Acquired Brain Injury
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Chris Bryant(5 years ago)
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Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend has done a lot in this field herself. She has met with that group, which has been to see us here in Parliament, and I hope that they will be taking part in our lobbying event in a couple of weeks. Next week is Brain Injury Awareness Week, which is why this is such a timely debate. Tomorrow, I am going with the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) to visit the National Star College outside Cheltenham, which does an awful lot of work.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the damage that long-term exposure to carbon monoxide can have on the brain. He knows that I was one of those who organised the seatbelt legislation 25 years ago. One of the really worrying things that the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety found last week is that we are getting relaxed and that people are beginning not to wear seatbelts and not to put their children in vehicle restraints. If that continues, people are in terrible danger of serious brain injury or death.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One reason why carbon monoxide exposure matters so much to me is because it involves an element of social justice. Children from poorer backgrounds are four times as likely to have a significant brain injury before the age of five as those from wealthier backgrounds. We do not fully understand why as yet, and we need to do more work on that. However, it is also true that elderly people, who maybe cannot afford to have their boiler checked as often as others or may have landlords who do not check their boilers as often as necessary, may be suffering low levels of carbon monoxide poisoning over such a long period that they are not even aware that they are being poisoned. The memory loss, the fatigue and the problems they are having may be associated with their boiler rather than with anything else. We need to look further at legislation in that area.
The thing about brain injury is that it is often internal and completely unseen. It can add a whole new layer of stigma because people can often misjudge a sufferer standing in a queue in front of them or coming to work with them as being drunk. However, the reason why the person is slurring is because they have had a brain injury. That is why I and others—I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings—wanted to set up an all-party parliamentary group on acquired brain injury to look at the issue, which is a hidden epidemic. Every 90 seconds, someone in this country is admitted to hospital with an acquired brain injury.
The APPG produced a report because we wanted to see more evidence. The Select Committee on Health produced a report in 2001, and some of its recommendations were implemented, but many were not. We wanted to go further, so we produced the “Time for Change” report, which calls for real investment in neuro-rehabilitation. We have major trauma centres that have saved so many lives—I pay tribute to the Government for the brave decision to take them forward—but it is depressing that a quarter of trauma centres still have no neuro-rehabilitation consultant. That means that people sometimes fall between two stools when they leave the acute setting and go back to their home and to their community.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Chris Bryant(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Business of the House
Debate between Barry Sheerman and Chris Bryant(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. You took me by surprise. In the old and less enlightened days when I was at primary school, we could have a good old pinch and a punch for the first day of the month—
Mr Sheerman
No, it was not in Queen Victoria’s time.
May we have an early debate so that many of us can give a good pinch and a punch to the private sector partnerships that benight so many hospitals in our land? So many of us want a new deal for our hospitals and health sector, but we are being dragged down by private finance initiatives that were badly negotiated many years ago. Let’s have a debate on this, please!