It is an honour to return to the Department of Health and Social Care to continue its important work, especially ahead of the challenges this winter. I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), for everything that she has done to get the system ready for the challenges ahead. I welcome my experienced ministerial team to their posts and thank Ministers from the summer. I am also looking forward to robust, I am sure, but—based on our previous experience—very constructive engagement with Opposition Front Benchers.
I am pleased that all GP practices will soon be able to automatically provide patients aged 16 and over with access to the latest information and their health records through the NHS app. We are switching on that ability from today in a process that we expect to be completed by the end of the month. That is an important milestone for patient empowerment and is part of a process that sees patients play an even more active role in managing their health and care. I hope that Members across the House will welcome that on behalf of patients.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his reappointment. Will he reiterate the importance of getting ambulance waiting times down? Would he endorse the use of minor injuries units in community hospitals, such as those in Malvern and Tenbury, as a very effective way to open up access through other routes for our constituents?
My hon. Friend raises an important point, particularly for category 3 and 4 ambulance journeys. As she highlights, there are numerous aspects to the challenge of ambulance delays: the blockage in the flow from social care and delayed discharge, which we have debated many times in the House; issues in accident and emergency with pre-cohorting, post-cohorting and triaging nurses; conveyance rates, which often vary significantly between ambulance trusts; call handling, which we have put additional money into; and the work of the auxiliary service. My hon. Friend is quite right that within the portfolio of options, minor injuries units are an area that can help to relieve pressure on busy A&Es.
I welcome the Secretary of State back and welcome his team, but I have had boxes of cereal with a longer shelf-life than Conservative Secretaries of State. As a consequence of the turnover and chaos, the truth is that the NHS is not prepared for this winter—it cannot even get allocated funds out of the door.
Let us turn to the future. Over the summer, the Prime Minister promised to establish a “vaccines-style taskforce” to tackle the Conservatives’ NHS backlog on “day one” and to have overall waiting list numbers falling by next year. May I ask the Secretary of State who is on that taskforce, how many times it has met and what its programme of work is?
I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman raises the issue of vaccines; in fact, I raised it in Cabinet today. The UK is the first country in the world to have introduced bivalent vaccines targeted both at omicron and at the original strain of covid-19. We have now made the covid vaccine and the flu vaccine available to all over-50s; I hope that Members across the House will promote that. I think the UK can be very proud of its work to roll out vaccines against both covid and flu, which are a key part of preventing some of the pressure on our A&Es.
I can forgive the Secretary of State for mishearing the question, but what I find unbelievable is that it seems as if this is the first time he has heard about the Prime Minister’s own proposed taskforce to deal with the Conservatives’ NHS backlog. That is what the Prime Minister promised, and that is what I asked the Secretary of State about. This is obviously another case of the Conservatives over-promising and under-delivering.
If the Secretary of State cannot stand by the Prime Minister’s pledges, what about the views of the man next door? When we announced our policy to train a new generation of doctors and nurses, paid for by abolishing non-doms, it was welcomed by the Chancellor as—and I quote—“something I very much hope the government also adopts on the basis that smart governments always nick the best ideas of their opponents.” In the spirit of constructive opposition that the Secretary of State asks for, Labour has a plan to tackle the staffing crisis. The Conservatives do not. It is fully costed and paid for, so will he nick it?
The hon. Gentleman skirts over the fact that it is this Government who have opened five new medical schools, who have significantly boosted medical undergraduate training, who are investing more in our NHS as per the long-term plan, who have invested a further £36 billion as part of our covid response, and who are investing in technology and the skills of the workforce as a whole. We are boosting the number of medical trainees and—I touched on this question earlier—we are also boosting the number of doctors in training to be GPs.
T2. At a face-to-face surgery this weekend, a constituent mentioned the difficulties that a relative of hers, who has subsequently died, had had in getting a face-to-face GP appointment at a surgery run by an American company called Centene, which now covers 600,000 patients. Will the Government insist that we are fully committed to the traditional approach of a committed and caring family doctor seeing patients face to face, and that we will not allow GP surgeries to be fully commercialised?
My right hon. Friend raises an important point about face-to-face care, which matters to many constituents, but I gently remind him that in the Lincolnshire integrated care system, 71.9% of appointments were face to face in September 2022. It is not the case that every patient wants a face-to-face appointment; there can be instances in which an online service is better. For patients facing domestic violence, for example, it can often provide a much more convenient service.
Order. I know we are bedding back in, but Front Benchers have to think about Back Benchers. These are their questions as well, so please let us make sure that I can call as many of them as possible.
The Scottish Government introduced new national guidelines to make it easier for retiring NHS staff to return to support the NHS, while drawing their pensions. However, there is a substantive issue of pension tax rules pushing senior clinicians to reduce their commitments or retire early. As we know, pension taxation is a wholly reserved matter, so will the Minister address this issue with Cabinet colleagues in order to find a permanent solution that will allow us to help the NHS retain senior staff?
T4. More than 13,000 people who are in hospital today would be out of hospital if the care system had the necessary capacity, and most of them could go back to their own homes if we had enough domiciliary care workers. Can the Secretary of State assure me, and the House, that he will produce a proper workforce plan for the care sector as a matter of urgency?
Very much so. The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) asked about a taskforce. With our colleagues in NHS England, we launched a “delayed discharge” taskforce with a “100-day challenge” over the summer; we have also set up an international recruitment taskforce within the Department to prioritise the establishment of a “clearing house for care”. I will not add further to my answer, other than to say that this is a key area of focus.
T3. I recently visited a local GP surgery which is short of a third of the staff that it needs. Surgeries are finding it increasingly difficult to retain staff owing to stress and burnout. Do the Government recognise that it is stress and burnout that make it so difficult for us to retain GPs in their profession, and for them to retain their staff? If so, what on earth are they going to do about it?
The wellbeing of staff—especially in the NHS, and especially after the pressure of the pandemic—is a crucial issue, and one on which I have focused in particular since returning to the Department. I look forward to having discussions about it with the hon. Lady.
T6. Last year I raised with the Department worrying data from the Alzheimer's Society about the number of care home residents with dementia who were being prescribed anti-psychotic drugs when they did not have a psychosis diagnosis. Can my hon. Friend provide an update on the current levels of prescribing?