Speeches by Coleman.

“You say “regional”. Forgive me for taking the region of London, but it is the largest one. How many health directors are you talking to in London? Is it just the overall health director? That is Yvonne Doyle for London.”

“Yes, absolutely. If you have four ICBs that have come together, you are potentially getting 30 councils involved. Surely the councils should have some say in how they wish to be represented on those ICBs. It should not be a top-down NHS solution. They should be engaged in that conversation.”

“Is not there a lot of overlap between health and wellbeing boards and ICBs?”

“It is a big issue. In my part of the world, we had to fight to get the right people on our ICB. In the end, we had three on the NHS North West London ICB. Having local authority representation on ICBs is not a small thing. According to the 10-year plan, you might be planning to get rid of it at the stroke of a pen. In …”

“I can just build on that. I want to ask one question—I will come back to my other questions later—on this whole question of mayors. The 10-year plan foresees mayors being the only local authority representation on the ICB boards. Is that right?”

“I am not quite clear what you mean by “mayor”. You have very few—about a dozen—local authorities who have mayors. The rest of the 152 are led by leaders. Are you talking about the Mayor of London being on 42 ICBs? It is 42 at the moment; they are merging, so it might be fewer. Are you suggesting that would be it and no…”

“You might say that, but reading the 10-year plan, as I did, I thought, “These people do not understand how local authorities work”. It is a ridiculous comment to say you are going to have mayors when you only have 10 massive regional mayors in the country. You have 12 mayors of local authorities and the rest are all le…”

“To clarify, the statement in the 10-year plan was at best unclear and at worst wrong. You intend to keep council leaders or cabinet members, if the leaders choose the cabinet member to go, in place on the ICBs for the foreseeable future. Is that correct?”

“We have eight health and wellbeing boards in NHS North West London ICB because there are eight councils in the ICB. I imagine it is the same for people across the country. One of the challenges that I and other colleagues of mine who sat on these bodies found—this is before being elected—was that the NHS did not seem t…”

“Local authorities are responsible for social care and they are responsible for public health. Public health is absolutely essential to one of the three Government pillars of prevention. How are public health directors being involved as a body in the development of the new system? How are social care directors being inv…”

“That is helpful, thank you. You are going to have a number of ICBs, which will be increasingly reduced as they merge, but you will maintain the 152 health and wellbeing boards that exist at the moment.”

“What will the difference be in the functions of those? Where will they overlap?”

“I thought I was taking the time that I was allotted. Finally, I want to come to the proposed model of neighbourhood health. At the moment, is it for individual ICBs to come up with a plan for this? Lots of ICBs do not have much resource because they have all been cut. If an ICB has the resource to drive this itself, it…”

“I was only trying to get a clear understanding of what it meant to you.”

“To come back to my ego fix, which is trying to get local authorities more involved, we have talked about vaccination. We have talked about public health, but we will not get the country’s health better if it is all just about the NHS. This is being driven by the NHS and full marks for all you are doing; it is a very di…”

“It will come as no surprise to anybody who has ever dealt with any member of the Reform political party for more than five minutes that double standards are involved. We only have to read what its leader says from one week to the next to realise that its association and commitment to maintaining a close relationship wi…”

“I welcome the Minister to his position. I hope that he is enjoying the debate. I understand why the Government are proposing to extend the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain. I think we all recognise that the immigration numbers are high. This is a complex challenge, not least, let us remember, because of…”

“If we as a Committee asked for a report in six months on whether you were satisfied that producers were starting to get their act together to implement the guidelines, would you be able to provide us with that?”

“Brilliant. But isn’t the thing about progress that it is not just a fixed point in time, and that you can assess progress towards things? We do not have to wait 18 months to see whether any progress is being made; the industry can inform you, on an ongoing basis, of the changes they are making. Shouldn’t we be assessin…”

“I agree, but on reasonable timescales, you have given the 18-month timescale. I am not challenging that. Some people might, but I am not. But I have worked in business. When you ask somebody to deliver a project within a timeframe—you may give them six months or a year—you regularly check in with them to see how it is …”