Budget Resolutions

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

I begin by addressing the British Medical Association’s reckless call for resident doctors to strike in the run-up to Christmas. That is a cynical choice, coming as flu cases surge and we enter the most dangerous time of year for hospitals, and it is completely unjustified. After a 28.9% pay rise, the Government offered to create more jobs and put money back in resident doctors’ pockets. The BMA rejected that out of hand. My door has always been open, I have never walked away from the table and I stand ready to do a deal that puts patients first. We will prepare for this round of strike action.

I am extremely proud of the hard work and performance of NHS leaders and frontline staff who did so well to minimise costs and disruption during recent rounds of strike action. In fact, during the most recent round, we were able to maintain planned elective activity to cut waiting lists at 95%. Yet I must be honest with the House and with the country: if this strike goes ahead, this time will be different. Our hospitals are running hot and the pressures are enormous. That is why I urge the BMA not to go ahead. Not only does it put the progress we are making together in the NHS at risk; it threatens to do so in the worst way and at the worst time possible.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the hard-working staff at St Thomas’ hospital across the bridge, who deal with patients from right across the country, including many who have had surgeries and operations booked for many months, still kept the show going during the last rounds of strikes? Will he please do everything in his power to make sure that the strike does not go ahead?

[Wes Streeting]

I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance, and I absolutely endorse what she says about our local hospital, which I know very well. I genuinely thank frontline NHS staff, without whom the performance and improvements we are seeing simply would not be possible.

Let me turn to the substance of this debate. There was once a time, not long ago, when this place was bound in consensus on a number of issues addressed by this Budget. We used to be united on the need for a national health service as a publicly funded, public service, free at the point of use. The last Labour Government built a shared conviction that in 21st-century Britain, no child should grow up shackled by the scourge of poverty. We could go back as far as the Government of Benjamin Disraeli and find a Conservative Prime Minister committed to public health in a way that Labour and Conservative Prime Ministers have been in my lifetime. We did not always agree on how to get there, but there was at least agreement on the destination. However, as the opposition parties lurch to the right, consensus after consensus is breaking. [Interruption.] Admittedly, the Liberal Democrats have moved further to the left since their days in coalition; that is true. Maybe do not lead with your chins on that one, comrades.

Regardless of our friends on the centre left, old battles that were won must now be fought all over again, so it falls to Labour not just to cut waiting lists, improve the health of the nation and lift children out of poverty, but to win the argument, as well as hearts and minds. It falls to Labour to persuade people that we can and must help people lead healthier, longer lives, free from preventable disease; rebuild our national health service as a public service, free at the point of need; and give every child the best possible start in life, free from the scourge of poverty. Labour has won those fights before, and we will win them again.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

The Secretary of State knows, because his Department shares responsibility for special educational needs and disabilities education, that that is a major challenge facing the young people whose opportunity he so rightly champions. How will the announcement that the Government will take responsibility for that from 2028 alleviate the growing deficits facing many county councils across this country, which it is estimated will grow to nearly £17 billion by the time the national Government take over?

[Wes Streeting]

That is a good question, and I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that my Department is working closely with the Secretary of State for Education and colleagues right across Government to make sure that we get that right. We have growing levels of need for provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities. We can all see in our casework, let alone through debates in the House, the unmet need, and its impact on children’s education, health and life chances. We are committed to modernising and reforming the system so that it meets needs and sets children up to not only survive but thrive. That is the ambition of this Government.

On Sunday, the Leader of the Opposition said that she would reinstate the two-child benefit limit. At the stroke of a pen, she would plunge half a million children back into destitution, shame and hunger. Gone are the days when David Cameron attempted to ape Gordon Brown on issues of inequality and poverty; in fact, the 2010 Conservative party manifesto included the word “poverty” 20 times and committed to an anti-poverty strategy. The 2024 Conservative manifesto mentioned the word once, in a chapter on foreign affairs. Was that because, after 14 years of Conservative rule, the stain of child poverty had been removed from our nation? No, of course it was not. The Conservatives plunged 900,000 children into poverty, more than a million children relied on food banks last year, and children are being admitted to hospital for malnutrition in 21st-century Britain—but now, this Conservative party does not even pretend to care.

On public health, remember it was George Osborne who introduced the sugar tax, and Boris Johnson who introduced legislation to ban certain “buy one, get one free” deals and free refills of fizzy drinks, yet today their successors dismiss these policies as nanny state. Their party is more apologetic about their record on public health than it is about Liz Truss’s catastrophic mini-Budget.

We are seeing the NHS’s founding principles contested for the first time in generations. The Leader of the Opposition says,

“we need to have a serious, cross-party national conversation”

about charging for healthcare. Well, if she wants one, she’s got it, and it will be a short conversation. The answer from this side is “No, over our dead body.” We will always defend the NHS as a publicly funded public service, free at the point of use, owned by us, and there for all of us. Of course, it is not just the Leader of the Opposition saying these things; the leader of Reform wants to replace the NHS with an insurance-style system. [Hon. Members: “Where are they?”] They are obviously not here to advocate for their policies. They find it increasingly hard to defend them. They want a system that checks your pockets before your pulse, and asks for your credit card before providing your care.

Where is the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage)? He is not normally the shy, retiring type—unless, of course, he is being asked challenging questions, like whether paracetamol is safe, whether he believes in science or whether he racially abused schoolchildren. In fact, it is reported that he told a Jewish contemporary at school that “Hitler was right”. Admittedly, he was at school a lot longer ago than me, but had I grown up in the aftermath of the second world war, I think I would remember if I had supported the losing side. His politics are a disgrace. He cannot stand by his record, and that is why he is not here to defend it, and why he is regularly referred to in his constituency as “Never-here Nigel”. But as we are in a debate on these issues, let me take on the Opposition parties’ arguments, whether they are here or not.

The Conservatives say that the route out of poverty is work, not welfare. I do not disagree that those who can work should work, but six in 10 households impacted by the two-child limit have at least one parent in work, and they are still in poverty because of low wages and a high cost of living. The Conservatives say that it is the responsibility of families, not the state, to ensure that children are well fed. I agree that parents have a responsibility to look after their own children, but life is a bit more complicated than that. It is far too easy for others who have never walked in the shoes of parents like mine to pass judgment on people whose lives they will never understand.

The Conservatives sneer about “Benefits Street”. They have never been there. They have not got the first clue what life is like for people living on welfare. They say that lifting the two-child limit helps only the feckless and irresponsible, so let me tell them about the mum who came to see me at my advice surgery one Friday afternoon with her three children in tow. She had fled domestic violence and had been rehoused on the other side of London in a bed and breakfast. That remarkable woman was hand-washing her girls’ uniforms, doing a three-hour round trip every day to get her kids to school and holding down three separate jobs. Please do not tell me that women like her are feckless or irresponsible, or on the take. She is facing down hardships and challenges that would break many of us. I will tell Conservative Members who is feckless and irresponsible. It is the people who exploited the covid pandemic, ripped off Britain and lined the pockets of the Conservative party.

Conservative Members say that abolishing the two-child limit is not affordable, but the policy is fully funded. It is paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion, and a tax on online gambling. What they really mean is that they would make different choices. They would put the interests of gambling firms over the wellbeing of children. By labelling it as unaffordable, they betray their view that the prosperity of our country has nothing to do with the talent of its people, but we know that by investing in our people, we are investing in a more prosperous future. Growing up in poverty is not an inconvenience; it is a trap. On average, the poorest children start school already behind, get worse exam results, are less likely to make it to university, earn less, are more likely to develop long-term illness, end up paying less tax, and are more likely to need welfare support and the NHS.

Investing in our children is a moral mission; morally, we do not believe it is right to punish children for the circumstances of their birth, or the choices of their parents. This is also a down payment on a better future. It is far better and more cost-effective to invest in children now than pay the price for social failure later. I stand here today as the product of the wise investment of the British taxpayer. It was taxpayers’ contributions that clothed me, housed me, fed me and educated me when I was growing up. As a result, I am now in a position to pay back that debt to society—and to pay it forward to the next generation, too.

We should all be proud that this Budget funds the biggest reduction of child poverty of any Budget this century. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor takes that prize from Gordon Brown, who took it from Denis Healey, because lifting children out of poverty is what Labour Governments do. And why is it that every time Labour enters office, there is the moral emergency of child poverty? It is because, since records began, every single Tory Government left child poverty higher than they found it. That is why they must never be allowed back in power.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Wes Streeting]

Gladly. Please do defend keeping children in poverty.

[Paul Holmes]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for intervening, but this is my intervention, not his. Why was he part of a Cabinet that stood by and punished his colleagues for voting against the two-child benefit cap? Why do we now see this sudden conversion and revisionism? Why does he think that most people in this country who were polled are against the removal of the child benefit cap?

[Wes Streeting]

Let me say two things in response. I am almost certain that my hon. Friends will be delighted that he has intervened in defence of their plight at the hands of the Labour Whips, but he knows as well as I do that the Whip was removed from some of my hon. Friends not because of the substance of the issue they were raising but because we never, ever accept people voting against a King’s or Queen’s Speech. [Interruption.] That was the issue. He asked me a fair question, and he has got an honest answer. He should take it on the chin.

The hon. Member also asked why many people in our country believe that the two-child cap was right. It is because our Conservative predecessors peddled the myth and the lie that people in receipt of welfare are on the take, and are just looking for handouts, rather than help. We Labour Members take a different view; we recognise, as I have set out, that so many people affected by the two-child cap are in work and in poverty. That is one of the many scandals of the damage that more than a decade of Conservative rule did. The Conservatives broke the link between a hard day’s work and a fair day’s pay. In addition to the measures that we are taking on child poverty to remove the two-child limit, we are also increasing the national minimum wage. We are increasing it even higher for young people. We are doing this because this is the party of work, the party that wants to make work pay, and the party that is genuinely committed to waging war on poverty.

Just as we must win the argument for lifting children out of poverty, we must win the argument for the founding principles of our NHS. Having left the NHS in the worst crisis in its history, the right now argues that it is unaffordable and should be abandoned. The NHS was broken, but it is not beaten, and Labour is already breathing new life into our health service. Waiting lists are falling for the first time in 15 years. Ambulances are arriving 10 minutes faster in stroke, sepsis and heart attack cases.

Patient satisfaction with GPs is up from 60% to 74%, and nearly 200,000 more patients were given a cancer diagnosis or the all-clear on time.

With Labour, the NHS is on the road to recovery. That is in no small part because the Chancellor is reversing 14 years of austerity and investing in our NHS. We promised an extra 2 million appointments; we have delivered 5 million. We promised to recruit an extra 1,000 GPs; we have recruited 2,500. We promised to end the 8 am scramble; we have widened the window that patients have to request appointments and have made booking available online. A lot done and a lot more to do.

At this Budget, we announced the next steps on the road to recovery: 250 new neighbourhood health centres with the first ones in Birmingham, Barrow, Truro and Southall, and £300 million more to invest in technology to modernise healthcare. Next year, we will receive recommendations from Baroness Casey on laying the foundations to build a national care service.

The NHS does not just face an existential political challenge from the Conservatives and Reform UK; it faces a sustainability challenge.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

I appreciate the announcement about the 250 new neighbourhood health centres, but I am concerned for my constituency—a more affluent constituency that has health centres that were built in the ’60s. They are genuinely falling apart and need significant investment to ensure that GPs can continue to deliver outstanding service to my constituents. Could the Secretary of State provide some reassurance, or agree to meet me to discuss how we can ensure that deprivation is not the only aspect considered in that excellent initiative?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, we want to ensure that investment is deprivation linked. We want to reverse the damage the Conservatives did when they pursued what I would characterise as the Royal Tunbridge Wells strategy, when our former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), declared with pride to Conservative party activists that he had taken funding from the poorest communities in the country and funnelled it to the richest. There could be no shorter or clearer exposition of Conservative party values and politics in action than that claim.

To my hon. Friend’s point, he is absolutely right that within many affluent communities there are also pockets of deprivation, and we have to ensure that the NHS is there for everyone in every part of the country. We are dealing with enormous undercapitalisation in the NHS, totalling some £37 billion as identified by the noble Lord Darzi. It will take time to address that challenge, but I think my hon. Friend’s constituents know from his assiduous hard work and visible campaigning as a constituency MP that he will ensure that their needs and interests are not forgotten or overlooked by this Government.

Of course, as we improve the health of our health service, we also need to address the health of our nation. Children in England face some of the poorest health outcomes in Europe. Obesity in four and five-year-olds is reaching record levels—a health time bomb that leaves them at greater risk from cancer and heart disease later in life. What kind of start in life are we giving our children, and if we allow it to continue, what kind of future are we leaving to them? Our children will lead shorter, less healthy lives; our NHS will buckle under a tidal wave of chronic conditions; and our economy will suffer because businesses will be denied the potential of the next generation.

This Labour Government are tackling the sickness in our society. Whether it is the extension of the soft drinks industry levy, free school meals, a warm home discount that reaches millions more, the generational ban on smoking, Awaab’s law, cutting pollution and cleaning up the air that our children breathe, we are combating the drivers of ill health in children’s lives: poor diets, damp homes, dirty air and a lack of opportunity. In short, we are tackling poverty, because every child deserves a healthy start in life, and prevention is better than cure.

The leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Clacton, says we should instead be educating people to make healthier choices—I assume that he will not be leading from the front on that campaign. But we know that Reform and the Conservatives oppose our agenda to improve public health. They oppose our investment in the NHS. They should just be honest and admit that they now oppose the NHS itself. [Interruption.] Conservative Members do not like it, but I challenge them to dispute a single claim I just read. Let me repeat the charge sheet for their benefit: they oppose our investment in the NHS. Have they not opposed every budget spending review since Labour came to office? [Interruption.] Honestly, from a sedentary position, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood), who does not want to intervene because I think he knows he is leading with his chin on this, wants to suggest that somehow the Conservative party left a legacy that they could be proud of. They inherited the shortest waiting times and the highest patient satisfaction in history. They left us the longest waiting lists and lowest patient satisfaction on record. No wonder so few of them have turned up to defend that shoddy record.

The Conservatives oppose our public health agenda, do they not? I thought this was an area where we had built consensus, but not under their present leadership. I have already quoted what their leader, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), has said. Maybe they were not listening—the country certainly is not. I would have thought, though, that their own side would at least listen to what she said. She says she wants a debate about charging for healthcare. I do not know whether they have heard that or whether they stand by it. Maybe we could just see a simple show of hands—how many of her own side want to see charging for healthcare in the NHS? Not a single hand has gone up. That does not bode well for the future of the Leader of the Opposition, but let’s leave the Conservative party to revel in its irrelevance.

In fact, I was probably one of the few people who paid any attention to what the shadow Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew), said at the Conservative party conference. I noticed that he did not mention a single policy. I say to the Conservatives: if we are doing such a bad job, why would they not do anything differently? Would they cut the £26 billion this Labour Government are investing in the NHS, and if not, if they oppose this Budget, how would they pay for it? The Conservatives seem to think that the British people are so stupid that they will forget which party wrecked the NHS and led it to the worst crisis in its history.

To conclude, this is a Government who are cutting waiting lists, giving children a healthier start in life and lifting 500,000 children out of poverty. In doing so, we are restating the case for universal healthcare that is publicly owned, publicly funded and free at the point of use. We are showing that progress is possible after 14 years of decline, that things can get better. Abolishing the two-child limit is not a handout, it is a hand up. Our country cannot prosper while 6 million people languish on waiting lists, 4.5 million children grow up in poverty and 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training. But if we protect people’s health, give them the opportunities to put their talents to use and give them a strong foundation, they will build a good life for themselves and a better Britain for all, and we can fulfil the lost promise that tomorrow will be better than today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I remind all Members that the courtesies of this House require Members to inform other Members if they intend to name them in the Chamber.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

Well, we did not spend tens of billions of pounds in pay rises just for the same old problem to come back. There should have been proper reform, and conditions for those pay rises, but the Government did not make that happen, and here we are again.

The NHS Confederation has also warned that local services cannot continue to absorb the costs of ongoing strikes by the BMA without consequences for patient care. I pay tribute to frontline staff, who have been trying to keep everything going. I remind the Secretary of State that we have the answer: ban doctors from striking, like the Army and the police, and introduce minimum service levels, using the legislation that our Government passed. That would protect patients and taxpayers, so why won’t he do it? Labour’s Employment Rights Bill will make things much worse, because it reduces the vote threshold for calling a strike, and there will be no minimal service levels.

In addition, the Government have shown that they cannot stand up to the unions. By pushing up inflation, the Budget will make it harder to reach pay settlements across the rest of the NHS workforce. Even an additional rise in NHS pay of just 1% of what the Secretary of State included in his pay review body evidence would create another £1.5 billion hole in his budget. Is he confident that he can head off wider industrial action with a 2.5% offer, especially given that benefits are rising much faster under this Government?

The OBR has also raised the unknown risk of increasing drug prices. My understanding is that the spending review assumed that spending on branded medicines would rise by 25%—or £3.3 billion—between 2025-26 and 2028-29. In winding up, will the Minister clarify what happens when the negotiated price costs more than what was assumed in the spending review? The rest of the money is surely intended to be used to deliver more care and to cut waiting lists, so are frontline services at risk?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the shadow Health Secretary for giving way. We should be clear that the deal struck with the United States is the first and only deal with the United States that secures 0% tariffs and mitigations against most-favoured-nation pricing. It will ensure that patients get access to good drugs. For the avoidance of doubt, although some costs are unpredictable because of the complexity of medicine pricing, of course we will not cut NHS budgets to fund the pharma deal.

[Stuart Andrew]

We will see what happens. It would be interesting to know exactly where the money will come from. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State just said that if the prices go up, there will be no cuts to the NHS budget, but where will the money come from? Which other part of the national health service and social care will the money come from? We will have to wait and see.

The Budget last week made no mention of social care. After all, Labour’s only plan is to delay coming up with a plan for a few more years, despite the urgency and the scale of the challenge. Many of us entered the cross-party talks in really good faith, and they were encouraging, but we have only met once. Surely we should be getting on with it. The message was loud and clear that we want to work together, but we want to get on with it. Please can we have another meeting, so that we can get on with tackling this really important issue?

It is not quite true to say that social care is unaffected by what was announced. The increase in the national living wage will be welcomed by those on the lowest incomes, but the Nuffield Trust estimates that it will cost the social care sector £1.2 billion. The sector is already struggling with last year’s national insurance contributions hike, so who will pay for this? Will there be funding cuts to other parts of the health budget? Will self-funders have to fork out yet more again, or will it be passed on to local authorities, inevitably leading to council tax rises? What impact will this national living wage increase have on wider pay in the sector?

--- Later in debate ---

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 342) with explanatory notes (Bill 342-EN).

[Wes Streeting]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have to confess a sin. Earlier today, in the debate on the Budget, I referenced the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) and did not notify him in advance. This was particularly egregious because I was not very nice about him. With that in mind, and out of respect for the customs and conventions of this House, I would like to apologise to the hon. Member and put this note on the record. I have, of course, written to him in similar terms.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for giving me advance notice of his putting this point on the record. I am not sure that it is a sin, or whether he will be absolved of it, but it has been noted.