Speeches by Johnson.

“Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.”

“The Chair adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No. 88).”

“Currently, NHS England has a legal duty to promote innovation. That is set out in section 13K of the NHS Act 2006, which was it was inserted by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. As the Government are abolishing NHS England, that duty will disappear. The Government have chosen for clause 6 of the new legislation to p…”

“Members will have seen many reports about the productivity challenges facing the NHS. In sectors like manufacturing and software, new technologies allow organisations to significantly increase their output per worker, but that is difficult in healthcare: nurses can make use of new equipment and better techniques, but t…”

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“Innovation has the potential to save lives, which is very impressive. In a technological form, many people, including me, wear watches that tell them what their heart rate is and that monitor their exercise. There is so much available now that was not before, so we need to encourage innovation because it will improve o…”

“It is exciting how widespread that could become. If people travel to the continent, in particular to France, they have to carry a breathalyser, which costs just a few pounds, in their car. Professor Hanna is talking about how his technology, once it has been proven, could be developed on that scale so if someone was co…”

“In February, the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew), and I met the scientist Professor Hanna and his team at Imperial College. It was a fascinating visit; Professor Hanna is looking at a breath test for pancreatic cancer. Outcomes for pancreatic cancer and other canc…”

“My amendment would prohibit ICBs from limiting patient choice of provider based on commercial interest or organisational type. That would safeguard against ideologically motivated directions, which can undermine patient choice. The Minister is a sensible person, but some of her detractors, and future Ministers, may not…”

“Members cannot legislate just for today’s Government; they legislate for future Governments who may interpret legal duties in different ways. The amendment, therefore, would strengthen the patient choice duty in the clause from a general aspiration into a specific and enforceable right to choose between providers for o…”

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“As in many other policy areas, when Government give people the freedom to choose, we tend to end up with better outcomes across the board. Notwithstanding those points, I am concerned that the clause is not sufficiently robust, because, when put under the microscope, it has a weak legal threshold. It requires the Secre…”

“Clause 5 will impose an equivalent patient choice duty on the Secretary of State. As I mentioned, NHS England is being abolished, so the clause is a necessary continuity measure. In addition, it will not be possible for the Health Secretary to improve the health service unless he focuses on patient choice. Choice can r…”

“That is why choice and patient involvement is so important. It was first enshrined in the NHS constitution published in 2009, which set out that patients have a right to make choices about their care and the right to the information necessary to support those choices. The successor Government amended the National Healt…”

“Every medical practitioner knows that choice is important for care, because patients need to choose which type of care that they receive. When patients receive elective care—planned procedures and treatments that are not emergencies—there is often more than one option, and different options carry different trade-offs. …”

“The gap between what was promised and what is being offered has left the British public wondering: did the Labour Government really believe that power was too concentrated, or that power was concentrated in the wrong hands? I hope the Minister will enlighten us.”

““This Bill focuses on shuffling responsibility around Whitehall and gives the Secretary of State the role of chief micromanager.” —[Official Report, 1 June 2026; Vol. 786, c. 909.]”

“I understand the Government’s intention in clause 11, but it is unnecessarily sweeping. Ministers promised to let go of the steering wheel, but in practice they have installed a larger one. The hon. Member for North Shropshire hit the nail on the head when speaking during the Bill’s Second Reading:”

“I appreciate that Ministers may be frustrated after the election, pulling levers only to find that they are not attached where they thought they were, or even to anything at all, but I find it hard to reconcile what Ministers previously said, given the strength and universality of those comments, with what they have so…”

““As I said in Committee, this is fundamentally another NHS reorganisation Bill. It is a restructuring of the NHS and a centralisation of power within the NHS. It does not nothing to achieve integration and nothing to improve accountability to the public, to patients and to communities… It is clear that centralising con…”