Kirith Entwistle

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I will come on to GP surgeries in more detail. None of this is from a lack of effort. Our GPs and practice teams are working flat out. What is needed is joined-up care with real accountability. When a discharge is planned, the equipment and care package must already be in place. Families should not have to chase switchboards for what was promised on paper. Neighbourhood teams bringing physiotherapists, pharmacists and mental health practitioners into GP surgeries are part of the answer, and I want to see them fully rolled out in Bolton. It is common sense: if we help people sooner, we prevent hospital crises later. Before I move on, I want to speak about the experience of Leah, a Bolton mum who took her 10-year-old son to the GP twice last summer. Her son was suffering from severe headaches, and Leah rightly asked their GP for blood tests. No tests were done. On the first visit, she was told it was most likely a virus. On the second, she asked again for bloods, but was told the GP needed to refer her son to paediatrics. Then, having taken him to A&E, she was told a referral had been received but that there would be a 28-week wait. Leah tried again and again. Later, while on holiday in Cyprus, Leah’s son collapsed. Doctors there diagnosed acute leukaemia, a life-threatening condition. This 10-year-old had to be treated in a foreign country he did not know, away from home and support, and the family were told he could return only by air ambulance, at a cost of more than £50,000. Leah asked me a question no parent should have to ask: “If basic bloods had been done when I asked, would my son have been spared this ordeal?” I hope the Minister will agree that what Leah and her son have endured is utterly unacceptable, and I look forward to hearing what will be done to ensure that what happened to Leah’s son never happens again. As a mother to a three-year-old boy, I cannot accept a system that makes it easier for GPs to tell a worried mother to wait than to get a same-day full blood count when there are obvious red flags. Parents need to be heard and believed. Leah and her son are far from alone in their experience, which is exactly why we must recognise the critical role and responsibilities of GP surgeries when it comes to preventive care. After speaking with the Bolton Pulmonary Fibrosis Support Group, I fully back its call for more robust regular medication reviews in GP surgeries as well, and I will keep pressing for GP surgeries in Bolton to meet their responsibility to our communities. We must get this right, because families must be able to rely on their GPs. Nowhere is the need for better healthcare in Bolton more visible or urgent than in maternity care and women’s health. In 2023, the crumbling reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete we have all read about was found in the roof of the maternity unit at Bolton hospital. Services had to be decanted, temporary structures went up and mothers and midwives made do. Although I am pleased that significant progress has recently been made in removing RACC, I will continue to push until the work is completed quickly and safely. Mothers and babies deserve a modern, safe environment, and I am determined to ensure that Bolton’s midwives have facilities that match their professionalism. The £4.7 million allocated to Bolton hospital by the Government this year for these repairs is welcome, but it is also a sticking-plaster. We simply cannot deliver 21st-century care in 20th-century buildings. The experiences of mothers in Bolton underline why this matters. Healthwatch Bolton has reported accounts from women who were left alone for hours during labour, while another mother described giving birth in a hospital corridor. Beyond maternity, the gynaecology backlog has been in crisis for decades. Across the UK, more than half a million women are on gynaecology waiting lists, and in Greater Manchester alone around 40,000 women are stuck on a list for over 18 weeks. The average time for an endometriosis diagnosis is nearly nine years, with waits worse in the north than in the south. That is why I strongly support the women’s health strategy, and the roll-out of women’s health hubs. The North Liverpool hub shows what works—menopause, cervical screening and gynaecology triage brought under one local roof, cutting waits, improving access and working for and around women, not the other way around. Bolton should benefit in the same way. I will continue to fight for a fully established and equipped women’s health hub in Bolton, with funding for specialist nurses, imaging and theatre time to match demand. I look forward to the Minister setting out what steps the Government are taking to improve maternity services and women’s health in my town. If we want to see the future of a community, we should look at its children’s health. In Bolton the picture is stark. One in five children starts school overweight or obese, and by year 6 that is 38%, which is well above the England average. Worse still, our infant mortality and child death rates are higher than the national rate, and the wealth gap in healthy life expectancy means that someone born in Breightmet is likely to spend about a decade less of their life in good health than someone born in Bromley Cross. That is an utterly unacceptable level of inequality. Close to 30% of Bolton’s children live in poverty. Poverty drives stress, poor nutrition and overcrowding, and those drive ill health. Bolton also has the highest rate of deaths of despair among young people—particularly young men—in Greater Manchester. We must change that reality. Last week, to mark World Mental Health Day, I had the privilege of training as Bolton’s 100th manbassador. Bolton Manbassadors creates safe spaces for men to talk, connect and seek support, and I am proud that its impact was recognised at this year’s Bolton News business awards, where it won a Heart of the Community award. I commend it and everyone in our community for coming together to support Bolton’s men and boys. For years, dentistry in Bolton has been a crisis hidden in plain sight. Before the election, fewer than half of adults had seen an NHS dentist in two years. Families tried dozens of practices, only to be turned away, and although waiting lists have fallen under the Labour Government, there is still much more to do. One constituent, a full-time NHS worker, wrote to me in April after suffering 18 months of recurring infections and abscesses, all because she could not register with a dentist after moving to Bolton. She pays taxes and national insurance, but cannot get a basic extraction under the NHS. It is indefensible. In Bolton our dentistry problem is structural. We are reliant on the Greater Manchester dental budget, but that fund covers only around 60% of our population’s needs. Dentistry is basic healthcare, not a luxury, and Bolton families should not go without because a funding formula short-changes our town. That structural unfairness is not limited to dentistry. It is pervasive across how our healthcare resources are budgeted. The market forces factor, a key determinant for local healthcare funding, uplifts budgets for high-cost areas such as London, but does little to recognise the higher burden of illnesses in towns such as mine. Public health grants are skewed south. London boroughs receive roughly £105 per head, but the north-west receives only £85. That is the wrong way round when the need is greater there. Bolton families should not be penalised for living outside the M25. Within that national picture, Greater Manchester devolution has brought real benefits to Bolton, such as shared elective hub capacity to cut backlogs, region-wide diagnostics collaboration and practical schemes such as the Greater Manchester dental access programme. When our region works together, it saves lives. But we must also be honest: Bolton can disappear into Greater Manchester averages that mask local pressures, and deficit controls and top-slicing can threaten to stall Bolton-specific plans. Yesterday’s meeting of the Bolton locality board warned that the biggest risk facing the system is the financial challenge facing health, and that a region-wide deficit could derail development plans, with an £800,000 shortfall for Bolton itself. My ask is simple: give Bolton its fair share, and do not leave us behind. When I talk to people in Bolton, they do not ask for miracles; they ask for fairness. They want to know that if their child is sick, someone will answer the phone and give them an appointment, that if their mum needs a scan, it will not take months and that if they work hard and pay their taxes, their town will not be forgotten. For too long, those basic expectations were treated as too much—but not any more. We are now seeing meaningful progress in urgent care, waiting lists and a renewed focus on women’s and children’s health—but progress must be made within Bolton and not around it. We are a proud town with brilliant NHS staff and a community who show up for each other. Bolton must never be left behind again—not in women’s health, diagnosis or the budget lines that can decide our fate. With the determination of our community, and a Labour Government that back us, we will not be left behind. I look forward to the Minister’s response.