Tag: Steve Barclay

The speech made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry annual conference held on 27 April 2023.

Well thank you, Richard [Torbett] – good afternoon, it’s great to be able to join you.

As you’ve just been touching on some of my past roles, it’s over five years since I was last in the Department of Health working then as a Minister of State.

And in those five years, we’ve seen game-changing breakthroughs in science and technology.

We’ve seen a once-in-a-generation pandemic.

We’ve seen Britain depart, as you’ve just mentioned, from the European Union.

And we’ve also seen the full consequences of the pandemic itself.

And those factors have come together to shape a landscape that is very different today, than it was five years ago in 2018.

The application of AI into almost every aspect of our lives might be receiving lots of attention today, particularly with things such as ChatGPT.

But the potential of AI in life science is something we in this room have long been alive to, from detecting cancers to scanning potential transplant organs.

Equally, pharmaceutical breakthroughs and their rapid deployment through the NHS have been turning the tide on diseases like HIV and Hep-C, and helping to bring us to a point where we can realistically talk about elimination – something which 10 years ago would have been unimaginable.

Next, the pandemic has ushered in some powerful new ways of working. The Vaccines Taskforce brought many of us in government to working very closely with industry and academia in ways that we had not done before.

And in its simplest terms we learned a lot about how to make things happen at pace.

And it offers much promise for breakthroughs in some other areas dealing with health challenges that we face in the months and years ahead.

And the third big shift is that the UK left the European Union, just as the pandemic began to take hold across Europe.

And as Brexit Secretary leading our exit at that time, I recognised that in taking control of our rules and regulations we have a chance to show global leadership in important areas including life science.

Now, with your help and support, we are doing just that. Building a more bespoke regulatory system that’s ready for the innovations of today but is also building the agility to respond quickly to the innovations of tomorrow.

Now the question we’ve been trying to answer today, in the sessions I’ve been hearing that you’ve been having is how do we seize those opportunities?

And I know you heard from some of my colleagues, from June Raine and Ros Campion earlier, on ‘How we build on the UK’s global strengths’. And we’ve heard about the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) laser-like focus on ‘process, partnerships and people’.

And this afternoon, I want to add some of my own thoughts on how we seize the opportunities that are in front of us.

The first way is with an unashamedly pro-innovation approach to regulation.

Now the theme of today’s conference is ‘Growing the UK as a Global Hub for Life Sciences’ and we have the largest life sciences sector in Europe.

And the benefits of that to the UK economy are vast, not just from the jobs created, but from the transformative change it offers for the NHS. A key priority is to ensure that great science is then fast-tracked into the very bloodstream of our NHS.

And that is why in the Budget, we announced an extra £10 million of funding for MHRA, so they can put in place a quicker, simpler, regulatory process for all approvals for innovative treatments, without compromising, in any way, patient safety. And that is building on the ever-closer working relationship that the MHRA and NICE have developed through the ILAP pathway.

Now we aim to develop the most effective regulatory approvals process of anywhere in the world. And we are fortunate to have the MHRA – one of the most respected drug regulators globally – and, of course, the first to license a vaccine for Covid.

From next year, the MHRA will set up a swift new approval process for the most cutting-edge medicines and devices to grow the UK’s role as a global hub for their development. And at the same time, from next year, they will allow the near-automatic sign-off for medicines and technologies already approved by trusted regulators in other parts of the world such as the United States, Europe, and Japan.

And the real value is that near-automatic recognition of other regulators in some areas, such as license extensions, will in turn free up valuable regulatory resource to focus on other cutting-edge areas, like AI in medical devices.

And this kind of smart regulation – made possible by the greater agility brought by our Brexit freedoms – meets our twin goals: Growing the UK as a global life sciences hub, while ensuring patients in the NHS have access to some of the most innovative medicines and treatments that can be found anywhere in the world.

Now many of you will be aware that this coming change was an interim recommendation from the report into Life Sciences regulations, which is going to be published next month. And I want to put on record, Richard, my thanks to everyone who played their part in that important piece of work.

Not least the ABPI, who have been so keenly engaged, including how you worked with the independent champions.

I’m looking forward to hearing further recommendations and the benefits they can bring to the sector and patients alike.

Now today, I also want to briefly comment on VPAS. The government and the pharmaceutical industry came together to negotiate a voluntary agreement, which has endured for many decades and created a stable basis for investment, access, and uptake. And it has done so while saving the NHS billions of pounds – which in turn has been reinvested into patient care.

The negotiations for a successor agreement will begin soon and I very much welcome the appointment of Sir Hugh Taylor, who brings vast experience in this area, and I hope assures Richard, colleagues, as to the seriousness with which we are taking these negotiations.

And you heard a little earlier from the Prime Minister, which I hope further underscores our desire to deliver a successor to VPAS – which needs to be a deal that is good for patients, good for the NHS, and good for you too.

The core value that sits at the heart of all of this – whether it’s innovative regulation or VPAS – is that the government is a committed partner.

And we are guided by our Life Sciences Vision, which sets out our ten-year plan for the sector, including seven missions for all of us – government, industry, the NHS, academia, medical research charities and others – to solve together.

And together, our work on everything from cancer to dementia, cardiovascular disease to mental health will not only support the NHS but it will help the wider economy by improving productivity and life expectancy.

Now we’ve already been putting this into practice.

In January we signed a memorandum of understanding with BioNTech to bring innovative vaccine technology to this country, with the potential to transform outcomes for cancer patients. The partnership means that, from as early as this September our patients will be amongst the first to participate in trials and tests to provide targeted, personalised and precision treatments. And that will use transformative new therapies to both treat existing cancers – and to help stop them from returning.

That deal builds on the 10-year partnership we struck with Moderna in December to invest in the mRNA research and development in the UK and establish a state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing centre here.

We want to partner with those who share our commitment to scientific advancement, innovation, and cutting-edge technology.

We’re the third biggest investor of government funding into health R&D as a proportion of GDP in the world and we’re upholding our promise to increase research and development spending to £20 billion a year. And that is at a time when there are many competing challenges for the Chancellor to meet.

It’s not just something I’m proud of for its own sake, but something I’m determined we use to its full potential, so we can transform people’s lives and opportunities both here and abroad.

And if there’s one message I want you to take from my speech today it’s this: we need companies – including a great many represented by you in this room today – to invest in UK clinical trials.

I know there are challenges, and we are listening, not least on how we can support those consultant clinical academics who drive medical breakthroughs.

It is why we have commissioned James O’Shaughnessy to conduct an independent review of the UK commercial clinical trials landscape.

And James has been kind enough to share some of his early findings and we will formally respond in the coming weeks.

And I know you’ve also heard from June Raine earlier about the MHRA’s work to simplify requirements and remove barriers.

There’s a lot of potential around clinical research and the changes ahead can bring a huge number of wins.

Wins for patients – who will get access to the latest innovative medicines that will become the Standard of Care in years to come.

Wins for the NHS – not just to boost to their income, but also because we know that hospitals that are active in research have better outcomes.

And wins for industry – who can work with a single NHS – from leading institutions and hospitals to primary care.

Because, with its unrivalled scale, breadth and potential, the NHS should be the research partner like no other on Earth. But I recognise that, for those of you in the room, that has too often not been the case.

Notwithstanding the need for change, clinical research in the NHS has already been responsible for some of the UK’s biggest successes – like the RECOVERY trial. And since Covid, public engagement in health research is at an all-time high.

But I want that to go further – so we’ll build in a clinical research environment that is people-centred, that is digitally enabled, and all embedded within the NHS.

And you can see that coming to life through initiatives like the NIHR’s ‘Be Part of Research’ which makes it even easier for people in England to find and register their interest in suitable research opportunities – including through the NHS App that we are developing at pace.

Seizing these opportunities on clinical trials will not only leave patients and the NHS stronger but give us a much more joined up life sciences sector and a more dynamic economy too.

So, we have a coming together of giant technological leaps:

Innovative new ways of working from the pandemic.

A post-Brexit regulatory environment that offers the agility to design a more bespoke and effective environment.

And a new way forward for clinical trials through implementing the James O’Shaughnessy review.

Taken together, it means the UK is well-placed to seize these opportunities – working in partnership with the talent we have within the Department of Health and its arm’s length bodies, with our fantastic NHS – including frontline medical staff, and in partnership with you on behalf of the industries that you represent.

I look forward to working with you Richard, to colleagues in the room, to achieve that shared common goal. Thank you very much.

The statement made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 17 April 2023.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. On its first part, we will not have firm figures on the number of patient appointments postponed until later today, because the NHS guidance has been to allow trusts a full working day to collate the data on those impacts. We do know from the previous three-day strike that 175,000 hospital appointments were disrupted and 28,000 staff were off. There is an initial estimate that 285,000 appointments and procedures would be rescheduled, but it is premature to set out the full impact of the junior doctors’ strike before we have that data. I am happy to commit to providing an update for the House in a written statement tomorrow. In the coming days, I will also update the House on the very significant progress that has been made on the successful action taken over recent months to clear significant numbers of 78-week waits, which resulted from the covid pandemic.

It is regrettable that the British Medical Association junior doctors committee chose the period immediately after Easter in order to cause maximum disruption, extending its strike to 96 hours and asking its members not to inform hospitals as to whether they intended to strike, thus making contingency planning much more difficult. Let me put on record my huge thanks to all those NHS staff, including nurses and consultants, who stepped up to provide cover for patients last week.

I recognise that there are significant pressures on junior doctors, both from the period of the pandemic and from dealing with the backlogs that that has caused. I do want to see a deal that increases junior doctors’ pay and fixes many of the non-pay frustrations that they articulate. But the junior doctors committee co-chairs have still not indicated that they will move substantially from their 35% pay demand, which is not affordable and indeed is not supported by those on the Opposition Front Bench.

Let me turn to the second part of the hon. Gentleman’s question and the steps we are taking to prevent further strike action in the NHS. We have negotiated a deal with the NHS Staff Council; it is an offer we arrived at together, through constructive and meaningful negotiations. It is one on which people are still voting, with a decision of the NHS Staff Council due on 2 May. The largest union, Unison, has voted in favour of it, by a margin of 74% in favour. So we have agreed a process with the trade unions, which I am keen to respect, and we should now allow the other trade unions to complete their ballot, ahead of that NHS Staff Council meeting on 2 May.

Wes Streeting

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

Finally, the invisible man appears; the Secretary of State was largely absent last week during the most disruptive strikes in NHS history. He was almost as invisible as the Prime Minister, who previously said he does not want to “get in the middle” of these disputes—what an abdication of leadership during a national crisis. An estimated 350,000 patients had appointments and operations cancelled last week—that is in addition to the hundreds of thousands already affected by previous rounds of action. Having failed to prevent nurses and ambulance workers from striking, the Government are repeating the same mistakes all over again by refusing talks with junior doctors. Patients cannot afford to lose more days to strikes. The NHS cannot afford more days lost to strike. Staff cannot afford more days lost to strikes. Is it not time for the Secretary of State to swallow his pride, admit that he has failed and bring in ACAS to mediate an end to the junior doctors’ strike?

Last week also saw the Royal College of Nursing announce new strike dates with no derogations and a new ballot. What does the Secretary of State plan to do to avert the evident risks to patient safety? Government sources briefed yesterday that they are prepared to “tough it out”. That is easy for them to say. Will the Secretary of State look cancer patients in the eye, while they wait for life-saving treatment, and tell them to tough it out, as they are the ones who will pay the price for his failed approach?

Finally, writing in The Sun on Sunday, the Secretary of State said that he is worried about patient safety, but he offered no plan to get this matter resolved. He is not a commentator; he is nominally the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with the power and responsibility to put an end to these strikes. When will he put his toys back in the pram, stop blaming NHS staff, sit down with junior doctors and negotiate a fair resolution to this terrible, damaging and unprecedented dispute?

Steve Barclay

The shadow Secretary of State seems to ignore the fact that we have negotiated a deal with the NHS Staff Council, and it is a deal that it has recommended to its members. Indeed, the largest health union has voted in favour of the deal—indeed it is his own health union that has voted in favour of it—and yet he seems to suggest that we should tear it up even though other trade unions are voting on the offer, and their leadership had recommended it.

Secondly, the shadow Secretary of State says that we should sit down and negotiate. We have made an offer of 10.75% for last year, compared with the Labour Government in Wales, who have offered just 7.75%, which means that, in cash terms, the offer in England is higher than that put on the table by the Welsh Government, whom, I presume, he supports. He says that he does not support the junior doctors in their ask of 35%, and neither does the leadership there. We need to see meaningful movement from the junior doctors, but I recognise that they have been under significant pay and workforce pressures, which is why we want to sit down with them.

The bottom line is that the deal on the table is reasonable and fair. It means that just over £5,000 across last year and this year will be paid for a nurse at the top of band 5. The RCN recommended the deal to its members, but the deal was rejected by just under a third of its overall membership. It is hugely disappointing that the RCN has chosen not to wait for the other trade unions to complete their ballot and not to wait for the NHS Staff Council, of which it is a member, to meet to give its view on the deal. It has chosen to pre-empt all that not only with the strikes that come before that decision of the NHS Staff Council, but by removing the derogations—the exemptions—that apply to key care, including emergency care, which is a risk to patient safety.

Trade unions are continuing to vote on the deal. The deal on the table is both fair and reasonable, including just over £5,000 across last year and this year for nurses at the top of band 5. The deal has been accepted by the largest union in the NHS, including, as I have said, the shadow Health Secretary’s own trade union. It pays more in cash to Agenda for Change members than the deal on the table from the Labour Government in Wales. It is a deal that the majority of the NHS Staff Council, including the RCN’s own leadership, recommended to its members. We have always worked in good faith to end the disruption that these strikes have caused and we will continue to do so. None the less, it is right to respect the agreement that we have reached with the NHS Staff Council and to await its decision, which is due in the coming weeks.

The letter sent by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to the General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing on 16 April 2023.

Dear Pat,

Thank you for your letter of 14 April.

The offer that we arrived at together through negotiations in March, and which as the General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing you recommended to your members, is a fair and reasonable settlement that acknowledges the dedication of NHS staff.

It would mean that a nurse at the top of Band 5 would get over £5,000 in extra pay across last year and this year – including over £2,000 in bonus payments arriving as a lump sum in pay cheques by the summer.

After you recommended the deal be accepted, I am disappointed that given the turnout, a rejection from less than half of your members was sufficient for a narrow rejection overall.

This offer was of course negotiated with and put to all Agenda for Change trade unions. Unison’s members decisively accepted it on Friday, and other unions are yet to conclude their consultations. I hope that this fair and reasonable offer will secure their members’ support, and I will therefore await the collective outcome and extraordinary Staff Council meeting that will follow. As you know from when you and your colleagues negotiated this offer, the lump sum payments for 2022/23 are payable if the NHS Staff Council ratifies this offer.

Given that you supported the offer we reached together, and that your ballot saw a very narrow result, I am also both disappointed and concerned that the Royal College of Nursing has chosen to announce 48 hours of continuous strike action without consultation of other Staff Council unions or waiting for the full Staff Council consultation to complete. The decision to refuse at this stage any exemptions for even the most urgent and life-threatening treatment during this action will, I fear, put patients at risk.

We have so far worked together constructively, and I hope this can continue. The strike action you have called will cause significant disruption at a time when the NHS is already under extreme pressure. I urge you to reconsider your planned strike on 30 April – 2 May and, like the remainder of the Agenda for Change unions, wait until the collective outcome of the extraordinary Staff Council meeting.

I would therefore welcome a meeting with you to discuss how we can avoid this escalatory action – recognising that the offer we negotiated with you and other unions stands, and I hope to see it implemented in the interests of all Agenda for Change staff once other consultations conclude.

Yours ever,

RT HON STEVE BARCLAY MP

The statement made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

I am pleased to be able to inform the House that today 16 March 2023, I have made a formal offer on pay for 2022-23 and 2023-24 to the unions representing staff on the agenda for change contract. The NHS Staff Council has discussed this offer and the Royal College of Nursing, UNISON, GMB, the chartered society of physiotherapy and the British Dietetic Association will recommend the offer to their members in consultations that will be held over the coming weeks. Strike action will continue to be paused while they are consulted.

Under the offer, over 1 million NHS staff on the agenda for change contract would receive two non-consolidated payments for 2022-23. This is on top of an at least £1,400 consolidated pay award that they have already received, which was in line with the recommendations of the independent pay review body.

Under the terms of the offer, all staff would receive an award worth 2% of an individuals’ salary for 2022-23. In addition, staff would receive a one-off bonus which recognises the sustained pressure facing the NHS following the covid-19 pandemic and the extraordinary effort these members of staff have been making to hit backlog recovery targets and meet the Prime Minister’s promise to cut waiting lists. This NHS backlog bonus is an investment worth an additional 4% of the agenda for change pay bill, and would mean staff would receive an additional payment of between £1,250 and £1,600. With both of these payments, a nurse at the top of band 5, for example, would receive over £2,000 in total.

For 2023-24, the Government have offered a 5% consolidated increase in pay. In addition, the lowest paid staff, such as porters and cleaners will see their pay matched to the top of band 2, resulting in a pay increase of 10.4%.

For example, this would mean a newly qualified nurse would get over £1,300, increasing their base salary to £28,407. A nurse at the top of band 6 would receive a pay rise of over £2,000, increasing their base salary to £42,618.

The Government firmly believe that this is a fair offer which rewards all agenda for change staff and commits to a substantial pay rise in 2023-24 at a time when people across the country are facing cost of living pressures and there are multiple demands on the public finances.

Setting pay is an annual process and, as is always the case, decisions are considered in light of the fiscal and economic context and ensuring awards recognise the value of NHS staff whilst delivering value for the taxpayer. While it is right that we reward our hard-working NHS staff with a pay rise, this needs to be proportionate and balanced with the need to deliver NHS services and manage the country’s long term economic health and public sector finances, along with inflationary pressures.

The Government asked the NHS Pay Review Body (NHSPRB) to report by the end of April 2023. We anticipate the progress made and the outcome of the union ballot to be taken into account. If the offer is accepted by unions, it will be implemented, but the Government would welcome observations from the NHSPRB on the pay deal in England.

On top of the pay package, the Government are also committing to important measures including the development of a national, evidence-based policy frame- work which will build on existing safe staffing arrangements and amendments to terms and conditions to support existing NHS staff develop their careers through apprenticeships.

In addition, having heard the concerns of nursing staff and their representatives about the specific challenges they face in terms of recruitment, retention and professional development, the Government have committed to address these issues and will therefore work with NHS employers and unions to improve opportunities for nursing career progression.

The Government are also committed to improving support for newly qualified healthcare registrants. It will commission a review into the support received by those transitioning from training into practice. And the Government will consult on the permanent easement of pension abatement rules.

This package, alongside the comprehensive NHS Long Term Workforce Plan that NHS England will publish later this year, will help to ensure that the NHS can recruit and retain the staff it needs to meet the growing and changing health and wellbeing needs of patients.

Alongside making this formal offer, I have today also written to the Royal College of Nursing to outline that, in undertaking work to address the specific challenges faced by nursing staff—in terms of recruitment, retention and professional development—this work will involve: how to take account of the changing responsibilities of nursing staff; and the design and implementation issues, including scope and legal aspects, of a separate pay spine for nursing staff exclusively.

The Government intend to complete this work such that resulting changes can be delivered within the 2024-25 pay year. In conducting this work, the Government will also consider whether any separate measures may apply to other occupational groups, taking into account the views of NHS Employers and unions.

The speech made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 9 February 2023.

The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill requires the Secretary of State to consult with such persons as they consider appropriate prior to making regulations to establish minimum service levels for relevant health services in the event of strike action. The regulations must be approved by both Houses of Parliament before they are made. The consultation requirements may be fulfilled before and after the Bill receives Royal Assent. Minimum service levels will enable employers to issue work notices, ensuring adequate staffing for a minimum level of safety to be achieved in the event of strike action.

Minimum service levels aim to limit the impacts of strike action on the lives and livelihoods of the public and to strike a balance between the right of unions and their members to strike with the need for the wider public to be able to access key services during strikes.

This consultation focuses on minimum service levels for ambulance services, which the Prime Minister has identified as a priority, alongside fire and rescue services and rail services. Our proposal is that ambulance services should be covered in regulations as a priority recognising that disruption to blue light services puts lives at immediate risk. This consultation will help to inform a decision as to whether ambulance services should be covered by the regulations and if so the detail regarding the minimum service levels required in the ambulance service.

The consultation will open today, Thursday 9 February 2023, and will be open for a period of 12 weeks, closing on Thursday 4 May 2023.

Copies of the consultation will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.

The statement made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 9 January 2023.

The covid-19 pandemic has shown the importance of having the ability to develop and deploy vaccines rapidly to respond to a health emergency, as well as to mitigate the potential economic and health costs such an emergency can cause. It also demonstrated the need to establish resilience on UK shores to avoid supply chain disruptions which could have severe public health and economic consequences. While the future trajectory of the covid-19 virus is uncertain, delivering a consistent and resilient supply of covid-19 vaccines is critical in ensuring safe and effective vaccines are provided on at least an annual basis over the next decade, to protect those who are most vulnerable to covid-19.

With these challenges in mind, in June 2022 Ministers signed non-binding heads of terms and a single tender case for a strategic partnership between HMG and Moderna. Since then, the Vaccine Taskforce and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), has worked to negotiate a definitive agreement with Moderna. The execution of our contractual agreement for a 10-year partnership with Moderna was announced on 22 December 2022. The partnership will bring vaccine development onto UK shores, boosting our messenger RNA (mRNA) capability, strengthen our ability to scale up production rapidly in the event of a health emergency, and better equip the UK to respond to covid-19 and future health emergencies.

Through this deal, Moderna will, at its own cost, establish a UK based manufacturing facility and global research and development (R&D) centre, as well as commit substantial investment into UK-based R&D activities over the 10-year period, bringing the UK a step closer to becoming the leading global hub for life sciences. The manufacturing facility will be capable of supplying up to 100 million doses of respiratory vaccine per year in normal circumstances, increasing to up to 250 million doses in the event of a health emergency. The UK will have priority access to these vaccines where they are demonstrated to be safe, effective, and authorised by the MHRA. These include both Moderna’s proven and highly effective covid-19 vaccine and others in its pipeline, including against flu and RSV, providing health resilience.

Moderna has demonstrated expertise in mRNA development which has the potential to be a transformative breakthrough technology in several disease areas, including cancer, respiratory illnesses and heart disease. Also, mRNA vaccines have the potential to treat multiple pathogens in a single shot and be delivered in rapid timeframes.

The new Innovation and Technology Research Centre will look to unlock this potential by developing revolutionary treatments in the UK, which will benefit NHS patients and people worldwide. This will include running a significant number of clinical trials in the UK. Moderna has also pledged to fund grants for UK universities, including PhD places, research programmes and wider vaccine ecosystem engagement. The industry-leading, future-proof design of the plant will permit the addition of capability to manufacture a wide range of medicines and will be a massive boost to the UK’s R&D capability, as well as creating more than 150 highly skilled jobs.

The partnership, secured by the Vaccine Taskforce, will be taken forward by the Covid Vaccines Unit in the UKHSA. This will see the UKHSA working with Moderna to ensure early vaccine development, supporting the G7 mission to get from variant to vaccine in 100 days. Construction is expected to commence in early 2023, with the first mRNA vaccine expected to be produced in the UK in 2025.

The statement made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in the House of Commons on 9 January 2023.

The UK’s response to the covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the power of Government collaborating with industry to accelerate life sciences innovation. We want to take this innovative approach to tackling the other major healthcare challenges we face, such as cancer.

The Government have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Germany-based company BioNTech. This MoU aims to build a strategic partnership which will bring innovative immunotherapy research to the UK, with the potential to transform cancer patient outcomes and develop new vaccines for infectious diseases. This agreement will pave the way for a multi-year partnership between the Government and BioNTech, accelerating trials into the company’s ground-breaking pipeline of products targeted at major global diseases such as breast, lung and pancreatic cancer, malaria and tuberculosis.

BioNTech is a biopharmaceutical company developing a pipeline of cutting-edge immunotherapies—including mRNA-based vaccines and therapies. The company became a household name in 2020 after developing a covid-19 vaccine in partnership with Pfizer, which went on to become the world’s first licensed vaccine to use novel mRNA technology.

Through this partnership with BioNTech, the Government aim to ensure trials into further promising vaccines and therapies are accelerated, to reach our patients faster. The agreement means cancer patients will get early access to trials exploring personalised mRNA therapies, like cancer vaccines. No two cancers are the same and mRNA vaccines will contain a genetic blueprint to stimulate the immune system to attack cancer cells. The collaboration will aim to deliver 10,000 personalised therapies to UK patients by 2030 through a new research and development hub, creating at least 70 jobs and strengthening the UK’s positions as a leader in global life sciences.

BioNTech will also be the first industry partner in the new cancer vaccine launch pad which is being developed by NHS England and Genomics England. The launch pad will help to rapidly identify large numbers of cancer patients who could be eligible for trials and explore potential vaccine across multiple types of cancer. The partnership will aim to help patients with early and late-stage cancers.

If successfully developed, cancer vaccines could become part of the standard of care.

The statement made by Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 9 January 2023.

Mr Speaker, I wish to take this first opportunity to update the House on the severe pressures faced by the NHS since the House last met. I and the Government regret that the experience for some patients and staff in emergency care has not been acceptable in recent weeks. I am sure that the whole House will join me in thanking staff in the NHS and social care who have worked tirelessly throughout this intense period, including clinicians in this House who have worked on wards over Christmas. They include my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), the Minister for mental health, and the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), the shadow Minister for mental health.

There is no question but that it has been an extraordinarily difficult time for everyone in health and care. Flu has made this winter particularly tough: first, because we are facing the worst flu season for 10 years—the number of people in hospital with flu this time last year was 50; this year, it is over 5,100. Secondly, it came early and quickly, increasing sevenfold between November and December. It also came when GPs and primary and community care were at their most constrained. When flu affects the population, it affects the workforce too, leading to staff sickness absence that constrains supply just as it also increases demand.

These flu pressures came on top of covid. Over 9,000 people are in hospitals with covid, while exceptional levels of scarlet fever activity and an increase in strep A have created further pressure on A&E. All that comes on top of a historically high starting point. We did not have a quiet summer, with significant levels of covid, and delayed discharges were more than double what they were during the pandemic. I put that in context for the House: in June 2020, there were just 6,000 cases per day of delayed discharge—patients medically fit and ready to leave hospital—whereas throughout last year the figure was between 12,000 and 13,000 per day. The scale, speed and timing of our flu season have combined with ongoing high levels of covid admissions in hospital and the pandemic legacy of high delayed discharge to put real strain on frontline services.

Since the NHS began preparing for this winter, there was a recognition that this year had the potential to be the hardest ever. That is why there was a specific focus on vaccination. There were 9 million flu shots and 17 million autumn covid boosters. We extended eligibility more widely than in the past, to cover the over-50s, and became the first place in the world to have the bivalent covid vaccine, which tackles both the omicron and the original covid strain.

NHS England also put in place plans for the equivalent of 7,000 additional beds, including the introduction of virtual wards of a sort that one can see at Watford General Hospital. That innovation is still at an early stage of development, but has the potential to be significant in reducing pressure on bed occupancy in hospitals; in Watford alone, it has saved the equivalent of an extra hospital ward of patients. In addition, our plan for patients put £500 million specifically into delayed discharge, with a further £600 million next year and £1 billion the year after. Although the funds are already starting to make a difference, efforts have taken time to ramp up operationally with local authorities and the local NHS.

In addition, our 42 integrated care boards, recognising how bed occupancy in hospitals and social care are connected, will fully integrate health and care in the years to come. But likewise, they are at an early stage of maturity, with ICBs having become fully operationalised only in July 2022, less than six months ago.

Our plans involving the integration of hospital care and social care, additional funding for discharge, increased step-down capacity, the equivalent of 7,000 additional hospital beds and a vaccination programme at scale have provided the groundwork for the Government response, but it is clear we need to do more right now in light of the level of flu and covid rates and given that hospital occupancy remains far too high and emergency departments are too congested. Recognising that, we launched the elective recovery taskforce on 7 December, and in the coming weeks, we will publish our urgent and emergency care recovery plans. NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care have been working intensively over Christmas on these plans, which were reviewed with health and care leaders at an NHS recovery forum in Downing Street on Saturday.

The recovery falls into three main areas of work: first, steps to support the system now, given the immediate pressures we face this winter; secondly, steps to support a whole-of-system response this year to give better resilience during the summer and autumn—as we have seen with the heatwave this summer and with the levels of covid, pressure is now sustained throughout the year, not just, as in the past, during autumn and winter; and, thirdly, our work alongside those two areas on prevention, on maximising the step change potential of proven technologies, such as virtual wards, and on the wider adoption of innovations such as operational control centres and machine reading software to treat more conditions in the community, away from someone reaching an emergency department in the first place.

Let me first set out the measures I can announce today to provide support to the NHS and local authorities now. First, we will block-book beds in residential homes to enable some 2,500 people to be released from hospitals when they are medically fit to be discharged. When that is combined with the ramping up of the £500 million discharge funding, which will unblock an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 delayed discharge cases, capacity on wards will be freed up, which will in turn enable patients admitted by emergency departments to move to wards, which in turn unblocks ambulance delays. It is important, however, that we learn from the deployment of a similar approach during the pandemic by ensuring that the right wraparound care is provided for patients released to residential care. I have asked NHS England to particularly focus on that, so that it is the shortest possible stay on patients’ journey home and into domiciliary care, and indeed it is in the NHS’s own interests for those stays to be as short as possible. Taken together, this is a £200 million investment over the next three months.

Next, our A&Es are also under particular strain. From my visits across the country I have seen and heard how they often need more space to enable same-day emergency care and short stays post emergency care. Our second investment is in more physical capacity in and around emergency departments. By using modular units, this capacity will be available in weeks, not months, and our £50 million investment will focus on modular support this year. We will apply funding from next year’s allocation to significantly expand the programme ahead of the summer. We are giving trusts discretion on how best to use these units to decompress their emergency departments. It might be for spaces for short stays post A&E care, where there is no need for a patient to go to a ward for further observation, or for discharge lounges that previously have not been able to take a patients in a bed—many of those are often simply chairs—or for additional capacity alongside the emergency department at the front end of the hospital.

The third action we are taking to support the system right now is to free up frontline staff from being diverted by Care Quality Commission inspections over the coming weeks, and the CQC has agreed to reduce inspections and to focus on high-risk providers in other settings, such as mental health. Those are the actions we are taking that will have an immediate effect.

I turn to the measures we are taking now that will give greater resilience into the summer and next winter. We now have 42 NHS system control centres in operation across England, staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, tracking patients on their journey through hospitals, helping us to identify blockages earlier and getting flow through the system. Where we have implemented these systems, such as the one I saw in operation in Maidstone, they have had a clear impact. We will therefore allocate funding in next year’s settlement to apply these systems more widely.

Similarly, we have also seen how the use of artificial intelligence and data can demonstrably reduce demand and release patients sooner. NHS England has been tasked with clarifying and simplifying the procurement landscape, taking on board best international practice, so that a small number of scalable interventions are taken forward where international experience shows they can deliver meaningful benefits to patients.

Next, we will capitalise on the incredible potential of virtual wards. Last week at Watford General Hospital, I saw how patients who would have been in hospital beds were treated at home through a combination of technology and wraparound care. Patients released sooner are often much happier, knowing that they are receiving clinical supervision and always have the safety net of being able to quickly return to hospital should their condition deteriorate. There is scope to expand these measures to many more conditions and many more hospitals in the months ahead.

We are also opening up more routes for NHS patients to get free treatment in the independent sector and offering even greater patient choice. The elective recovery taskforce is helping us to find spare operating theatres, hospital beds and out-patient capacity.

We must also take steps in primary care. We are clear that our community pharmacists can support many more things to ease pressure on general practice. From the end of March, community pharmacists will take referrals from urgent and emergency care settings; later this year, they will also start offering oral contraception services. But I want to do even more, as they do in Scotland, and work with community pharmacists to tackle barriers to offering more services, including how to better use digital services. The primary care recovery plan will set out a range of additional services that pharmacists can deliver.

Finally, notwithstanding very severe pressures, we know that to break the cycle of the NHS repeatedly coming under severe pressure, the best way to reduce the numbers coming through our front doors is to address problems away from the emergency department. On Friday, we signed a memorandum of understanding with BioNTech —a global leader in mRNA technology—to bring vaccine research to this country, which will give as many as 10,000 UK patients early access to trials for personalised cancer therapies by 2030. This builds on the 10-year partnership we struck with Moderna in December to also invest in mRNA research and development in the UK and build state-of-the-art vaccine manufacturing here.

We are also reviewing our wider care for frail, elderly patients in care homes long before they ever get to A&E or our hospitals. Take the brilliant work being done in Tees valley, where community teams are being used to help with falls to prevent unnecessary ambulance trips to hospitals. We have looked at what more support we can offer elderly patients further upstream. With an ageing population, and many more people with more than one condition, it is clear that we have to treat patients earlier in the community and go beyond individual specialties to better reflect patients with multiple conditions to give the right support to people where they are, which is often at home or in residential homes.

Today’s announcement provides a further £250 million of funding, which recognises the spike in flu on top of covid admissions and high delayed discharge numbers from the pandemic. The funding will provide immediate support to reduce hospital bed occupancy and decompress A&E pressures, and, in turn, unlock much-needed ambulance handovers. This funding builds on the £500 million announced in the autumn statement specifically for discharge, which is ramping up, and the additional funding for next year.

All this work ultimately builds on the much-needed greater integration of health and social care through the 42 integrated care boards, which we will strengthen through the Hewitt review, and through a step change in capability, including operational control centres.

This immediate and near-term action sits in parallel with our wider life science investment, such as the deals with BioNTech and Moderna, and underscores our commitment to recognising the immediate pressures on the NHS and investing in the science that will shift the dial on earlier, upstream treatment at scale, particularly for the frail elderly, long before a patient reaches an emergency department. This is a comprehensive package of measures, and I commend this statement to the House.