Speeches by Kinnock.

“I am certainly not arguing that it is not challenging. If we look at, for example, the progress we are making on getting the backlog down—even in the face of industrial action—there are some pretty impressive results there on electives. That, of course, has cost a huge amount of money—£250 million is what that strike h…”

“They were totally integrated. That is what we need to get to.”

“Well, NHS England and DHSC will become a new body corporate that does the same thing. It will be the same function, so every ICB is held to account on that basis. The last outturn on that was January 2025. The ICBs have to show that they are discharging their functions. It is our job to hold them to account, and it is …”

“There is a statutory duty for trusts and ICBs to deliver the best possible care to their populations. They need to ensure that they are discharging their functions on the basis of their statutory duties.”

“I think once every two months I meet the head of ADASS and the head of the LGA jointly, and BCF always comes up. There is good practice. I recently visited a hospital in Bradford where they had a delayed discharge team made up of a combination of hospital staff and local authority staff sitting in the same office in th…”

“Yes, it is absolutely a priority for me to enable the shifts in our 10-year plan. If we are going to operationalise the 10-year plan, resources are a really important part of that, but it is also about reforming the system. Through better integration and better use of technology, you can be more productive without nece…”

“Well, as Ed says, we are publishing our workforce plan in the spring, and that will set out our targets right across the board. That is why I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but it is important that we have strong specialist care capability. From the point of view of the generalist workforce, it is quite di…”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know the answer to that question.”

“Every ICB is held to account by NHS England every year. They have to produce—”

“No, but there has been about an 80% increase in the number of specialist palliative care doctors since 2010 and about a 5% increase since 2024, so there is some increase in the specialist workforce. I absolutely accept that it is not where we would like it to be, but it has been moving in the right direction.”

“It is about early engagement and planning—all the way from primary and community care through to the trust and then to the local authority. It is about how we make it clearer that the focus has to be on getting that early engagement, and then getting the Better Care Fund—it is a big fund, £9 billion—to deliver improvem…”

“In specialist doctors?”

“Early identification is vital. I am pleased to see that, over the last year or so, we have had quite a good increase in the number of people on the palliative care register—I think it has gone up from 0.46% to 0.55% of the population. About 1% of the population dies every year—approximately half a million people—and th…”

“There are two sides to the workforce in palliative and end-of-life care: the specialist side and the generalist side. On the specialist side, we have actually seen quite a significant increase in the number of specialist doctors. I believe we have 910 specialist palliative and end-of-life care doctors now, which is an …”

“I am very happy to do that. We are looking at reforming the Better Care Fund, which plays an absolutely crucial role in bringing local authorities together with the health system to improve delayed discharge, which is a massive challenge that the system is facing. I have been working on that with my officials, and with…”

“Thank you for that question. I think this pivots back to what I was discussing with the Chair earlier, which is that we have to make this happen because, otherwise, we are just going to see a prolongation of the status quo. The question is how to make it happen in a way that still enables the stability and sustainabili…”

“Yes. When we talk about strategic commissioning, the funding flows have to follow the priorities set out under the new approach to commissioning. If you are saying that we are now going to have a holistic view where trust, primary care, adult social care and community care voices are sitting round the table and plannin…”

“Yes. I think you are right that, as a country, we do not talk about death enough. For all sorts of perfectly understandable reasons, it has a certain stigma around it, and people do not talk about it enough. I think there are two sides to the coin: one is the system and the workforce, and the other is the public. It is…”

“I wasn’t aware that we are planning to do that.”