Welcoming the passage of the Health and Care Act into law

I welcome that this week the Health and Care Act passed into law. This Act will help to improve health and care services by:

•    Requiring the inclusion of cancer outcome objectives in the NHS mandate, helping to boost survival rates and improve outcomes for over 300,000 people a year who are diagnosed with cancer.

•    Banned the abhorrent practice of hymenoplasty and virginity testing, protecting and safeguarding vulnerable women and girls.

•    Paving the way for a licensing regime for non-surgical cosmetic procedures, cracking down on the unregulated aesthetics industry and protecting patients from the physical and mental harms that come with botched cosmetic procedures.

•    Demonstrating the UK’s leading role as an opponent of organ trafficking, by making it a criminal offence to give or receive payment for an organ outside the UK.

•    Making important commitments on the safeguarding of children, and requiring Integrated Care Boards to set out any proposed steps to address the particular needs of victims of abuse.

•    Providing for the establishment of Integrated Care Boards and Integrated Care Partnerships, strengthening partnerships between the NHS and local authorities and improving integration and collaboration across the health system.

•    Supporting parity of esteem across physical and mental health, to support the mental health and wellbeing of everyone, and to ensure that the right support is in place for all.

•    Making clear the NHS’s duties to commission palliative care, ensuring that people of all ages can benefit from high quality personalised palliative and end of life care if and when they need it.

•    Introducing measures to ensure that our health and social care workforce have the right skills and knowledge to provide informed care to autistic people and people with a learning disability by making specialised training mandatory by law.

•    Making services safer by establishing the Health Services Safety Investigations Body, an independent public body which will investigate incidents that have implications for patient safety and help improve systems and practices.

•    Announcing a plan for adult social care that will protect individuals and families against unpredictable and potentially catastrophic care costs.

•    Placing a duty on government to publish a report detailing our workforce planning and our plan to deliver it. It commissions Health Education England to develop a long-term strategic framework, looking at trends across our workforce. It also commissions NHS England and Improvement to develop a long-term workforce strategy.

•    Introducing further measures to tackle health disparities, placing duties on ICBs and NHS England to reduce health disparities and making health disparities a key component of the wider duties NHS bodies must consider when making any decisions.

•    Giving the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care the power to directly introduce, vary or terminate water fluoridation schemes, with a view to ensuring more of the population benefit from fluoridation, which we know reduces oral health disparities and the burden on NHS services.

•    Delivering landmark modern slavery legislation with a view to eradicating the use of goods or services tainted by slavery in the NHS - representing a significant step forward in the UK’s mission to crack down on this evil practice wherever it is found.