Speeches by Smyth.

“In terms of the Department of Health and Social Care, unless I am advised otherwise, I would need to come back to you on what the specific relationship is, if that is okay?”

“On that point, I agree with what Adian has identified. Part of the wider work will look at how much it costs and how large-scale it is, rather than on anecdote, to see whether we can build it into routine datasets. We will do that as part of the continuing work. Again, I come back to the importance of the work and anno…”

“Unless Aidan can tell me differently about the use of the word mandatory, I am not sure how to come forward on that. This is partly an MHRA issue around devices and so on.”

“To add to my earlier point, we are in a slightly different place because of Baroness Cumberlege’s work and the intervening time. I totally take your point about medical misogyny, and many of us would absolutely recognise it. My colleague, Baroness Merron, is working on the updated women’s health strategy. We are workin…”

“I cannot speak directly on that sphere; I am afraid it is beyond my particular purview. The Department will continue to make sure it works with the Advertising Standards Authority to make sure it knows what we are doing, which will obviously be important. As I said earlier, the link across DSIT, the Department for Educ…”

“More widely, it is not just a Department issue. You were alluding to young people; we are working closely with our colleagues across the Department for Education around mental health support in schools and so on. The advertising I referred to earlier—the linking with influencers—is an important role across government t…”

“How this works operationally for people is to be advised about. As I said, the advice is there on the NHS website and more detailed in those other guidance documents. We need to be guided by what works ordinarily, and sometimes that is not known to people. How would those who are not involved in practising medicine kno…”

“Yes. Obviously, this is a really important part of this work, and there is information available on the NHS website for people who are contemplating this. People should have all the relevant information about what the treatment involves, the benefits, the risks and where there are reasonable alternative treatments. Aid…”

“Indeed. I saw the college’s submission and obviously we want to work closely with it and we welcome its co-operation with working with this and I totally understand where it is coming from on this. In fact in August, when I announced this from Southmead Hospital in Bristol, it was the surgeons that were just delighted …”

“I am going to come to Aidan, but first though we worked with the college—”

“Again, that is the challenge that we are talking to people about right now; it is really helpful to have that aired and, if I may say so, for the Committee to raise that. We recognise that it is really challenging; it is like the proverbial onion is it not? You take away one part and there are more: the nature of the p…”

“This is really pivotal to the whole area of regulation. You probably heard the range of current training and standards out there from your practitioners, and how difficult that is to navigate as a consumer. Part of what will take some time in this is that we will have to consider the current education and training stan…”

“If I take first and then I am going to bring the experts in. This adds to the complexity of the timeline about whether someone is medically qualified and what for, what those procedures are, and they are defined very closely as they are of course in usual medical regulations. Also, as Gavin said, in terms of what is al…”

“As my right hon. Friend has just said, we have delivered on that commitment. The hon. Member talks about the reorganisation being a distraction. If her party had focused taxpayers’ money on patient services rather than ballooning bureaucracy, with costs increasing both among providers and through ICBs, we would not hav…”

“The hon. Member makes an excellent point; it was echoed by Lord Darzi in his report about the state of our hospitals, and I know many hon. Members have similar problems. I have visited many such hospitals and would be happy to discuss the matter with him further. I remind him that, of course, the Torbay and South Devon…”

“We are putting the final nail in the coffin of the hon. Member’s party’s disastrous Lansley 2012 reorganisation—so bad that it made me become an MP. We are abolishing the world’s biggest quango, NHS England, along with 200 other bodies. The question is: why did the Conservatives not do that when they had the chance?”

“We know that there have been issues with the urgent emergency care response. We are absolutely committed to supporting ambulance trusts to continually improve the patient experience. The urgent emergency care plan for 2025-26 is backed by nearly £450 million of funding. I am happy to discuss that further with my hon. F…”

“As he often does, the hon. Gentleman highlights in his own very rural constituency some of the fundamental problems at the heart of our NHS. That is why we are reforming it, ensuring that we move hospital services from hospitals into the community and developing neighbourhood health services. We are also looking at the…”

“As well as the record investment that we put into the NHS, we are ensuring that we get a better bang for the taxpayer’s buck. Under the Conservatives, for example, the NHS was paying £3 billion to recruitment firms for agency shifts. We have cut agency spending by a third and are abolishing it altogether, with the savi…”

“It is absolutely the role of the hon. Lady’s local integrated care board to ensure that it involves all partners, particularly primary care, in the exciting roll-out of neighbourhood health services, which I think they welcome. I am happy to discuss that further with her.”