Stephen Kinnock MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Jan 2026 · NHS Dental Services: West Dorset · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman will have noted that we have committed to tie-ins for future dentists going through the training programme. It costs the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds to train a dentist, and we believe it is absolutely right that a significant percentage of their time should be put into NHS dentistry. In terms of improving access, in financial year 2023-24 there was a shocking £392 million underspend on NHS dentistry at a time when demand was going through the roof. I made clear that every penny allocated to NHS dentistry must be spent on NHS dentistry, and I am very pleased to report that we have got that underspend down to just £36 million. The decrease in the underspend is leading to an increase in NHS dentistry, but I accept that there is still a long way to go.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Primary Care in Epping Forest: House Building Targets · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and congratulate him on the addition of the facial hair. I am glad to see that he is joining that particular club—I think it is the only club we may both be a member of! The Government are aware of the pressure on pharmacy; it is a major challenge that we are facing. We gave pharmacy a 19% uplift in the last spending review. Of all the sectors in my portfolio, that was the one that received the largest uplift. We are also looking to secure better progress with the use of technology, and we are looking at the medicines margin and the dispensing fee, recognising the significant financial pressures that pharmacies are under. Through reform and investment, we believe that we can turn the corner and rebuild pharmacy in our country.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Primary Care in Epping Forest: House Building Targets · Hansard source

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  Rapid housing and population growth can put real pressure on GP services. That is why we are investing an extra £1.1 billion in general practice, taking total GP funding to £13.4 billion. We are also creating 250 neighbourhood health centres, upgrading surgeries through a £102 million fund, and working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to determine how developer contributions from new housing, through section 106 and the community infrastructure levy, can be improved to enable the delivery of local health services as an integral part of new housing developments.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Primary Care in Epping Forest: House Building Targets · Hansard source

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  I think there is some dispute over the number that was on the front page of the Express. We are looking into that number and will certainly come back to the hon. Gentleman on it. On his broader point about the decisions that the Chancellor took at the last Budget, I suppose I have a question back to him: would he be cutting the £26 billion that this Labour Government are investing in the NHS, and if not, how would he be paying for it?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Primary Care in Epping Forest: House Building Targets · Hansard source

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  I am not familiar with the details of that case, but I get the impression that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is. A really important part of our manifesto commitment was to end the 8 am scramble, which is all about access, and that is precisely what we are doing. In September 2024, patient satisfaction with ease of access stood at just 61%; today it stands at 73%. That is huge progress. It is all about getting better access, and building a primary care estate that is fit for purpose is a very important part of that. I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the details of that specific case.

• 13 Jan 2026 · NHS Dental Services: Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on the pun in her question. There is good news, in that we are making progress on children’s oral health, but we accept that we still have a way to go on the broader picture. We are making 27,196 additional urgent appointments available in the Humber and North Yorkshire ICB area. Our reforms, which I announced in December, will kick in from April of this year. They will significantly increase the unit of dental activity fee rate that we pay for urgent care to incentivise more dentists to do urgent NHS dentistry. We also have the golden hello system and a number of other measures that we are taking to address underserved areas. A lot has been done, but there is still a long way to go.

• 13 Jan 2026 · NHS Dental Services: Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend knows, we inherited an NHS dentistry system in crisis. This Government are determined to fix it with fundamental reform of that vital service by the end of this Parliament. Since last April, we have delivered extra urgent dental appointments nationwide, and last month we announced new measures to get the right care to the right people at the right time, incentivising dentists to offer more NHS care.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Community Audiology · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is busted now.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Community Audiology · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and congratulating him on securing this important debate. Having now been in the same room as a specialist in ear, nose and throat, a former GP and a vet, I am not sure that I am entirely qualified, and I approach this debate with some trepidation. I certainly enjoyed the debate and, as the Father of the House rightly said, it was a privilege to be able to hear some of the insights, direct experience and expertise of hon. Friends and Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip has also been doing a huge amount of good work in promoting the flu vaccine ahead of winter, in his constituency and more widely, and I pay tribute to him for that. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency a few weeks ago, where I met the incredible team at the Pembroke centre in Ruislip Manor to hear about how they are delivering, designing and developing their thoughts about neighbourhood health hubs and the neighbourhood health service, which will be a pivotal part of our 10-year plan. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People estimates that one in five people in the UK—almost 12 million adults—are deaf, have hearing loss or experience tinnitus, and by 2035 that figure is projected to rise to over 14 million. For people with cognitive disabilities, hearing loss can have a real impact on their quality of life, causing confusion for people with dementia, making communication and social interaction more difficult and increasing loneliness and isolation. That is why our community audiology services are so important. They represent a comprehensive range of hearing care delivered in local, accessible settings, such as GP surgeries, community clinics and community diagnostic centres. They help people of all ages, offering assessments, hearing aid fittings and support for those with tinnitus and balance issues. They advise on equipment such as amplified telephones and alerting devices, while working alongside occupational therapists to support people to stay independent. They form part of a wider team with speech, language and other community services, acute care, and the ear, nose and throat department for issues that cannot be managed in the community. Community audiology services face challenges, particularly on waiting lists and inequality of provision. Members across the Chamber raised some of those points. The Father of the House rightly pointed out that there are 6.7 million people who should use a hearing aid but do not. We must overcome the stigma associated with hearing loss. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) was right to talk about the connection between hearing loss and the propensity for falls. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) shared his tremendous expertise as an ear, nose and throat surgeon, and I thank him for his insights about the Hear for Norfolk project, which is a very interesting model indeed. Perhaps we can follow up on it in the new year. The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) gave a remarkable exposition on hearing loss in dogs—I have to say that I did not have that on my bingo card for this afternoon—from which we all learned a tremendous amount. He also made a number of important points about hearing loss in humans, and we absolutely take them on board. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) rattled off a number of questions for me, and I desperately tried keep track of them. I got some of them and did not get others, so I will happily write to him on the points that I am unable to address now. He raised an important point about self-referral, which of course depends on local commissioning arrangements. There is inequality and unwarranted variation in the ability to self-refer. We want more self-referral. We think there are opportunities in upgrading the functionality of the NHS app. Our objective is absolutely to be able to do this without having to go through a GP. There are some technology-related solutions, but I want to assure him that there is no conscious decision from the Government to deprioritise self-referral; I just think that there are some variations. The old chestnut that we are constantly trying to crack is around devolving to ICBs the power and agency that they should have because they are closest to the health needs of their population, while ensuring that they are clear about the outcomes, frameworks and standards that we expect. We honestly hold our hands up and say that we have not got that right in all cases, but we are committed to self-referral as a principle and as a really important part of the shift from hospital to community. On ICB budgets, we have secured £6 billion through the spending review process for capital upgrades. A lot of that will help us to ramp up what we are doing on community diagnostics. That is one way to square the circle around the investment that we need on the ground for ICBs to be able to do more in terms of the services they provide by improving the equipment, the kit and the technology they have. Part of the answer to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth’s question relates to capital investment really helping to boost the services provided. The workforce plan is coming in the spring of 2026. I absolutely hear what the hon. Member says about the need to move forward on that. It has been a complex process. Obviously some of the changes and restructuring around what we are doing on NHS England have also had an impact on the process of putting the workforce plan together, but I am reliably informed that that will be in the spring of 2026. Timely access and effective support to services can make all the difference to someone’s quality of life, wellbeing and independence. As part of our effort to shift care from hospital to home, this Government want to support people to live independently in the community, and community audiology will play an essential part in making that happen. Community audiology is commissioned locally by integrated care boards. Funding is allocated to ICBs by NHS England. Each ICB commissions the services it needs for its local area, taking into account its annual budget, planning guidance and the wider needs of the people that it serves. This year, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor confirmed the Government’s commitment to getting our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future, with day-to-day spending increasing by £29 billion in real terms over the next five years. By the end of this Parliament, the NHS resource budget will reach £226 billion. That funding will support the growing demand for community health services, including audiology. It will help integrated care boards to expand diagnostic capacity, invest in local estates and equipment, and sustain the workforce needed to deliver high quality hearing care for patients of all ages. For the first time, we have published an overview of the core community health services, which include audiology, for ICBs to consider when planning for their local populations and commissioning processes. Our medium-term planning framework for the next financial years sets out our ambition to bring waiting times over 18 weeks down, develop plans to bring waits over 52 weeks to zero, and to increase capacity to meet growth in demand, which is expected to be around 3% nationally every year. We are asking systems to seek every opportunity to improve productivity and get care closer to home, from getting teams the latest digital tools and equipment they need so they can connect remotely to health systems and patients, to expanding point-of-care testing in the community. Systems are also asked to ensure that all providers in acute, community and mental health sectors are onboarded to the NHS federated data platform and use its core products. Our 10-year health plan sets out how we would make the shift from analogue to digital by making the NHS app the digital front door to services. We will make it easier for patients to access audiology services through self-referral. This will transform the working lives of GPs, letting them focus on care where they provide the highest value-add. This is how we will make sure everyone can self-refer—not just the most confident and health-literate. Patients can access NIH-funded audiology services directly without having to wait for a referral from their GP. That means improved access to care and shorter waiting times. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and other hon. Friends stood, as I did, on a manifesto to halve health inequality between the richest and poorest areas of our country. I know he will agree that access should not be based on where we live. A key part of our elective reform plan, published at the start of the year, is transforming and expanding diagnostic services so we can reduce waiting times for tests and bring down overall waits. NHS England is working closely with services to improve access to self-referral options, aiming for a more consistent offer right across the country.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Community Audiology · Hansard source

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  I can—we are absolutely committed to responding to the Kingdon review next year. We are working on pulling together our response to the report. It is extremely important, and there are serious lessons to be learned from it. We think Dr Kingdon has done an excellent piece of work, and we are very keen to build on it and take it forward. Community diagnostics, such as local hearing assessment clinics and testing in community settings, are being rolled out more widely through the expansion of our community diagnostic centres. We are opening more of these centres—12 hours a day, seven days a week, offering more same-day tests, consultations and a wider range of diagnostics. I am very proud that we now have 170 CDCs across England. Almost 2 million audiology assessments have been carried out by NHS staff since this Government took office, including 136,000 tests in October—the highest number of audiology tests for a single month in the history of the NHS. This is a crucial step in supporting the NHS to meet its constitutional standards and deliver quicker care to patients. I also want to salute the work of the Welsh Government, who have been pioneers in many respects with their plan, published this week, showing how Wales is also leading in audiology services on care in the community, training and infrastructure. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth asked about the Kingdon report, and in this debate on audiology services, I must take this opportunity to thank Dr Camilla Kingdon for the excellent review that she chaired into failures in children’s hearing services. As I have just told him, the Government are committed to responding to the recommendations made by Dr Kingdon, and we will publish a comprehensive response next year. Community audiology services face challenges, with long waits and inconsistency in access to services, but we are taking action through the medium-term planning framework, by expanding community diagnostic centres and as an integral part of our 10-year plan. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and I come from a political tradition based on solidarity, and this Government stand for a health service that leaves no person behind. I know that he shares my determination to get timely access to community audiology services for all 12 million of our compatriots who need them. I thank my hon. Friend once again for bringing forward this extremely important debate, and I thank all Members who have spoken. It only remains for me to wish you, Mr Vickers, as well as your entire team and everyone else in the Chamber, all the very best for Christmas and the new year.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Palliative Care: North Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and I really thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) for raising this important issue. This year, I have seen at first hand—at the Wigan and Leigh hospice, the Noah’s Ark Children’s hospice in Barnet, and Katherine House hospice in Staffordshire—the vital role that hospices play in our communities, so I completely understand why my hon. Friend speaks so passionately about Ashgate hospice. And I will take a moment to thank everyone working or volunteering in the hospice care sector over Christmas, especially those who are spending Christmas day away from their own families just to bring a bit of joy to the people they care for. This Government want a society where every person receives high-quality and compassionate care, from diagnosis through to the end of life. Hospices and wider palliative and end-of-life care services will play a key part in our efforts to shift more care out of hospitals and into the community. However, we inherited a palliative and end-of-life care system that is under pressure and we absolutely recognise the financial challenges that hospices face as a result of rising costs and reduced charitable income. Let me echo what my hon. Friend said by also commending his constituents who came together to put their time, effort and money into fundraising. The fact that they managed to save two beds at Ashgate hospice from closing shows how important the hospice is to the wider community, even if challenges clearly remain. Most hospices are charitable and independent organisations that receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding that charitable hospices receive varies, both within and between ICB areas. Such variation can often be explained by the level of demand in a particular area, but it can also be explained by the totality and the type of provision from both NHS services and non-NHS services, including charitable hospices, within each ICB area. Although the majority of palliative and end-of-life care is provided by NHS staff and services, of course voluntary sector organisations also play a vital part in supporting people at the end of their life. That is why a year ago, almost to the day, we announced a £100 million capital funding boost for adult hospices and children’s hospices, in order to ensure that they have the best physical environment in which to provide care. Ashgate hospice is receiving over £845,000 of that money over the two years of funding and Blythe House hospice, another hospice in north Derbyshire, is receiving just under £160,000. All of this capital funding is a once in a generation investment into hospices in England, which will guarantee future savings by making them more sustainable, including by fixing draughty windows, repairing old boilers, installing solar panels, fixing roofs, etc. We are also providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices that serve north Derbyshire. This year, Bluebell Wood children’s hospice is receiving £986,000, and Rainbows hospice for children and young people is receiving £1,462,000. Our priority was to protect children’s hospices from facing a cliff edge of yearly funding cycles through multi-year settlements, so we were delighted to confirm that this funding would be in place for the next three financial years. This money will be at least £26 million each year, adjusted for inflation, allocated via ICBs to children’s hospices in England, or around £80 million over the three years in total. Having said all that, I do not for one second want to give the impression that I am downplaying the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield has raised, nor do I believe that this money is a silver bullet for all the issues we face. As he points out, integrated care boards are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care services to meet the needs of the people they serve. My understanding is that what NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB calls its core contract value—the baseline funding in the contract with Ashgate hospice—has increased by 55% since 2022, which represents a higher share compared with uplifts the ICB has provided for other NHS services through its hospital trusts and other providers. I am aware that the ICB has been working with the Ashgate team over several months to understand why their costs have risen significantly over the last financial year. It has also offered £100,000 towards an independent review, which would be linked to a future service specification—in other words, the way in which the ICB provides funding to the hospice in future. Derby and Derbyshire ICB has committed to develop a new service specification for palliative and end-of-life care to inform its contracting going into 2026-27, and to engage on a new model of palliative and end-of-life care across the ICB cluster, aligning to the three shifts set out in the 10-year plan and delivered through the neighbourhood health model of delivery. However, it is clear from my hon. Friend’s speech that there are two sides to this story. It appears that there is a gulf in understanding between the ICB on the one hand and the management team of Ashgate and the community on the other—that is clear from everything my hon. Friend has said and from other interventions. I would therefore be more than happy to broker a discussion between the ICB, concerned Members of Parliament and the hospice to get to the bottom of what is going on, so that everyone is on the same page as to what is happening with the costs, where the problems lie in terms of provision and ensuring we do everything we can to retain this vital service. It feels like the dialogue between the ICB and the management team at the hospice is not working, and I am more than happy to intervene, to help to make that work. Perhaps I could sit down and discuss that further with my hon. Friend and other colleagues. As I said earlier, the delivery of healthcare is largely devolved in England, and ICBs are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care services to meet the needs of local people. Beyond the £100 million of capital funding and the £80 million of revenue funding for children’s hospices, we are not able to offer additional funding from the centre as things stand, although we are looking at and exploring other opportunities. As I told the sector in a speech to the Hospice UK conference in Liverpool last month, I know that this is not the message the sector wants to hear, and it is certainly not the message that I want to deliver. But with the public finances in the state they are in—the state that we inherited them in—I have to recognise that the Chancellor has made some tough trade-offs to support our public services, especially the NHS, in the context of our debt interest payments surpassing the entirety of our education budget as things stand. In these challenging circumstances, we are trying to support the sector in other ways. We are developing the first ever palliative care and end-of-life care modern service framework, or MSF, for England. That will be aligned with the ambitions set out in our 10-year health plan. We will closely monitor the shift towards strategic commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services to ensure that services start bringing down variation in access and quality. While there is a lot of diversity in contracting models across the hospice sector, we will consider contracting and commissioning arrangements as part of this framework. In the long term, this will aid sustainability and help hospices to plan ahead. The MSF will not just drive improvements to services that patients receive at the end of life; it will start helping ICBs to address challenges and variation in access, quality and sustainability. Further support is being provided to ICBs through the recent publication of NHS England’s strategic commissioning framework and medium-term planning guidance, which set out in black and white how ICBs should understand current and projected demand on services and associated costs, creating an overall plan to more effectively meet these needs through neighbourhood health. The medium-term planning guidance acknowledges the importance of high-quality palliative and end-of-life care. The guidance makes it clear that, from April next year, ICBs and providers must focus on reducing unnecessary non-elective admissions and bed days from high-priority cohorts—which include, importantly, people with palliative care and end-of-life care needs—and on enabling patients who require planned care to receive specialised support closer to home. That will be at the heart of the neighbourhood health service that we look to build. It is important to emphasise that the cohort of people who are reaching the end of life is a prioritised cohort within the framework of the shift to a neighbourhood health model. I hope that those measures will reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield of this Government’s commitment to the sustainability of the palliative and end-of-life care sector, including hospices such as Ashgate hospice. We will continue to work with NHS England in supporting ICBs to effectively commission the palliative and end-of-life care that is needed by their local populations. The work that our hospices do to support people in the sunset of their lives, to support families in their grief and to give such families bereavement counselling at their most vulnerable moments is utterly priceless. It is a sad reflection of the dire fiscal position that we inherited and the dire state of our public services in general that we cannot give more than the extra support that I have outlined, but we are doing everything that we can to support the sustainability of the sector in the long term while tackling inequalities and unwarranted variation in the quality and quantity of service provision. To sum up, strategic commissioning of palliative and end-of-life care services is not working anything like as well as we want, frankly, across the country. It is clear that where there are gaps in an ICB’s understanding of the totality of the health and care needs of its population and in the capacity of partners and stakeholders in its ICB area to meet those needs, that process is not working as well as it needs to. That is what the modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care seeks to address. We do not have many MSFs—we have commissioned, I think, three or four in total across the entirety of what the Department of Health and Social Care is doing—so that MSF reflects the importance that we attach to palliative and end-of-life care. In the medium-term planning guidance, we have also emphasised that the palliative and end-of-life care cohort will be a top priority for our neighbourhood health strategy and the shift from hospital to community. That is what is happening at the strategic level, but I understand that at the constituency level, it also matters what is really happening for the community of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield and the worrying issues around Ashgate hospice. On the detail of what is going on there, I would be very happy to work with him to see what we can do with the ICB and other key players and stakeholders to address the specifics of that issue. There is a strategic challenge, but also an opportunity, for us and a more specific issue on which I would be happy to work with him. Dr Huq, I am happy to give the floor back to my hon. Friend for any closing remarks he wishes to make.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Palliative Care: North Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  Oh, okay. Does my hon. Friend wish to intervene?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Palliative Care: North Derbyshire · Hansard source

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  We have a plan for next steps and I look forward to discussing those with him further. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10( 6 )).

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  With the leave of the House, I will make some brief concluding remarks. I am very grateful to Members of this House for their contributions both today and throughout the passage of this Bill. I believe that by drawing on the lived experience of both Members and our constituents, we will be able to strengthen the intended impact of this legislation on people with serious mental illness and their loved ones. The passage of this Bill has seen the best of parliamentary commitment and co-operation, and the conduct of Members and peers has been collaborative and well-intentioned throughout. For too long, mental health reform legislation has sat on the shelf. This Government made a manifesto commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983, and we have delivered that within our first Session, providing an opportunity to transform the way we support those with severe mental illness and providing patients with greater choice and autonomy. I am reminded of what a patient in the 2018 independent review said: “I felt a lot of things were done to me rather than with me”. This Bill takes forward many of the changes put forward by the independent review, the recommendations of which were rightly shaped by the views of patients, carers and professionals. Many have asked about next steps and implementation. Post-Royal Assent, our first priority will be to draft and consult on the code of practice. We will engage with people with lived experience and their families and carers, staff and professional groups, commissioners, providers and others to do that. The code will go to public consultation, as well as being laid before Parliament before final publication. Alongside the code, we will develop the necessary secondary legislation. We will then need time to train the existing workforce on the new Act, regulations and the code. We estimate full implementation will take around 10 years due to the time needed to train the workforce and the need to ensure that the right community support is available. This timeframe necessarily spans multiple spending review periods and multiple Parliaments, so we are limited in the detail we can give about future spend and timelines. But we have committed to an annual written ministerial statement on implementation. This commitment will last for the 10 years or until the Bill is fully implemented, whichever is sooner.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Yes, I was just coming on to that, because the hon. Gentleman raised it in his speech. We are protecting the mental health investment standard in real terms, as it will rise in line with inflation. Our position is quite straightforward. We feel that for far too long the NHS has been run by a series of input-based targets which micromanage frontline leaders, while failing to ensure improvements in patient experience and care. We are bringing the era of command and control to an end, setting frontline leaders free to innovate and run their services as they know best. I also remind the Opposition spokesman that we are investing £473 million in capital funding in mental health nationally over 2026-27 to 2029-30. That funding will: support the establishment of a 24/7 neighbourhood mental health service; deliver mental health emergency departments, known as crisis assessment centres; expand neighbourhood mental health services; eliminate inappropriate out-of-area placements; and increase crisis accommodation for people with learning disabilities and autism. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that when we see a rising tide lifting all the boats, we are connecting our mental health spend to that rising tide. We are then seeing a rise in real terms on what this Government are spending on mental health across the board. I am very happy to again meet the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, and look at that particular issue. He raised it in Committee. I hope that some of the things I have just set out will help very much on the tragedy of suicide in our country. We are very conscious of how much we need to do to combat that. I put on record my thanks to all Members and noble peers who have paid such a close interest in the development of the proposals, along with the officials and parliamentary staffers who have supported us to do so. The officials involved in the Bill are too many to mention, but I would like to pay tribute to colleagues in my private office, Emily Cowhig and Penny Sherlock, who have done such sterling work on the Bill, supporting me and the entire team throughout. Transforming mental health care for the most vulnerable patients with serious mental illness requires the Bill to pass into statute. I am therefore grateful to hon. Members for their support in enabling us to do so. Lords amendments 19B and 19C agreed to.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Yes, we absolutely do agree. As the hon. Gentleman will hear as I proceed with my speech, we have three options in respect of what will happen in exactly the scenario that he has mentioned, and that has been very much the spirit of the amendment on which we have agreed with the other place. We will put patient feedback and outcomes front and centre by improving the transparency of reporting across in-patient and community mental health services. We will introduce an early warning system so that we can intervene earlier, using patient and staff feedback and clinical information to identify services that are at risk of providing poor-quality care. That is alongside our commitments to roll out mental health support teams in schools and colleges to full national coverage by 2029, to employ an extra 8,500 mental health workers by the end of the Parliament, and to pilot new 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres across the country. Once implemented, this long-awaited and transformational Bill will give patients greater choice and autonomy and enhanced rights and support, and will ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and respect throughout their treatment. Let me now briefly outline some of the commitments made by my ministerial colleague Baroness Merron in the other place. In response to the amendment tabled by Baroness May, the Government announced plans to launch a consultation on emergency police powers of detention. The consultation will look at in particular, but will not be limited to, sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, as well as exploring joint working approaches across organisations. We have committed ourselves to working with stakeholders as we define the scope of the consultation. In the other place, following engagement with Baroness Berridge, the Government tabled amendments in lieu regarding the appointment of a nominated person for a child under 16 who lacks competence. The amendment states that if no local authority has parental responsibility, an approved mental health professional—an AMHP—must appoint a person who has parental responsibility, a person named in a child arrangements order as a person with whom the relevant patient is to live, or a person who is a special guardian. If there is no suitable person with parental responsibility who is willing to act, the AMHP must consider the child’s wishes and feelings when deciding whom to appoint. This amendment clarifies whom AMHPs should appoint as the nominated person, and gives priority to those with parental responsibility. We intend to use the code of practice to outline what factors and nuances an AMHP should consider when making the appointment decision. If the AMHP later discovers that another of those on the list is more suitable to act as the nominated person, the legislation allows him or her to terminate the appointment of the nominated person and appoint the special guardian instead. I thank Members on both sides of the House for their support for the Bill, and look forward to hearing their contributions.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendments 19B and 19C. It is a privilege to return to the Mental Health Bill in this House for what I hope will be the final time in its passage. Thanks to the constructive and collaborative approach from Members across this House and noble Lords in the other place, we have been able to reach an amended and improved version of the Bill so that we can begin our vital work on the code of practice. In particular, I pay tribute to my ministerial colleague, Baroness Merron, for her outstanding work on this Bill. The Bill sits alongside the 10-year plan, which sets out our ambitious reform agenda to transform the NHS and make it fit for the future. We know that there is much more to do to improve outcomes, to tackle unacceptable waiting times for care and to fully meet the needs of the population in a tailored, personalised and timely way. We will overhaul how mental health support is delivered in England to drive down waits and improve the quality of care, backed by a whole-of-society approach to preventing mental illness and to intervening early. Last week, we announced the launch of an independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism. We are launching this review to understand the rises in prevalence and demand on services, to ensure that people receive the right support at the right time and in the right place. People who need it will access high-quality and compassionate mental health support at an earlier stage, and more people will recover or live well with mental illness. We will go further to improve the quality and transparency of care, working with experts and people with lived experience. We will publish a new modern service framework for severe mental illness, setting consistency in clinical standards across the country so that patients and families get the best-quality, evidence-based treatment and support.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I would be more than happy to meet her to discuss it, because I think the complexity of what she raises needs some detail.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for saving the Ladies Walk health centre in her constituency, which the Conservatives were trying to shut. We are advancing modern service frameworks for conditions where we can swiftly and significantly raise the quality of care. The National Quality Board makes recommendations on future modern service frameworks; its next meeting is on 8 December.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend, who is a tireless campaigner on this issue. We want to see more dentists in Burton and Uttoxeter, and across the country, which is why we are offering dentists £20,000 to work in underserved areas. We are making it a requirement for new dentists to practice in the NHS through our tie-in policy. We are also making additional urgent appointments available across the country, including for my hon. Friend’s constituents in Burton and Uttoxeter.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yes, I am happy to meet the hon. Lady.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. I met the GDC recently. It has completed the procurement of the new management agent to run the overseas registration examination, and I am confident that we will see a significant boost in the numbers—that is coming onstream very quickly. However, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman: it has been too slow, and it needs to speed up.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  We have the interim reforms, and our response on those will be published very soon. We are working on the long-term reform of the NHS dentistry contract with the British Dental Association, and I would be happy to keep the hon. Lady updated on our progress.

• 25 Nov 2025 · NHS Dental Services: Norfolk · Hansard source

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  NHS dentistry is out of reach for too many people, and that issue is felt particularly acutely in rural areas such as Norfolk. This Government are rolling out extra urgent dental appointments across the country, and we will be making further improvements for patients to come in from April 2026. NHS dentistry was left to rot for 14 years under the Conservatives; Labour is putting it on the road to recovery.

• 25 Nov 2025 · NHS Dental Services: Norfolk · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is right: it is the Government’s responsibility to give a steer to the Office for Students, and we are very close to being able to put that together. I am expecting some advice from my officials later in the week, and I shall be happy to keep the hon. Gentleman updated on further progress.