Adult Stem Cells and Life Sciences

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Gentleman and I have for a number of years been party to reports recommending to Government that we need to invest in research to provide better long-term outcomes in transplantation and future therapeutic treatments.

One key area is Alzheimer’s, and some of us may have received a briefing from the Alzheimer’s Society. We know from our constituencies the huge impact of Alzheimer’s. There are 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK today, and this is forecast to rise to over 1 million by 2025 and to exceed 2 million by 2050. A technique was developed in 2012 to turn adult cells into nerve cells, which again highlights the curative potential of stem cell transplantation. That can be particularly helpful in understanding and testing potential treatments for Alzheimer’s.

The Minister will know that the estimated cost of Alzheimer’s is a staggering £4.3 billion, which is approximately 3.4% of total NHS spending in the UK in 2013. Observing the initial stages of Alzheimer’s in nerve cells can give scientists clues to help them identify genetic risk factors. It can also be used to test potential treatments to see whether the damage from Alzheimer’s can be stopped. We are a long way from that, but it is an illustration of how important it is for us to carry out further research into adult stem cell transplantation. Indeed, it is vital; it makes economic sense and will save lives.

I wish to focus on my involvement with the all-party group on stem cell transplantation and to highlight the potential of cord blood donations to transform our ability to meet the needs of every patient who requires a stem cell transplant, including black, Asian and minority ethnic patients, who have suffered from such poor transplantation outcomes. It is a scandal that, in 2010, just 40% of BAME patients were able to find a well-matched stem cell donor. That figure has increased now to 60%, which is really welcome, and the Government can take plaudits for that. The £4 million that was pledged in 2013 and the total investment of more than £12 million since 2011, along with all the investment from the charitable sector, have made a difference, but we still face a situation in which four in 10 people from the black, Asian and minority ethnic community are unlikely to find a match, which is not good enough. We must do more, and I urge the Minister to support continued and sustained investment as we approach the next spending review.

We need to focus on the outcomes. Of the 6,200 patients who will receive a stem cell donation between now and 2020, one in three will not survive their first year after transplant. Of those who do survive their first year, many will suffer a number of post-transplant complications, including relapse, infection and graft versus host disease.

Since 1993, the collection of stem cells from cord blood and bone marrow has increased at impressive rates, meeting the needs of many patients in the UK. Over the past three years, we have seen progress in a number of areas. Cord banking rates have tripled, a quarter of all cord transplants in the UK are now sourced domestically, and the cost of transplants to the NHS has decreased dramatically. But the urgent need for improvements in long-term outcomes remains. In order to make the necessary progress, the UK needs to ensure that the early-stage advancements are sustainable by investing in long-term research, which is the focus of this debate, identifying improvements to treatments and developing potentially new life-saving therapies. So what needs to be done?

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. He referred to the fact that the potential for about 80 treatments has been discovered through adult stem cell research. Does he agree that it would have been preferable to have put all the resources that have gone into embryonic stem cell research, which has produced negligible results, into the work on adult stem cells?

[Mr Burrowes]

My hon. Friend will know that I was very much making that case in 2008 in the debates that we had on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Strong lobbying went on in relation to therapeutic treatments. I remember being in Central Lobby when many charities said that we had to pass that measure to provide immediate treatments. I do not want to get too involved in that debate today, beyond saying that adult stem cell transplantation is saving lives now, and has potential for the future. We need to have a really good mutual circle of which everyone can be part. Such a circle must lend itself to looking at the big ask of the Government today, which is a national stem cell transplantation trials network to ensure that we save more and more lives. We also need to look at future therapies as well.

I urge the Minister, as he steps up to the Dispatch Box, to show his support for a national stem cell transplantation trials network. This will not only provide a turbo boost for improving patient outcomes and make the UK a world leader in stem cell transplantation, but also support the economy by growing the life sciences industry, and I know how seriously the Minister takes that.

The UK Stem Cell Strategic Forum, which was established at the request of the Minister of State for public health in 2010, stressed the need for further research into stem cell transplantation in 2014, and that included the recommendation that the network be established. Furthermore, the all-party group on stem cell transplantation has called for a clinical trials network a number of times over the past few years. Last year, the all-party group heard from experts in the field who pointed out some of the barriers to research into stem cell transplantation in the UK. They identified inadequate research infrastructure and inefficient data collection. Currently, the small number of patient cohorts and the complex regulatory environment—I ask the Minister to look at that aspect as well—mean that fewer than 5% of stem cell transplant patients are recruited into prospective clinical trials of any kind. Also, data collection at transplant centres is inefficient owing to inadequate staff training. The poor quality of the data means that they are unsuitable for research purposes, which significantly undermines the potential to achieving good outcomes in transplantations.

The infrastructure is ready to provide support for a national network, which would allow for the rapid recruitment of participants, standardise procedure and provide a central data hub to manage and evaluate research and share information which could be used to improve patient outcomes.

NHS Success Regime

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. The success regime is locally based but must take into account the developing national opinion on the integration of health and social care. However, those can be properly integrated only on the basis of local considerations; this is not something that we can design from the centre, as some would wish.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for confirming that the Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015 will be at the forefront of the minds of those implementing these plans. The 2015 Act was passed by the House in the very last days of the last Parliament. Does not the fact that the Opposition have asked this urgent question today show that they have already forgotten the central tenet of the Act: that patient care and safety will be at the forefront of everything that the Government do?

[Ben Gummer]

I repeat to my hon. Friend the observation that I made earlier: it is interesting that in his opening contribution, the right hon. Member for Leigh did not make a single statement about patients and their centrality to what we are trying to do. The NHS has devised its own plan for its own success over the next five years, and the safety and care of patients lie at the heart of it. Only one party is supporting that plan, and that is why the Conservatives are the only party backing the NHS.

Health Services in Staffordshire

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for securing this debate and I share his concerns, particularly because these issues also affect my constituents in Congleton. One of them has written to me expressing concern that cardiac patients needing to be urgently

“transferred to The Royal Stoke immediately on arrival at our local hospital A&E, Leighton”

can be at serious risk as a result of the additional pressures on services. Indeed, he says that if this issue is not resolved

“fatalities may be the consequence.”

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I thank my hon. Friend. She makes a point that I think will be echoed by other hon. Members in the area.

The reason given for the potential closure of the community beds was that more care would be provided at home, but how precisely will that be done? I have to declare an interest in that my wife works as a GP in Stoke-on-Trent. From what I hear, community nursing teams sometimes have difficulty in managing the workloads they have at the moment, so where will the extra capacity come from? Surely it would be more sensible, before those beds disappear—if indeed they are scheduled to disappear—to ensure that the extra community nurses are in place and to show that there is a clear reduction in the need for such beds. I urge the Minister to question any proposed reduction in community beds—even if it is not of the order mentioned in the press last week—at a time when they seem to be most in need.

I will now turn to acute services in general. The University Hospitals of the North Midlands Trust has recently announced the closure of in-patient oncology and haematology at the County hospital. In future, there will be outpatient chemotherapy treatment, but in-patients will be seen in the Royal Stoke hospital. This move was not dealt with in any detail during the public consultation on the proposals of the trust special administrator, nor was it mentioned by the NHS in its information about the changes in services provided to my constituents or to those of my hon. Friends the Members for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) and for Stone (Sir William Cash), and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) who are affected.

From a visit to a patient on the oncology unit at the County hospital last week, it was clear to me that the service was not only very busy, but greatly appreciated. Constituents have written to me saying how important it was to have the unit relatively close, so that they could be with their family through stays which were very difficult and often lengthy. Why move what is appreciated and working well? I understand that there are staffing problems, but surely those could be tackled. I ask the Minister to look at this again.

Health and Social Care

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech included the welcome commitment to give every child the best start in life. I am optimistic that our Government’s legislative programme will prioritise strengthening families and boosting family stability, particularly given the Prime Minister’s own passion for these issues, which are vital for the nation’s economic and social welfare, and the fact that families were mentioned nearly 100 times in the 2015 Conservative party manifesto. Without the constraints of coalition, we have the opportunity to develop a robust and comprehensive range of family policies.

States have a vested interest in making families stronger. They make a contribution to society by producing a competitive labour force, caring for family members of all ages, playing an instrumental role in healthy child and youth development and putting a heart into local communities. However, there are profound social consequences when, for whatever reason, families fail. The high level of family breakdown in our country costs £48 billion per annum, and disproportionately affects people in our poorest communities, where two thirds of 15-year-olds no longer live with both their parents. With our Conservative commitment to compassion and social justice, we simply cannot ignore this issue. If it is sensitively handled, this could mark us out as the true party of the family.

I urge the Prime Minister to appoint a family champion—a Cabinet-level Minister to strengthen families. Our ground-breaking family test for all policies is welcome, but it is reactive to the proposals of other Departments, rather than proactive in forming a family-strengthening approach across all areas of policy, as a champion for families at Secretary of State level would do. We need to match the promises we have made on economic support for families with more policies not only to prevent family breakdown but to promote healthy relationships, just as we promote physical health and wellbeing. Children’s health and wellbeing are fundamental to their educational attainment, and their ability to thrive in the workplace and in wider society rests on their benefiting from safe, stable and nurturing relationships with those closest to them—and for most, that means their family.

We ignore this at our peril. The state cannot be a surrogate family. Supporting family relationships is one of the driving principles of the troubled families programme, which has rightly been extended, but we must do more. We need places in every community where people can go when relationship problems are beginning to emerge, in order to enable everyone—including couples, and parents of toddlers and teenagers—to build strong relationships from the outset and to maintain healthy relationships into later life. This, in turn, could help to address many other challenges, such as mental ill-health, obesity, self-harm, addictions, loneliness and child poverty. However, many families have no role models to look to as the basis for a successful family life. Family life throws out challenges for us all. Real complexities can ensue, as we have seen from the troubled families programme, if families are not equipped to make a go of it. For almost a decade, organisations such as the Centre for Social Justice, and individuals such as its associate director Dr Samantha Callan, have been calling for change.

One important change would be for Sure Start children’s centres to broaden their offer and become family hubs—local nerve centres co-ordinating all family-related support. Relationship support and education, at all life stages, would be part of a family hub’s core offer, whether supporting couples in their own relationship, or as parents, or grandparents, or in marriage preparation, or strengthening father involvement, or supporting families as carers for elderly relatives, or when specific challenges occur. For example, many couples will not, or cannot in a timely way, go to Relate, which is one of many organisations that family hubs could host or help families access. To ensure that as many parents as possible know what is on offer at a family hub, local health commissioners should ensure that all antenatal and postnatal services are co-locate there. The Field review on poverty and life chances recommended that all birth registrations should take place there, too.

The social justice directorate in the Department for Work and Pensions is piloting a family offer in some children’s centres that takes in some of the aspects I have mentioned, but more is needed. More national leadership will be essential if this scheme is to be implemented at a pace that this country needs to strengthen family life. This brings us back to why we need a family champion.

Education, early intervention and prevention will ensure that families are less dependent on social services and welfare. I stress that I am not just talking about deprived areas here. Broadening Sure Start centres into family hubs would provide an effective means of tackling family breakdown, strengthen family life and help deliver the Conservative vision of giving every child the best start in life.

Finally, I urge the Government to work towards a fully transferrable tax allowance for all married couples. Thirty hours of free childcare amounts to £5,000 a year, and the value of the Government’s tax-free childcare offer is £2,000 a year. What message do those figures send out when the marriage allowance for single earners is just £200 per family? It must be recognised that doubling free early years education and making childcare tax free when both parents work without reviewing the marriage person’s tax allowance skews support overwhelmingly towards a particular type of family.

Families in which one parent chooses to take time at home—working and caring within it and investing in their children’s future—while the children are young are doing the right thing just as much as those families in which both partners choose to work outside the home. Stay-at-home parents deserve our appreciation, respect and support.

Over this Parliament, reversing Britain’s tragically eye-wateringly high family breakdown rates must be our ambition—it must be a priority—and strengthening families by supporting healthy family relationships at all ages and stages of life and rolling out family hubs to achieve that should be our vision.