Speeches by Fenton-Glynn.

“11. When she plans to announce the number of seasonal worker visas available for 2027.”

“I am currently taking part in the excellent National Farmers’ Union food and farming fellowship. On a recent visit to a vegetable farm, I was told that the numbers of seasonal worker visas are announced far too late in the farming cycle for farmers to be able to plan in advance. If we are to have domestic agriculture, …”

“If you were back as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and you were asked to decide whether we should fund social care based on the value of houses in an area 35 years ago, would you see that as a sustainable model?”

“Yes. It is not paid as skilled work. It is paid as unskilled work, essentially. You are right that we need to recognise it, but do we need to reward it?”

“The work is independent, but what they look at is obviously defined by the Secretary of State and the PM, right?”

“I understand. In the session we had a few weeks ago on the Casey commission, Stephen Kinnock, the Minister for Care, was quite clear with us when he said that he “did not agree with the position that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister took in terms of the timeframe that was given to Louise Casey. It needs to be brou…”

“Do you accept his framing that the reason it is been delayed was because of decisions made by No. 10 and the Treasury?”

“Moving on to care workers more specifically, Skills for Care found that the median hourly rate for a care worker in March 2025 was £12 an hour, which is 56p above the national living wage, but 31p lower than the pay for an HCA in the NHS. Do you think that is good enough to attract and retain people to the sector?”

“It is not going to bring it up to HCA levels, is it?”

“The average care worker pay is in the bottom 20th centile compared with other jobs. Do you think that is the right place for it or should it be higher up?”

“Vacancy rates are very high in social care. After five years’ experience in social care, you will be earning about 7p an hour more than you would if you had just started. In 2016, that was 33p more an hour. Is that progression and sustainability of jobs something that the Casey commission is looking into, or that it sh…”

“Broadly, do you think it should look at pay or the sustainability of careers in care work?”

“Good to see you, Secretary of State. You are a former Treasury Minister, and now you are Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Do you think it would be good to base our model for funding the NHS on the value of homes in an area 35 years ago?”

“My understanding, though, is that the fair pay agreement is such that the envelope remains the same—it is just how it is divided. There is no extra money coming from the fair pay agreement.”

“But broadly you would hold that the current funding model is not sustainable and does not work?”

“I have been contacted about this issue by 14 constituents and have raised their cases. Only three of them have been resolved; the unresolved ones include bereavement cases, which we were told would be prioritised. I went to the drop-in for MPs, but I sat there for 40 minutes and then left because nothing had happened. …”

“There were staggering bits in the briefing for this session about GPs taking out personal loans and so forth. None of this is how you would design the system if you had a blank sheet of paper. If you were going to design a system for the NHS estate, how would you do it?”

“How significant will the transfer of NHSPS properties to trusts be, in terms of neighbourhood health?”

“Would you incentivise individual GPs, or GP practices?”

“I would like to observe that Rob did very well in answering about my constituency and Layla’s constituency. I hope he buys whoever briefed him a drink afterwards.”