Hammond for Health - My Priorities

HAMMOND FOR HEALTH – MY PRIORITIES 

I am standing to be chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee. I have outlined my priorities for the work of the Committee below.  

• Primary Care - the front door to our health service. I will ensure that the committee tackles the bottleneck within our Primary Care system. I will prioritise an investigation into long term primary care provision. 

• Ambulances - The Government has promised to improve waiting times. The Committee will hold the Government to account. 

• Backlog - Ensuring the Government has a realistic plan to reduce the backlog. 

• Life Sciences - ensuring DHSC has a vision for the UK Life Sciences Eco System, preserving and enhancing our world leading status.  

• Data - Ensuring we make wearable tech an asset to our health service whilst protecting people’s privacy. There is clamour for data to be the answer to all our problems, we must be clear that whilst it will help, we need to build the workforce and the resources available as well.  

• The delivery of a sustainable Workforce Plan which supports NHS professionals and focuses on retention, not just recruitment. 

• Integrating Social Care with healthcare provision and ensuring that high standards are upheld across the industry. 

• Health Inequalities. Ensuring those who do not regularly engage with the health service have access to the care they need and that BAME and LGBT people are not discriminated against.  

• Supporting the delivery of a long-term plan for our health service, which needs to focus on preventing serious illness and protecting our citizens before they become unwell as well as caring for them when they are. 

• Ensuring NHS targets are grounded in patient safety, are deliverable, and are supported by the workforce.  

• Learning the lessons from the pandemic on preparedness and ensuring that the NHS and Care system has the capacity to cope with shocks in future.    

The Government is overdue to respond to three of the Committee’s previous reports. I will ensure these are received and open a number of new inquiries: 

• Heath Inequalities.

  • We need to better understand health inequality, so I am committed to opening a new inquiry into health inequalities across the UK.  

• Digital transformation in the NHS. 

  • The Merger of NHS Digital and NHS England has been brought forward to January. It is vital the Committee’s scrutiny of this merger continues following the report’s publication and I am committed to seeing this through.  

• Primary Care Reform 

  • As the front door to the NHS Primary Care needs to be more efficient, and better integrated with Secondary Care. 

• Retention of Professionals in our Health Service.  

  • We need the best people working in our NHS. Too many have been leaving and I am committed to opening a new inquiry into how we can retain more of the world class NHS staff.  

• Integrated Care Systems 

  • I want to ensure that we look at our health service in a joined-up way and ensure that care is delivered where it is needed.