Dr Peter Prinsley, MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, reflects on first year in Parliament
A year to the day since a political earthquake hit Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, Paul Derrick and Ross Waldron went to Parliament to speak to Labour MP, Dr Peter Prinsley, about the last 12 months.
“I used to say I was a specialist surgeon but now I’m a political GP,” smiles Dr Peter Prinsley.
It is a year since the then NHS ear, nose and throat surgeon entered the history books – triumphing in a Conservative stronghold to become the first Labour MP, and the first non-Conservative since 1880, elected to represent Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket.
Just before 3.30am on a balmy July 5, a thumbs up to his supporters signalled what many had thought was impossible as he overturned a Tory majority of nearly 25,000.
It was an unexpected political earthquake – not least for the man, who enjoyed a healthcare career of more than 40 years and a brief spell as a Norwich city councillor.
His life was transformed as he swapped the hospital operating theatre for the halls of power, navigating Parliament to help find the remedies for the issues afflicting his constituency and the country.
“When I started I didn’t think this was a seat that Labour could win,” Dr Prinsley admitted. “I think it was the third safest seat for the Conservatives in the whole of England. It certainly wasn’t anything like one of Labour’s target seats and we had very little support from the regional Labour Party.”
But with a national malaise over 14 years of Tory rule, he soon sensed a mood for change as he received a favourable reception when he knocked on voters’ doors.
“A common thing they said was ‘you’re the first political person we’ve ever seen in our street,” he said. “What probably happened in the past was the Conservative Party had always been so sure they were going to win, there hadn’t been much incentive for them to campaign, and similarly the Labour Party had been so sure they were going to lose their heart wasn’t really in it.”
With an enthusiastic local Labour operation, positive opinion polls and weeks of pounding the pavements in the summer heat, Dr Prinsley won with a 1,452 majority.
Entering uncharted territory, he said he had to disentangle himself from his work as an ENT surgeon at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and James Paget Hospital before finally retiring in March.
From a set timetable and routine he was familiar with in the NHS, every day is different in politics and Dr Prinsley, a father of three and grandfather, has had to adapt quickly to build a team, open a constituency office and help resolve the challenges facing Bury and Stowmarket.
“I do think I’ve made a bit of a difference,” he reflects. “It’s difficult to know as a lone backbencher what difference you make. I think there have been some things where things have changed as a result of what I’ve been able to say.”
At Prime Minister’s Questions, he pressed Sir Keir Starmer as to whether hospitals built with the faulty concrete RAAC, such as West Suffolk Hospital, would be prioritised in the Government’s review of new hospitals. Fast forward to the Chancellor’s budget statement and Rachel Reeves namechecked it to be rebuilt.
“All the other MPs turned round to look at me,” Dr Prinsley said. “That was a real political win for us.”
Hearing Ms Reeves confidently assert the West Suffolk Hospital rebuild would go ahead was not so much a moment of relief as disbelief, he said. So much so, he sought her out for a conversation after the speech, where she again confirmed it was going ahead.
With a son, who is an accident and emergency doctor, and, based on Dr Prinsley’s own experience, he knows all too well action needs to be taken to improve conditions for workers and is keen to tackle the issue of student debt, with a suggestion it could be offset by the number of years they are prepared to commit to the health service.
He has sought to solve concerns about the career progression of physician associates, who work under the supervision of doctors to provide care.
After speaking to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a review was announced a few days later.
The NHS is intrinsically linked to almost all facets of his life, but what about the issues closer to home for constituents?
“We’ve done something for potholes,” said Dr Prinsley. “There was a way in which the Government was persuaded to invest money directly to the roads authorities and the local councils to start sorting out the potholes. A really good example of that is Station Hill [in Bury], which was just about the most disastrously potholed road, I think, in the whole place, and that has now been resurfaced.”
But the challenges were rooted in his inexperience as a politician.
“I’ve had to learn how to do Parliamentary politics because I was starting pretty much from scratch,” he said.
“I’ve begun to work out how to get things done, how to speak to people in Parliament and I’ve had to learn how to be a parliamentary speaker.”
At 67 years old, he is one of the oldest new Labour MPs but brings a unique lived experience and is one of five doctors – and two surgeons – in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
That experience came to the fore with the assisted dying bill, one of the most highly scrutinised pieces of legislation in recent times.
He voted in favour, something he has admitted he would not have done when he was a young doctor. But, as he said in one of his speeches, now he is ‘an old doctor’ and he has seen more.
“I understand that there are people who are worried about this, but what I would say is that this is a pretty tightly written bill,” he said.
“This is a bill for people who are dying. It’s not for people with disabilities who are living perfectly well with their disabilities.”
He highlighted the series of safeguards within the bill as well as the importance of – having seen people in fear towards the end of their lives – retaining dignity in one’s final days.
“What I say to people is that you may not agree with it and you may have philosophical objections to it, which may have all sorts of bases. But the question I would ask is: ‘who are you to deny the right to choose for those who wish to choose?’ And I think that it’s this question of choice which lies at the heart of it.”
The bill was one of the examples where Dr Prinsley was more visible but, by his own words, the majority of the time he is a ‘lone backbencher’.
Not in Government, not a whip, just Dr Peter Prinsley, representative for Bury and Stowmarket.
He said, while he understands the whipping system, this affords him more freedom to think more directly about how to vote, what to pursue and what feels right.
His life experiences afford him some credibility within the Parliamentary Labour Party and recently he and other Labour doctors had a preliminary meeting with Mr Streeting about the content of the 10 Year Health Plan for the NHS.
And it is for people such as Mr Streeting, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whom Dr Prinsley holds a deep respect.
He acknowledged Labour had made some unpopular decisions in its first year in Government but he praised their willingness to do what they felt was right for the country in the long term.
”I think that they’re more interested at the moment in doing what they believe to be effective to improve things, particularly to improve people’s lives and the economy, than necessarily always being popular,” he said.
Dr Prinsley highlighted how the Government had also been willing to backtrack on some of its decisions, such as arguably its most unpopular move – cuts to winter fuel payments.
While it could be easy to be overawed by those he works with and brushes shoulders with in Parliament, Dr Prinsley joked he remained calm and collected around even the biggest names in politics – mainly because he is older than most of them.
But how does he stay on track and not forget the people that really matter – his constituents? He has made differences to people’s lives for 40 years in his time as a surgeon, but how does that compare to now?
“I think you make different sorts of differences,” says Dr Prinsley. ”As a doctor, I was also involved in medical research, so you make differences to people with conditions that you treat, and you can certainly help families. But I think in politics, you can make a difference to populations.
“It’s not an accident that the sessions MPs hold with their constituents are called surgeries.”
Looking back on the last year, Dr Prinsley said it was an extremely interesting new life and he had made hundreds of new friends.
He now has a permanent presence in his constituency with the opening of his new office in Market Place, Stowmarket, adorned with the green hue of the Commons.
But what about the future? In four years, will his name once again appear on the ballot papers?
“Well, I think I should say there’s an extremely high chance that I’ll stand at the next election,” he said. “But of course, the future is unpredictable.”
