Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for the response so far. Will she outline what discussions have taken place with independent groups such as Specsavers, which does excellent work providing wider access to NHS-funded tests and hearing aids, with special reference to more rural areas?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this. As I said in my first answer, it is important that we can work collaboratively with organisations in the private sector and across the NHS to make sure that patients, wherever they are in the country, in urban or rural areas, can access the right care and support when they need it.

Lower Limb Wound Care

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I do apologise—I went to university in Wales, so I should get that right.

I must congratulate the right hon. Lady, first, on securing the debate, and, secondly, on making such mammoth, gargantuan efforts to be here. She did that with some help from her friends on the 12th floor of St Thomas’s, the experts in the Gallery—I am going to have to be careful what I say. She is nothing short of an inspiration to all of us, both as a long-standing Member of Parliament who is greatly respected in this place and as a human being. We are so grateful for the fact that she has made it here today, and we wish her a very speedy recovery. We look forward to her being back here to monitor every development that the Department can bring about in the context of wound care and how we look after people in hospital more generally. She is a great inspiration to all of us, and I thank her so much for raising this issue in the House.

I think we all recognise the importance of ensuring that patients have access to high-quality lower limb wound care. As a Government, we are absolutely committed to ensuring that people receive the right care in the right place at the right time, whether through acute services, a local GP or services based in the local community. As the right hon. Lady knows, wound care treatment is a vital service which, during the initial period, is predominantly provided by a community nurse. That crucial provision offers relief to those with leg ulcerations or diabetic foot ulcerations and pressure ulcers.

As Members will know, venous disease is the most common type of leg ulceration, and can cause great distress and suffering to patients and their families. The right hon. Lady spoke powerfully of the pain that she has suffered, and that others suffer, as a result of the condition. I think it is important to keep that in mind because of the side effects that having to live with enduring pain for long periods can have on a person’s emotional and mental health and wellbeing.

Our priority is for leg ulcers of this type to be treated early and in the community when that is possible, without the need for further hospital admissions or GP appointments. I think that that preventative approach is right for patients and for the system. It is key for wound care to be delivered effectively and efficiently. Good wound care not only saves patients from distress and suffering, but gives nurses more time to deliver other important services, and alleviates pressure on acute services. That is why NHS England and NHS Improvement have commissioned the Academic Health Science Network to develop and deliver a national wound care strategy programme for England, which aims to improve the quality of wound care provision. It is a comprehensive programme, which covers improving prevention of pressure ulcers, wound care of the lower leg, and management of surgical wounds.

The programme’s work will be informed by the following priorities. First, it will improve patient experience and outcomes by developing national clinical standards of care and a more data-driven approach. I know that the right hon. Lady is very keen on that. Secondly, it will work with industry to ensure that the right wound care products are reaching patients at the right time through the development of a much more robust supply, delivery and distribution model. Thirdly, it will aim to improve the current patchy provision of wound care training—of which I know the right hon. Lady is well aware—and the inconsistencies in the availability and quality of educational resources. As well as improving the care provided by healthcare professionals, that will allow patients to become more capable in self-care.

The right hon. Lady raised several issues that I should like to follow up. Let me first pay tribute to the work done by the Lindsay Leg Club Foundation in relation to community-based leg ulcer care. I am pleased that the committee of the lower limb clinical workstream of the national wound care strategy programme includes members of the foundation. As the right hon. Lady said, leg clubs are organised by the local community rather than health providers, but leg club nursing teams are employed by NHS local provider services, clinical commissioning groups and GPs. That is why it is so important for everyone to work together to support people as much as they can in the community. I can imagine that when this condition starts it is so painful that people can feel extremely alone and isolated, and the provision of leg clubs and other support mechanisms in the community, to offer the information, advice and support that they need, can help them to stop feeling that isolation and fear.

I also join the right hon. Lady in welcoming the all-party parliamentary group on vascular and venous disease. It is important for us to have all-party parliamentary groups which really recognise conditions of this kind, and which are doing their best to push the Government, and us in the Department of Health and Social Care, to do everything we can to support people who suffer from them.

The programme that I was talking about started its work in late 2018, and since then has brought together a range of experts. It has recruited over 500 stakeholders from a very broad range of private and public sector organisations to its stakeholder forum, and it is important that we have people with real experience from across the country taking part in this and influencing the decisionmaking. They aim to deliver their recommendations by the end of the 2019-20 financial year. We look forward to receiving them and the positive impact that they will have on patients’ lives. This is just for England, but NHS England is in communication with wound care leads in the three other devolved nations to ensure that they are sharing this learning across the piece.

The research in this area is also very important. The Department funds research into all aspects of human health through the National Institute for Health Research at the level of about £1 billion a year, and the NIHR has funded a number of studies focusing on lower limb wound care, including venous leg ulcers and vascular problems. A five-year funded programme on complex wounds comprised 11 new and updated reviews of the existing literature, a survey and interviews with people with complex wounds, their carers and health care professionals. There has also been a series of venous leg ulcer studies using randomised control trials to investigate the clinical and cost effectiveness of new versus traditional venous leg ulcer treatments from types of compression bandage through to compression hosiery to larval therapy.

The right hon. Lady also spoke about the importance of having the right staff, expertise and medically trained people to be able to deliver the care, and it is no secret that community nurses are a fundamental part of our health system; they provide vital services that ensure patients are treated where they are most comfortable, which often is in their own home, and that they are supported to manage their conditions and to live independently. To help deliver our vision for community services, we are investing an extra £4.5 billion a year to spend on primary medical and community health services by 2023-24. The key to delivering the long-term plans and vision is ensuring that we have the right nursing numbers, particularly in the community, and that is why the interim NHS people plan is prioritising taking urgent accelerated action to tackle some of the community nursing vacancies. That will be done in a range of different ways, including increasing supply through under- graduate nursing degrees, clearer pathways into the profession through the nursing associate qualification and apprenticeships, and tackling some of the misconceptions about the role of community nurses, which sometimes deter people from entering the profession. In addition, in May 2018 we announced £10 million for incentives to postgraduate students to go on to work in some of the areas that we care very passionately about and where we want to recruit the best people, such as mental health, learning disability and district community nursing roles.

[Jim Shannon]

I am pleased to hear this very positive response from the Minister. In Northern Ireland we have a very good community nursing programme that is delivered through the social care services. It cares for those who need care and a change of dressing for their wounds every day. The Minister referred to contact with the regions and devolved Administrations; will she contact the Northern Ireland Assembly and the permanent secretary of the Department of Health, Richard Pengelly, so they can give some idea of what we do there?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman is always full of brilliant ideas and we will only move forward as a nation if we share best practice and the expertise gained from different parts of our country. So I would be very keen to speak to his colleagues at the Northern Ireland Assembly and see if we can gain any learning from that.

Living with Dementia

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)]

As ever, Mr Paisley, it is a great pleasure to serve under your stewardship. I thank the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) for securing this important debate, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for supporting her in doing so, and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for it. I also thank all the other Members who have taken part in the debate, and in some cases shared very personal journeys and stories about their family’s experiences with dementia and, indeed, some interesting and inspiring best practice from their constituencies—things that other areas can learn from.

I also thank the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth for her personal commitment and dedication to people living with dementia, both through her work on the all-party parliamentary group on dementia and in her constituency. She is so committed to making Oldham East and Saddleworth a really dementia-friendly place to live; she sets an excellent example of what we as Members of Parliament can do in our own communities, and I welcome her vision of making Westminster the first dementia-friendly Parliament. I will do everything I can to support her in that endeavour, because I know that her passion is driven by her experience of having a close family member living with dementia.

Other Members have spoken about their own experiences, and I have also had two very close family members living with dementia: my grandmother and my uncle, who passed away just before Christmas. I have experienced at first hand the impact that dementia has, both on the person who is living with it and those who love and care for them. Hon. Members from across the House have spoken about the importance of carers, and I have seen at first hand the impact that caring for my grandmother had on my mum—on her relationships, her professional life and her health and wellbeing. Those carers’ commitment should never be taken lightly. A dementia diagnosis is more than a diagnosis for that individual: it is a diagnosis for the whole family, their loved ones, their community and their workplace.

[Jim Shannon]

In my constituency, 1,152 people live with dementia. As the Minister rightly said, it affects a lot of families as well as the wider family circle. Has she given any consideration to respite care for those families to give them a break from the physical, emotional and mental pressure that they are under?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Respite care was one of the themes of the carers action plan that we published last year. SCIE is putting together guidance for local authorities on how they can best provide that crucial respite moment for those brilliant carers. [Interruption.]

A diagnosis is very much for an individual, but also for their families and loved ones and for their communities and workplaces. When those come together, it is possible to live well with dementia, as my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) said. Such personal experiences make me passionate about my responsibilities as a Minister. The hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) challenged me to continue to push the Government to keep dementia as a priority, and I always will. I am proud of the Government’s commitment to deliver on the dementia challenge 2020 in full to make this the best country in the world to live for anyone with a dementia diagnosis.

The challenge aims to transform the lives of people with dementia, as well as their carers and their families, through better awareness, care and research. We have made significant progress as part of the challenge, but we know, as we have heard today, that there is still much more to do. We have already started our work on our strategy for the period beyond 2020. This is not something that finishes in 2020. It is simply the start of the next phase and we will publish our thoughts on it early next year.

One of the key successes of the challenge has been improved diagnosis. We are meeting our ambition, and today two thirds of people living with dementia receive a diagnosis, but we clearly still have some way to go. Of course, not everybody wants a diagnosis, but we know that a timely diagnosis enables a person with dementia to access the advice, information, care and support that can help them to live well with the condition and remain independent for as long as possible.

We are focusing on reducing the variation in local dementia diagnosis rates. There is a real geographical variation, and targeted support to identify and engage the areas most in need of assistance will really help. Reducing the gap in diagnosis rates will ensure that people with dementia have consistent access to a diagnosis wherever they are in the country. We also know that receiving good quality care improves the lives of people with dementia. Equipping our health and social care workforce with the skills that they need is therefore crucial to the quality of care for those living with dementia.

Since 2012—the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) mentioned this—1 million episodes of the tier 1 dementia awareness training have been completed by NHS staff, and more than 1 million care workers completed the care certificate, or common induction standards. We continue to work to meet our commitment that staff have the training appropriate to their role. We want to see more people doing the tier 2 training, which is much more robust, so we are exploring options to see how we can increase take-up for anyone who needs it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am pleased the hon. Gentleman has raised this issue, because he is absolutely right that we need to drive up performance nationally on diagnosis for autistic people. It is only with diagnosis that people can get the support and help they need. We are collecting data for the first time. It will be published later this year for the first time. It will mean that each area can be held to account and given the help and support it needs to drive up those figures.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Minister further outline the steps that have been taken to push for a UK-wide, ring-fenced uplift to respite care funding for those who suffer from autism, bearing in mind that there is a two-year waiting list in some healthcare trusts for families to access overnight respite care?

[Caroline Dinenage]

That is a really good point. We all know that access to respite care can be incredibly valuable, both for autistic people and their carers and their loved ones. That is why we are supporting CCGs that want to invest in respite care, and we are looking more carefully at how we can direct funding to these important services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this. When children’s hospices expand and include facilities for young adults, it can make such an immeasurable difference in their local area. In my area, the Naomi House children’s hospice has opened Jacksplace, which has been such a valuable resource. Hospices should be incredibly celebrated for all such facilities they offer.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to guarantee that the £11 million children’s hospice grant will be protected for children’s hospices, and indeed further increased as a result of the long-term plan to reflect the growing demand and the complexity of care provided by these lifetime services?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes. I think this is a really strong signal to clinical commissioning groups about how the NHS values the services provided by children’s hospices—not just end-of-life and palliative care, as I say, but the other respite and outreach services they provide. That is why giving them access to up to £25 million will make an immeasurable difference.

NHS Menopause Services

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) on securing this debate on health services and the menopause, and I want to start by celebrating the fact that we are discussing this subject. For too long the things that only affect women have been taboo; they have been brushed under the carpet—they have not been discussed in this place. One of the most magnificent of the many great side-effects of having a more gender-equal place is that we begin to discuss these subjects and those last taboos get addressed properly. It is wonderful to hear and see the men present in this Chamber who also care passionately about this subject; that must be celebrated too.

My hon. Friend has been a passionate and highly effective campaigner for improved awareness of the menopause and better support for women who are dealing with some of the difficult symptoms. I am very grateful and supportive of her work on this issue; in my eyes she is an absolute hero. I believe it is vital that we provide effective support and treatment for women with menopausal symptoms. It is of the utmost importance that we continue to work to improve that and to tackle the misconceptions attached to the menopause.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of HRT and expressed her concern that some GPs are not prescribing or recommending it to women who need it. No two menopauses are exactly alike and GPs play an important role in ensuring patients are given treatment that is appropriate to them. It is worth bearing in mind that the menopause is a natural stage in a woman’s life, and that many women will experience the menopause without troublesome symptoms or the need for treatment. Where symptoms do arise, HRT can be very effective in relieving them, and GPs should give menopausal women information about HRT as a treatment option, highlighting its risks, if they see that there are any, and its benefits. However, every patient is different and HRT might not be suitable for everyone. It is not the only treatment for menopausal symptoms, and GPs should also, where appropriate, talk women through all the non-hormonal and non-pharmaceutical treatments that are available.

My hon. Friend is right to say that there has been real confusion in the past about the safety of HRT. Concerns were raised in the early 2000s, as she mentioned, when a study said it was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease. As a result, many women were advised by their doctors to come off HRT and the number of HRT users in the UK fell significantly. I cannot stress strongly enough that, as my hon. Friend has noted, the evidence base has since become clearer and the NICE guidance on the menopause is clear that HRT is a perfectly safe treatment in the majority of cases, and in most cases there is a far lower health risk in taking HRT than in drinking a couple of glasses of wine every day or in obesity, as my hon. Friend said.

The NICE guidance on the menopause also provides GPs with advice on how to recognise symptoms of the menopause. This guidance has helped prevent misdiagnosis, and my hon. Friend spoke very powerfully about how sometimes menopause can be mistaken for depression, which is incredibly worrying. Improving treatment of the symptoms of the menopause is also important.

We are also taking a range of other actions to improve support for women experiencing menopausal symptoms. This includes the work of the royal colleges, which of course play an important role in the education, training and professional development of healthcare professionals who treat women with menopausal symptoms. The Royal College of General Practitioners has produced a toolkit that includes learning resources for GPs on diagnosis and management of symptoms of the menopause. In addition, the Royal College of Nursing, in collaboration with the British Menopause Society, has produced a guide providing information for nurses who wish to become specialists in the menopause. That is very important, too. The Royal College is also aiming to develop a GP specialty that focuses on women’s health, which will be warmly welcomed.

Correct diagnosis and treatment of symptoms of the menopause are important, but we also have to focus on improving wider awareness of the menopause. An important part of this will be to have more open conversations around the menopause, so that we can start tackling the taboos that are attached to it. Taking this wider, bigger-picture approach is vital, given the huge impact that the menopause can have on all parts of a woman’s life.

In raising awareness and tackling taboos, we need to ensure that we reach out to all demographics, including boys and men. I cannot help thinking that if a similar hormonal transition affected men for an average of four years in the second half of their life, we would never hear the end of it—[Interruption.] Present company excepted, of course. As it is, the menopause has become something of a taboo, and we have to get over that. That is why it is so incredibly faith-restoring to see these incredibly liberated and forward-thinking gentlemen in the Chamber tonight, including my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), who has talked about the menopause café that he runs. He should be championed for that. I was also pleased to see that the debate that was held on world menopause day last October was called by a male MP. These men are champions, in my eyes, and they deserve to be celebrated.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch mentioned, education is absolutely key to promoting awareness and understanding of the menopause. The Government are making relationships education compulsory in primary schools and relationships and sex education compulsory in secondary schools. The underpinning focus in these subjects is to equip young people to develop positive attitudes to health, relationships and wellbeing. Schools will then have a really good opportunity to improve pupils’ understanding and awareness of the menopause.

Hon. Members will be aware that women represent 51% of the UK population and 44% of our workforce. They play a vital role in the nation’s health, but they do not always receive the most timely or appropriate healthcare. My hon. Friend mentioned the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who is the Minister with responsibility for mental health, inequalities, and suicide prevention. She is doing sterling work on this issue, and she has set up a women’s health taskforce. This taskforce will work to ensure that women receive timely and appropriate care in relation to a whole range of issues, and as part of its upcoming early work, it will consider the menopause.

This work will be informed by a collaborative discussion that will be led by the brilliant chief medical officer and include the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a number of academics who work in menopause research and GPs who specialise in the menopause. These discussions will feed into the taskforce’s wider objectives: to empower women to speak more confidently; to raise awareness and break taboos around women’s health problems; and to improve the access, quality and experience of care for women. I hope that that will help to address some of the important issues that my hon. Friend has raised today, and I am sure that my ministerial colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care will be absolutely delighted to work closely with her on the taskforce’s developing work around the menopause, because she has done such sterling work in this area so far.

We need to ensure that workplaces provide the necessary and appropriate support for women. A recent study found that 41% of women aged 50 to 60 said that the menopause had affected their job, but that 70% did not tell their employer about their symptoms. This demonstrates the work that needs to be done to move beyond shame and silence to an open conversation about the menopause, because half the population will go through it. Giving better support to those women in work is not only right but fundamentally good for the economy. Women over 50 are now one of the fastest growing groups of employees. They have invaluable skills and experience, which means that they are incredibly difficult to replace. We should be looking to support them to stay in work whenever we can.

I am particularly proud to be responding to this debate tonight not only because I am hurtling very fast towards the menopause myself but because, when I was Minister for Women and Equalities, I chaired the very first parliamentary roundtable on awareness and taboos around the menopause in the workplace. This was the first ever meeting in Parliament that brought together important stakeholders and interested parties to discuss this important issue. We heard some incredible evidence. I remember one lady telling us that she had had to leave her workplace because all she wanted was a desktop fan to help her deal with the hot flushes, but the company would not let her have one and so lost an employee with incredible experience and huge amounts of skill, which just makes no sense at all.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Minister for her positive response. There is an old proverb that a problem shared is a problem halved, and the Minister has clearly indicated a method of doing that. I encourage her to get that message out across GP surgeries, education and all the relevant bodies.

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman is an enlightened man. The work that we did at the very first roundtable led to an evidence review that was published in 2017, which talked about raising awareness and about the effects on women’s economic participation. The review led to the Women’s Business Council developing a toolkit to enable employers to support their employees more effectively, and I think we can all agree that that can be nothing but a good thing.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

The role of the family is much greater in this amended legislation than it is currently. A number of families have told us through our work on this Bill that they feel very disenfranchised by the current system. For example, in the new system a family member or a loved one can be an approved person.[Official Report, 13 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 7MC.] That would be the person’s advocate through the process. That method brings family members and loved ones much closer into the decision-making around this whole system.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I received some correspondence from Age Concern, as the Minister knows. It wanted to raise two specific issues; I spoke to the Minister about this, but I want to raise it again to have it recorded in Hansard. The issues are the definition of the deprivation of liberty, which I understand the Government are including in the Bill, and access to advocacy. I reiterate, too, the point made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood): the importance of having family and loved ones as part of the process. We must not disenfranchise them; if we do that, we are doing this wrong. So will the Minister confirm that those things are in place?

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes, that definition is included in the Bill, and it is also expected that people will have an advocate. That is an approved person; it can be a family member or loved one or it can be an independent mental capacity advocate, or indeed both if the family do not feel they are fully equipped to be able to support their loved one.

[Jim Shannon]

So the wishes and feelings of the loved ones and their families are at the heart of the Bill?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The wishes and feelings of the vulnerable person are at the centre of the Bill, and the wishes and feelings of their family will definitely be taken into consideration if their family is the approved person. We must always leave a little space in case the person does not want their approved person to be a family member for whatever reason.[Official Report, 13 February 2019, Vol. 654, c. 8MC.] The wishes and feelings of the individual must be at the heart of this, and that was at the heart of the original Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Patient Safety

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)]

I wish to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on securing this really important debate on patient safety. All patients have a right to expect care that is compassionate, effective and safe. The courageous testimonies of individuals such as Julie Bailey, who exposed the scandalous failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, and Sara Ryan, who campaigned fearlessly following the death of her son, Connor Sparrowhawk, while in the so-called care of Southern Health, show that safer care starts with listening to patients and their families.

It is important that we recognise that there are many victims when care fails—the families and the loved ones, of course, but also the healthcare professionals who carry the burden of their mistakes. The great majority of NHS patients receive effective and successful care. However, according to international studies, levels of healthcare harm range from 1% for the most “negligent” adverse events, to 8% to 9% for preventable adverse events. We are clear that any level of harm over 0% is unacceptable, and we believe that the route to a safer NHS is through transparency, learning and action. What is most frustrating is when harm persists, despite our having the knowledge and wherewithal to prevent it. There are approximately nine “never events” in the NHS every week—avoidable harms such as wrong-site surgery or foreign objects left after an operation.

Thirty years ago, the aviation industry stood at a similar crossroads. Since then, there has been a massive reduction in fatal accidents every decade, despite a huge increase in the number of passengers. According to the Civil Aviation Authority, there is an average of one fatality for every 287 million passengers carried by UK operators. Compare that with the 150 avoidable deaths every week across the NHS. That rate would potentially equate to the loss of 52 airliners per year.

How has the airline industry transformed its safety record so successfully? The key has been a “just culture” that recognises honest human error, but continues to hold people to account for criminal acts or wilful negligence. Creating a safe space that protects the evidence provided by pilots and air traffic controllers when there is an investigation is a cornerstone of the approach. It helps to create a culture in which people can be open about their errors and a system of learning from one’s mistakes, rather than blaming individuals.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) on securing this debate on an important matter. NHS staff are greatly restricted by their work and the long hours they do. We all know that and pay tribute to them. Sometimes, however, we have to look at better ways of keeping records and at innovations to streamline things to make sure that the real focus of NHS staff is on the work that they do. Has the Minister looked at streamlining and innovations to take away the red tape that restricts the caring job that NHS staff do?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The more we can innovate and put in place the technology that helps to streamline day-to-day processes, the more that will help NHS staff, who do such a marvellous job, to do their job even more effectively and efficiently.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham rightly said, to err is human. I am told that every year, 30,000 motorists put diesel fuel into their petrol cars—that is around 15 every hour. Those people are not intentionally destructive or feckless, they are human. Of course, I am not making an analogy with medical mistakes, which can be significantly more damaging and life-changing than the need to get a new engine, but in the same sort of way we need to move away from a blame culture in health—away from investigations that single out one individual rather than seeing their actions in the context of a complex overarching system.

Respite Care for Vulnerable Adults: Teesside

Debate between Jim Shannon and Caroline Dinenage

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

That will of course be a matter for the Secretary of State, who will deal with it in the appropriate way.

The Care Act also requires local authorities to take a preventive approach to addressing people’s needs in taking steps to intervene early to prevent or delay any worsening of an adult’s need for care and support. This would of course include the carers about whom the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues care so passionately. It is really important to allow carers to take the respite that we have spoken about.

The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that the Autism Act 2009 requires the Government to have a regularly reviewed autism strategy and to issue guidance to local authorities, NHS bodies, and foundation trusts. In addition, the Children and Families Act 2014 introduced a new statutory framework for children with special educational needs and disabilities. This gives commissioners very clear responsibilities towards those with learning disabilities and autism, including those who may be affected by the review on Teesside.

[Jim Shannon]

I think that everyone in this Chamber will have a knowledge of autism. The Minister will be aware that we have an excellent autism strategy in Northern Ireland, and there is also a very good strategy in Wales. Has she had a chance to check out both those strategies in order perhaps to introduce them, in full, to England?