NHS Funding: South-west

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. Given how many people wish to speak, we will start with a two and a half minute limit.

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[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) on the debate. I will try, in my remaining two minutes, to cover four subjects very quickly. The first is about the fair funding question or whether the funding to an area is sufficient. The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) rightly referred to the seasonality of the pressures and the rural nature of the geography, but in Cornwall there is also the issue of the peninsularity of the geography. People cannot call on an emergency service to the north, south or west in a place such as Cornwall and therefore we need to make provision for services so that they can cover all eventualities. Also, this year, during the settlement process, people are talking about cost improvements within the ICB spending programme over the future year. In Cornwall, it is a cost improvement—the rest of us might describe it as a cut in services—of £108 million, which is about 7% of the budget overall. That will create tremendous pressure in areas such as ours.

The second issue is value for money estimates. I visited a brilliant project very recently: the Helston Gateway project, which has created a new GP surgery across 20 consultation rooms, and achieved that on the basis of a building cost of just £1,400 a square metre, which is half the cost that people would get if they went to private sector contractors doing it through NHS development programmes and certainly significantly less than in the private finance initiative programmes of the past. I strongly urge Ministers to look at such brilliant initiatives as a brilliant way to provide services.

The third issue is stopping private sector organisations cherry-picking the profitable parts of the NHS and therefore undermining acute sector trusts. Finally, I would welcome clarity as to why the acute trust in Cornwall is not having its debt written off, unlike other provider trusts and ICBs.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

The aim is to take the three Front Benchers from 5.09 pm, which means that the time limit is dropping down to two minutes each.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. I think that someone will probably end up falling off the call list; there are people standing to speak who were not on the list and who were not standing at the beginning of the debate. Let us see how we go.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. I am afraid that we will now move on to the Front Benchers, starting with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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[Alison Bennett]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. It is vital that when we look at per head of population funding, we think about the different factors that actually drive up the true cost of delivering healthcare across the country, which obviously varies by region.

On ICBs, I will press the Minister on three points. First, on the timescale for cuts to be delivered by ICBs, they have to be completed by the end of 2025. The Sussex ICB had about three weeks to make that initial submission to the Department. Does the Minister think that those timescales are realistic and achievable? Secondly, what will the cost of the redundancies be for ICBs? Has that calculation been done? For Sussex, we are looking at more than half the workforce losing their jobs. Thirdly, what is the impact assessment for patients and the service that they will receive as a result of cuts to ICBs?

For too long, social care has been treated like the back door of our public services. It has been overlooked, underfunded and taken for granted. That must change. That is why we must once again ask for more urgency on social care reform. I believe that personal care should be free at the point of use, just like the NHS—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. I call the shadow Minister.