LAURA KYRKE-SMITH MP appointed to national role to help ‘build NHS fit for the future’
Labour MP Laura Kyrke-Smith meets NHS England's Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard in Parliament this week (Credit: Laura Kyrke-Smith MP)
Aylesbury MP Laura Kyrke-Smith has been appointed to a new national role to support the Labour Government in its ambitions to rebuild the NHS.
The Labour MP will take on the role of Labour’s National Health Mission Delivery Champion, which will involve working with Government Ministers to deliver on the Party's mission to “build an NHS fit for the future”.
The role will be vital in order to make important progress in Labour's long-term plan for national renewal. It will involve working with the Government to help deliver on its Health Mission and feed in issues as and when they arise.
Kyrke-Smith is also expected to attend meetings of the Health Mission Delivery Board, which has been set up to ensure the Government delivers on its manifesto commitments, including:
Cutting NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments every week.
Doubling the number of cancer scanners.
Establishing a new Dentistry Rescue Plan; and
Recruiting 8,500 additional mental health staff.
In response to accepting the role, Laura Kyrke-Smith MP said: “I am committed to getting the NHS back on its feet and fit for the future.
“The NHS locally is not delivering as it should for patients and NHS staff alike: from the GPs surgeries struggling to deal with demand for appointments, to those patients waiting for operations.
“Drawing on those experiences I hear from residents, I will be pushing forward the fundamental reforms needed to rebuild the NHS across Aylesbury, the villages, and indeed the country.
“As the damning Darzi report on the Conservatives’ 14-year stewardship of the NHS makes clear, there is much to be done to begin the work of turning our health service around.
“That work starts now. This week, I met with NHS England's Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard. We talked about the importance of prevention, as well as the pressures faced by Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where doctors and nurses have supported my family brilliantly in recent years.
“I look forward to working together with the Health Secretary, Ministers, NHS staff, patients, experts and businesses to fix our broken NHS with long-term health reform – major surgery, not sticking-plaster solutions”.
An independent review of the NHS by Lord Ara Darzi, published this week, has found that years of neglect of the NHS by previous governments have left it “in critical condition” and no longer able to give patients the timely care they need amid an explosion in demand caused by the UK’s ageing, growing and increasingly sick population.