Building an NHS Fit for the Future

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

It is a pleasure to open this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, and to have the opportunity to speak about the long-term decisions that the Government have been taking for a healthier future for our country, for our national health service, and for our social care system.

We are building our health and care system for today and for tomorrow. We are increasing the capacity of the NHS and social care systems, boosting primary care and community care, investing in diagnostics and in treatments, building our NHS workforce with the long-term workforce plan and building our social care workforce with our 10-year vision, putting people at the heart of care. We are giving people choice and control over their health and care, and investing in the facilities and technology that need to be at the forefront of care and sustainable for the long term. We are driving reforms to prevent ill health, joining up health and care in integrated care systems and delivering a shift towards prevention and proactive care, keeping people out of hospital and enabling them to live independently in their communities.

Every day since last winter, we have been planning and preparing for the challenges that lie ahead this winter. The first ever NHS long-term workforce plan underpins our plans for the future of the NHS. It will double the number of medical training places, almost double the number of adult nursing places, and expand GP and allied health professional training numbers, giving the NHS the staff it needs for the future, creating new roles, building new training pathways and delivering a huge boost in diagnostic capacity.

By the end of this year, we will have opened 160 new community diagnostic centres. That is the biggest investment in MRI and CT scanning capacity in NHS history. Community diagnostic centres will bring care closer to home, on high streets, in supermarket car parks and at football stadiums. They have already done more than 5 million tests and scans, getting patients faster diagnosis for cancer, heart disease and other life-threatening conditions. That is not all we are doing to diagnose conditions faster. The number of people receiving blood pressure checks at local pharmacies has more than doubled, reducing thousands of people’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

We are expanding primary care, too. There are now over 30,000 more primary care professionals working in GP practices than in March 2019. We will deliver 50 million more GP appointments by the end of next year and we are investing more than £200 million in tech to end the 8 am rush for GP appointments. Pharmacy First will give people another choice, giving pharmacists the power to prescribe treatments for seven common conditions, freeing up as many as 10 million GP appointments, and as we put test results on to the NHS app, that will free up GP time again.

That is also one of the ways that this Government are giving patients more choice and control. Just as we are going to give people more choice in where they are treated when they are referred by their GP for specialist care, we have committed to giving patients a choice between by five providers so that they are treated based on what matters to them—be that shorter waiting times, seeing a particular doctor or getting care closer to home. We have given patients who are waiting more than 40 weeks the right to request treatment elsewhere, making better use of available capacity across the NHS and bringing in more capacity from the independent sector.

On patient choice, there is a clear dividing line between the Government and the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition calls the Welsh Government the blueprint for what Labour would do in power, yet in Wales, under a Labour Government, there is no legal right to patient choice, and patients there wait on average five weeks longer for treatment than in England. We know where Labour’s plans would lead. We just need to look at its Welsh blueprint: less choice for patients, longer waiting lists and more bureaucracy for doctors and nurses who just want to get on with the job.

Before the most disruptive industrial action in NHS history stalled progress, we were reducing the longest waits. Last summer we hit our target to eliminate two-year waits for planned operations. This June we had virtually eliminated waits longer than 18 months. We are spending more than £8 billion between 2022 and 2025 to increase elective activity, including opening over 140 new surgical hubs to deliver 2 million more operations. We are investing almost £6 billion in beds, equipment and technology, and this year we started preparing the NHS for winter sooner than ever before.

Back in January, we published our recovery plan for urgent and emergency care, setting clear targets to improve A&E waiting and ambulance response times and using £1 billion of dedicated funding to provide 5,000 more permanent staff beds and 800 new ambulances. We are seeing results. In October, average category 2 ambulance response times were more than 90 minutes faster than in the same month last year. Delayed discharges have been coming down and we have brought forward flu and covid vaccinations, protecting the most vulnerable from illness this winter and reducing the likelihood that they will need hospital treatment.

A strong social care sector is also vital this winter and into the future. That is why we have made up to £8 billion available over this year and next to boost adult social care across the country. This is enabling local authorities to buy more care packages and help more patients to leave hospital on time, together with 10,000 “hospital at home” beds which mean that patients can receive their care where they are most comfortable, recovering in their own homes with support from secondary care when they need it. Through social prescribing, thousands of people up and down the country are benefiting from activities such as reading circles, choir groups, walking and football. We are driving reforms to the intermediate and proactive care framework, which sets out how local systems should support adults who need support after discharge, freeing up hospital capacity for those who need it most and giving people more care as they need it—in their community, away from A&E and out of hospital.

We are rolling out technology that will give patients life-saving treatments now and in the future. By the end of the year, every stroke network in England will have AI technology that can examine brain scans an hour faster, cutting stroke patients’ risk of suffering long-term consequences by as much as two thirds. What is more, almost half of NHS acute trusts have won a share of £21 million to invest in AI, accelerating the analysis of X-rays and CT scans for suspected lung cancer patients. That will save radiologists’ time, boost efficiency and cut waiting times. For the long-term, we are investing a further £100 million to use AI to unlock treatments for diseases that are incurable today, be they novel treatments for dementia or vaccines for cancer.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Can the Minister say something about the availability of new and specialist drugs that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is not recommending? Will an effort be made to make these specialist drugs, which in many instances are effectively regarded as miracle cures, available for cystic fibrosis and cancer treatments, for example?

[Helen Whately]

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I know how strongly families and patients feel about this. It is not for me, as a Minister, to step on the independence of NICE, which has a remit to take those decisions. I am sure that the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), and other Ministers in the Department will continue to listen to the concerns of families about access to those treatments.

If we want to fully embrace preventive care, we must tackle the single biggest preventable cause of ill health, disability and death, which is smoking. Unlike drinking alcohol or eating fatty, salty or sugary foods, there is no safe level of smoking. It causes almost one hospital admission every minute, one in four cancer deaths and 64,000 deaths a year.

Four in five smokers start by the time they are 20, so the best thing we can do is to stop young people smoking in the first place. That is why this Government will automatically raise the smoking age by one year every year, so anyone who is 14 or younger today will never be able to buy tobacco legally. Increasing the smoking age works. When it rose to 18, smoking rates dropped by almost a third in that age group. Restricting choice is never easy, but this time it is the right thing to do. Existing smokers will not be affected, but the next generation will be smoke-free, saving thousands of lives, reducing pressure on the NHS and building a brighter future for our children.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I hear what the Minister says about the Government’s commitment to this policy, but can she explain why the Government are allowing a free vote rather than whipping Back Benchers to vote for Government policy?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately]

I am not going to stand here and explain whipping policy, which is not my job as a Health Minister, but I am delighted to see the potential of this legislation. As with so many other worthwhile Government policies, such as increasing funding for the national health service, I would be delighted to see the right hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members support this policy.

We are also cracking down on the alarming rise in vaping among children. There is no doubt that vaping is safer than smoking and is a terrific tool to help adult smokers quit, but, like Members across the House, I am concerned that one in five children has tried vaping, which can be hugely damaging to their health. The whole House knows that no child should be using nicotine.

The rise in youth vaping is no coincidence. Disposable vapes are consistently marketed at children and are available at pocket-money prices, with many retailers ignoring their duty not to sell them to young people. With more than 5 million being thrown away every week, disposable vapes are also damaging our planet. We are acting now to protect our children and our planet. We are looking at banning child-friendly flavours, restricting colourful packaging and mandating that vapes are displayed only behind the counter. We are also exploring a ban or a restriction on disposable vape sales and empowering local authorities to dish out on-the-spot fines for selling vapes to children. All these proposals are being developed with parents and teachers across the UK, and they will strike a balance between giving adult smokers a choice to switch to vaping and preventing our children from taking it up.

I recognise the disappointment that the mental health Bill was not included in the King’s Speech, but I can assure hon. Members that this Government are committed to achieving genuine parity between mental health and physical health, improving the care of those detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 and bringing forward the Bill when parliamentary time allows.

We are not going to wait for legislation to make change. We will continue to pilot models of culturally appropriate advocacy, providing tailored support to hundreds of people from ethnic minorities to better understand their rights if they are detained under the Mental Health Act. This comes on top of the record investment and staff numbers we are putting into mental health. Since 2010, the mental health workforce has grown by more than 20%, and by March we will have invested over £2 billion more in mental health than four years ago, meaning that 2 million more people, including more than 300,000 children and young people, will benefit from mental health support.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

One of the biggest issues raised by every school I visit in my constituency is mental health support, and I am disappointed not to see the mental health Bill in the King’s Speech. Will it be addressed in any other way? Where is it?

[Helen Whately]

As I said a moment ago—let me remind the hon. Lady of this—we are not waiting for legislation in order to bring forward mental health reforms. That is why, for instance, we have already been rolling out mental health support teams in schools. We are already ahead of schedule on that; we are giving a quarter of England’s school and college children access to mental health support teams a year ahead of schedule. In addition, thanks to this Government, dormitory accommodation for mental health patients will soon become a thing of the past.

It has been a pleasure to work with the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), and a huge honour to work with my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) as part of a Government taking the long-term decisions to build a health and care system for the future, one with more doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physios and care workers, better mental healthcare for adults and children, more proactive care in the community, greater capacity, the newest technology and more choice, where conditions are diagnosed quicker or prevented altogether, thus helping people to live longer and healthier lives.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.