Appropriate ME Treatment

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

First, may I add my support to the motion as set out on the Order Paper and congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) on leading the way in securing this debate and also on her excellent speech.

I spoke in a previous Westminster Hall debate and later put down written questions on ME on the basis suggested by Dr Ian Gibson, whom longer-standing Members may remember as the Labour Member for Norwich and a distinguished medical scientist in his own right. Ian was incensed by the use of graded exercise therapy. He said that it was less than useless and actually damaging to sufferers as well as causing them pain and raising false optimism that such therapies would work. Given that ME causes extreme fatigue, suggesting more exercise seems to me about as sensible as asking frostbite sufferers to walk about in snow. The other suggested treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy, helped to underpin the myth that ME is a psychological problem, not a physical condition. Neither of those supposed therapies should have been given credence and efforts should have been focused long ago on discovering the real causes of ME and on undertaking proper and thorough research to develop effective treatments.

I first became aware of ME more than 25 years ago when two of my young relatives were found to be suffering from the condition. The fact that I was not aware of ME until then is itself extraordinary given that some 25,000 children are estimated to be suffering from the condition. That is more than 38 children, on average, for every one of our constituencies.

I later became informed of sufferers in my own constituency and recall one man in particular who suffered constant pain and had to lie in a darkened room because he could not bear the light. Such symptoms are well known, but, of course, like so many illnesses, the severity of symptoms can vary greatly. MS, for example, can advance rapidly, or can remain fairly mild and stable for many years. Such variations do not invalidate the condition.

I have mentioned children with ME, but if all adults were included, the figure reaches 250,000, or nearly 400 per constituency; it really is that serious. The impact on the lives of those constituents is enormous, but the cost to society and to the economy is over £3.3 billion a year—an enormous sum. Therefore, finding causes and discovering effective treatments are vital. Funding research must be a priority, first, to reduce the level of suffering, but also to reduce the wider social and economic costs. Research into ME represents just 0.02% of all grants given to funding agencies—just one 500th of the total, a pathetic amount.

In conclusion, I hope that we are now putting behind us all the myths and misdiagnoses related to ME. It is a physical condition and it is causing untold suffering. Recent research has looked very promising, and has pointed to possible causes of ME. One factor in particular has recently received publicity—the overactive immune system in many sufferers. It seems that we are starting to move in the right direction. We must congratulate the scientific and medical researchers who have done, and who are doing, so much valuable work towards finding solutions to the scourge of ME and alleviating the suffering that it causes.

I hope that Ministers and other hon. Members will take note of the reports in “Breakthrough”, the journal of ME research—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I call Mr Stephen Pound.

Carillion

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

I cannot possibly deliver my speech in three minutes, but I will do my best.

I am pleased to be able to speak in this significant debate on an issue that marks a turning point in Britain’s politics and economics. The collapse of Carillion should see the end of a huge policy mistake—the dogma-driven tragedy of the privatising, outsourcing and marketising of our public services. It is now time to accept that mistake, and to begin the process of rebuilding the public utilities and public services established in the early post-war decades that underpinned the enormous social advances achieved in those times.

The neoliberal economic model has brought political and economic instability, slower and erratic growth rates, and greater inequality—a world where the mega-wealthy and unconstrained private banking and corporate power have prospered at the expense of the rest of us. The death knell for neoliberalism was sounded by the 2008 crisis, when a catastrophic financial collapse was prevented only by spending billions of taxpayers’ cash to prop up the corrupt and out-of-control banking system. But the Frankenstein’s monster did not quite die then, and has limped along for another decade despite financial scandals and failures, with the public purse being ripped off time and again. The collapse of Carillion is one more nail in the coffin of the monster, but it is still not dead. It is time to ensure that it finally dies, and soon.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, which is an excellent Committee with a first-class Chair and brilliant staff. As we have heard, the Committee has just produced its own report, which is very well written and contains much good material, but I was unable to support it because it did not draw the obvious conclusion that the drive to outsource and privatise—to hand vast sums of public money to grasping private companies through PFI schemes and outsourcing—has been an enormous and costly mistake, driven by ideology and not the public interest. We should have said in the report that PFI should be abandoned forthwith, and that the process of insourcing should be supported and accelerated.

The report says:

“PFI financing costs more than government financing because the state can borrow at a cheaper rate than the private sector. While we are confident that PFI costs more than conventional procurement, neither…the National Audit Office nor the Public Accounts Committee can find any evidence of the benefits the Government claims”.

This is pretty damning, but the report stops short of saying that PFI should be stopped now and for good and confined to the dustbin of history.

We have been here before—long before Carillion—with the collapse of Jarvis 14 years ago. At that time, I put a question to the then Prime Minister in the following terms:

“My right hon. Friend will be aware that the private finance initiative contractor, Jarvis, has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for weeks now. This is putting at risk a large number of school repair schemes and other public sector works. Would he not think it sensible, given that Jarvis’s share price has now collapsed to junk levels, to buy out all those public sector schemes, get them done in the public sector, and save billions of pounds of public money?”—[Official Report, 14 July 2004; Vol. 423, c. 1408.]

As hon. Members may have guessed, I received no sensible answer. Now, 14 years on, we have Carillion, and the present Government are still persisting with the failed models of privatisation, including the appalling PFI.

Some public authorities are beginning to insource, with significant financial and service benefits, but the drive to privatise continues, especially in the national health service. The failures of the model are legion, from prisons to probation, and from long-term care to smaller issues such as building control. But perhaps the greatest—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order.