longer in government. As a freelancer, and the deputy chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, I am free to speak without fear or favour. [Interruption.] I can hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) saying that I have always spoken without fear or favour.

I start by saying that there are many children of alcohol in this great Parliament. For many children, it is a terrible trauma of silent suffering from which they never really escape. It also drives into many children an extraordinary ability to take on responsibilities too young, as well as tasks and duties that should really fall only to adults, and it often engenders a drive to make a difference. We see 11, 10, nine or eight-year-olds face things that nobody should have to cope with, let alone a lonely child carer. It is perhaps not surprising that much of the drive that lies behind many people in this Parliament comes from some of those experiences, whether of alcohol or other addictions.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman; we spoke about people who have lived with this before the debate, which he might refer to, and I was very moved by what he told me. Across Northern Ireland, there are some 40,000 children living with parental alcoholism, and there has been a rise specifically in alcohol deaths. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there must be more focus, and that antenatal and health visitors should routinely screen parents who are dependent on alcohol to not only support the parents but ensure that the children are protected in the home? I have a friend who grew up with this, and I always remember their story—it has stuck in my mind all my life.

[George Freeman]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I want to reassure the Minister that I am not here to hit him with 20 demands—that will come in due course. Today is really a chance to raise the flag of the all-party parliamentary group. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned one of the things in our manifesto for change, and I am grateful to him for raising it.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am really grateful for all that the hon. Gentleman does in this place. I want to raise the issue of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We know that its prevalence is now 4%, which is higher than autism, and there is no screening programme for pregnant women, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) just mentioned. It is really important that we understand these issues and find a sensitive way to protect children from developing such a disorder.

[George Freeman]

The hon. Lady makes another excellent point. As I know the Minister and his Department understand, not only is there no magic bullet but many of these issues circulate and form secondary complications that cost—which is the least of it—huge amounts to the health system later.

I will touch on some of the mental health issues. In our society, 80% of us are reasonably lucky, but 20% of us struggle to escape these difficult syndromes related to living with addiction or suffering from mental health. Many of our prisoners are people who are still suffering—they are prisoners, actually, of mental health and addiction—and many of our children are born to parents who have no chance of giving them a start in life. There is a circularity here that drives a lot of underlying health conditions, predispositions and comorbidities.

Without indulging my own back story too much, I want to make the point that this affliction knows no class or geographical boundaries. When I first joined the all-party group back under the coalition Government as a newly elected Conservative MP, I went with some trepidation because it was—very proudly—led by Labour MPs pointing out that poverty is a major cause of addiction and alcoholism, and they were right. The point I made was that it is a curse that goes across our society, too.

I was very lucky to have one of the most materially privileged childhoods—packed off to the greatest schools money can buy and given all the material support—but as a child in a family of two alcoholic parents, in the end it does not matter. If you are suffering that experience, you are lonely and you are on your own. I acquired at a very young age a habit of spotting which adults could see below the line. By that I mean those adults who would look at an eight-year-old, see what was going on and quietly acknowledge it, saying, “And how are you, young man? Things can’t be easy.” That is all you need as a child—to know that somebody has spotted it.

Children are very loyal. The last thing they would ever do is dob their parents in. In fact, it is quite the opposite: many children end up having to lie for their parents to get them out of difficult situations. Those are habits that no child should learn. The thing I learned above all is that there are two types of adults: those who understand—who look, who acknowledge, who see—and those who do not see below the line. That is not shaped by class or geography at all. It is the same in this House: there are some colleagues who really understand the importance of children, who do not have a voice in here unless we speak for them.

I am speaking today on behalf of all those children, wherever they are, whoever they are and whatever background they come from, to let them know that we are listening. This Parliament is here to speak for them. They may not vote, and they may feel silent or unheard, but it is not the case. Many of us here do understand and want to help them.

You probably know a child of alcohol, Mrs Harris, as do colleagues. I say that because people often say, “No, I don’t.” Well, they probably do, because there are sadly over 2.5 million children in this country who are living not with parents who drink a little bit too much—that probably applies to many of us—but with one or two parents with a serious alcohol dependency problem.

Alcohol is part of our cultural history and something that we have come to live with, accept and in many ways encourage as part of our society. However, that often means that we forget the difficult consequences for the children who live with the aftermath, whether of social drinking, binge drinking, the habits that alcoholics acquire—the habits of deceit and often forgetting what they said or did—or the unintended consequences that undermine their ability to parent and that lead to children normalising those behaviours. I am speaking for those children, wherever they are and whoever they are.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Alcohol was a very prevalent part of my childhood. I was very fortunate to have grandparents who were able to step in when it was necessary, but I will never forget. It was the fear of knowing that the pubs had just closed and that my parent would be coming home in a horrible state to disrupt what would normally be a very productive and pleasant household. Sometimes, those are the things that children take away—they are the things that I remember and cannot get away from. Those experiences also impact our relationship with alcohol, to the point that it is not something that I enjoy or particularly partake in, simply because my memories were formed by those experiences at a very young age. While I was lucky to have my grandparents, you cannot get away from those memories.

[George Freeman]

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for making a powerful, personal and political point. He is absolutely right.

For my part, people often ask me how on earth I ended up in this place. My mother, who went on to become an alcoholic—tragically, my father had been an alcoholic and she suffered terribly through that; it is her funeral on Friday—asked me after I was elected, “When did you decide that you wanted to be an MP?” I said, “Actually, mum, I came on a school trip aged 10 or 11,” as schools do; it is wonderful to see children coming in. Nobody in the class knew that I was then a solo child carer of an alcoholic parent, dealing with the things that those children do.

What struck me about the thing I was living with was the fact that there seemed to be no one I could turn to. There seemed to be no network of support, and no one I could raise it with. One was on one’s own. I walked into the Chamber of the House of Commons, in which we have the privilege to serve, and was literally electrified by what struck me: the fact that there is a place where the nation tries to take responsibility for itself, where people are elected to take responsibility and actively seek it. That, to me, was an electrifying idea.

I remember that I was the least prepossessing boy in the class. I was the smallest boy, with a mop of red hair, a very bad stammer, crushing confidence issues and a double brace. I was the least likely boy in that class to become a parliamentarian. I remember walking into the Chamber and seeing the signs saying, “Don’t touch”, “Don’t sit down”, and staring at the Dispatch Box—it was at my eye height. I remember my teacher behind the Speaker’s Chair saying, “Stop dawdling, Freeman—keep up.” I said, “I’m not dawdling, sir; I’m intrigued, because it says ‘Don’t touch’, but someone has been touching it,” as the Minister will have touched it—the sweaty corner of that Dispatch Box where nervous Ministers, being cross-examined, hold on as they are being forensically held to account, something I now realise having had the privilege of doing it.

My teacher said, “No, no, no—that is not for the public; that is where Ministers hold on when they are being cross-examined.” I was electrified by that idea, and I left the Chamber thinking, “What a place.” If we can give the children out there who are suffering some confidence that we are here for them and that we are listening, I think we will be doing them a great service, and this Parliament and our democracy too.

I want to make a point about the geography of this matter because, as with so many social malaises, we sometimes think of it as an inner-city issue. Many of the formulae that the Government use to allocate money are largely driven by the formulae shaped after the inner-city riots of the 1980s. I used to be a specialist in local government finance, for my sins, and when we look at those formulae, a lot of them allocate money to areas that have high-rise flats and high incidences of minority ethnic families—all important indicators of certain types of deprivation.

In rural areas and many areas that do not fit those qualifications, however, there are many social issues that are often hidden. In rural Mid Norfolk—an area that people drive through on the way to the most beautiful coast in the land—behind the hedges and the beautiful villages there is a tidal wave of mental illness, depression and suicide, with a farmer a week taking their life, and children suffering. We often overlook that rural dimension, and that is equally true for mental health more broadly.

That is why last year I set up the Regeneration Theatre company with my wife, to take her inspiring one-man “Hamlet” made by her ex-husband—a former alcoholic who has been to prison and has been on a journey now—around prisons to help connect with prisoners and help them understand that many of the traumas they have experienced are actually to do with addiction and the behaviours that go with it. I am grateful to the prisons Minister for his support of that.

Today is really about the children of alcohol, and I particularly want to pay tribute to NACOA, the National Association for Children of Alcoholics. Hon. Members will know that there are many all-party groups in this great Palace—although rather fewer than there used to be, which I think is probably a good thing. There were ones for jazz, teddy bears, and even I think “Brideshead Revisited” at one point. Those light, frothy, frivolous all-party groups have gone. They are now generally very serious groups, committed to issues that do not lend themselves well to individual party politics—causes that often get lost. It has been my great privilege to chair a few.

I have to say that the all-party parliamentary group on children of alcoholics is the most extraordinary I have ever seen. The meetings are packed, with 100 or 200 people. We hear from children who come to Parliament to speak about their experiences. We hear from very high-achieving adults who are still dealing with the damage of their experiences. I will mention in particular Calum Best, whose father George Best was one of the greatest footballers in the land, if not the greatest—and a Northern Irelander to boot, I believe. Funnily enough, my mother met George Best at a drying-out clinic 40 or 50 years ago. Calum is an inspiring advocate for this cause. I also want to pay tribute to Hilary, Piers, Amy, Maya and all of those who volunteer to support the children, who without them would have no voice. I will also give a shout-out to Camilla Tominey, who has been a great supporter of our work.

We have supporters in the House of Lords as well. Sometimes, I think people think that privilege comes with a disconnection from some of these ills, but people might be surprised to know how many people there are in the House of Lords who have suffered as children of addiction of all sorts. This is not an issue that lends itself to advocacy by those from just a single party or geographic area.

I welcome the Minister—it is the first time we have had the chance to engage like this—and congratulate him on his appointment as the Minister with responsibility for life sciences, a role that I was lucky enough to be the first to hold. It is great to see him in his place. Having served in his Department, I know how many difficult issues he and the Department have to deal with; there is no magic silver bullet for any of them.

Over the course of this Parliament, the all-party group will try to set out a manifesto of reasonable, deliverable, fundable, understandable and relevant reforms that we hope the Government can work with us on. We do not suggest that the Government are the only body that can deal with this; we require a culture change and a broader network of support to help the charities, the community groups and those on the ground in communities where so many children suffer in silence. I will not go through the list of issues in the manifesto, and I will save for the Minister the duty of reading out the speech that his officials have probably carefully written and gone through point by point, but may I lead a delegation from the all-party group to see him and officials in due course, once the group is formally constituted, to run through the manifesto and talk through what else we might be able to do to help these children?

I want to give the Minister the chance to respond, so I will not detain the Chamber any longer, other than to say this. Let us all keep it in our minds that there are 2.5 million children out there who are, right now, watching the bottles, watching the levels, keeping an eye on their parents, distracted from their school work, struggling to do all the things that children should, learning to normalise anxiety and learning a lot of habits that will stay with them. For some, extraordinary tenacity might serve them well, but for many it will cause them long-term problems. I think that if we can grip this issue, we will be able to do a lot for long-term public health. I am grateful to the Minister, and to you, Mrs Harris, for allowing me this debate.

Healthcare Provision: East of England

George Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered healthcare provision in the East of England.

It is an honour to conduct this debate with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. Before getting into the meat of the debate, I will give a brief overview of the broad context. The beating heart of healthcare provision in this country is of course the national healthcare system, arguably the closest thing to socialism that this country has ever seen, based as it is on the provision of healthcare by need, not the size of someone’s wallet. That is pretty unique, not just in this country but around the world. One could argue that this far-sighted policy has changed the very nature of our everyday reality.

Our health is everything. Without it, we are more insecure, less productive and less happy. The security of good health and of access to care free at the point of use has revolutionised our society, helping us to live longer, more secure lives, and arguably creating social stability that affects economic productivity and perhaps even the strength of our democracy itself. Or at least it did so until about 60 years ago, when it began to be picked apart.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is my friend as well, for giving way. How wonderful it is to see so many people present for this debate at the beginning of term.

I point out gently that the NHS has also thrived under successive Conservative Governments and that, although it may be a great socialist idea, I believe it has come to be part of the fabric of our whole country and I think all parties present want to improve and support it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the NHS also underpins our enterprise economy? In America and other places, it is difficult to start a company when the healthcare costs of the staff have to be thought about; here, by underwriting the cost, we help entrepreneurs to start businesses. That point is often overlooked.

[Clive Lewis]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, yes, successive Governments have presided over the NHS, but with differing intentions. Until the mid-1970s, say, there was a broad consensus—I will come on to this—on what the welfare state was and how it operated. That has changed substantially in the past 60 years. The implementation of different policies by different Governments, including Conservative ones, has not always been in the best interests of the NHS. On enterprise, yes, a secure welfare state, good social security and the ability to give people good health—the NHS has been integral to that—have implications for our economy, as I have already pointed out.

I am sure I am not the first or the last to suspect a direct connection between the rise of angry and anti-democratic right-wing politics and the demise of the NHS’s ability to look after us all effectively. The sheer far-reaching impact of the NHS and its crisis cannot be underestimated. One needs only to look at the US, where free universal healthcare does not exist, as the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) just mentioned, to see the state of politics, crime, drug addiction and social breakdown there. The free market in healthcare provision and medicines has led to a country with one of the least efficient and most high-cost healthcare systems in the western world, and where millions are hooked on drugs that are as heavily advertised as if they were cans of coke. Let us not indulge too much in English exceptionalism, though. We need only to look at dentistry and adult social care in this country to see what happens to healthcare provision that is, to all intents and purposes, privatised or well on its way to being so—the consequences of which I hope colleagues will discuss later in the debate.

The foresight of the 1945 Labour Government cannot be underestimated. When the NHS was launched in 1948, it was done in tandem with the advent of the welfare state, because Beveridge, Keynes and Bevan understood the three pillars necessary for a healthy nation. The first pillar—the NHS—would be there for people if they became sick, but it was the second and third pillars that meant the NHS would not be overburdened. They would work in tandem with it to prevent sickness.

The second pillar was, of course, the welfare state, providing a network of social institutions that would protect citizens from the market risks associated with unemployment, accidents and old age. The third pillar was an economic system that prioritised full employment in secure, well-paid, unionised jobs—a system that sought to reduce all forms of inequality, from wealth to health.

Over the last 60 years, the three pillars have been systematically smashed. The second and third pillars are in tatters, while the first—the NHS—is wobbling precariously. It is testament to the enduring nature of the national healthcare system that it has managed to survive as an almost solitary pillar for as long as it has. If a Labour Government are truly to fix the foundations of our broken healthcare system, they must acknowledge the nature of the three-pillar foundation, and acknowledge that the NHS cannot be fixed if we do not rebuild and replace the other two pillars as well.

The situation in the east of England—from dentistry deserts to sky-rocketing rates of mental health referrals and some of the worst ambulance waiting times in the country—is beyond one malfunctioning organisation. Norwich and the wider region are experiencing a systemic crisis that is institutional, social and economic. Healthcare reforms such as devolution to the integrated care boards have become about devolving who gets to wield the axe to make savings—known to many people as cuts. I will give an example. Our ICB in the east of England, part of NHS Norfolk and Waveney, has been told by national health bosses to cut its running costs by 30% by 2026. My first question to the Minister is: how will our Government deliver improved healthcare outcomes while simultaneously implementing the previous Government’s frankly destructive cuts?

We know that vast areas such as dentistry and social care are largely privatised, with spiralling costs, and that undermines the NHS’s central commitment to care being free at the point of use. Tendrils of the crisis extend into social care. It is often said that if social care is cut, the NHS bleeds too. Norfolk county council acknowledges a crisis in social care. With soaring demand and struggles to recruit staff, there is a backlog of hundreds of vulnerable people waiting to get their care needs assessed, and care providers fold on a regular basis. My second question to the Minister, then, is: what news can she give us on the last Government’s unimplemented cap on care costs? Is it being implemented, as the Secretary of State implied during the general election campaign, or being dropped? If it is dropped, what plans are there to help those facing ruin given their complex care needs?

One consequence of the situation in Norfolk is that there are regularly hundreds of hospital patients who are medically fit to leave but unable to be discharged. It is clear that our healthcare system is struggling to respond to today’s crisis, but it is also unprepared for the challenges of the future. East Anglia is the UK region most at risk from early climate impacts, and there is clear evidence of the link between climate breakdown and ill health. For example, from 2022 to 2023 the number of flood reports in Norfolk doubled, and stretches of Norwich are predicted to flood year after year. Victims of flooding in the UK are nine times more likely to experience long-term mental health issues, and flooding is linked to a greater instance of respiratory diseases because of dampness.

Prevention is better than cure—it is about treating the causes, not just symptom alleviation. We know that the Prime Minister is keen on the so-called preventive state and we have seen some early policy announcements, so my third question is: will the Minister elaborate on what that will look like? What does healthcare provision that prioritises prevention look like in the east of England?

[Clive Lewis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his input, and his points were well made. When researching this debate, I probably spent more time working out what I did not have time to say than what I could actually put into the debate, so I have tried to do a broad overview. Many of the issues the hon. Gentleman raised are also of concern in my Norwich South constituency and across the eastern region. I am sure that during the debate many of those issues will be raised and dealt with in more detail.

Our Government have said they are a Government of service, but a legitimate fourth question that I ask the Minister is: in service of whom and to what end? It is clear to many that the interests of big business, of big tech and data companies and of private finance do not always sit well with the public interest, particularly when it comes to health. There are areas where they do, but there are also areas where they do not. We know with whom the last Government sided; whom will ours back when push comes to shove—big business, big tech, the finance industry or Joe public?

I want to briefly provide a snapshot of the scale of the crisis in the eastern region. Ambulance response times in the east of England are significantly worse than those in the rest of England. In 2023, response times for category 1 cases—that is, severe cases—were nearly 12 minutes in East Anglia, while the national target is seven minutes. They were nearly the worst on record. The Care Quality Commission, now under inquiry and investigation itself for its capability to do its job, has described Norwich university hospital as the

“worst in the East of England”

for ambulance handover times.

Referrals to mental health services increased by 18% between 2018 and 2020. Compared with the rest of England, Norwich and Norfolk have higher rates of self-harm, death by suicide and mental health issues among young people, as well as more self-diagnosed mental health issues generally. Our mental health trust—Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust—is notorious for being the worst in the country, and I do not think that can be said enough.

Norwich is a dental desert. In July, the Secretary of State branded Norwich North the “Sahara of dental deserts”. That is a rather romantic notion, but it is a desert where people pull their own teeth out in this burgeoning phenomenon of a do-it-yourself dentistry industry. Indeed, some of my Ukrainian constituents have told me that they find it preferable to dodge Russian missiles and artillery to use Ukrainian dentists. Ukraine arguably has a better dental system in the middle of a prolonged war. That is unsurprising given that in the east we have one NHS dentist—no, it is not even one NHS dentist; it is one dentist—per 2,600 people. Just picture that in your head: one dentist with their tools with 2,600 people queued up. That is what it feels like to many of my constituents.

For the second year running, no dental practices are accepting NHS patients. Norfolk children under five have some of the worst tooth decay in the entire country. Thousands of people have had to go to hospitals in Norwich and Norfolk for abscesses that should have been prevented. The list goes on and on. I am sure that many of my colleagues from the eastern region will also outline some of the issues and stories that they know are taking place on a daily basis, and that have been for many years now.

[George Freeman]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making the point about dentistry that I think we all understand, particularly in the east. Does he agree that the real cause is threefold—the tariff did not keep up with costs and inflation, we have not been training enough dentists and we have been losing too many—and that the previous Government’s dental plan was a big step in the right direction? Does he support that plan? I am interested to know whether the Opposition intend to continue to implement it.

[Clive Lewis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention but will leave the response to the Minister, because it is a question that she would be better able to answer. Frankly, given that the last Government had 14 years to sort out that mess and have handed it over, pretty much complete, to the new Labour Administration, I will not be singing their praises when it comes to dentistry. That will not be going on the record.

I will conclude by looking at the social and economic roots of the healthcare crisis, which are the elephant in the room. As I have outlined, many of the causes of ill health are socially determined. Waiting lists, ill health and mental health issues are signs that our healthcare system is breaking down, but also that we have an economy with a degrading social fabric—one need only look at the race riots this summer to understand that. But do not take my word for it; listen to civil society organisations in my constituency that are at the coalface of this crisis. The Norfolk Care Association says:

“Around 10% of health outcomes result directly from healthcare delivery, with a more significant proportion derived from the physical, social, and economic factors that people experience day to day. The government must do more to tackle poverty, ensure quality housing, and create safe communities, as these are fundamental to improving health outcomes.”

Age UK Norwich says that the key healthcare issue older people face is

“chronic health conditions and limited spend/focus on prevention: around 55% of Norfolk’s older population have one or more long-term health conditions; however, most are treated independently”.

That organisation points to the need for

“Rebalancing healthcare focus and investment to underlying causal factors”—

the “wider determinants” that make up 80% of a person’s overall health status.

Let us have a quick look at some more drivers of ill health. Take, for example, fuel poverty: 10% of people in the east of England live in fuel poverty, and it is almost 12% in Norwich South. Fuel costs in the UK are on average 30% higher than the EU average.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), on securing this important debate about the health service in the east of England.

We have just recovered from a general election, and I hope we have all had time off—a bit of a break—to recharge our batteries so that we can start thinking about how we should lead this country in the years and months ahead. Health and the health service was a key election issue on the doorsteps of Broadland and Fakenham. As the Conservative candidate, I was armed with a whole series of data about how we had 20,000 more doctors and had, I think, recruited 50,000 more nurses. We had paid for and secured 50 million more GP appointments each year—an increase to 350 million per year. We had provided a lot more funding for the NHS, increasing it by £28 billion, or 17%, since 2019. I would have the conversation on the doorstep and read off all these facts about how we had funded the health service, but that was not how things felt to our constituents, and that was a key negative impact for Conservative candidates such as myself. As a Government, we felt we had done what we could—we had increased the funding—but the outcomes our constituents experienced did not tally with that.

I have come up with a number of factors to explain that. One was the covid backlog for elective surgery. Back in early 2020, covid was thrown at the Government, who were caught unaware, and it created a huge backlog. Steps were taken to address it in Norfolk. We had two new operating theatres for elective surgery at the Norfolk and Norwich university hospital, and we got the diagnostic centres at the James Paget university hospital and the Queen Elizabeth hospital, as well as a new one at Cromer. However, these things take time to work through, and the election came before our constituents felt the benefits of that enormous local investment.

However, there was a bigger problem, which the Conservative Government failed to address. A key, proper criticism of our Government is that productivity in the health service went down between 2019 and 2024 by about 5.8%. We were putting much more money in and we had more staff, but what they achieved decreased. If there is one thing the Minister should address—I would be grateful if she could do so in her summing-up—it is what plans the Government have to improve productivity, rather than just funding and staffing, in the NHS, because that is the absolute key. My starter for 10 is that productivity will not improve if we have pay deals like that awarded to ASLEF, where money was provided and productivity improvements were removed from the deal.

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point about productivity in the health system. I have been a Health Minister and I have observed that—not because of ministerial diktat, but just because of the way the health system works—if you deliver more for less, the Treasury and the Department of Health give you less, but if you struggle to deliver more for less, we give you more. If we ran a business like that, we would go bust. Does my hon. Friend agree that, ultimately, the east needs a much more decentralised, empowered system? In Norfolk, we have an ambulance trust, a mental health trust, three hospital trusts and five clinical commissioning groups. That is bonkers. We need one Norfolk healthcare system that provides what patients need: an integrated patient pathway.

[Jerome Mayhew]

We have made progress in that direction with the integrated care board, which is a very good step in the right direction because it allows the whole care system in Norfolk to come under one remit. We were beginning to see some of the benefits of that with the mental health trust. Although it has a long and pretty disgraceful history of underperformance, there have been tentative signs of improvement since the ICB came in.

The next issue, particularly in Norfolk, is the physical state of our hospitals. We have the Queen Elizabeth hospital at King’s Lynn, which is a RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—hospital, the James Paget in Yarmouth, and the pretty modern Norfolk and Norwich in Norwich. The last Government fully funded and agreed full rebuilds of the QEH and the James Paget, which are long overdue. Those hospitals should be rebuilt by 2030, and I am very concerned to hear that that funding commitment is now under review. The Minister might be constrained in what she can say at the Dispatch Box, but whatever reassurance she can give the residents of Norfolk about the Government’s intention to continue those rebuilds would be much appreciated, because they are enormously important to my constituents.

Then there is dentistry. The hon. Member for Norwich South talked about our dental desert in Norfolk. We have 39 dentists per 100,000 of population, compared with a national average of 52. If someone who grows up in Norfolk wants to be a dentist, the nearest place they can train is Birmingham or London, so it is no surprise that we do not have domestic, home-grown talent becoming dentists in Norfolk. What incentive is there for a just-qualified 26 or 27-year-old who is not from the eastern region to move to a largely rural area? For those reasons, we desperately need an undergraduate dental training school at the UEA in Norwich, perhaps in partnership with other academic establishments in the east of England. I am not squeamish about what it might look like, but we need to have undergraduates being trained in the east of England and in Norwich, because 40% of UEA medical school graduates become “sticky”—they stay in the area because they fall in love, get married and develop commercial relationships with GP surgeries and the like.

The dental Minister in the last Government came to the UEA in about May for a lecture and a series of meetings. The impression given was that we were on the cusp of an announcement of a dental training school but that the election got in the way. All eastern region Members of Parliament, irrespective of their political colour, are wholly in support of that, and we would be very grateful, as the hon. Member for Norwich South said, if we could have some indication that it is still on track.

There is a huge amount to be done in the east of England and in Norwich in particular. We have great staff and good structures, but we need to get the productivity working and the expectation of early GP appointments back on schedule. One recurrent complaint I get from constituents is about how difficult it is to see a GP. I note that 43% of all GP appointments are now same-day appointments, and that record needs to be built on. I have listed a number of areas on which I would be grateful if the Minister could give an indication of the Government’s thinking, and I look forward to hearing her response.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

Again, across the country we see the damage done over the last 14 years, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight that the situation in one part of the system knocks on to other parts. That is why we want a 10-year plan to look at this, an immediate look with Lord Darzi, and, critically, to understand which community and primary care services can be supported to support the rest of the system. I am very happy to meet with colleagues across Cornwall, where we now have many Labour MPs.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

8. If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring newly-qualified dentists to work for the NHS for a set period of time.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and congratulate him on his survival instincts in getting re-elected to this place.

NHS dentistry needs urgent action thanks to 14 years of chaos, failure and neglect. Our rescue plan will get NHS dentistry back on its feet, followed by contract reform to make NHS dentistry more attractive. A consultation for a tie-in to NHS dentistry for graduate dentists closed on 18 July and we are now considering the responses. The Government position on this proposal will be set out in due course and I will keep the House updated on this matter.

[George Freeman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer and congratulate him and his colleague the Secretary of State on their appointments. All of us who are serious about the health service and the need for reform, about which the Secretary of State has spoken, have their back in pushing for reform. The hon. Gentleman has his moment of triumph, but may I gently encourage him to reach out and build a cross-party coalition of support for serious reform? The NHS is broken not by Tory cuts but by years—[Interruption.] For years we have been pouring money in; it needs to modernise for the 21st-century.

In the spirit of which, on dentistry, may I encourage the Front-Bench team to reach out and have a meeting—a rainbow coalition meeting including the new hon. Members for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone)—of all MPs in Norfolk, which has suffered more than most counties? We desperately need that University of East Anglia dental school.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman was doing so well at the start, and then he kind of blew it a bit towards the end. It is absolutely right that we put country before party, and we will work with whoever has the best interests of rebuilding our public services at heart. The issue that he raises specifically sounds interesting. What I would say is that unless we get the bigger picture sorted, and unless we make NHS work pay for dentists, we will not be able to rebuild the NHS dentistry system that we should be cherishing and seeking to reform. I am of course always open to conversations with him.