Dr Peter Prinsley

Party affiliation

Parliament's party history for this member: Labour (4 Jul 2024 – present).

Register of interests

Register on Parliament's site

Latest on this tracker 361

1. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Budget Resolutions

   I welcome much of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said in the Budget, but tonight I will speak of our NHS, for we will not grow our economy if we are not well. Norfolk and Suffolk foundation trust is the mental health trust that serves my constituents, and it has been transformed thanks to its brilliant staff and inspired leadership—I thank all of them. Last week I learned that some of the teams have been early adopters of AI, using it to transcribe patient consultations. More time with the patients and less time staring at computers—imagine that! Some of us remain suspicious of AI in healthcare, but who here has not asked their phone about a symptom or a medical worry? Many GPs already use AI-assisted triage to tackle the dreaded 8 o’clock rush. I am therefore pleased to hear that we will fund the technology that will increasingly shape our health service. Let us embrace it, not fear it. I welcome the Government’s approach to healthcare, but much remains to be done. Too many of our patients are being asked to be just that: patient. We have record NHS staffing and resources since the pandemic, yet activity has not increased proportionately. Why is that? How much genuinely improves people’s health? We know that health depends on housing, wealth and much else besides. Falling life expectancy in some of our communities and the problems in maternity services demand urgent political attention. I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of funding for surgical robots, having heard how they are helping patients at West Suffolk hospital, but frankly, if I were asked where I would invest taxpayers’ money, my answer would be: in primary care and neighbourhood health centres.

   Hansard source
2. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Budget Resolutions

   If the right hon. Gentleman simply listens to the next part of my speech, he may be reassured. Let us build on GP partnerships and shift resources from hospitals to communities. We could have centres that are open in the evening, at which there are specialist nurses, mental health professionals and pharmacists. These would be places where the patients know their doctor, and the doctor knows their patients.

   Hansard source
3. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Budget Resolutions

   I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention. Keeping people healthy and at home, wherever possible, should be supported by our developing national care service. It is a simple but transformative move, and I am delighted that our Government will fund it. In Suffolk, seven new NHS dental practices have been announced, including two in Bury St Edmunds. I applaud the organisation Toothless in Suffolk for its advocacy, but the dental contract must be reformed. Why has this been delayed? A new dental school is opening at the University of East Anglia, and we must ensure that graduates choose NHS dentistry, rather than private practice. It was a privilege to serve on the Public Bill Committee for the Health Bill. I welcome the single patient record, alongside the retention of Healthwatch and the Health Services Safety Investigations Body. Patient voices and independent safety investigations must remain central. Some of our political opponents suggest that the NHS has had its day and advocate for an insurance-based system. I profoundly disagree. My father joined the NHS at its foundation in 1948, having served as an RAF medical officer. I spent more than 40 years as a surgeon, and my son works as an A&E doctor in London—78 years of continuous family service to the NHS. Perhaps the NHS is in my DNA. It is certainly in the DNA of the Labour party. Finally, I want to say something about medical research. We celebrate Jenner, Lister and Fleming, but let us remember the extraordinary British scientists of my lifetime, including Nobel prize winners Crick, Hodgkin, Milstein, Nurse, and Hassabis, whose AlphaFold work revolutionised protein structure prediction. There are many others, including the grandfather of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), the unsung Harold Hopkins. Their achievements remind us why supporting scientific research must remain a national priority. I remain a great optimist for our NHS—there is fresh hope for the future—but we must cherish our NHS. We must invest in it and protect it.

   Hansard source
4. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Budget Resolutions

   It is my last sentence, but go on.

   Hansard source
5. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Budget Resolutions

   I do not claim to be an expert on the selection of software programmes for the single patient record, but I believe that a single patient record will be transformative. If we ever lost our NHS, we would never ever get it back.

   Hansard source
6. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Immigration: Earned Settlement

   I welcome this statement and its greatly imaginative measures. I particularly welcome the fact that care workers will have a second opportunity to apply for indefinite leave to remain. Does the Home Secretary agree that the care workers whom we welcome to this country are every bit as valuable as the highly paid doctors, entrepreneurs and industrialists who come here with high salaries?

   Hansard source
7. 29 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Highways (Financing) Bill (First sitting)

   <strong>Q</strong><strong><QNum HRSContentId="{BD45896B-0C7A-4423-9527-F3251B9D8233}"> </QNum></strong> I am the MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket in Suffolk, where we have a lot of problems with our roads and no motorways. I think the general public are anxious about the price and what it is going to cost for them to take their vehicles through this new tunnel. On what you said earlier about there being very little choice—people will use this tunnel if it is there—there is a fear that the public will be held to ransom. That is the problem. How are we going to deal with that? What do you anticipate the price of taking my car through this tunnel will be when it opens? <em><strong>Steve Gooding:</strong></em> I hesitate to say what the price is going to be. I suspect it is going to be whatever it costs today to go across the Dartford crossing and some more. Given the anxiety that people quite rightly feel at the moment when looking at the cost of the lower Thames crossing, there must be a question whether it has to cost quite that much. Whatever further pressure can be applied, everything is going to flow from that initial estimate. How the RAB is valued over time will flow from the question of what it costs to build this thing. That is why it is so important at the outset that as much pressure is put on National Highways to keep the costs under control and preferably drive them down. That is what will affect things. Subsequently, some quite big bills will come in for the refurbishment and renewal of the existing bridge and tunnels. Keeping pressure on those is important and that is why, as we keep saying, the pressure from the regulator to press for the efficient cost is so important to the structure working.

   Hansard source
8. 29 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Highways (Financing) Bill (First sitting)

   <strong>Q</strong><strong><QNum HRSContentId="{70E30791-DE44-42B0-8F13-7A5CE1C40AF7}"> </QNum></strong> And you would like to see that written into the Bill? <em><strong>Steve Gooding:</strong></em> It is very hard to write it into the Bill. However, there is absolutely the need to keep the pressure up. That is why we have the independent regulator—some entity that is effectively saying, “You can tell me whatever you like about the cost of this, but in my opinion, the efficient cost of it is x.” In this model, particularly if we are talking about the lower Thames crossing, that first estimate will be derived from the National Highways model, obviously with ORR involvement, but it will not be quite the same as subsequent reviews where it will be entirely down to the ORR. <span id="12" class="column-number" data-column-number="12"></span> <em><strong>Edmund King:</strong></em> Currently the cost at Dartford is £3.50 for cars and £8.40 for heavy goods vehicles. It brings in about £130 million a year. If you do some back-of-the-envelope calculations, on a 120-year concession, that would bring in £15.6 billion. It is estimated that the scheme might cost £11 billion now. People accept that the £3.50 and it is affordable. I think it should be based on that figure with limits built in, whether linked to inflation or something else. It is vital that it is to be affordable for people, not just fair and transparent.

   Hansard source
9. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

   Higher Education Funding

   It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this important debate. Sheffield is my university. I attended the 45th reunion last weekend and, apart from the fact that many of my former student colleagues had decided to dye their hair grey, everybody was looking remarkably well. I would also like to say that I actually went to university before Mrs Thatcher was the Prime Minister. I am a former NHS surgeon and a father of three children who have all been through our university system. Our universities are among our greatest assets, as we have heard during the many thoughtful contributions this morning. They drive research and support our local economies, but we cannot take them for granted. They are facing considerable financial pressure. Rising operating costs and an increasing reliance on international student income have left many of them in a precarious position. We all know that the importance of universities goes far beyond the lecture theatres. Just this Monday, I spoke in the House about genetic research at the University of East Anglia to help us distinguish between dangerous and less dangerous prostate cancers—a subject that we absolutely need to sort out. That sort of groundbreaking research depends on well-funded universities with the confidence to invest in the long term, particularly in subjects such as my own, medicine, but also in the sciences and many others, where the costs of providing higher education and training are considerable.<span id="148WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="148WH"></span> The Government’s decision to increase tuition fee caps in line with inflation rather than allowing their value to erode makes sense. I also welcome the return of maintenance grants. Those are important steps towards supporting universities and students, but we must recognise that there is a difficult balance at the heart of this debate. Universities need more money, yet increasing tuition fees means that we are asking students to take more debt. I can see that generational difference in my own family. My two eldest children studied under plan 1, my youngest is on plan 2 and the students I met at Thurston community college in my constituency face the prospect of something called plan 5, with repayments potentially stretching over 40 years. I graduated from medical school without tuition fee debt. I began my career, I entered the housing market and I gradually became more secure, but that looks very different for today’s graduates. A maths graduate who recently attended one of my constituency surgeries brought home just how complicated our student finance system has become. He brought a very well worked-out spreadsheet that explained it to me—at least at the time; I could not possibly explain it to Members today. We must avoid a situation in which the financial sustainability of our great universities is secured simply by transferring the ever-greater burden on to the next generation, for generational unfairness is the great challenge of this Parliament. I ask the Minister to consider just two things. First, how can we provide universities with greater long-term funding certainty rather than leaving them so dependent on tuition fees and unpredictable international student recruitment? Secondly, how can we ensure that efforts to stabilise university finances are accompanied by a fair and transparent student finance system so that young people really understand the financial commitments they make? Our universities need financial stability, but our students need financial security. That is a hard thing, but our Government know how to do hard things.

   Hansard source
10. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·Dr Peter Prinsley

    Prostate Cancer Screening

    Thank you for chairing this debate, Dr Murrison. I declare an interest in that I am a surgeon and appointed chair of the all-party parliamentary group on prostate cancer. Prostate cancer bewilders people. They think, “Surely it must be like other cancers we know about? Find it early, treat it early and save lives.” Only lung cancer causes more death in men, but prostate cancer is not so simple. <span id="8WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="8WH"></span>We know it to be a range of diseases that behave quite differently. At the one end is the dreadful spreading disease of cancer that kills men, sometimes quickly and sometimes very young, and at the other end are the indolent cancers that simply sit around causing little trouble, so that the patient lives with the cancer and dies of something unrelated. The great dilemma is how to distinguish which is which. If we identify cancers that are, in fact, not going to cause any trouble and we treat them, we will need to deal with the consequences of the treatments and side effects that so many men fear—incontinence and impotence—and we risk doing more harm than good. That, in simple terms, explains why the screening experts have determined that at present whole-population screening is not the way to go. People find that a little difficult to understand, and so do I, to be honest. As we have heard, at least two former prime Ministers have been advocating for screening, as have a number of famous sportsmen. The blood test used in screening is the PSA test. What is the problem? False positives—three quarters of men with PSA greater than 4 ng/ml will on biopsy be found not to have cancer—and false negatives, as men with cancer can have normal PSA. So it is not a yes or no test, and is perhaps not massively useful. The UK National Screening Committee says we should do targeted screening of men with the BRCA2 gene and a family history of prostate cancer, but it might be best to use MRI for those men. I would like to say that there is hope. Analysis of surgical samples of prostate cancer subjected to genetic study at the University of East Anglia, where I too lately completed an MD in medical genetics studies, will soon allow us to distinguish between bad prostate cancer and good prostate cancer. We can be proud of how British science is contributing. I urge our Government to use this Parliament to support that research and those amazing scientists in their bold endeavour.

    Hansard source

2024 General Election: Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket

Election result on Parliament's site

Parliamentary career

Career on Parliament's site

Published contact details

Only the details Parliament publishes for this member. Contact page on Parliament's site