Health Bill

Simon Opher Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in support of the Bill, which I believe has the power to transform patient care in the NHS. Particularly after the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), the House will be aware that I also have a vested interest in this, as I have been a working GP in the NHS in Stroud for at least the last three decades. Indeed, I did a surgery last Friday, and I excitedly told the other doctors that we are going to have a single patient record. Instead of being excited, they said, “It’s about time.”

Those of us working in the NHS have been calling for a single patient record for years, so it is about time that a patient can tell their story just once, and about time a GP knows what a consultant is saying and the consultant knows what the GP is saying. It is about time that, when a patient gets admitted to A&E, the doctors know what the GP has already done, and that, when a patient gets referred to a psychiatrist, they know which antidepressants have been taken. As my hon. Friend said, patients struggle to understand how all the doctors do not know what is going on. We got rid of the fax machine in our surgery only last year, so we are fairly behind on communication, but the Bill lays the foundation for that to be remedied.

The benefits of the Bill for patients are huge—their medical knowledge at their fingertips, just as they are for clinicians and for integration. We cannot have integration without a decent single patient record. On research, our data is a national asset. I fear that a company such as Palantir owning our data is a derogation of our duty, and that we should use that data as a fantastic resource. I am also worried about Palantir’s involvement with death in Gaza and the infringement of civil liberties under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in America. Also, at the Chelsea and Westminster hospital, it seems that the benefits that Palantir said it would bring to the operating theatre were not provable. The data is owned at the moment by GPs, and if there is a spillage of data, GP practices are unlimitedly liable. We must change that; otherwise, no one will become a GP partner. We must also be careful, because excessive and over-the-top safeguarding could obstruct the single patient record, and that would harm patient care.

[Peter Prinsley]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we must have a single patient record, not simply federated records from other sources?

[Dr Opher]

I do agree, although that is a much bigger job. At the moment, mental health uses a different system from the hospital, and it would be great to unite them. I agree with that, but whether it would possible in the next couple of years, I am not so sure.

Let me quickly go on to NHS England. The administrative burden on GP surgeries from NHSE has been huge, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, and it will be fantastic to get rid of that. When GPs undergo CQC inspections we have to do pointless protocols to fulfil the criteria, and they involve weeks of work. I want to make a little bid here for a much more supportive, lighter touch approach when looking at proper data around GP surgeries, which we would not have to prepare for. That would be very popular with GPs.

I warmly welcome this Bill. It is about time we reduced the ridiculous administration around patients and allowed clinicians to properly care for patients, and it is about time we had a single patient record.