Contribution
“Fresh hope for the future” must mean something that people can recognise in their own lives: a young person finding a skilled job close to home, a patient getting a diagnosis sooner, someone waiting for an operation finally getting treatment and getting back to their life. That is how people will judge us, so I welcome this Budget’s determination to give families breathing space now while building a stronger economy for tomorrow. I want to focus on one opportunity that can help us achieve both: backing life sciences so that Britain can build a future here. That involves developing new treatments, manufacturing them in Britain and getting them to NHS patients faster, because a healthier country is a stronger country. The industries that help us live healthier lives can also create the jobs, investment and prosperity that our communities need.
I began working as a care assistant at 16. I became a social worker, working in child protection, and served as cabinet member for public health and protection. Those experiences taught me that public services are judged at the moment someone needs them. Can they get help? Are they listened to? Does someone take responsibility? As a Health Minister, I brought that same test to innovation. A scientific breakthrough is an extraordinary achievement. Approval matters, but success is a patient receiving treatment. Our ambition should be clear: discover here, make it here and deliver it here.
This Budget gives us something substantial to build on. I welcome the £100 million investment in robotic surgery, supporting the ambition to increase procedures from 70,000 a year today to 500,000 by 2035. For a patient, that could mean a less invasive operation, a shorter stay in hospital and getting home to their family sooner. I also welcome the life sciences investment in Manchester, Oxford and Loughborough, together worth more than £1 billion, supported by almost £70 million in Government grants. These investments should give businesses the confidence to build in Britain and patients the confidence that progress will reach them.
The next task is to make that partnership work across the country, and to connect investment with improvements that people can feel. Birmingham’s life sciences district shows what is possible when we bring our strengths together. The University of Birmingham, the Queen Elizabeth hospital and Birmingham Health Partners connect world-class research with frontline care, and our health innovation campus and precision health technologies accelerator help businesses turn discoveries into treatments. We should back this district as an engine of national growth, attracting investment, expanding manufacturing and opening routes into skilled jobs for local people. This is an enormous opportunity for our city to know that there could be a place for young people in my city as a laboratory technician, an engineer, a clinical researcher, a manufacturing apprentice or a specialist working with health data. Representatives of the University of Birmingham are here today in Parliament launching the Birmingham health and life sciences quarter.
As the Government develop their 10-year plan and prepare for the next spending review, three things should guide us. First, we must make the adoption of proven innovation a core NHS responsibility, because businesses and innovators need a clear route from successful evaluation to everyday use, with named responsibility, funding and a timetable. For a small British business, a successful NHS trial should open the door. It should not have to go begging every single trust to procure its product. We should measure success through patient outcomes, and the same discipline should apply to AI. I therefore welcome the Budget’s review of NHS productivity and AI. Its purpose should be practical: better care, less avoidable administration and more time with patients.
Secondly, we need to connect life sciences investment to British manufacturing and local opportunity. Thirdly, we must make prevention and earlier diagnosis central to our ambition, because the greatest gain is often the illness avoided.
This is a serious economic opportunity. Better health can help people remain in work, support families and reduce pressure on public services. Successful British businesses can bring investment, exports and skilled employment. The Prime Minister has opened a conversation about the country we want to become. My answer is a Britain confident enough to back its scientists, ambitious enough to build new industries, and determined enough to put their achievements into the hands of the people who need them; a Britain where a discovery becomes a treatment and an investment becomes a skilled job, and where a young person can see a future in the place they call home. That is what fresh hope for the future must mean.