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We held our AGM on Weds 20 May. After the formal meeting Paul Campion and Kevin Minier each gave a 10-minute presentation, Paul about a new w-site to coordinate the work of patient groups in Herts and Kevin about building up a network of Patient Groups in GP Practices. We will resume our programme of meetings in the autumn. If anyone would like to suggest a topic for a meeting, please contact us via the address at the end.

LOCAL NHS NEWS.

From January to March the NHS consulted on the future of the Mount Vernon Cancer Centre and issued its Report earlier in June. As expected, it recommended moving the Centre from its current site in Northwood to the grounds of Watford General Hospital, which is not scheduled for redevelopment until the 2030’s. It is to be hoped that the Cancer Centre and WGH will be granted funding, the sooner the better.

West Herts Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (which runs WGH) has issued a statement that it is reviewing “how we seek expert advice and co-disciplinary input” re its work. I confess that I find those words a tad opaque and wonder if they do or don’t indicate a greater willingness to take patients’ views into account. Has anyone got any experience of WHG’s Patients’ Panel? Maybe its chair would contact us? Even give us a talk?

On 11 June, for the first time ever, the NHS issued statistics on the topic of corridor care. During May the number of patients being treated in corridors in English hospitals averaged about 3,000 a day, but I’m informed that in recent weeks WGH has managed to eliminate corridor care from its premises. For several months I’ve been trying, and failing, to secure a speaker from WGH. Perhaps someone will volunteer to confirm this good news? ‍

NATIONAL NHS NEWS.

Another strike by Resident Doctors due to start on 15 Jun was called off, at least until another ballot has been held and the votes counted. They were offered a pay rise, to start next year, and another tranche of training places. Over the last four years they have received pay rises of 33% so that their starting salary is now just over £40,000 a year and over 4 to 5 years rises to a basic £76,000 p.a., a figure which I have been assured is correct.

News about maternity units continues to cause concern. Ten years ago, a still-birth in Nottingham City Hospital led to the most extensive review of maternity department failings in NHS history. A report is expected on 24 June.

At the end of April Cambridge University researchers published statistics showing that “Black women in England are more than twice as likely to die in childbirth as White women.”  Their report concluded that “Racism infiltrates every aspect of medicine.”

At the end of May, there was better news from Cambridge. The University’s Cancer Research Centre released news that it has developed a urine test for the early detection of lung cancer that could transform diagnosis and survival for thousands of patients, by giving an early warning of the disease months or even years before symptoms appear.

It is now about a year since Mr Streeting’s 10-Year Health Plan was published. His successor as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Mr Murray, is in charge of the 2026 Health Bill, sometimes called (with a dash of wishful thinking?) the NHS Modernisation Bill. It is 200 pages long.

Don’t worry. Earlier in June the DHSC issued a “Policy Paper. Health Bill. Summary” which is available via Google.

Amongst other things, the Bill proposes to abolish NHS England, to transfer its powers to the DHSC, and to give the latter increased power over the recently reorganised Integrated Care Boards. It plans to abolish Health Watch, originally created to provide a patients’ champion, and replace it with a Director of Patient Experience, based in the DHSC.

It has therefore been criticised by the Local Government Association and the Patients Association for destroying an independent institution and replacing it with an ill-defined replacement subordinate to the DHSC.  There were scores of local Health Watches but apparently no plan for each ICB to have a role in patient engagement and representation.

From 16 June to 16 July the Bill is to be examined and scrutinised by an all-party Committee of MPs, and members of the public have been invited to send in written submissions giving their own views and proposals. Google “Health Bill. Scrutiny.”

The address to which to send a submission is scrutiny@parliament.uk

This gives an important opportunity to the SAHPG. Our committee will draft an SAHPG response. Please send us your views and / or send them direct to the all-party Committee. For starters, I’m thinking of suggesting that the DHSC tells each ICB to set up an independent committee to promote patient and public engagement, involvement and representation, and be the patients’ champion.

Best wishes, John Wigley, Chair SAHPG, June 2026.    Johnwigley33@yahoo.co.uk