Alison Bennett

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) for bringing forward this important debate. We have been reminded by hon. Members that the Conservative legacy is pensioners left in agony, waiting for hours for an ambulance that may not come in time; women forced to give birth in unsafe, overstretched conditions; and people having to pull out their own teeth—in the 21st century—because they cannot find an NHS dentist. We have heard from hon. Members that the south-west has some of the longest ambulance waits in the country, some of the worst repair backlogs, and waiting times for GPs and dentists that are simply unacceptable. That is not just a strain on our health services but a daily struggle for families, carers and patients across our region. The Liberal Democrats believe that people deserve better, and that they should be in control of their own lives and health. That means people getting the care that they need, when they need it and where they need it, without them having to fight every step of the way. Instead of lurching from one crisis to the next, as previous Governments have done, we have a plan. It starts with early investment in community health—in GPs, pharmacists and dentists—so that fewer people end up in hospital to begin with. We will finally fix the crisis in social care, so that people are not left stuck in hospital beds with nowhere to go. If we expect to rely on our NHS in future, we simply must invest in it. We need not just big grand schemes but investment in the simplest yet most important things. For example, in my own patch in Mid Sussex, the Princess Royal hospital recently had only one of its four lifts working over a weekend.