Health Secretary launches 'national roadshow of NHS debates' in Middlesbrough

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was in Middlesbrough this weekend to launch what has been described as a “national roadshow of NHS debates”.

Wes Streeting was in Teesside on Saturday, November 16,, alongside the NHS England Chief Executive, Amanda Pritchard, as the government is putting together its 10-Year Health Plan. Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr Streeting was asked why Middlesbrough was chosen as the starting point for this national conversation.

He said: “I wanted to kick off the conversation here so that as we’re putting together the 10 year plan for the future of the NHS, we’re not just involving the usual suspects - the policy wonks in Westminster - but we’re involving the general public and crucially the patient voice so that their fingerprints are on the plan for the future of their health service.”

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The Health Secretary said: “We’re off to a great start” and that he had received some “characteristically frank feedback” from the people of Middlesbrough and the wider North East, “that will not only get the NHS back on its feet but make it fit for the future.”

Mr Streeting was asked what was the single most useful conversation that he had at the event. He prefaced his answer by explaining the three big shifts that had been identified ahead of the July General Election. These were: a shift in care out of hospital and into community, a shift from analogue to digital, and a shift from sickness to prevention.

“When we asked people, of those big shifts, which did they think was the most important, I had just assumed that people would think that it would be the digital and technology side that would make the biggest difference, and actually, people were really up for the shift out of hospital into the community,” he explained.

He also outlined his experiences during the day in other parts of Teesside. He said he had spent time with Redcar MP, Anna Turley, “looking at the Hospital at Home Service that is active across Redcar and Cleveland, seeing first hand the difference that is making, providing care in the home. We met a guy who would otherwise, with his urinary tract infections, be in and out of hospital, instead he’s just being looked after at home. It’s made a massive difference to his life and his care.”

He said this was a good example of taking the time and going to listen to patients, rather than just the think tanks and added: “I don’t think the patients’ voice is loud enough in the NHS”.

Middlesbrough suffers from both obesity and poverty, with a Middlesbrough Council report stating that in July 2023, an estimated 71% of adults in the council area were either overweight or obese. Additionally, at last week’s Multibank launch, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said 200,000 children in the North East were living in poverty. On top of this, the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 outlined that six of Middlesbrough’s wards were in the top 1% most deprived in England.

There is broad agreement across the political spectrum that poverty and obesity are interlinked. It was put to the Health Secretary that people in Middlesbrough are dying early from unhealthy lifestyles. He said: “I really want to reassure people that while we’re building the 10 year plan, which will be published in May next year, we’re wasting no time in getting on with the job and dealing with the crisis in front of us.”

Mr Streeting asserted that the government was scaling up the “40,000 more appointments we promised every week”. In terms of prevention, “we’ve taken immediate action to ban the targeting of junk food at kids”.

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