Debate contribution: Health and Social Care: Three-year Plan
Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on .
- MLA
- Mr Mike Nesbitt
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 10 December 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Ministerial Statements
- Heading
- Health and Social Care: Three-year Plan
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4715450
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for her question and comments, but I see no contradiction. You need to do both. As I said in my first comments here as Health Minister, if you took a blank map of Northern Ireland and asked yourself, "Do you want to design a health and social care system?", the answer would, I think, be yes, but then you get into judgement calls about whether it is about prevention or cure. Of course, it has to be both, because, no matter how good you are at prevention and early intervention, people will still get sick. Therefore, you still need your acute hospitals and the screening programmes that she referred to. My ambition is clear: it is that shift left and getting care away from acute hospitals and delivering healthcare in the home, ideally, or, if not in the home, as close to it as possible. That means investing more in GP surgeries, Community Pharmacy and community health initiatives such as my Live Better initiative. That has always been my ambition and where I want to shift to, but that does not mean that we will be closing acute hospitals because we do not need them. I just hope that we would need them less and that people would stay healthier for longer. On health inequalities, look at the difference between two women growing up maybe a mile apart in this city — one in the area of least deprivation and one in the area of most deprivation. Their healthy life expectancy varies by 14·2 years. Those are my ambitions; that is where I am trying to get to.
I thank the Member for his question. I am meeting unions later today. We have had previous discussions about how I would hope to honour the national pay parity awards, and it was made clear to me by the unions that my language, which included such words as "ambition" and such phrases as "using best endeavours", was not acceptable. When I meet them later today, my language, I hope, will be more pleasing, or agreeable — let me put it that way. The Member referred to future activity. It is my ambition — rather, it is my intent — that, all things being equal, when the pay bodies make their pay recommendations for the 2025-26 financial year, I will accept them and begin implementing the awards with immediate effect.
401 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.03 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.88).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.03 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.02 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.02 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.03 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.88 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.03 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.62 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.28 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.08 |
| Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits | 0.01 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.01 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:45 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
Disagree with this assessment?
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