Category: Health

  • Wes Streeting – 2022 Comments on A&E Waiting Times

    Wes Streeting – 2022 Comments on A&E Waiting Times

    The comments made by Wes Streeting, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 11 January 2022.

    It’s unacceptable for almost half of patients to be left waiting, often in pain and distress, for more than four hours in A&E over Christmas.

    After a decade of Tory mismanagement of the NHS, we went into the pandemic with record A&E waiting times, leaving us in the worst possible position when Covid struck.

    It’s not just that the Tories didn’t fix the roof while the sun was shining, they dismantled the roof and removed the floorboards.

    Labour will secure the future of the NHS with the staff, modern equipment and technology needed to bring waiting times down.

  • Maggie Throup – 2022 Comments on the NHS Food Scanner App

    Maggie Throup – 2022 Comments on the NHS Food Scanner App

    The comments made by Maggie Throup, the Public Health Minister, on 10 January 2022.

    We know that families have felt a lot of pressure throughout the pandemic which has drastically changed habits and routines

    The new year is a good time for making resolutions, not just for ourselves, but for our families. Finding ways to improve their health is one of the best resolutions any of us could make.

    By downloading the free NHS Food Scanner App, families can swap out foods from the weekly shop for healthier alternatives and avoid items high in salt, sugar and saturated fat.

  • Ben Wallace – 2022 Comments on Military Helping the NHS in London

    Ben Wallace – 2022 Comments on Military Helping the NHS in London

    The comments made by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, on 7 January 2022.

    The men and women of our Armed Forces are once again stepping up to support their dedicated colleagues in the NHS, as they work hand-in-hand to protect the nation from Covid-19.

    They have shown their worth time and again throughout this pandemic, whether driving ambulances, administering vaccines or supporting patients in hospital and they should be proud of their contribution to this truly national effort.

  • Sajid Javid – 2022 Comments about the Flu Vaccine

    Sajid Javid – 2022 Comments about the Flu Vaccine

    The comments made by Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 6 January 2022.

    It is incredible that more people aged 65 and over have received their flu vaccine this year than ever before. Getting your winter vaccines – whether that is your flu jab if eligible or your booster jab – is one of the most important things people can do this winter.

    Record numbers of people took up the offer of a free flu vaccine last year and the programme is expanding even further this year, with a record 35 million people in England eligible.

    Don’t delay – all those eligible should book their winter vaccines as soon as possible.

  • Michelle Mone – 2018 Speech in the House of Lords on Child Obesity

    Michelle Mone – 2018 Speech in the House of Lords on Child Obesity

    The speech made by Michelle Mone in the House of Lords on 17 April 2017.

    My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on securing this timely debate. There is much to welcome in the Government’s plan to tackle childhood obesity. It is of grave concern to me that those most affected by the obesity epidemic are among the poorest in this country. I am sure I share the belief of all noble Lords that people should not be at a higher risk of obesity and cancer just because they are on low incomes.

    I grew up in the East End of Glasgow. I did not learn anything about food and nutrition until I started my business and my entrepreneurial career. I was eating really badly and put on lots of weight. My children too were eating unhealthily. Once I learned the basics of nutrition, I changed what I ate, lost tons of weight and started to work out. I became a lot happier and healthier and my children followed me. It is far too easy for people to point the finger at low-income parents and criticise them for not feeding their children properly, but I think we are putting the blame in the wrong place. When you are on the breadline, your focus is, “I just need to feed my kids”. You will reach for a tin of spaghetti hoops, pre-packed, convenient ready meals or fish fingers and oven chips, thinking that you are providing a decent meal for your kids. We put a lot of trust in manufacturers and supermarkets, believing that they are selling us food that is healthy and nutritious, but that trust is misplaced.

    The fact is that the food industry, both manufacturers of processed food and supermarkets, can make billions of pounds selling high-sugar, high-salt, low-nutrition foods at cheap prices, regardless of the impact it has on childhood health. Essentially, the Government are subsidising the food industry to the tune of £5 billion-plus per year—the cost to the NHS of the obesity health epidemic. These trends, unless stopped, will cost the NHS tens of billions in the coming years. Changing behaviour around food at childhood, teaching in schools and educating parents on the dangers of what they are eating will prevent lifelong problems. We can save billions of pounds and live healthier, more productive lives.

    We have been here before on many different matters of public health. We eventually banned lead from paint when we realised it was killing people—although 86 years after Australia. Wearing a seatbelt became the law when we realised that not wearing a seatbelt meant we were more likely to die in a car crash. And we put health warnings on cigarettes when we realised that smoking caused cancer, although it took 50 years to achieve this. How long do we wait to act on obesity? At what point do we accept that our food manufacturers and supermarkets are selling food that is slowly killing their customers? It must be made clearer to families that a diet of kebabs, chips, chocolate, burgers, sugary drinks and convenient ready meals does not constitute a healthy, balanced diet just because these products are sold in supermarkets and available at takeaways. We must act when less healthy foods are three times cheaper than healthy foods, and foods with red traffic light labels are 20% more likely to be on promotion.

    We can change food labelling once we are out of the EU. How should we do this? First, we must apply health warnings. As the Royal Society for Public Health has advised, high-fat, salty and sugary foods, which are linked to obesity and cancer, should carry a clear health warning, as cigarettes do.

    Secondly, food labelling must be simple and easy to understand. The “recycle” symbol is one of the most recognised in the world. In the same way, a positive food choice should be instantly recognisable at the supermarket. Australia’s Health Star system rates foods out of five stars. The more nutritious the food is, the more stars it gets. It is simple. If we can get a similar system, and do it right, this sort of labelling will help families make positive choices.

    Change is possible. The food industry has responded amazingly to the “Blue Planet” documentary, which shifted our attitudes and practices around plastic almost overnight. Iceland is working to reduce the use of plastics in its packaging to save dolphins. It is banning palm oil in its own products to save rainforests. But what are Iceland and the other supermarkets doing to end the supply of goods that fuel childhood obesity and illness? Let us work hard in this House to challenge the food industry to make it easier for hard-pressed families to make positive food choices, by getting real about the health risks of cheap, processed foods, adding health warnings to packaging, and devising simple labelling to help families make informed choices. Together, we can end the £5 billion-plus NHS grant to the food industry, and stop this obesity epidemic now.

  • Maggie Throup – 2022 Comments on the Better Health Campaign

    Maggie Throup – 2022 Comments on the Better Health Campaign

    The comments made by Maggie Throup, the Vaccines Minister, on 4 January 2022.

    The Better Health campaign returns today, focusing on improving adults’ health and helping them get to a healthier weight.

    January is a great time of the year for making resolutions and I hope that people can use this as a kick start moment to be more active and eat healthier – especially when losing body weight can have such a positive impact on our health, including reducing the chance of becoming seriously ill with COVID-19.

  • Maggie Throup – 2021 Comments on Giving Up Smoking

    Maggie Throup – 2021 Comments on Giving Up Smoking

    The comments made by Maggie Throup, the Minister for Vaccines and Public Health, on 28 December 2021.

    We know that many people make a quit attempt in January, and while there are so many good reasons to stop smoking for yourself, we hope that this new campaign – by highlighting the inter-generational smoking link with parents influencing their children – will be the added motivation many need to ditch the cigarettes for good this year.

    With so much help and support available for parents, carers and anyone looking to quit – including the NHS Quit Smoking app, support on Facebook, daily emails and texts, and an online Personal Quit Plan – you won’t be alone in your New Year’s resolution.

  • Priti Patel – 2021 Comments on Extension of Health and Care Visa

    Priti Patel – 2021 Comments on Extension of Health and Care Visa

    The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 24 December 2021.

    The care sector is experiencing unprecedented challenges prompted by the pandemic and the changes we’ve made to the health and care visa will bolster the workforce and helping alleviate some of the pressures currently being experienced.

    This is our New Plan for Immigration in action, delivering our commitment to support the NHS and the wider health and care sector by making it easier for health professionals to live and work in the UK.

  • Boris Johnson – 2016 Speech on Leaving EU Creating More Money for NHS

    Boris Johnson – 2016 Speech on Leaving EU Creating More Money for NHS

    The speech made by Boris Johnson, Gisela Stuart and Boris Johnson on 3 June 2016.

    A STRONGER NHS AND MORE MONEY FOR THOSE IN NEED – WHY LEAVING THE EU HELPS PROTECT WORKING PEOPLE

    Our NHS is a precious asset. No other European country gives its citizens the guarantee of free healthcare, there when people need it, irrespective of ability to pay.

    The NHS is a great British institution and its core values – of solidarity, fairness and inclusivity – need to be protected and defended. The wealthy can always buy themselves top quality care and jump the queue for treatment. Working people don’t have that option. Working people need an NHS which is strong and well-funded to give them security at every stage in their lives.

    As our population grows, and as we all live for longer, so the pressures on the NHS are set to grow. We believe that one of the best ways to protect, and to strengthen, the NHS, for the people of this country is to use some money we currently spend on EU membership to invest in improving healthcare.

    The NHS leadership has said it needs an additional £30 billion each year by 2020 to meet future pressures. Eight billion pounds will come from spending increases, and £22 billion will need to come from efficiency savings. The Government rightly committed at the last election to meet that £8 billion target.

    But we don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to make the £22 billion worth of efficiency savings. Again, we are sure ministers, managers, doctors, nurses and everyone in the Health Service will do everything they can. However, trusted health experts such as the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation and the King’s Fund have all stressed how difficult it will be to achieve the planned net efficiency savings of 2% each year.

    This level of savings is far above what the NHS has achieved historically. And the demand for NHS services is only set to grow. NHS Improvement, the NHS regulator, has identified rising demand as one of the principal challenges for the NHS’s future funding.

    If we vote to leave the EU on 23 June, we will be able to do something about one of the main causes of higher demand – uncontrolled and unlimited migration from the EU into the UK.

    In 2015, 270,000 people came to the UK from Europe, a population movement equivalent to all the inhabitants of a city the size of Newcastle arriving in our country. Net migration was 184,000, a population increase equivalent to adding a city the size of Oxford to the UK population. Year after year, similar numbers arrive.

    On top of this, between 2005 and 2014, there were 475,000 live births to mothers who were EU citizens. This is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Manchester to the UK population. The cost of maternity services alone to these families is likely to exceed £1.3 billion.

    As we have set out before, it is government policy for five new countries to join the EU: Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey. We are paying billions to these countries to help them join. The EU is already opening visa-free travel to Turkey. That would create a borderless travel zone from the frontiers of Syria and Iraq to the English Channel. The EU’s plans for future growth will lead to demands being placed on the NHS far beyond what its funding can cope with.

    We have set out our plan to change the immigration system after we vote to leave. We will end the ‘free movement’ of people from the EU and take back control. We will introduce a points-based system under which migrants will be admitted to the UK on the basis of their skills, not their passport.

    But even after we take back control of our migration policy, the NHS will still face funding pressures. Restoring control over our borders is a necessary step, but there is more we should do to guarantee quality care for working people.

    We need to ensure the NHS has as much money as possible and after we vote to leave we will have the means to do so without damaging public finances.

    After we Vote Leave on 23 June, the Government should use some of the billions saved from leaving the EU to give at least a £100 million per week cash transfusion to the NHS.

    This money will be over and above the commitment that the Prime Minister rightly made at the last election to an £8 billion real terms increase.

    How can we pay for this additional spending? From the money we save from leaving the EU.

    The UK’s gross budget contribution is currently over £19 billion or £350 million per week. According to Treasury estimates, this will increase to nearly £400 million per week by 2020.

    We get some cash back through a negotiated rebate and some other money we hand over to the EU is spent here in the UK on areas like farm subsidies.

    But the rebate is not a fixed benefit anchored in the treaties. It is there only by the consent of other EU nations, it has to be negotiated, it has already been reduced, and if we vote to stay it can, and will, be whittled away.

    If we Vote Leave, we take back control of the whole sum. We will no longer be dependent on other countries to protect the money we get back in our rebate. And we will continue to support farming, science, universities and poorer areas of the UK with the money they currently receive from the EU.

    That would mean we would then be able to spend all of our net EU contribution of £10.6 billion on our priorities like the NHS and cutting VAT on fuel.

    Other money will also be liberated to spend on public services in the event of a vote to leave.

    We have already set out plans to amend the European Communities Act 1972 immediately after the referendum to stop multinationals using EU law to claim tax refunds in the UK. This will save taxpayers between £7 billion and £43 billion by 2021.

    It is wrong that big businesses have been using the European Court to starve public services of money they could never have recovered under English law.

    If we leave the EU we could also restore our system of taxation of offshore companies which was set aside by the European Court. The European Court’s judgment has cost UK taxpayers an estimated £840 million each year.

    We can also scrap the EU’s foolish rules on how Whitehall runs procurement processes which add billions to costs every year. The European Commission’s own conservative figures suggest that procurement rules cost at least £1.7 billion each year and delay projects by years.

    There are billions of savings that Government will be able to make after we vote leave and escape the control of the rogue European Court.

    A vote to leave is a vote for a fairer Britain. You only have to look at who funds the IN campaign to realise this: the undeserving rich, the investment banks that crashed the world economy in 2008 and who bankrupted the people of Greece, and the multinational corporations who spend millions on lobbying the corrupt Brussels system.

    This is the choice on 23 June.

    A Vote to Remain means that we keep handing over control of £350 million of our money to the EU every week. A Vote to Remain means we cannot control immigration. A Vote to Remain means greater pressure on the NHS, school places and housing.

    If we Vote Leave, we can take back control of our borders and our money. By 2020, we can give the NHS a £100 million per week cash injection, and we can ensure that the wealthy interests that have rigged the EU rules in their favour at last pay their fair share.

    That is why we believe a Vote to Leave is the right choice for social justice, safer for public services, jobs, and families and better for the next generation.

  • Sajid Javid – 2021 Comments on Booster Jabs

    Sajid Javid – 2021 Comments on Booster Jabs

    The comments made by Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 16 December 2021.

    One thing is absolutely clear – we have no time to waste in the race between virus and the vaccine. Booster jabs are absolutely critical for strengthening our defences, and today’s milestone of 25 million top-up jabs is a testament to the enthusiasm of people up and down the country who are rolling up their sleeves to get boosted now.

    I want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone working on this national mission across all corners of the United Kingdom – from the brilliant NHS and Armed Forces to the tens of thousands of heroic volunteers who have signed up to help with deployment of our booster vaccines.