Speeches by Smyth.

“The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous campaigner on behalf of Royal Berkshire hospital and now of Frimley Park hospital. I met with Members of Parliament last week who are involved in the RAAC schemes, which are progressing to plan. We are absolutely on target with progressing that plan, and we look forward to the proposa…”

“In January we published an honest, realistic and deliverable plan that puts the programme on a sustainable footing, ensuring that taxpayers get the maximum value for money. We are committed to delivering all the schemes and are moving at pace, with funding in place for design work, construction and business case develo…”

“My hon. Friend has been the most tireless campaigner on this issue since coming to the House in July 2024, so of course I will continue to work with her to support her local hospital. The previous Government neglected the NHS: those buildings were left to crumble and their new hospital programme was neither affordable …”

“We inherited a crumbling NHS estate. Many hospitals, including Doncaster Royal infirmary, are in a state of disrepair, thanks to the shocking record of the last 14 years. When I visited Doncaster Royal, I saw at first hand the outstanding care staff are providing despite significant infrastructure challenges. That is w…”

“This question is about services across north-west London. We are working with all integrated care boards to ensure that they work with local Members of Parliament about service configuration. It is a matter for them to determine. I have spoken to the hon. Gentleman previously. We are determined to ensure that we have t…”

“As my kids would say, that is a bit boomer, but I take the point. My hon. Friend is a tireless campaigner for Northwick Park and his constituents, and he has long campaigned for the improvement of cancer services. Any reconfiguration or change to services needs to be clinically led by local decision makers, following e…”

“Thanks to our investment and modernisation of the NHS, the Government are putting cancer services on the road to recovery by opening up community diagnostic centres on evenings and weekends, building new surgical hubs and investing in new radiotherapy machines. We are diagnosing cancer faster and treating it sooner. Th…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) on securing this important debate. He has made absolutely sure that the voice of Bracknell Forest is heard loud and clear, both here and at the Department of Health and So…”

“I will get through all the points, if I can, because I know there are lots of issues to address. As I was about to say, too many people are still waiting, but we are committed to working with the Welsh Government to keep the cross-border arrangements fair, transparent and patient-centred. Patients also face challenges …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) for securing this important debate. I knew that hon. Members from across the United Kingdom would come here for it, and so it has proved. There are no end of technicalities that …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) on securing the debate. We have veered quite a long way into the public health arena in the last while, but that demonstrates how important it is. I pay tribute to the expertise that my h…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The pride in place programme does just as it says on the tin, and it is important. The Government’s drive is to make sure that those communities, which know best what they need, are the drivers of how that is done. We will think laterally and bring together all that they know about w…”

“I do not have those numbers to hand but, as we outlined in the 10-year health plan, we are particularly committed to people in rural and coastal communities with regard to workforce and access to many other services. If there is anything specific the hon. Gentleman is not aware of, I am happy to furnish him with more i…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing the debate, and for getting through it—I hope he is well. I thank other hon. Members for their contributions. As others have noted, I am aware of the work that the hon. Gentleman has done, usin…”

“We will need to work with the industry. We recognise, and we say in all our comms and messaging, that this is a largely female industry largely for women and is an important part of our economy, particularly in local communities and constituencies. They want to work with us and we recognise that. Obviously many of them…”

“If I take first and then I am going to bring the experts in. This adds to the complexity of the timeline about whether someone is medically qualified and what for, what those procedures are, and they are defined very closely as they are of course in usual medical regulations. Also, as Gavin said, in terms of what is al…”

“We should say that there are a lot of good people doing good work out there. You have heard from some of them; they want good standards because they do not want their industry to have this bad reputation. They want high standards and they do not want to be in competition with people who are cowboys, have low standards,…”

“This is really pivotal to the whole area of regulation. You probably heard the range of current training and standards out there from your practitioners, and how difficult that is to navigate as a consumer. Part of what will take some time in this is that we will have to consider the current education and training stan…”

“Yes, we are. Part of that was in the summer and actually the response and interest from the media was fantastic and I commend it. Largely, young female journalists have really taken this on because they can see what is happening in their own social media feeds and so on, and they have pursued some stories on behalf of …”

“I cannot add anything to what I have already said on that: we are working at pace to make sure that we get this right and we intend to have that out so that people can be clear what that looks like. In the meantime, we all need to make sure that we do as much as we can to raise awareness. This inquiry has raised a lot …”