Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

We all appreciate the wonderful work done by cancer charities such as Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK, and the Department works closely with those charities. We want outcomes for cancer patients in England to be among the best in Europe. As I said, we know we are not there yet, but a great deal of effort and money is going into getting there. The NHS is treating more cancer patients than ever. Since 2009, we have seen numbers rise by 15%—that is 1,000 more patients with suspected cancer referred to a specialist every day. That is the success of some of the early diagnosis and awareness raising activity. Of course we want any local dips in performance to be addressed, but let us give credit where it is due to clinicians who are diagnosing more cancers and catching them earlier, because that is the key to treating cancer successfully.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

5. If he will meet the chair of the College of Emergency Medicine to discuss A and E units.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

I met the chair of the College of Emergency Medicine four times in the last six months and I will meet him again next week.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. Will he tell the House what progress has been made by Health Education England, along with the College of Emergency Medicine, to recruit trainee doctors from India in an attempt to address the serious staffing shortages in emergency medicines departments? Will he work with Ministers from other devolved regions to address the serious shortage in A and E doctors, which is having an impact on waiting lists in hospitals the length and breadth of the UK?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady is right that operational pressures on A and E are happening throughout the United Kingdom. We have made good progress in recruiting 50 A and E doctors to help relieve pressure this year in A and E departments, but that is a short-term measure. The long-term issue is to get more doctors going into A and E from training, and we are looking at contract structures and at what we can do with training schedules to make that more attractive. We will certainly work with colleagues in devolved Administrations and tell them what we have learned.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I encourage those on the Opposition Front Bench in particular to talk to a few people in A and E and ask whether they think they have been supportive, in a very difficult winter, by whipping up all these scare stories when, in fact, because of their hard work, we are seeing 2,000 more people every single day in less than four hours than when the shadow Secretary of State was Health Secretary. A and E is performing better than ever.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

T5. There are nearly 500 UK-trained medical practitioners now working in Australia, of whom 6% never return owing to the better conditions available there. What steps will the Secretary of State and his ministerial team take to ensure that we retain those qualifying in emergency medicine this year, to keep local A and E departments open in Britain and Northern Ireland?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

I would like to point out to the hon. Lady that it is not unusual for doctors in training to work overseas to improve their medical experience. Many of my contemporaries did that, and every one I know has returned to work in the NHS in the UK. It is a common phenomenon that benefits doctors’ experience. What we have done, unlike the previous Government, is ensure that we now have a 100% fill rate for people entering A and E common stem training.

NHS

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Let us be absolutely clear. Why has Labour decided to remove the word “crisis” from the motion it submitted to the House this afternoon? It does not mention the word “crisis” at all, because the winter crisis that the right hon. Gentleman has been predicting for over six months now has simply not materialised.

Let us look—this is important—at how the right hon. Gentleman has been manipulating the statistics. He knows perfectly well that there is no A and E target for single categories of A and E; rather, the target applies to all A and Es. He gets his numbers by singling out the biggest A and E departments, type 1s, which are extremely important. How did type 1s—the most important and biggest A and Es—perform during the winter when he was Health Secretary? Let me tell the House: they missed their target every single week up until this point in the year. There are indeed pressures on A and E departments, but why does he think the country will listen to him, when by his own yardstick he failed to deliver every single week up until this point in the year?

The right hon. Gentleman has been predicting a winter crisis for months, and we are still waiting. For him, these debates are not about the reality on the ground; they are about hyperbole and spin. As someone who has been Health Secretary, he must know—this is a serious point—the effect that lurid headlines based on dubious statistics have on morale for staff and those using the NHS, but still we get the same cracked record, because for him, politics always matters more than patients.

It is not just A and E performance; under this Government—[Interruption.] It might not be comfortable for the Opposition, but let us look at the figures. Under this Government, MRSA rates have virtually halved, mixed-sex wards have nearly been eliminated and when it comes to elective care, more than 35,000 fewer people are waiting more than 18 weeks. That is thanks to the efforts of hard-working front-line staff. Our NHS is doing 800,000 more operations year in, year out than it did under Labour—something we can be immensely proud of.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the shadow Secretary of State, has referred to comments by Dr Cliff Mann about the shortage of A and E doctors and the fact that the issue was flagged up some two years ago. What will the Government do to address the 50% shortage in A and E doctors, not only in England but throughout the UK?

[Mr Hunt]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight the fact that there has been a long-standing issue with recruitment into A and E. We have made some good progress. We have 350 more consultants in post than at the time of the election, but we need to do even better, so we are looking at the training process for A and E consultants. We are also looking at the contractual terms for A and E consultants, particularly as they relate to things such as shift work, to try to make it a more attractive profession. I am confident that these issues are now being addressed—in fact, I have had some encouraging feedback from the College of Emergency Medicine saying that it, too, is confident about that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I can confirm that the Department of Health is investing an additional £250 million over the next two years in A and E, with NHS England also allocating an additional £150 million for the current year. Milton Keynes has been allocated £2.8 million to support local initiatives to relieve pressures on A and E, and I know that, as a great champion for his local hospital, my hon. Friend will welcome that additional support.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Given the ongoing crisis in A and E units in the UK, particularly in the area I represent in Northern Ireland, will the Minister confirm whether the Health Minister in Northern Ireland has had discussions about possible solutions to finding and recruiting extra doctors?

[Dr Poulter]

I am not aware of any direct conversations with Ministers here, but as the hon. Lady will be aware, the Minister responsible for A and E services is my right hon. and noble Friend Earl Howe. I will write to her about the discussions that have been had with the noble Lord and Health Education England.

Accident and Emergency

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is the central point of my speech: the removal of the guarantee that patients could get an appointment within two working days. The Government removed it in June 2010 and, as a result, we all hear stories, do we not, of people saying that they are getting up and ringing the surgery at 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning and are being told that there is nothing available for days. That is a result of the Government’s decision to remove the two-day guarantee. That is why people are facing that frustration. I shall explain that in more detail—[Interruption.] Government Members say that the guarantee did not work, but in 2005 nine out of 10 people said that they could get an appointment within two days. Have those Members checked the figures recently? There is falling satisfaction with GP services and it is happening on their watch.

I asked the Secretary of State whether he had spoken to the Work and Pensions Secretary, and he needs to do so urgently. The truth is that pressure has been growing all year on A and E and he has been ignoring the warnings, sticking to his usual line of blaming everyone else. His original line was to blame the 2004 GP contract, but that was undermined by the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and the inconvenient fact that there was no winter crisis in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 or, indeed, 2009.

Having seen his original spin dismissed, the Secretary of State changed tack. In a message to NHS staff on 6 December he said:

“Our ageing society has meant 1.2 million more people in A&E every year compared to 3 years ago”.

Finally we have an admission that the pressure has built on his watch, but as ever, it is nothing to do with the Government. It is nothing to do with the break-up of NHS Direct and its replacement with the disastrous NHS 111, nothing to do with the closure of a quarter of NHS walk-in centres, nothing to do with the severe cuts to social care and the removal of home care from vulnerable people, nothing to do with the loss of 6,000 nursing jobs and nothing to do with the reorganisation that no one wanted and no one voted for that threw the entire NHS into chaos just when it needed stability and that has led to precious NHS money being spent on redundancy payments only for those people to be re-employed by new NHS bodies. No, it is now all the fault of the ageing society. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

My right hon. Friend is making a compelling case about the problems in accident and emergency. Is he aware that they extend to Northern Ireland? Although devolved arrangements are responsible, we are told that the problems are down to the shortage of doctors, which emanates from Whitehall and the Department of Health. It is no longer a compulsory part of GP training for doctors to do a component in A and E and that is causing a problem.

[Andy Burnham]

I mentioned the reorganisation, through which we saw the complete disruption of training arrangements in the NHS. The Government’s eye was taken completely off the ball of the growing problem of recruitment, not just of GPs but of A and E doctors. That is a real problem around the country. We now have fewer GPs per 1,000 of population than we had a few years ago, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that issue.

The new spin is that the Secretary of State admits that A and E has got worse on the Government’s watch, but it is not his fault and it is not a crisis. That is the public line, at least. In private, it is a different story. This is the Secretary of State who has taken up ringing hospital chief executives who are not meeting their A and E targets. I have heard from two senior sources that the Secretary of State has discussed within government whether Cobra should be convened to discuss the A and E crisis. Can he confirm or deny whether that is the case? I have no way of knowing, but he needs to give a straight answer.

The longer we see the Secretary of State in this job, the more familiar we become with his style: spin before substance. That is the real danger when someone holds a job as important as his. If they use spin to distract people from the real causes of the problems, they end up neglecting those problems and precious time is lost.

Rare Diseases

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) for his generous offer of support, and I am sure that we will be able to deliver his preconditions for that support. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate. He is, as the shadow Minister has said, one of the most assiduous attendees at health debates and a consistent contributor on a whole range of different issues. We all welcome his contributions. He always makes the case for better co-ordination and collaboration between the different nations of the United Kingdom, and I completely share that aspiration. There is great value in a bit of diversity in the development of our health systems, because we can often learn things from the innovation and experimentation taking place in other parts of the United Kingdom. In opposition, I visited Northern Ireland because I was fascinated by the way in which Northern Ireland commissions and provides health and social care together. I wanted to learn more about the experiences in Northern Ireland, good and bad. Such diversity is to be valued and we should not have a one-size-fits-all approach, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of collaboration. The Government’s strategy is an example of where that can be really strong and effective.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

On the Minister’s point about collaboration, is he aware that a drug to deal with atypical haemolytic uraemic syndrome has been approved in England but the same approval has not been given in the devolved institutions, particularly in Northern Ireland?

[Norman Lamb]

I was not aware of that, but I am interested to hear it, and the hon. Lady makes her case powerfully. Before I respond fully to the points made by the hon. Member for Strangford, I want to deal with some of the other issues that have arisen during the debate. Several hon. Members, including the shadow Minister, asked whether the new architecture of the NHS had damaged the co-ordination of work on rare diseases. In many respects, I can reassure hon. Members. There is a danger that if one was coming into this place from afar and hearing the debate, one might think that we were moving from an idealised, perfect scenario into something more troubling. We all know, however, that that is absolutely not the case. The treatment of rare diseases historically has been far from optimal, and the greater involvement of clinicians in the commissioning of care can have real benefits for patients. Until 31 March 2013, far from being a simple matter, specialised commissioning was fragmented across a range of NHS organisations including regional specialised commissioning groups, a national specialised commissioning team and local primary care trusts, which remained ultimately responsible for the specialised health care of their populations. From 1 April 2013, under the terms of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, NHS England became the sole direct commissioner of specialised services, which provides a greater simplicity in the commissioning of services.

Tobacco Products (Plain Packaging)

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman]

As I shall describe later, the evidence indicates the reverse; I will come to that in a few minutes.

I am pleased that the borough of Harrow, which I have the honour to represent, has a lower than average smoking rate. The latest data still estimate that 500 11 to 15-year-olds in Harrow currently smoke, which is 500 too many. I am sure that other hon. Members here have much higher smoking rates in their constituencies. Clearly, the Government’s duty to local authorities to promote public health means that they will have to take action against smoking.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some research suggests that when young people and children start smoking ordinary cigarettes, they can then move on to harder drugs, destroying not only their health but their families and their future career and health prospects?

[Bob Blackman]

Clearly, the younger someone starts smoking, the more likely they are to increase their smoking in later life, and the greater harm they will do their health. Evidence indicates that the earlier someone starts, the more heavily they are likely to smoke later in life, increasing their dependency and lowering their chances of quitting. They therefore have a higher chance of premature death from smoking-related disease. The appalling truth is that half of all lifetime smokers will die from illness caused by their addiction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

What I know is that the cancer drugs fund is delivering in a way that, if I may say so, was not delivered under the last Administration.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

What discussions have taken place with Health ministerial colleagues in devolved Administrations on the need to share best practice in diagnosis, analysis of biopsies and future treatments and care for those suffering from different forms and types of cancer?

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

The last month has seen the Government take two radical steps that will fundamentally improve the quality of health care in this country. First, in our response to the Francis report on the appalling tragedy at Mid Staffs, we announced the setting up of a chief inspectorate of hospitals based at the Care Quality Commission. That will introduce compassionate care, patient feedback and expert peer review into a system that has been too long dominated by targets and box-ticking. Secondly, in response to the Dilnot report, the Government announced a long-term solution to the funding of social care, which will both help thousands of low-income pensioners avoid having to sell their homes and make us one of the first countries in the world where it is as normal to save for social care costs as it is to save for a pension.

[Ms Ritchie]

This week I will meet my constituents Neal and Rita Denvir, whose son, Fionn, made a miraculous recovery from meningitis. Many are not so fortunate, however, so will the Secretary of State pledge his support to the Meningitis UK “Beat it now” campaign, and include the newly licensed vaccine for meningitis B in the NHS childhood immunisation programme, so that no family has to live with the terror of that terrifying disease?

[Mr Hunt]

As the father of two young children, I completely share the hon. Lady’s passion for this issue and I am happy to give my support to Meningitis UK. The decision on whether to include a meningitis jab in the immunisation campaign is made by an independent expert panel, and I will always follow its advice.

Regional Pay (NHS)

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

The motion in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), the Leader of the Opposition, comes at a time when public sector workers face a continued pay freeze, an increased pension age and increased pension contributions throughout their careers. It would seem that some are “all in this together” more than others. This Government’s flirtation with regional pay is merely the latest ill-advised policy that undermines the valuable work done by front-line staff in the health service and across the public sector.

A good starting point would be for the Government to clarify their position on the issue, because the current indecision will do little more than breed further uncertainty and bad feeling. Today’s debate should bring a greater degree of clarity from Ministers, but I say that more in hope than in expectation.

Although the focus of this debate is on NHS pay levels in England, it is important to point out that this could have serious ramifications for the public sector in Northern Ireland. Make no mistake: any movement in this direction will put extreme pressure for similar measures to be implemented in Northern Ireland by way of both principle and precedent and as a result of any possible corresponding decrease in block-grant consequentials.

The suggestion that the measure is being considered as a means of equalising pay between the public and private sectors is fundamentally disingenuous. What seems to lie at the centre of the argument is the misplaced notion that public sector workers are paid too much. That contention is rife with misleading comparisons between the public and private sectors, which, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes, often ignore factors such as age and levels of qualification, and compare highly selective samples for the purpose of making a political argument. Indeed, any move towards regional pay in Northern Ireland will likely bring the worst aspects of the private sector to our public service, while removing the social guarantees that are the bedrock of a fair system. It will be a case of equalising down rather than levelling up.

In standing up for the public sector, we should not ignore the severe problem of low pay in parts of the private sector. This is a particularly pressing problem in Northern Ireland, where in 2010-11 the pay of private sector employees was 21% below the UK average for private sector workers. The recent discussion of introducing a living wage is much more instructional and productive than any cut to public sector pay. Put simply, low private sector pay in Northern Ireland will not be helped by decreasing public sector pay through the introduction of regional pay scales.

The likely effects of such a move on our public services and our regional economy are clear. There is a strong possibility that it would lead to skills shortages in the NHS and across public services, and to a shortage of much-needed front-line staff in areas where pay is kept low, as I fear it would be in Northern Ireland. That could result in a scenario whereby regions invest in educating and training staff only to lose them to an area with higher pay. The Government have offered no explanation of how they would guard against that. Any such proposal would also remove much-needed money from our local economy. The cost has been put at about £10 billion and the corresponding cut in the Northern Ireland block, at a time when families and businesses are already struggling, would be, frankly, a step too far.

In the Income Data Services report, “Crowding out: fact or fiction?”, researchers found absolutely no relationship between public sector pay levels and private sector job creation, and that regional pay would have a greater impact on women than men. Indeed, they state that most private companies employ national pay scales.

In essence, the Government seem to be attacking a problem that does not exist, while ignoring the problem that does, namely the lack of jobs and the low growth in the economy. This can be seen as nothing more than an ideologically motivated attack on the public sector and we will oppose it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has said, this is important, and we in the Social Democratic and Labour party will uphold the principle of national pay agreements.