NHS: Winter Preparedness

Debate between Vikki Slade and Wes Streeting

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

Through my hon. Friend I thank staff at Milton Keynes hospital for all their hard work—I have had the privilege of visiting recently—and I thank all NHS staff for what they are doing throughout this week and throughout a very challenging winter. We know that staff are working under pressure and that their pay, terms and conditions need to improve. Most importantly, we know that conditions for patients need to improve, and we are far better able to do that if we work together, and if the BMA is more reasonable not just about the scale of the asks, but about the pace with which it is demanding change, recognising our responsibility to all staff, not just doctors, and crucially to patients.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

More than 34,000 residents of Dorset are over the age of 80 and therefore excluded from the RSV vaccine. They have been told that it is too dangerous for them to take, but they are now extremely worried because cases are going up. Will the Secretary of State sit back round with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and review the decision to exclude them, so that residents such as Joan in Wimborne, who has to care for her even older and more disabled husband, can get reassurance this winter that she can protect herself and him?

[Wes Streeting]

I am not a clinician or a scientist, but the JCVI is full of them and we follow its expert advice. It will, in the normal way, review how this winter has gone and look ahead to future pressures, but it is important that we are guided by the evidence, whatever the political pressure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vikki Slade and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Last month I began to receive concerning emails from employees of the NHS trusts in my constituency, saying that the trusts were seeking to create a subsidiary company and move staff into it. They are really worried about their future rights. I know how important it is to the Secretary of State that people have good employment rights. What steps is he taking to ensure that there is full consultation with staff before the creation of subsidiaries, and to prevent the creation of two-tier employment practices in the NHS with no continuity of service?

[Wes Streeting]

While I understand the desirability of such arrangements for NHS trusts, this Government are absolutely clear that staff must be in receipt of good NHS terms and conditions, and must feel part of the NHS workforce and the NHS family. I would be happy to receive further representations from the hon. Lady.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vikki Slade and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

T10. Some 44,066 children—one in six—are waiting more than a year for medical treatment, compared with one in 100 adults. Waits are at their worst in community medicine. In Dorset, there are waits of up to two years in child development, and delays of a year are normal for child and adolescent mental health services. Fifty-three per cent of all community health referrals take more than a year. Will the Minister confirm whether the 18-week target will apply to community referrals and not just hospitals? If not, when can we expect a target, so that children are not badly affected?

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to put the spotlight on paediatric health. Mental health is important for children and young people, but physical health is too. This Government are committed to dramatically reducing waiting lists and returning to the 18-week standard by the end of this Parliament, but we should aim to go even harder after those childhood waiting lists, because many children waiting in pain and agony are losing valuable years of their childhood that they will never get back.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Vikki Slade and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm what is being done to ensure that patients with rare and complex conditions, such as functional neurologic disorder and achalasia, can access consistent and co-ordinated care, including referrals to the multidisciplinary teams they need for the different symptoms they experience?

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Member is right to raise cases where there are multiple comorbidities or complex conditions requiring a range of care services. That is why we need to design services around the patient, not expect patients to contort themselves around the services. Our approach to neighbourhood health services should make a real difference in that regard, but we have to go further and faster on health and care integration, and we absolutely will.

Puberty-suppressing Hormones

Debate between Vikki Slade and Wes Streeting

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

As the report into the failures of the Tavistock clinic shows, a whole range of individuals and organisations did not discharge their duty of care appropriately to an extremely vulnerable group of children and young people. I pay tribute to the whistleblowers of the Tavistock and Portman who laid their careers on the line. They were subjected to the worst kinds of attempts to silence whistleblowers, and in some cases to bully them out of the organisation or vilify them. That was not only a disgraceful way to treat good colleagues who were raising legitimate concerns in the right way, but ironically—I have no doubt that many of the people behaving in that way did so with the best of intentions towards that vulnerable group of children and young people—they set back the national conversation about that group of children and young people and undermined confidence in gender identity services. That cannot be a good thing.

I also pay tribute to those journalists who were willing to report on this issue. I pay particular tribute to Hannah Barnes, whose “Newsnight” investigation took some of these issues to a wider audience, and whose journalism on broadcast media and in print showed how we can expose failure, and expose the risks to a wide range of children, young people and adults, in a thoughtful, evidence-based way.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman talked about the treatment of other people who have raised concerns in a wide range of contexts in this debate. He mentions Kathleen Stock, and there are others, too. I do not think that has been helpful; in fact, I think it has been actively harmful to having the kind of national conversation we should have more broadly about gender identity and how some women fear their sex-based rights are at risk. If we were able to navigate those issues in a much more thoughtful, considered way, listening to different perspectives and experiences, I feel confident that, despite all the challenges, as a society we could find a way through that not everyone loves, but everyone can live with. We have done that before on same-sex marriage, on sexual orientation and religious freedoms, for example. It is possible, if we are willing to listen, to engage in good faith and to not shout down people raising heartfelt concerns. Perhaps if we engaged in the conversation in a much better way, we would find a better way through as a country.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

While I am deeply disappointed, on behalf of our trans children, by the Secretary of State’s statement, I thank him for speaking directly to those children. I know that they will appreciate his sentiments. Trans young people in Mid Dorset and North Poole already rely increasingly heavily on their GPs, their schools and CAMHS, with many leaving education entirely, doing serious harm to themselves and losing their lives while on the waiting list.

The former director of Tavistock told me that no data was collected on incidents of assisted suicide and deaths of children who were on the waiting list. Data was collected only of children and young people who had already started treatment. As a result, we have no information about the harms that young people and their families are going through in those years leading up to treatment.

What assurance can the Secretary of State give me that those already under the care of CAMHS and paediatricians will be treated urgently? Can he update me on progress on how long those already on the list might expect to wait? Will he commit to collecting data from families on the waiting list, so that we can truly understand their experiences?