Speeches by Streeting.

“My hon. Friend is right, and that is why the vaccination campaign has been so important this winter. He is also right about the importance of community-based teams. One of the Darzi conclusions was that since 2019, we have significantly increased staffing in our hospitals, but because we had the wrong people in the wro…”

“Thanks to the decisions taken by the Chancellor in the Budget, we are boosting the spending power of local authorities significantly, and £880 million has been ringfenced specifically for social care. I appreciate that a single Budget cannot undo 14 years of Conservative failure, but this is an important start, and of …”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. If we improve the service at Whipps Cross hospital for his constituents, it will have the added benefit of improving the service at Whipps Cross Hospital for my constituents, too.”

“I was grateful to staff at Derriford hospital for showing me at first hand the emergency department pressures when I visited just before Christmas. I have also visited Derriford at the height of summer, when it experiences high pressures. There are year-round difficulties at Derriford, and I thank the staff and leaders…”

“Some of the new capacity announced in today’s elective reform plan will come through the independent sector, and some of that new capacity will be in the NHS. It is our ambition to rebuild the NHS so that it is available for everyone where and when they need it, and we will work with the independent sector. We are publ…”

“I can definitely reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Deputy Prime Minister and I are working very closely on this issue, which is close to her heart; she has a huge amount of experience in this area. We will follow her progress as she embarks on her local government reforms. Baroness Casey will take those reform…”

“That is an excellent question. Having put in place funding to ensure that there are 1,000 more GPs on the frontline before April, and having announced just before Christmas a significant uplift for general practice, I hope that in the first six months of this Government, we have sent the strong message to people who as…”

“Do you want to come in on that, Tom?”

“I have a lot of respect for Adrian. If we just took that statement as literally the thing we would do to deal with UEC pressures, we would end up deepening and worsening the diagnosis that Darzi provided, where we concentrate more staff in hospitals, thinking that is the way to deal with the pressures, either in UEC, e…”

“If I think about some of the examples that I have seen, it is not just about top-down direction; it is also about horizontal leadership across different parts of the NHS. For example, I recently went up to the Redcar constituency with Anna Turley and Amanda Pritchard, the chief exec of NHS England, and I saw how the co…”

“I would say a few things. First, one of the first things I did, within weeks of coming in, was find the money to deal with the issue of GP unemployment so that we could deploy 1,000 more GPs to the frontline within this financial year. I was really clear up front—not least because I did not want GPs to think, “I really…”

“Absolutely.”

“I do not feel that the organisations I walked into in July, which I now lead, had the degree of openness and partnership with, in particular, the voluntary and community sector, or—and Tom might want to speak to this with his previous local government hat on. Look, I come from local government, and the situation is def…”

“First of all, we designed in accessibility with how we commissioned the partner agencies that we have involved in the consultation process. We did give it that consideration at the design phase, but I take your criticism on the chin in terms of people still feeling that when we launched it was not as accessible as it s…”

“I will say two things. First—to deal with the cynicism—the plan is not already finalised or written and drafted. I do not have a secret draft in my drawer. We took some flak for that, by the way. We came into government and when we launched the 10-year plan engagement, people said, “Why don’t you already have your 10-y…”

“Fine. Finally, men—that classically under-represented group in our society, but men’s health is a serious issue—accounted for only 34% of the responses. In all of those areas we will be going further with our partners, and we are thinking about how we do our social media outreach to try to drive up participation.”

“They should not be taking decisions ahead of seeing the allocations. As I say, we are in a much better position than we would have been had the Chancellor not done the heavy lifting that she did in the Budget to plug the black hole we walked into, stabilise public finances and start fixing the foundations of our public…”

“I can definitely say across health and social care that we are better off thanks to the decisions the Chancellor took at the Budget to invest in health and social care. As I have said very clearly, particularly in terms of primary care, hospices and so on—I understand that people want to set their budgets for the year …”

“We went through the spending review and Budget process with the Chancellor. We made clear what the pressures are in the system. We obviously came into Government with a manifesto that we were determined to deliver and hit the ground running with. The Chancellor and the chief secretary took our pressures and ambitions i…”

“I know that by the end of this Parliament we need to be able to see demonstrable improvement in the NHS. The Prime Minister has particularly emphasised through our plan for change the 18-week target from referral to treatment. We want to achieve that by the end of this Parliament. We will only be able to do that if we …”