NHS 10-Year Plan

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

It was coincidence rather than causation, as my hon. Friend the cancer Minister says—although, given both our experiences, we will rethink our visit schedule to Bury.

On a serious note, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) is absolutely right to make the link between poverty, particularly child poverty, and ill health. The last Labour Government lifted 400,000 children out of poverty; I am so proud to think that when in the first year of this Labour Government we chose to extend free school meals to half a million children from low-income families, with that one measure on one day we lifted 100,000 children out of poverty. That is the difference Labour Governments make, and that is how we will deliver not just an NHS fit for the future, but a fairer, more equal, more just society.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I look forward to studying the detail of this plan, but I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to neighbourhood health centres and likewise his commitment in a previous answer to rural communities. May I therefore offer him a golden opportunity? He will have heard me over many years in this House call for funding to build a new health centre in the village of Long Crendon, which lost its GP practice during the pandemic. They have the land, they have the planning permission and it will cost less than his lower number of £200 million to build. Will he convert words to delivery and commit to Long Crendon?

[Wes Streeting]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support with the plan, which I am sure is in no way connected to the fact that he wants some money out of us for that neighbourhood health centre. I will take his question as the first bid we have had from those on the Opposition Benches, and I look forward to receiving those representations from him.