NHS Winter Pressures

Anna Firth Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, this is absolutely a system-wide challenge. That is why the use of innovations such as virtual wards in demand management upstream, in the care home or on the home, is important, just as discharge—getting patients to leave hospital who are fit to do so—is important. The focus has often been on ambulances being delayed at A&E or on the significant and real pressures in emergency departments themselves, but the challenge is much wider. That is what the funding in the autumn statement recognised.

In response to his second point about this being a longer-term issue in England specifically, I would just point him to the examples in Wales and the pressures in Scotland. This surge in flu combined with covid and the pandemic legacy that we have seen in England have created so much pressure over the festive period, and it is something with which many other health systems around the globe have also been grappling.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I very much welcome this extra funding, and I look forward to hearing how much will be coming to Southend University Hospital, which has had to deal with not one but two critical incidents declared by the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust. It has already innovated with modular units and an active discharge lounge. These NHS workers deserve all our recognition, and what they need is £8 million of capital funding to reconfigure the hospital, which is fundamentally not big enough. In the short term, will the Secretary of State agree to encouraging care homes to take discharges after 5 pm? Every day, 15% of the people who need to be discharged cannot be discharged because the care homes will not take them after 5 pm. That is at least 70 people a week who could be out of hospital. This is an emergency—everyone must put their shoulder to the wheel.

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend has raised the £8 million capital request with me previously, and it is something we are looking at. She is right about how capital needs to be looked at in the context of getting flow into a local system and of where triaging can be unlocked. In response to her point about 5 pm, there are two points. First, part of the reason for looking at discharge lounges is that if we have something that is 7 am to 7 pm, there is a cultural change for the patient in going into the discharge lounge in the morning and being off the ward. Looking at other health systems around the world, we see that that can be beneficial in accelerating discharge, rather than there being a point in the day after which suddenly it is easier to leave discharging the patient until the next day.

The second point on 5 pm is that we need to look at what support care homes need to have the confidence to take the patient. To be fair to them, it is not simply a question of whether they are refusing to take the patient after 5 pm; it is also about us looking at the wider wraparound care package, so that care homes are confident in taking that risk not just after 5 pm on weekdays, but at weekends, when there is often a significant drop in the number of patients taken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Firth Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I am very sorry to hear about that tragic case in Northern Ireland. We want to reassure people that, while there is a slightly higher number of cases than usual for this time of year, the UK Health Security Agency is on top of this and is not concerned that there is a wider outbreak than would be expected. We want to encourage parents who are concerned that their children are not responding to get help as soon as possible. Antibiotics are available, and local directors of public health should be co-ordinating local activity, but if there are any concerns, Members should come and see me.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

On Saturday, I visited Chalkwell Grange, a brilliant new care home in picturesque Leigh-on-Sea which is struggling to recruit due to the guidance that all care workers should wear face masks. Will the Secretary of State give care homes the best Christmas present ever and change the word “should” to “can” or “may”, to put them in charge of their own infection control?

[Helen Whately]

I thank my hon. Friend; it is good to hear that she has visited a local care home. I have also heard what she heard from staff. Although face masks are important for infection control, we know that they have downsides, such as making communication harder. I have asked for updated public health advice on the use of masks in care homes and I look forward to updating hon. Members and the social care sector on the guidance about that shortly.

Urgent and Emergency Care

Anna Firth Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am happy to draw that case to the attention of the relevant parties and ensure that the hon. Gentleman gets a written explanation.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I think that the Secretary of State is aware of the acute problems at Southend University Hospital and of the fact that A&E capacity is the issue. We are waiting for capital funding that was promised years ago to be released. I know that Health Ministers have been working on this over the summer. There were 15 ambulances there yesterday. Our hard-working nurses and doctors would love news on that funding to be forthcoming.

[Steve Barclay]

As I said in my statement, additional funding has been put in to boost A&E capacity. There was some £450 million of funding in the spending review in 2020, which has been applied across 120 trusts. Of course, the ICSs will look at the commissioning priorities in particular areas, and the NHS England taskforce is looking at trusts where there is acute pressure.

Health Services: Southend West

Anna Firth Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

Let me begin by saying what a huge pleasure it is to be holding my first Adjournment debate since my election in February—and on such an uneventful day! Let me also thank Mr Speaker for granting a debate on a subject that is so important to everyone in Southend West; and I am particularly pleased to see that we still have a Minister here to respond to it.

Making Southend West healthier is my absolute priority, and I want to say a huge thank you to all our brilliant local NHS workers. Their incredibly hard work is an inspiration to us all, and it is no exaggeration to say that our country would simply not function without them. However, it was very clear during my election campaign that, sadly, our local healthcare system was simply not up to scratch. Since my election, my mailbox has been dominated by problems with our hospital, with our ambulance service, with 111 and with GPs. Literally every day I receive complaints from constituents, and I have promised to do something about it.

There are four issues that I want to focus on this evening. The first is Southend University Hospital. The hospital lies right at the heart of my constituency, and the tower—which I had the pleasure of abseiling down earlier this year for charity—dominates the local skyline. The hospital now has 670 beds, serving as the main healthcare centre and accident and emergency department for around 330,000 people. Just over 4,500 staff work around the clock to provide the best possible care to local residents. However, the hospital is hampered by its setting, on a fairly small plot of land right in the centre of the city. There is no room to expand, so the hospital really has to make the most of every spare bit of space available.

The small site of the hospital is mirrored by the limited size of the A&E department, which can safely admit around 55 people within a 24-hour period. According to hospital staff, they regularly have to deal with between 120 and 150 people daily. This is quite simply unsafe. The Minister will know that the Care Quality Commission rated the Department as “requires improvement” late last year. Understandably, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) is keen that patients from her constituency are encouraged to attend Basildon A&E instead of Southend.

Clearly, the number of people the A&E department has to deal with has consequences for treatment waiting times. Statistics last month showed that more than a third of patients needing the most serious A&E care waited more than four hours to be seen. The lack of space in the A&E wing also means that ambulances regularly have to queue up for several hours outside the hospital to discharge their patients. Indeed, it is not unusual to see what effectively amounts to a temporary field hospital of 15 ambulances in the car park.

The national guidance states that patients arriving at an accident and emergency department by ambulance must be handed over into the care of A&E staff within 15 minutes. Shockingly, the average handover time for a person arriving by ambulance at Southend Hospital is 84 minutes, which is five times the national target. The worst day at Southend this year was 11 April, when the average handover time was 178 minutes. That is nearly three hours, and 12 times the national guideline. Of course, some patients wait considerably longer. One of my constituents contacted me last month to tell me that he had spent six hours in the back of an ambulance in agony, and one 79 -year-old constituent had to wait eight hours in severe pain before being seen. If this is happening in the spring and summer, I dread to think what the situation might be in winter.

This brings me to my first ask of the Minister this evening. The hospital trust, led by Anthony McKeever and the outgoing chief executive officer, Clare Panniker, has put together a plan for a major clinical reconfiguration of the Mid and South Essex integrated care system. This reconfiguration has been fully costed at £118 million and the funding was first promised in Parliament in 2017. Southend is the major beneficiary of this funding envelope, with £51 million also promised in 2017 for the development of, among other things, a new emergency care hub at Southend Hospital. This would go a long way towards addressing the critical issues with space and flow in the emergency department. It would also see additional inpatient wards and new and refurbished theatres in the hospital, as well as myriad other essential medical services.

This scheme is ready to roll, but for one big stumbling block. Approval of £8.4 million in capital enabling funding is needed to allow the development of the full business cases necessary to unlock the whole £118 million programme, and it is still awaited. In May, the Minister reconfirmed at a meeting with Essex MPs that these crucial enabling funds will be expedited. Sadly, this has not yet happened. Will he please confirm tonight the release of the £8.4 million of enabling funding needed for these essential upgrades at Southend Hospital? In the words of Cuba Gooding Jr., when will he “Show me the money”?

Problems with people waiting absurdly long times for an ambulance to arrive are not unique to Southend. This year we have already had debates in this place on delays everywhere from Cornwall to Shropshire to Ellesmere Port. One elderly woman in my constituency waited 12 hours for an ambulance to arrive after falling at home and fracturing her hip. Another 86-year-old waited six hours while suffering from sepsis.

What makes the situation in Southend unique is our rapidly ageing population. The results of the 2021 census, published last week, show that the average age in Southend is 20 years older than in England as a whole. The number of people aged 70 to 74 has risen by 37% in the past 10 years, and we now have nearly 2,000 people aged over 90. As my predecessor was so fond of saying, we have the highest concentration of centenarians in the country, which has implications for the ambulance service. Older people are more likely to have urgent medical conditions that can be dealt with only by having an ambulance come to them.

I am pleased to say that, since I was elected, we have seen some real changes. Working with my neighbouring colleagues, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point, whom I thank for being here to support me this evening, we have held many productive meetings with the new chief executive of East of England Ambulance Service, Tom Abell, including another one only this afternoon. I am delighted that we will be receiving a net increase of 111 ambulance staff, and that the 11 new ambulances promised to us in March are already on our roads.

There will be no real benefit to the people of Southend West from these new ambulances if, when they arrive at the hospital, they cannot be discharged. The elderly lady with a broken hip I mentioned earlier, after waiting 12 hours at home for an ambulance, had to wait outside the hospital in that ambulance for another four hours. Sadly, her story is far from unique.

My second ask of the Minister this evening is exactly the same as my first. Will he release the £8.4 million of enabling funding needed to improve Southend Hospital’s emergency department?

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The heroic efforts of our paramedics—I use the word heroic deliberately—are being hampered because they cannot discharge a critically ill patient into Southend Hospital if there is no bed available. An ambulance in the hospital car park with a critically ill patient cannot go back out to help other ill patients.

My hon. Friend is entirely right so, as a neighbouring MP, I join her in pleading with the Minister for this vital £8.4 million. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who is also in the Chamber, I would be grateful if the Minister could show all of us the money.

[Anna Firth]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. While ambulances wait in the hospital car park, another person is waiting at home with a broken hip or something similar and is unable to be picked up.

The 111 service in Mid and South Essex is run by Integrated Care 24, and the service answered 30,396 calls from patients in June. One of the most baffling things about the 111 service is that if a call has not been triaged by a clinician within an hour, an ambulance is automatically dispatched as a fail-safe. In June alone, 100 ambulances were auto-dispatched in Mid and South Essex, which is an average of 3.1 a day, due to delays in patients being triaged. In May, I met an ambulance crew who had been auto-dispatched to treat a 12 year-old child with tonsillitis as the case had not been triaged by a clinician within an hour. The ambulance crew were as surprised as the mother that they had been sent to attend a child with tonsillitis. On average, each ambulance call-out costs the taxpayer about £350. On those figures, we could be spending nearly £500,000 annually in Mid and South Essex alone on unwanted and unnecessary ambulance call-outs. Were that situation to be repeated at every hospital trust throughout the country, we would spend tens of millions of pounds on unnecessary ambulances. Will the Minister commit to reviewing the system that causes ambulances to be auto-dispatched?

Finally, I come to GP waiting times. GPs are at the heart of so much of our health system, and they have traditionally been the first port of call for people who have minor or recurring illnesses, but since the covid pandemic we have had a tsunami of complaints from people who are not able to see their GP. According to a poll by Survation, 47% of people in Southend West experienced problems booking a GP appointment in the past year—that is nearly 50% of people who are trying to see their GP. Every week, I am contacted by at least three constituents who are struggling to get a GP appointment. Generally, the complaint is that patients are in an endless loop of calling their practice in the morning and being told that there are no appointments available and they should call back in the afternoon, only to be told then to call again the following day—and they go round the buoy again. In one case, it took a constituent five weeks to get an appointment with his doctor. At West Road surgery, in my constituency, there are currently three-week delays for urgent blood tests. I have also received many reports of GPs delaying the return of medical forms to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and of delayed referrals to specialists. One constituent who had suffered a minor injury to his head and needed to see a GP for a check-up and bandaging had to call an ambulance and attend A&E because no appointment was available. This simply adds to the pressures I spoke about earlier in this speech.

Some surgeries in my constituency are attempting to innovate by bringing in an e-consult system, but they are doing so without writing and explaining the new system to their patients in advance—I am told there are no funds from the clinical commissioning group for such a letter. Not surprisingly, that is adding to the levels of frustration and anxiety. Besides, this online system is not suitable for many of the most elderly and vulnerable people in my constituency, who do not have access to the internet. Nationally, 54% of over-75s are not online, and the figure for the city of Southend is 8%, so we are talking about 12,000 people who have never even used the internet.

What my constituents need and deserve is to be able to visit their doctor, and that brings me to my final ask this evening. We can implement all sorts of clever systems to reduce waiting lists, but what we really need is more GPs and more appointments. Will the Minister please let me know what is being done to recruit more doctors in Southend, and what is being done to encourage them to increase the number of in-person appointments available?

I started this evening’s speech on a positive note by thanking our brilliant health workers, and I want to conclude on a similar one. We have some brilliant initiatives locally that are already making people in Southend West healthier. Southend University Hospital is piloting an innovative enhanced discharge service, a collaboration between Southend-on-Sea City Council, Southend clinical commissioning group and the hospital. This is helping people to get home when they have been in hospital, and it is a brilliant therapy-led assessment service that really puts people at the heart of ongoing care. I am delighted that the Government have praised the scheme, and I look forward to it being extended. I would like to take this opportunity to invite the Minister to come and visit the hospital; he and his ministerial colleagues—whoever they may be—are always welcome to come and visit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) would raise the case for a Shoebury health centre if this debate covered the whole of Southend, but I know the Minister is already aware of his passion and support for such a proposal. I fully support this endeavour and indeed would welcome one of these in Southend West as well.

To conclude, my main asks this evening are as follows. What is being done to recruit doctors in Southend, and what is being done to encourage them to increase the number of GP appointments available? What is being done to reform the 111 service to ensure ambulances are not auto-despatched needlessly? Most importantly, will the Minister please confirm tonight the release of the £8.4 million of enabling funding that is so vitally needed to improve the Southend emergency department?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

As the Minister is a regular attendee at Adjournment debates, I would normally say that I am delighted to see him here today. After the events of the last 24 hours, however, I will say that I am relieved to see that he is here to respond to this debate.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) on securing this important debate. She is a notable advocate for healthcare in her constituency, and a strong champion and voice for her constituents in this place. The NHS has faced extraordinary pressures over the course of the pandemic, and I am sure the whole House will join me in expressing our utmost gratitude to staff for their outstanding work and dedication during this time.

I will address a number of my hon. Friend’s points, but, although it is rare to do so at the Dispatch Box, I will come to her main point first and seek to address it head-on. My hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois)—and, although she may not intervene in the debate, the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris)—have asked whether the Government will provide the £8.4 million of funding requested to improve Southend emergency department to unlock the business case to allow it to proceed to do further work. While I regret that I am not able to give a clear answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West this evening, I hope it will come as some encouragement to her that I can say that, following the tenacity of her campaigning on this issue in the Chamber, and indeed outside it, in pursuing me and other Ministers—that is exactly what Members of Parliament are here to do—I have instructed the Department to convene a meeting to review the submitted business case prior to the summer recess, and I anticipate being able to update her and the trust with the outcome of that before the House rises for the summer. That is, obviously, subject to my new Secretary of State’s decision on the recommendation of officials, but I undertake that I have instructed officials to come back to her with that decision before the House rises in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, work to improve local services continues, and I am aware that Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust hospitals and the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust—EEAST—have a range of actions in place to meet the high levels of demand they are experiencing. For example, EEAST is prioritising emergency cases, and, where clinically appropriate, a team of clinicians in its emergency clinical advice and triage service will advise people who do not need an ambulance to use other services. EEAST has also successfully recruited more call handlers and expanded the network of hospital ambulance liaison officers who help to co-ordinate handovers at hospitals, including by diverting crews to other hospitals where they can be seen more quickly.

EEAST is working with acute hospitals to develop cohorting areas, where patients can be assessed before going into the emergency department, helping to get ambulances back on the road more quickly. In the context of ambulances, I am reminded of an incident that was recounted to me—I could not possibly reveal the source from which I acquired this information. When she was abseiling to raise money for charity while dressed as Wonder Woman, my hon. Friend spotted ambulances queued up. As soon as she got to the ground and across the car park, she pursued the issue to find out what was going on. Such is her commitment to her constituents and her passion for this issue, and I commend her for that.

After a successful trial at Lister Hospital, EEAST is now using a rapid release process with some acute hospital partners, where the handover of patients is fast tracked if an urgent response is required in the community. At busy times, EEAST may also offer enhanced pay rates to encourage staff to complete additional shifts.

These local initiatives are also supported by national actions to reduce waiting times, including continuous central monitoring, support from the National Ambulance Coordination Centre and the allocation of £150 million of additional system funding for ambulance service pressures in 2022-23, supporting improvements to response times through additional call handler recruitment, retention and other funding pressures. My hon. Friend has quite rightly highlighted the additional ambulance service staff and the additional ambulances themselves. She is absolutely right to highlight the fact that while the ambulance service may often be the visual manifestation of the challenges faced, it is a system challenge with a number of complex, interrelated parts.

My hon. Friend has raised an important issue concerning the NHS 111 service and the automatic dispatch of ambulances. I am advised that when a patient calls 111 and the automated call handler assessment concludes that a low-urgency ambulance should be dispatched, a clinician will call the patient back to validate that that is actually required. I understand that that happens about 95% of the time. Where the patient is not able to be contacted within a fixed timeframe, as my hon. Friend has said, the call will be passed to the ambulance service for dispatch. However, it is important to understand that the call may still be scrutinised by the ambulance service as to whether an ambulance is really needed.

Although no remote triage process can be perfect, there is consistent clinical review of these calls to ensure the wise use of resource, and NHSEI does not believe that significant numbers of ambulances are being dispatched unnecessarily. I have already asked officials in the Department to look into the specific issue that my hon. Friend has raised to understand the extent to which that is happening, whether it is happening unnecessarily and what the consequences are in terms of cost and time resource.

We are also building the capacity of NHS 111 to act as the front door to the emergency care system, so that patients receive an ambulance or go to A&E only when needed. This is being supported with £50 million in 2022-23, helping to ensure that people can access urgent care when they need it, increasing the ability to book callers into alternative services or into a timed slot at their local A&E where appropriate.

On general practice, we know that general practitioners are still under huge pressure. I am incredibly grateful for the contribution of GPs and their teams over the past two years. They have stepped up to deliver our world-leading vaccination programme while still providing exemplary care for their patients during a pandemic. We made £520 million available to improve access and expand general practice capacity during the pandemic. That was in addition to at least £1.5 billion announced in 2020 to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments by 2024 by increasing and diversifying the workforce.

GPs and their teams will always be there for patients, alongside NHS 111 and community pharmacy teams, and it is important that people do not delay in coming forward with health concerns. In 2021-22, we saw the highest ever number of doctors accepting a place on GP training—a record 4,000 trainees, up from 2,671 in 2014. GP trainees support fully qualified GPs, helping to ease workloads and increase capacity, and allowing more patients to get the care they need. Just as in hospitals, doctors in training are delivering direct patient care while being safely supervised and supported.

I hope that our exchange today provides a degree of reassurance that there is significant support in place at local and national level to address performance issues, as well as a determination to improve the provision of health services in Southend West and more broadly in the local area. As you alluded to, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have been a regular at the Dispatch Box in these Adjournment debates, certainly over the past two to three years. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing forward this debate, and it has been a great pleasure and privilege to answer it.

[Anna Firth]

May I thank the Minister very much for the careful way in which he has responded to all my points and for his assurance that there will be some news on the £8.4 million before the recess?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her kind words. I will just conclude by saying that it has been a huge privilege to respond to debates such as this, and I am very grateful to her for affording me that privilege this evening.

Question put and agreed to.

Community Pharmacies

Anna Firth Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Gary. Community pharmacists have long been one of the unsung heroes of our NHS. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that they are a keystone species of the NHS, serving as a minor injuries unit and providing a vital prescribing service and essential healthcare out of hours for so many people around the country. They are also our most accessible form of healthcare. Their contribution throughout covid-19 was perhaps the best example of their heroic and accessible work. Community pharmacies were the first to step forward during our world-beating vaccine roll-out programme. Millions of people, just like me, had both their first and second jab from their local community pharmacy. Many of us regularly visit our pharmacies for covid tests, travel jabs, flu vaccines and a plethora of other essential healthcare services.

One of the less well known but most inspirational initiatives that community pharmacies have been involved in during the covid pandemic is their support for women experiencing domestic abuse. The Government-backed, pharmacy-led Ask for ANI scheme was a lifeline for many abused women. They could go into a pharmacy and ask for “ANI”, which was the codeword for getting a safe space to raise this important and personal issue.

It is their community nature that makes those pharmacies so valuable. Being on every high street, and having a smaller number of patients than a GP or medical centre, means they can be truly local and embedded in the area. In my constituency of Southend West, we have 18 brilliant pharmacies, each serving an average of 5,162 people. They thus serve a whopping 93,000 people a year. I am delighted that the Government have already recognised the important role that pharmacies play. Earlier this month, the NHS chief executive announced that community pharmacies will be funded to spot early signs of cancer and trained to refer people directly for scans and checks without seeing their GP. That is so welcome and important. Every Member of Parliament will be receiving a welter of emails complaining about access to GP appointments. The Valkyrie surgery, in my constituency, is clearly struggling to cope with the demand for appointments, and it is certainly not the only one struggling in Southend West.

Enabling people to access specialist services without going through a GP will massively ease pressure on GP services. It will also ease the pressure on our beleaguered accident and emergency services, which are crumbling under the pressure. Southend Hospital is safe for around 50 people going through A&E every day, but it is, on occasion, having to cope with 150 people. The obvious solution to those twin problems is to upskill our community pharmacies and ensure they have the funding and training they need to take the burden off our GPs, ambulances and hospitals.

Pharmacies already save 619,000 GP appointments every week; that is 32 million every year. The services they provide also save around 3.5 million people every year from visiting A&E and walk-in centres. We must go further to transform our pharmacies into an even more vital community resource. In Southend West we have the brilliant Belfairs pharmacy, run by an inspirational pharmacist called Mr Mohamed Fayyaz Haji—known locally as Fizz. Fizz provides a great range of services, including cholesterol and blood pressure checks, health advice and prescribing. He has recently acquired further premises so that he can expand into even greater levels of primary and community care, from ear syringing through to community phlebotomy, and to earlier diagnosis measures such as measuring prostate-specific antigen levels for prostate cancer, as well as electrocardiograms and ultrasound screening for sports injuries and pregnant women. That is exactly the sort of care that we want to be championing and supporting to ease the pressure on our other services. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister would like to join me in applauding Fizz’s efforts in Belfairs. That is a model for community pharmacy care around the country.

That sort of expansion is obviously not free. I applaud the fact that the Government are already investing in this area. I welcome the community pharmacy contractual framework, which will provide £2.5 billion annually. It is providing clarity and certainty about funding for the first time. I also welcome the new commitment for an additional £15.9 million to support the expansion of frontline pharmacy staff, providing people like Fizz with the training that they need to develop the skills of their staff for the benefit of everybody in the local community. I want to see this continue and for our pharmacies to be able to offer routine medical check-ups and routine injections and to be able to spot the early signs of serious illnesses and refer patients straight on to specialist departments in our local hospital.

In conclusion, pharmacies already provide a huge range of local services and they deserve greater recognition for the essential work that they do. The Government are already doing great work. I would like to see the Government go further with upskilling pharmacists, easing the pressure on our NHS and creating a healthier society all round. Pharmacies, especially in Southend West, are keen to be part of this mission and offer more to their local communities. I welcome every step to empower them to do just that.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Last but never least—Jim Shannon.

Health and Social Care Leadership Review

Anna Firth Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend.

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

I thank the Health Secretary for this vitally important report at this critical time. Is he aware of reports circulating in the media that some NHS health information pages appear to have been de-sexed in their language about conditions affecting women? Is he, like me, very concerned about this, and will he look into it?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn, I hope, that as Health Secretary I think an individual’s biological sex is incredibly important when trying to meet their health needs. I have seen the reports. In fact, I do not think they are just reports. With regard to the NHS website on ovarian cancer, I think it is actually has been, as she puts it, de-sexed. That is not something that I agree with. Of course, issues of gender, rather than sex—I distinguish the two—should be approached with compassion and sensitivity, but it is right that when it comes to healthcare, where there are health issues that impact only people of a particular biological sex, such as ovarian cancer and prostate cancer, the health service recognises that.