The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on a
new, ambitious elective recovery plan—the NHS’s delivery plan for
tackling the covid-19 backlog of elective care. The NHS has
responded with distinction during the country’s fight against the
virus, caring for over 700,000 people with covid-19 in hospital in
the UK and delivering a vaccination programme that is helping this
country to...Request free trial
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care ()
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on
a new, ambitious elective recovery plan—the NHS’s delivery plan
for tackling the covid-19 backlog of elective care.
The NHS has responded with distinction during the country’s fight
against the virus, caring for over 700,000 people with covid-19
in hospital in the UK and delivering a vaccination programme that
is helping this country to learn to live with the virus, while at
the same time doing so much to keep non-covid care going.
Nobody—no institution—felt the burden of the pandemic more than
the NHS. There have been 17 million cases of covid-19 and the NHS
has had to respond to the original variant, the alpha wave, the
delta wave and, most recently, of course, the omicron wave.
Despite these pressures, we had one of the fastest vaccination
programmes in the world, including one of the fastest booster
programmes in the world.
Sadly, as a result of focusing on urgent care, the NHS could not
deal with non-urgent care as much as anyone would have liked. The
British people have of course understood this. Despite those
exceptional efforts, there is now a considerable covid backlog of
elective care. About 1,600 people waited longer than a year for
care before the pandemic. The latest data shows that this figure
is now over 300,000. On top of this, the number of people waiting
for elective care in England now stands at 6 million, up from 4.4
million before the pandemic. Sadly, that number will continue
rising before it falls.
A lot of people understandably stayed away from the NHS during
the heights of the pandemic, and the most up-to-date estimate
from the NHS is that that number is around 10 million. But I want
these people to know that the NHS is open and, as Health
Secretary, I want them to come forward for the care they need. We
do not know how many will now come forward—we do not know whether
it will be 30% or 80%—because no country has faced a situation
like this ever before. So in developing this plan, the NHS has
had to make a number of assumptions. Even if half of these people
come forward, this is going to place huge demand on the NHS, and
we are pulling out all the stops so that the NHS is there for
them when they do. We have already announced that we are backing
the NHS with an extra £2 billion of funding for elective recovery
this year and £8 billion on top of that over the next three
years. In addition, we are putting almost an additional £6
billion towards capital investment for new beds, equipment and
technology.
Today we are announcing the next steps, showing how we will help
this country’s health and care system to recover from the
disruption of the pandemic but also how we will make reforms that
are so important for the long-term future. That will allow the
NHS to perform at least 9 million extra tests, checks and
procedures by 2025 and around 30% more elective activity each
year in three years’ time than it was doing before the pandemic.
This bold and radical vision has been developed with expert input
from clinical leaders and patient groups. It will not just reset
the NHS to where it was before covid but build on what we have
learned over the past two years to transform elective services
and make sure that they are fit for the future.
This plan focuses on four key areas. The first is how we will
increase capacity. On top of enormous levels of investment, we
are doing everything in our power to make sure that we have even
more clinicians on the frontline. We now have more doctors and
nurses working in the NHS than ever before. We have a record
number of students at medical school and a record number of
students applying to train as nurses. The plan sets out what more
we will be doing, including more healthcare support workers and
the recruitment and deployment of NHS reservists. We will also be
making greater use of the independent sector, which formed an
important part of our contingency plans for covid-19, so that we
can help patients to access the services they need at this time
of high demand.
Secondly, as we look at the backlog, we will not just strive to
get numbers down but prioritise by clinical need and reduce the
very longest waiting lists. Assuming that half the missing demand
from the pandemic returns over the next three years, the NHS
expects the waiting list to be reducing by March 2024. Addressing
long waits is critical to the recovery of elective care, and we
will be actively offering longer-waiting patients greater choice
about their care to help to bring down these numbers.
The plan sets the ambition of eliminating waits of longer than a
year for elective care by March 2025. Within this, no one will
wait longer than two years by July 2022, and the NHS aims to
eliminate waits of over 18 months by April 2023 and of over 65
weeks by March 2024, which equates to 99% of patients waiting
less than a year.
I have heard the concerns that have rightly been raised,
including by many hon. Members, about the pandemic’s impact on
cancer care. On Friday, World Cancer Day, I launched a call for
evidence that will drive a new 10-year cancer plan for England, a
vision for how we can lead the world in cancer care. This
elective recovery plan, too, places a big focus on restoring
cancer services.
The NHS has done sterling work to prioritise cancer treatment
throughout the pandemic, and we have consistently seen record
levels of referrals since March 2021, but waiting times have gone
up and fewer people came forward with cancer symptoms during the
pandemic. The plan shows how we will intensify our campaigns to
encourage more people to come forward, focusing on areas where
referrals have been slowest to recover such as lung cancer and
prostate cancer. It also sets out some stretching ambitions for
how we will recover and improve performance in cancer care:
returning the number of people waiting more than 62 days
following an urgent referral to pre-pandemic levels by March
2023; and ensuring that 75% of patients who have been urgently
referred by their GP for suspected cancer are diagnosed or have
cancer ruled out within 28 days by March 2024.
I am determined that we tackle the disparities that exist in this
backlog, just as I am determined to tackle disparities of any
kind across this country. Analysis from the King’s Fund shows
that, on average, a person is almost twice as likely to
experience a wait of over a year if they live in a deprived area.
As part of our recovery work, we are tasking the NHS with
analysing its waiting list data according to factors such as age,
deprivation and ethnicity to help to drive detailed plans to
tackle these disparities.
Thirdly, this new chapter for the NHS provides an opportunity to
radically rethink and redesign how services are delivered, to
bust the backlog and to deliver more flexible, personalised care
for patients. The pandemic has shown beyond doubt the importance
of diagnostics. Although over 96% of people needing a diagnostic
test received it within six weeks prior to the pandemic, the
latest data shows that has fallen to 75%. Our aim is to get back
to 95% by March 2025.
A major part of this will be expanding the use of community
diagnostic centres, which have already had a huge impact. These
one-stop shops for checks, scans and tests help people to get a
quicker diagnosis and, therefore, the treatment they need much
earlier. Sixty-nine community diagnostic centres are already up
and running, and the plan shows our intention to have at least
100 in local communities and on high streets over the next three
years.
We will also keep expanding the use of surgical hubs, which will
be dedicated to planned, elective surgeries. They will allow us
to do more surgeries in a single day than can be carried out in
out-patient settings, so that we can fast-track operations and
ensure that patients are more likely to go home on the same day.
We have already been piloting these hubs, and we will now be
rolling them out across the country.
Finally, we will improve the information and support for
patients. I know the anxiety that patients feel when they are
waiting for care, especially if they feel that they do not have
certainty about where they sit in the queue, and I am determined
to ensure that, as we enter this next phase, we will be open and
transparent with patients. We will be launching a new online
platform called My Planned Care, which will go live this month,
offering patients and their carers tailored information ahead of
their planned surgery. They will be able to see waiting times for
their provider, so they can better understand their expected
wait. A third of on-the-day cancellations are due to people not
being clinically ready for treatment, and the new platform will
also be able to link patients to the most appropriate
personalised support before their surgery. This shows the
approach that we will be taking in the years ahead, putting
patients at the heart of their care and giving the support that
they need to make informed decisions. We will also put in place a
payment system that incentivises strong performance and delivers
value for money for the public.
Just as we came together to fight this virus, now we must come
together on a new national mission to fight what the virus has
brought with it. That will mean waiting lists falling by March
2024, strong action to reduce long waiting times, and stretching
targets for early diagnosis and for cancer care. This vital
document shows how we will not just recover, but reform and make
sure that the NHS is there for all of us, no matter what lies
ahead. I commend my statement to the House.
12.46pm
(Ilford North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his
statement, but it falls seriously short of the scale of the
challenge facing the NHS and the misery that is affecting
millions of people stuck on record high NHS waiting lists. We
have been waiting some time for his plan to tackle NHS waiting
times. We were told that it would arrive before Christmas; we
were told that it would arrive yesterday; and it is not clear
from his statement today that the delay was worth the wait. There
is no plan to tackle the workforce crisis, no plan to deal with
delayed discharges, and no hope of eliminating waits of more than
a year before the general election in 2024. I wonder whether the
Conservatives will be putting that on their election leaflets.
The only big new idea seems to be a website that tells people
that they are waiting for a long time, as if they did not already
know.
Perhaps the Secretary of State can tell us whether the plan
itself contains two other measures that have been floated in the
press: the cancellation of patients’ follow-up appointments,
whether they need them or not, and an offer enabling people to
seize the opportunity to travel hundreds of miles around the
country, if they can find a hospital in England that does not
already have a waiting list crisis of its own. What we did hear
was a series of reannouncements, including some perfectly
sensible proposals for community diagnostic and surgical hubs. We
welcome those, but the Secretary of State cannot pretend that
they meet the scale of the challenge.
The Secretary of State reaffirmed the Prime Minister’s
commitments on cancer, announced only yesterday. He announced a
new target that no one should wait more than two months for
cancer diagnosis, but there is already a target for the vast
majority of cancer patients to be treated within two months of
referral. Can he tell us which target he is aiming to meet? Is it
the target that has not been hit since 2015, or the target
announced yesterday, which seems to lower standards for patients
because the Government consistently fail to meet them? The Prime
Minister has also announced that three out of four patients
should receive a cancer diagnosis within 28 days, but that is an
existing target which was introduced in April and has never been
met, and nothing that the Secretary of State has announced today
gives me any confidence that it will be met in the future. Given
that half a million patients with suspected cancer are not being
seen in time, it seems that the Secretary of State declared a war
on cancer after more than a decade of disarming the NHS, and is
now sending the NHS into battle empty-handed.
Indeed, it is hard to believe that this is the announcement that
the Secretary of State wanted to make. One Government official
briefed Robert Peston that the plan was being blocked by the
Chancellor, who is, “reluctant to rescue the Prime Minister”.
Putting to one side the appalling spectacle of the Tory
leadership crisis impacting on life and death decision making in
Government, it seems from the statement that the Chancellor has
won the day. What other explanation can there be for a plan to
recover the NHS and bring down waiting lists that does not
contain a workforce plan? The single biggest challenge facing the
NHS is the workforce challenge. There are 93,000 staffing
vacancies in the NHS today. The NHS is understaffed, overworked
and, if the Secretary of State is not careful, he will lose more
people than he is able to recruit. This is not a new development,
and it should not be news to him.
In April, the NHS called for a national workforce plan. Polling
from the Health Foundation found that the public want more staff
with fewer workload pressures. The Secretary of State himself
told the Health and Social Care Committee in November that his
plan would include a strategy for the workforce crisis. We know
the NHS wants a workforce plan and the public want a workforce
plan. He promised a workforce plan, so where is it? There is not
even a budget for Health Education England let alone a serious
plan to recruit and retain the workforce that we need. Instead,
he is proposing new NHS reservists. Who are they? Where are they
coming from? How many does he imagine there will be? How does he
imagine that they will make a dent in the 93,000 vacancies? It
seems more “Dad’s Army” than SAS.
Then there is the issue of wider NHS and social care pressures
that impact directly on waiting lists and waiting times: the
pressures on GP practices that see people ringing the surgery at
the crack of dawn in the hope of getting through before the
appointments have gone; the pressures on social care that lead to
delayed discharges from hospital, as we saw in more than 400,000
cases in November alone; and the missed opportunities and the
wasted money that comes from a failure to invest in community
services that lead to people turning up at A&E at greater
cost to patient health and at greater cost to the taxpayer.
This plan falls well short of the challenge facing our country.
Six million people are waiting for care. Cancer care is in
crisis, with half a million patients with suspected cancer not
seen in time. Heart and stroke victims are waiting more than two
hours for an ambulance when every minute matters. It is clear
from what the Secretary of State said today, from what his
colleague, the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood
(), said yesterday, and no doubt
what will be heard repeated in the Tory scripts in the days and
weeks to come, that the Conservatives are hoping to blame the
state of NHS waiting lists on the pandemic—the “covid waiting
lists”, they called them. But this is not a covid backlog; it is
a Tory backlog. After a decade of Tory mismanagement, the NHS
had: record waiting lists of 4.5 million before the pandemic;
staff shortages of 100,000 before the pandemic; 17,000 fewer beds
before the pandemic; and 112,000 vacancies in social care before
the pandemic.
In conclusion, it is not just that the Government did not fix the
roof while the sun was shining, they dismantled the roof and
removed the floorboards. With the ceiling of their ambition that
the Secretary of State outlined today being to go back to where
we were before the pandemic, it is now clear that the longer that
we give the Conservatives in office, the longer patients will
wait.
I am surprised with the argument and the tone of the hon.
Gentleman. It is 2022, not 2024. We have all come to expect the
scaremongering that we have just heard from the Labour Benches at
election time—that has happened in every election campaign since
the war—but what I did not expect is this scaremongering from the
hon. Gentleman on the plans to recover in the wake of a deadly
pandemic.
I am astonished and disappointed that the hon. Gentleman is
willing to stand there and claim that there is no covid backlog.
[Interruption.] That is what he just said. He just said that
there is no covid backlog. He is well aware that this country has
just gone through its biggest health challenge in history. He is
also well aware that there has been a national mission across the
NHS to deal with that challenge and to recover from it. I paid
tribute to the hon. Gentleman just last week in this
House—perhaps I was just a bit too early—when he rightly
supported the nation’s vaccination programme, because he
understood just how important it was. Perhaps some of his Back
Benchers have now got to him, so instead of standing up for the
British people, he is just thinking about his own leadership
prospects in his party—perhaps that is what is actually going
on.
Today, instead of doing the right thing and backing the
NHS—backing the hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses and
everyone working heroically across the NHS—the hon. Gentleman
decided to play party politics. A moment ago, he heard me talk
about the 10 million people who the NHS estimates have stayed
away from the NHS and who need reassurance from both sides of the
House about what the NHS is doing. He should reconsider his
approach and work together in the national interest.
(Telford) (Con)
I welcome the statement and I am grateful to the Secretary of
State for setting out a covid recovery plan to tackle the
challenges that lie ahead. Every single Member of the House
should support him in that endeavour. I ask him, however, how he
will tackle the staffing crisis.
I thank my hon. Friend for her support. Over the past two years,
the number of clinicians in the NHS has risen by about 40,000. In
the past year, we have 10,000 more nurses, 5,000 more doctors and
more people in medical school than ever before, so a huge amount
of record investment is going into the workforce. Recently, I
also asked the NHS to put together a long-term 10-year-plus
workforce strategy and I look forward to receiving it.
(Worsley and Eccles South)
(Lab)
The elective care backlog is not the only crisis facing the NHS.
Covid has affected the care being delivered by mental health
services, primary care, emergency care, community care and social
care. In the Health and Social Care Committee’s recent report on
tackling the NHS backlog, we recommended that a broader national
health and care recovery plan be published to set out a clear
vision for how patient care will be improved. Will the Secretary
of State confirm that that will be published before April, as the
Committee recommended?
I thank the hon. Lady for her work on the Committee. She is right
to raise the importance of mental health. Although today’s plan
is focused on elective surgical procedures and diagnostics, she
is right to talk about other types of care, especially mental
health care. I know that she supports the huge amount of record
investment going into the NHS for mental health care. Under the
NHS long-term plan, it is an additional £2 billion a year. She is
also right to raise the importance of patient care. I believe
that there is a lot in this plan on patient care that she will
support.
(Peterborough) (Con)
I welcome the statement and the national mission. I must say that
for the Labour party to try to play party politics with it is a
serious misjudgment. Surgical hubs have been successfully piloted
in London by the Getting It Right First Time programme. As they
are rolled out across the country, will the Secretary of State
ensure that GIRFT continues to be properly resourced and is given
a key role in leading the programme in future?
Absolutely; I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. There are
already 44 surgical hubs up and running across the country,
including in London. I went to see one at Moorfields, which is
getting through cataract operations more quickly and seeing more
people per day than ever before. He is right to talk about their
importance and the funding is there in the plan to see many more
of them across the nation.
(Rhondda) (Lab)
The key issue seems to be the workforce. It is about trying to
ensure that people do not leave the workforce now or do not leave
it early. It is also about recruiting enough people, sometimes
into specialties that are not necessarily the sexiest ones that
people are pushed into at the beginning. For instance, there is
no chance of getting diagnoses within the target set in 2018,
which we now hope to meet in 2024, unless we train more
pathologists every single year. This year, we will not train
enough pathologists to meet the number who are leaving this year,
so we are going backwards rather than forwards. How will the
Secretary of State address that?
I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of the
workforce, especially in the context of specialisms, and
pathology is a really good example. That is why we are putting
record amounts of investment into the workforce and training. It
is also one of the reasons why, to get a more joined-up plan in
health, I have decided that Health Education England should be
merged with the NHS. This will enable more joined-up thinking and
much better planning for the future, especially in specialist
areas.
(South West Wiltshire)
(Con)
I declare my interest as a doctor. Will the Secretary of State
look again at how we structure doctors’ pay and remuneration? At
the moment, we are training lots of doctors—more and more of
them—which is a great thing, but typically they leave in their
late 50s, so we are losing a whole decade of productive medical
time. That cannot go on. Will he look again to see how we can
disincentivise early retirement of medical professionals?
My hon. Friend speaks with great experience and raises a really
important issue. The short answer is yes. We have fantastic
doctors throughout the NHS and more in training in medical
schools than ever before, but we should also focus on retaining
talent throughout the NHS. I assure him that that work has
already begun.
(St Albans) (LD)
I am shocked that some Government Members are trying to pat each
other on the back, because right now my heart is breaking for all
those constituents who have emailed me to tell me that they are
in fear and in pain, and what they have just heard is that that
may continue for years to come. The Secretary of States talks
about new tech, new hubs and new scanners, but without people to
operate them they may be of limited use. Where is the plan to
fill the almost 100,000 NHS vacancies?
The hon. Lady, like other hon. Members, is absolutely right to
raise the importance of workforce. To deliver on this plan, of
course we need to do so much more to keep increasing the
workforce and make sure all the skills we need are there. Just
last week, I believe, the NHS published that it has more doctors,
nurses and clinicians than ever before; 40,000 people have joined
the NHS over the last two years, including many more doctors and
nurses. Also, as I mentioned, I have asked the NHS, with HEE,
which will become part of the NHS, to come up with a long-term
plan. We look forward to that plan and will invest in it.
(Gainsborough) (Con)
People of a certain age, of whom, unfortunately, I am one, are
terrified because they think that if something goes wrong, they
might have to wait in pain for two years. We cannot wait until
March 2024 to join the back of a slightly shorter queue. Then we
see our friends who have private health insurance—I am not one of
them; we cannot afford it—being seen within days. May I suggest a
policy that would be wildly popular with many of our own
supporters, which every Conservative Government until 1997
followed, which is to give tax relief to private health
insurance? Why not look at every innovative solution that
unleashes new money? Before the Secretary of State says that that
is a matter for the Chancellor, will he at least put it at the
back of his mind, so that when he next talks to the Chancellor
they will at least discuss it?
I am always pleased to talk with my right hon. Friend about his
ideas and suggestions, and I am happy to meet him to discuss this
further, but I am sure he agrees with me on the importance of
making sure that we invest in the NHS and the workforce so that
they can deal with as many people as possible.
(Birkenhead) (Lab)
Across the country, millions of people are waiting for
potentially life-changing procedures, and it is absolutely right
that every effort be made to bring this backlog down, but the
Secretary of State should be aware of just how big an ask he is
making of frontline staff. This will be a herculean effort,
especially for all those who have spent the last two years on the
frontline of the fight against covid-19. When he considers the
enormous sacrifices that NHS workers have made over the course of
this pandemic and everything that they will be asked to do in the
very difficult months ahead, will the Secretary of State concede
that last year's 3% pay rise was pitiful and commit to giving our
healthcare heroes the substantial pay rise they truly
deserve?
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that all those working in health,
and social care for that matter, have been the heroes of this
pandemic. Everything that they have delivered and gone through
over the last two years is something that the whole nation will
respect. He is right to also point out that the expectation over
the next few years for delivering on the plan is very high, and
the workforce of course deserve maximum support. When it comes to
pay, it is right that the Government listen to the independent
pay review bodies, which will take into account a number of
factors, and that is exactly what we did last year.
(Wellingborough) (Con)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for coming to the House
and making this announcement here first. Does he agree that, as
other Members have said, particularly Opposition Members, we need
to increase the workforce? How then can the mandatory vaccination
of NHS health workers, which was going to lose us 80,000 people,
possibly have been right? We knew the covid backlog was there, so
how on earth was that ever a good policy? I know that Opposition
Members supported it hugely, but Conservative Members had their
doubts. Was it not a wrong decision?
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of the
workforce, but I am afraid I do not agree with his comments about
the plans for mandatory vaccination. I will not go through the
details again; I did make a statement to the House on that last
week, and in fact it was supported by the vast majority of
Members of this House. The short answer to his question is that
it is all about patient safety. The Government and the NHS are
always absolutely right to put patient safety first, and although
the Government have now, in the light of omicron, rightly changed
their plans, it is still the professional responsibility of
everyone working in healthcare to get vaccinated.
(Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I am grateful for what the Secretary of State said about
diagnostic hubs. Will he investigate personally why the planned
hub for Westmorland general hospital has been delayed until 2023?
I am also grateful for what he said about cancer services more
generally. He knows that there have been 60,000 missed cancer
diagnoses over the last two years, and I am sure he knows that
radiotherapy is a key factor in tackling the backlog. Is he aware
that radiotherapy ought to be accessed by 53% of cancer patients
in this country but is accessed by only 23%, and that, as a
proportion of our cancer budget, funding for radiotherapy in this
country is only a little more than half the average for similar
developed countries? Will he therefore make it a priority to meet
with the all-party parliamentary group for radiotherapy and look
at our manifesto, so that we can work together to save tens of
thousands of lives that would be needlessly lost otherwise?
The hon. Gentleman raises a series of very important points,
especially in what he said about cancer and radiotherapy. I
believe he already has a meeting in the diary with Health
Ministers, and I will look out for the output of that meeting. I
agree with what he said about radiotherapy and the importance of
investment in that, and there is a lot more investment. I
referred earlier to the £6 billion extra capital budget, and a
large part of that will be used for new diagnostics. I hope he
also agrees with me that, as well as radiotherapy, we need to
invest in the very latest cutting-edge technology for cancer
care, such as proton beam therapy, which I saw for myself last
week in London.
(Forest of Dean) (Con)
The Secretary of State will know that many on this side of the
House were very reluctant, but did support the increase in
resources for the NHS through the increase to national insurance
and then the health and social care levy. When we are making that
argument to our constituents, they will expect that money to
deliver results, so may I make one observation and ask one
question? The observation is that, while the plan is welcome,
only getting to 99% of patients waiting less than a year by March
2024 is not ambitious enough, so will he perhaps be more
ambitious? Will he also say a word about how the resources raised
through national insurance will be removed from the NHS and flow
into social care? From October 2023, we will have to fund social
care with the same money. He did not talk about that, and social
care is as important as the NHS, so will he say a word about
that?
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of
making sure that every penny spent in the NHS, or social care for
that matter, is spent wisely and in the very best interests of
taxpayers. I absolutely agree with him on that, and that also has
to translate into the ambition. My right hon. Friend, like other
hon. Members, will not have had time yet to look at the plan. I
am happy to discuss it with him afterwards if he wishes. I hope
he agrees that it is full of ambition. Indeed, if the NHS can go
much further than the targets I set out earlier, that is what we
all want. As I said in my statement, it does depend on how many
people come back to the NHS, and that is very hard to estimate,
but I want as many people as possible to come back.
My right hon. Friend is right to raise the importance of social
care and the need for much better integration between healthcare
and social care. We will set out more detailed plans on just that
very shortly.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
As a clinician, I am astounded by what the Secretary of State has
brought forward today. First, he talks about health inequality,
then puts forward a solution that will exclude people who
experience the greatest health inequality because they also
experience digital inequality. Not only that, but people on
waiting lists are in a lot of pain. They are put on waiting lists
because of the advancement of their condition. They do not need a
website; they need clinicians surrounding them to give them the
physical and psychological support they need over the two or more
years they will have to wait. What plans has the Secretary of
State got to ensure that they get the physical and psychological
support that they need over that time?
The hon. Lady is of course right to talk about the importance of
health inequalities. I hope that when she has had time to look at
the plan she will see just how seriously the NHS and the
Government take that. More broadly, I will have a lot more to say
about tackling health inequalities shortly. Of course, the hon.
Lady is right that there need to be alternatives to digital
access for those who cannot easily access digital, be it through
a web platform or the NHS app. There are alternatives in place,
but I hope she agrees that for those who can use digital tools,
we should make them part of the offering. The new “my planned
care” service will be hugely important in providing more
transparency than ever before, but also in helping people prepare
for their surgical procedures. She may have heard me say earlier
than one third of on-the-day cancellations of surgical procedures
happen because people were not prepared.
(Sleaford and North
Hykeham) (Con)
I declare my interest as an NHS doctor and I echo much of what
has been said by colleagues across the House about the workforce
challenges.
As the Secretary of State said, covid has been a huge challenge
to the NHS and it is a testament to NHS workers that cancer
treatment was maintained at 94% of pre-pandemic levels throughout
the pandemic and that 95% of people who needed cancer treatment
started that within a month. However, I am sure the Secretary of
State agrees that one month is a very long and frightening time
to know that cancer is growing inside and that every day’s delay
could be the day that costs your life. How does he intend to
reduce that time and what will be his target from diagnosis to
treatment?
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of the
workforce. She is right to raise the importance of cancer care
and to note that it has remained a huge priority for the NHS
despite all the pressures of the pandemic. In the plan that we
are publishing today, we have set out a number of cancer targets.
They are all very ambitious with record amounts of investment.
Once my hon. Friend has looked at the plan, I would be happy to
discuss it further with her, either the cancer aspects or
anything else.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for a progressive and positive
statement on the way forward. With statistics showing that there
were some 10 times more patients waiting six weeks or more for
cancer diagnostic tests at the end of November 2021 than in
November 2019 in England, and with similar UK-wide statistics,
what specifically is the Secretary of State doing to address the
massive backlog in those life-saving tests?
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments. With respect to
life-saving tests and scans, including for cancer, the plan sets
out a huge amount of new investment in diagnostic capacity. One
area of investment is the new community diagnostic centres, some
69 of which have already opened across England in convenient
places such as shopping malls and car parks, which people can
access much more easily and get their results from much more
quickly.
(Bosworth) (Con)
I welcome the plan. I am most intrigued by the “my planned care”
website, because one of the biggest problems for clinicians is
that they spend a lot of time chasing admin. It is a great
opportunity for pre-operative checks and for people to know where
their follow-ups are. Will the Secretary of State look at
expanding it to out-patient settings? People over the age of 80
may well have four, five or six specialists, so trying to keep
track of their letters, of where they should be and of their
appointments is really difficult.
During covid, 29 million people downloaded the NHS app and we had
the fantastic covid dashboard, so we have seen what we can do
with technology to help our patients and clinicians. Will the
Secretary of State encourage the NHS to build on the measures
that he is bringing forward to help with the backlog?
Yes. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about the
importance of technology in delivering world-class care. He will
know that I have already announced that the parts of our health
system that contribute to the best use of technology, NHSX and
NHS Digital, will become part of the wider NHS so that we have a
more joined-up strategy. “My planned care” will start as an
online platform, but will move to an app-based service as soon as
possible. My hon. Friend is right to talk about the importance of
having something similar for out-patient care; we are already on
it.
(South Basildon and East
Thurrock) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend work with our excellent GPs to increase
access to primary care? Will he encourage them to open up more
channels of communication such as email, text and chat apps to
ensure that people feel able to raise their health concerns at
the earliest possible stage rather than putting them off until
they become more serious, when it is potentially too late?
Yes. I join my hon. Friend in thanking GPs up and down the
country for all their phenomenal work throughout the pandemic
amid the huge pressure that they have had to deal with. He is
right about making sure that channels of communication with GPs
are as varied as possible and are available to everyone in all
age groups so that we can better support early diagnosis.
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for his
leadership as we recover from covid. I must say that I find the
words of the hon. Member for Ilford North () a bit hollow when the Opposition voted against £36
billion recently.
May I raise the matter of recovery in our emergency care? The
Secretary of State will know that too many people in
Newcastle-under-Lyme have had to wait too long for ambulances
recently. Will he or his Ministers help to bring together West
Midlands ambulance service, Royal Stoke University Hospital and
the clinical commissioning groups to find a solution so that we
can get patients into hospital and back out again as quickly as
possible?
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding the House that the Labour
party voted against additional investment in the NHS. He is right
to talk about the impact on urgent care, particularly for
ambulance services and especially during the recent omicron wave.
We invested an additional £55 million in ambulance services over
the winter. A lot more needs to be done to support urgent care,
but the plans that we will shortly set out for the integration of
healthcare with social care will certainly help to relieve many
of those pressures.
(Kettering) (Con)
Kettering General Hospital performed heroically during the
pandemic and is now gearing up with determination to increase its
elective surgery capacity by 30%. Does the Secretary of State
take on board the point that in addition to having to clear the
covid backlogs, areas such as Kettering and north
Northamptonshire are seeing a very steep rise in the local
population, with tens of thousands of new houses being built, and
are expecting a very sharp rise in the next five years in the
number of people aged 80 or over? Will he ensure that Kettering
General Hospital gets all the resources it needs?
I join my hon. Friend in thanking the staff at Kettering General
Hospital for everything they have been doing, especially over the
past two years. Of course, challenges remain. I understand that
my hon. Friend the Minister for Health will visit Kettering
General Hospital shortly; I look forward to hearing about it. I
can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone)
that when we look at funding and directional resources, we will
certainly take account of not just the current population, but
the forecast population.
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