What Westminster gets wrong about the NHS - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 98

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What Westminster gets wrong about the NHS - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 98

27 Jun 2025

We are joined this week by two guests who bring invaluable insight into the intersection of health policy and parliamentary life. Dr. Sarah Wollaston and Steve Brine – both former MPs, health policy experts, and co-hosts of the podcast Prevention is the New Cure – share their experiences of how the House of Commons handles health and social care.

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Both Sarah Wollaston and Steve Brine chaired the Commons Health Select Committee during their time in Parliament, and both bring broader career experience: Sarah as a former GP and Steve as a former Health Minister. They offer a candid and often striking comparison between GP surgeries and MP surgeries, revealing how health and social care concerns often dominate the concerns constituents bring to their representatives. Their experiences underscore how central the NHS is to public life and how fraught it is in political terms.

We explore the dangers MPs face when navigating NHS policy, particularly around controversial local hospital closures and service changes. Steve recounts his own strategic focus on healthcare in Winchester and the delicate balance between constituency advocacy and ministerial responsibility. While Sarah shares her frustration with the legislative process, particularly during the Lansley reforms, when her medical expertise was side-lined by the party whips.

The conversation moves to Labour’s current proposals for NHS reform. Our guests reflect on the gap between political rhetoric and delivery, particularly the challenge of achieving meaningful change in a system under financial and structural pressure.

Turning to the role of Parliament, Sarah and Steve reflect on the importance – and limits – of select committees in influencing policy. Drawing on their own time as committee chairs, they describe the committee corridor as one of the few places in Parliament where serious scrutiny and cross-party collaboration take place. Yet they also lament MPs broader failure to engage seriously with evidence or exercise proper scrutiny of departmental spending.

Finally, as more than 100 Labour MPs signal a potential rebellion over proposed cuts to Personal Independence Payments, we explore the culture of dissent at Westminster. Steve and Sarah – both with a track record of principled rebellion – offer advice to the new intake of MPs weighing loyalty against conscience. Their message is clear: in the long run, the votes you regret are the ones where you didn’t make a stand.

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Our guests

Dr Sarah Wollaston

Dr Sarah Wollaston was the Member of Parliament for Totnes from 2010 until 2019. Unusually for a UK parliamentary candidate, she was first selected in an open primary, chosen as the Conservative candidate by local voters including those who were not party members. She chaired the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee from 2014 to 2019. From 2017 to 2019 she also chaired the Commons Liaison Committee, which coordinates the work of other committees and questions the Prime Minister of the day. In February 2019, amid ongoing fallout from the Brexit referendum, she resigned from the Conservative Party and went on to join The Independent Group (TIG). Later in 2019 she joined the Liberal Democrats, but lost her seat in the December general election. After leaving Parliament, she served as chair of NHS Devon - the county’s Integrated Care Board - but resigned in 2024 due to concerns about the level of funding provided to deliver service requirements.

Steve Brine

Steve Brine was elected as the Conservative MP for Winchester in 2010. In 2016 he joined the Government as a junior Whip. In 2017 he went on to be a Minister in the Department of Health, later the Department of Health and Social Care. He briefly lost the Conservative whip in September 2019 after voting in favour of Hilary Benn’s backbench bill that forbade Prime Minister Boris Johnson from withdrawing the UK from the EU before the end of January 2020. He returned to the health portfolio in 2022, as chair of the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee, until standing down from Parliament when the general election was called in May 2024.

Resources

Steve Brine and Sarah Wollaston

Prevention is the New Cure podcast

Hansard Society

The Estimates: a procedural guide

House of Commons Library

Debate on the Main Estimate for the Department of Health and Social Care

Transcript

Please note, this transcript is automatically generated. There may consequently be minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript copy below, please first check against the audio version above.

Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy, and welcome to a slightly different edition of this podcast. We are joined in the Parliament Matters studio today by two fellow podcasters and former MPs and health policy experts, Dr. Sarah Wollaston and Steve Brine.

Ruth Fox: Both used to chair the Commons Health Select Committee. In her previous career, Sarah was a doctor and Steve served as a health minister. Now they collaborate on a health and politics podcast, 'Prevention is the New Cure'.

Mark D'Arcy: And Sarah and Steve, I wanted to start by looking at how health issues, how NHS issues, feed into the lives of parliamentarians. Sarah, you went from being a GP to being an [00:01:00] MP and from a GP surgery to an MP surgery. Were you surprised at the kind of NHS issues that were brought to you as a parliamentarian?

Sarah Wollaston: I thought it was extraordinary how similar my surgeries were. I guess you could say that except for nobody took their clothes off.

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