Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Osborne Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Maria Caulfield
I thank the shadow Minister for her question. To highlight another initiative in West Yorkshire, the Night OWLS—Overnight West Yorkshire Living/Advice Service—helpline has been set up for children and young people. It is open between 8 pm and 8 am seven days a week for young people to access, in addition to the 24/7 helpline that is available. I am sure that the shadow Minister will also welcome the fact that we have more than 400 mental health support teams in schools in England, covering 3 million children, so that they can access mental health support directly at school.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)
We are tackling the root causes of health inequalities. We have doubled the duty on cigarettes and brought in a minimum excise tax on the cheapest cigarettes. That has helped to drive down smoking rates from 21% to a record low of 13%. We are going further, helping a million smokers with our scheme to get people to stop smoking and start vaping. We have provided £40 million to start rolling out new weight-loss drugs and, in the major conditions strategy, we will talk further about how we will tackle health inequalities.
Kate Osborne
People in the north-east die younger than people in the rest of England and spend more years in ill health. Increased NHS waiting times leaves them on medication for longer. The north-east has the highest level of people living in poverty, leaving many of my constituents unable to afford prescription charges. Some have told me that they are taking paracetamol instead of prescribed medication, worsening health inequalities. Will the Minister commit to scrapping these unfair prescription charges?
Neil O’Brien
Nine out of 10 prescriptions are not paid for, but free at the point of delivery. On the various important points that the hon. Lady makes, tackling health inequalities is hugely important to us. That is why we are creating 160 extra community diagnostic centres, which are targeted at areas of the highest deprivation. It is why we are rolling out targeted lung health checks in 43 areas of the most deprivation. It is also why we are providing cost of living support worth about £3,300 for the average household in this country. It is one of the most generous schemes anywhere in Europe, exactly to tackle those cost of living pressures and health inequalities.
Future of the NHS
Kate Osborne Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of the NHS, its staffing and funding.
The national health service is a beloved national institution. Everyone in the country and in this House will have interacted with the NHS and have their own personal connections and stories that they can reflect on, from the birth of their children to the death of a loved one or seeing a general practitioner about a health condition. It is undeniable to most of us that the NHS is in crisis. It is being pushed into an avoidable and unprecedented collapse after 13 years of Conservative mismanagement.
All our constituents will have been impacted in some way by the crisis, a crisis so bad that nurses have taken strike action for the first time in NHS history. Ambulance workers and other NHS staff have also taken action, and this week British Medical Association junior doctors voted with a 98% majority to do the same. I thank all my constituents who work in the NHS, particularly those who got in touch about this debate, including paramedics from the North East Ambulance Service who tell me that on a daily basis they are unable to hand over patients because of delays in A&E and lack of beds, and how frustrating it is that many of the calls are for people who need social care or cannot get a GP appointment, rather than the acute calls that they are best placed to deal with.
That highlights the impact the crisis in social care is having on the NHS. Half of all people arriving in A&E by ambulance are over 65 and one third are over 75. The lack of adequate social care for basic daily needs is storing up problems and leaving older people less able to care for themselves, or arriving in hospital with preventable health problems, adding to the pressures in A&E and bed provision. People who work in the NHS have had enough of being failed by this Government’s mismanagement. The country deserves better.
NHS dentistry is on its knees, with patients facing a growing crisis of access and resorting to DIY dentistry. The NHS was in crisis pre-pandemic and the Government’s failures and mismanagement have made the situation far worse. For Ministers to dismiss the crisis as winter pressures, or even to flat-out deny that there is a crisis, is frankly absurd.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The crisis in dental and mental health is affecting our children at the moment. In some of our constituencies, it is a direct result of the lack of local provision. We are feeding a generation of problems as a result of that failure.
Kate Osborne
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. The problems for our children further down the line are worrying, but of course, they are preventable if the right action is taken.
The Conservatives blame everything else—the weather, the pandemic and even NHS staff—but their 13 years of failure have left the health service in crisis. At Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, the Prime Minister boasted about
“record sums into the NHS…and…a clear path to getting people the treatment they need in the time they need it.”—[Official Report, 22 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 222.]
He is not living in the real world. Every briefing and communication that we have received has cited delays in treatment and the devastating impact that they have, as well as the decade of underfunding. It is hard not to agree with the British Medical Association, which called the Prime Minister “delusional”.
The last Labour Governments allocated, on average, a 6% rise in the NHS budget every year. Successive Conservative and coalition Governments have since allocated a rise of only 1% a year. The Prime Minister can talk about “record sums” all he wants, but he is fooling no one. In reality, the settlement is not enough, and it is nowhere near what previous Labour Governments invested. This crisis can be laid firmly at the Government’s door.
There are so many awful headlines and statistics, and I will delve into some of them, but let me say from the outset that we must all remember, when we talk about the 7 million people on waiting lists, or the 500 avoidable deaths every week, that we are talking about people. There are faces behind those statistics: the faces of women who cannot get urgent gynaecological treatment, the faces of children who cannot access mental health support, the faces of families whose loved ones have died—lives that could, should and would have been saved if this Government cared about communities and invested in our NHS.
When we talk about 133,000 NHS vacancies, we are talking about people who have left their work in the NHS because they cannot cope financially or emotionally, we are talking about the rest of the workforce working harder to pick up the slack, we are talking about the NHS being unable to recruit because of poor wages and conditions, and we are talking about the impact that that has on patients.
The only way to solve the NHS staffing crisis is by sorting out pay. The Government agreed yesterday to negotiate with the Royal College of Nursing, and nursing strikes have been paused for those negotiations to happen. The Government could have agreed to negotiations months ago, but they chose not to. Negotiations with the RCN alone will not solve the staffing crisis. Junior doctors have voted by 98% to strike, but the Health Secretary has not even offered a meeting. Negotiations with one section of the NHS workforce are not sufficient; all unions representing NHS staff need to be negotiated with. The Government must make a pay offer that is not linked to efficiency savings and productivity, because NHS staff are already working unacceptably long shifts.
An offer—such as the one we saw on Tuesday—of 3.5%, when inflation is at least triple that and NHS workers’ pay is worth less than it was a decade ago, is, as Sharon Graham of Unite the Union said, a “sick joke”. Christina McAnea of Unison announced further strike days next month. The Government are failing to resolve this dispute; instead, they are attempting to blame workers for putting patients in danger. Patients will never forgive the Conservatives for refusing to negotiate and using patients as bargaining chips.
The staffing crisis must be urgently addressed. The impact of waiting times on individuals can be severe and the consequences irreversible. Two hundred people in my Jarrow constituency have Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s UK is concerned about people waiting longer than two years for a diagnosis. Similarly, the MS Society has said that more than 13,000 people have been waiting more than a year for a neurology appointment. Those delayed diagnoses and treatments have a hugely detrimental impact on the individuals concerned.
Delays in cancer diagnosis and treatment are life-threatening. For years, the Government have missed cancer targets because of a lack of concerted action on matched funding. In South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, only 73% of people were treated within the target of two months following a cancer referral, and only 61% of people are treated within that target nationally. The UK is being left behind, and people are dying avoidable and preventable deaths. That is why we need a workforce strategy—yes, to pay people properly, but also to enable the NHS to save people’s lives.
Labour has a workforce strategy, while the Government have not even committed to fully funding their promised workforce plan. The Chancellor praised Labour’s plan, so why does he not put his money where his mouth is by implementing it? Labour will deliver a new 10-year plan for the NHS, including one of the biggest ever expansions of its workforce.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. This will come as a surprise to her, but I have visited a private health provider in my constituency in the last fortnight. People there told me that they are recruiting staff directly from university, so people are trained at the state’s expense but are then used for private profit. That means that the health service, which cannot afford to pay the same wages, loses out. Does she have any ideas about how that might be sorted out?
Kate Osborne
I will address my hon. Friend’s point in my remarks. This Government’s ideological commitment to the free market has led them to force through more and more privatisation of our national health service. Some Government Back Benchers are talking openly about moving to an Americanised healthcare system in which people are priced out of healthcare, and they have even mentioned it in this Chamber. We have seen corrupt contracts for cronies, and friends of the Government making millions while people suffer. The Government have allowed the private sector to run rampant, taking hundreds of billions out of the NHS budget over the last 10 years.
It is as if the Government are on a mission to destroy the NHS as we know it. They have even performed smash-and-grab raids on hospital repair budgets, taking £4.3 billion away and leaving hospitals crumbling, leaking and falling apart at the seams. Fifty per cent. of trusts now have structural issues with leaks, collapsing floors, raw sewage and unsafe wards.
American news agency CNN said last week:
“Britain’s NHS was once idolized. Now its worst-ever crisis is fueling a boom in private health care.”
The number of people paying privately for operations is up 34% in 2022. If that trend continues, it will embed a two-tier service in our NHS and price many people out of healthcare. My constituent Christine was referred to a private health company by her GP, while another constituent, Ray, was told that he could no longer get a service from the NHS and that he would need to pay privately, at a cost of £50. Ray said to me:
“As I am 74 years old and rely on my state pension it makes it very difficult for me in the current economic climate to pay this amount. Having paid national insurance contributions for 50 years, I don’t understand. Why do I have to pay again?”
I look forward to receiving a response for Ray from the Minister.
Ray is correct, of course. As Nye Bevan said:
“No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.”
As with any crisis, companies step in to exploit the situation and make money.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for making such a powerful speech on a really important issue. A fantastic GP surgery in my constituency, the Waterloo Health Centre, is closing because the landlord is selling to a private developer. Many people who have used that GP service for decades are now worried about where they will register. A number of people across the country are waiting to register with NHS GPs, and waiting lists continue to grow. Does she agree that that is another example of the private sector coming in and making it really difficult for our NHS system?
Kate Osborne
Yes. We have all seen for ourselves and heard from our constituents how difficult it is to get an appointment, and the private profiteers are driving that.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and making such a powerful case. On the subject of privatisation, does she share my concern that, as we have heard in recent speeches in the Chamber by Conservative Back-Bench MPs, this is entirely deliberate? They want to manufacture consent among the public for a move to an insurance-based, American-style system by more and more people feeling forced to take out health insurance or pay for healthcare, so that over a number of years, we see healthcare provision go down the same path as council houses, which went from mass provision to minority provision.
Kate Osborne
I agree that if things do not change, that is exactly the route we are going down.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does she acknowledge that this has already happened in dentistry, with families taking out dental plans because they cannot access an NHS dentist?
Kate Osborne
We are seeing this across the whole NHS, including dentistry, as my hon. Friend rightly says.
As with any crisis, we see companies step in to exploit the situation and make money. US group Cleveland Clinic plans to open its third UK facility in London later this year, adding to the 184-bed hospital and six-floor clinic that it opened in 2021 and 2022 respectively. HCA Healthcare, another American group, which has over 30 facilities in London and Manchester, will be opening a £100 million private hospital in Birmingham later this year. Some 40% of private mental health companies need safety improvement, and we are handing over billions to companies that are failing our constituents.
Too much of what is happening is hidden from Parliament and from the public. Where is the accountability for these private companies? Labour’s plan for the NHS includes working with partners to ensure patient safety and to bring down waiting lists. What it does not include is the rampant corrupt profiteering, with contracts for cronies and profit put above patients, that this Government are presiding over.
In England, we have a 20-year gap in life expectancy between the most and least affluent areas of the country. Less than a year ago, the Government promised to tackle the causes and symptoms of these underlying health inequalities and publish a White Paper on health inequalities. Last month, the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed that no White Paper would be published. I am pleased that today, Labour announced that we will build an NHS fit for the future and cut health inequalities.
The cost of living crisis has pushed over two thirds of UK households into fuel poverty, which will exacerbate health inequalities that were already widened during the pandemic. In September 2022, one in four households with children experienced food insecurity, and in my constituency of Jarrow, 39% of children are living in food poverty. Malnutrition costs the NHS an estimated £19.6 billion each year. Investment in greater support, particularly targeted at the most vulnerable, would lead to returns in reduced NHS demand. As well as a strategy for the NHS, this Government need to start prioritising much more support to get the most vulnerable through the cost of living crisis. I hope Ministers will listen closely to the contributions in the debate and take on board what is needed for a workforce strategy and funding to secure the future of our NHS.
Rob Roberts
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. How easy would it have been to go out into the media and say, “We’re asking for a 20% pay increase, by the way” —which is what happened—and then to blame the Government for not coming to the table? When the Government are called to the table on such ludicrous terms—from my point of view; everyone will have their own opinion—why should they engage? Timing is everything; they are now getting around the table and are now doing it. To answer the hon. Lady, she has condemned the Government for not doing it sooner, so I am sure she will now praise the Government for taking the time to do it.
The same strikes have been announced in Wales, but what happened there? Would the hon. Lady also condemn the Welsh Government for not getting around the table and not negotiating in the right way? [Interruption.] It never happens, or it is very rare. It is easy for the Opposition to play the blame game. Where has it got them?
Kate Osborne
I fail to see how the hon. Member does not understand that these points are political. For 13 years, a Conservative Government have underfunded the NHS, which has led to over 7 million people on waiting lists and tens of thousands of vacancies. As for the trade unions, yes, the Government are now talking to the RCN, but when are they going talk to Unite, GMB and the other trade unions that represent NHS workers?
Rob Roberts
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I am so exasperated by this. We hear from the Opposition all the time that the NHS was properly funded by Labour in 2010, but as the King’s Fund and many others will tell us, NHS funding has increased in real terms since 2010.
Rob Roberts
It has—although if Opposition Members want to argue with the King’s Fund, that is fine. But if NHS funding was okay under Labour and has increased in real terms since then, how is it not okay now? I agree that it is not okay now, but that is because of all the reasons I have already mentioned: we are keeping people alive longer, and sicker, there are more of them, and it is more expensive to diagnose and treat them. They are not political issues.
To draw my remarks to a conclusion, I am not familiar with the machinations of how to go about these things, but it seems perfectly reasonable to have, finally, some kind of royal commission—some kind of massive public engagement exercise—on the future of health services in the United Kingdom. We must tackle it head-on. We must not be afraid to go wherever that debate takes us in search of better outcomes for people. I just wish we would keep in mind that we are here for people. We are here to serve them and give them the best outcomes we possibly can, not to get caught up in form and process, or dogma and ideology. We are trying to make people better. We have to do whatever we can to get to the root causes of the issue, because as my former NHS and now private sector nurse partner tells me all the time—I quote—“You could fix so much if you’d just stop politics getting in the bloody way.”
Neil O’Brien
It will be right across the piece. We have already set out some of our plans for social care, and the full details will hopefully be with the hon. Lady in the not-too-distant future.
The NHS recently published a delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services. It is backed by record investment, including a £1 billion dedicated fund for hospital capacity over 2023-24. We will achieve these improvements by delivering 800 new ambulances and 5,000 more sustainable, fully staffed hospital beds, as well as an ambition to scale up innovative virtual wards, which are already making huge improvements, to support 50,000 people a month in their own home.
The number of ambulance and ambulance support staff is up by 40% since 2010. As well as having those extra staff, we are putting in an extra £50 million in capital funding to upgrade and expand hospitals, including with ambulance hubs and facilities for patients who are about to be discharged. That will free up hospital beds and address handover delays, helping to get those extra ambulances swiftly back on the road.
As well as getting people to hospital, we must further prevent the need for urgent care. That is why we extended vaccinations and are rolling out fall services across the country. We also need to improve the flow through hospitals, as the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) said, by investing in social care. I will say more about that in a moment.
Members know only too well the pressure that the pandemic put on the NHS. The number of people waiting more than 52 weeks for elective care rose from 1,468 in August 2019 to 436,000 in March 2021. In February 2022, the NHS published a delivery plan for tackling the covid-19 backlog, which set out a series of public commitments and initiatives to reduce the backlog. We met our first target by virtually eliminating waits of two years or more by July 2022—that is from a peak of 23,800 at the start of January 2022. To support that elective recovery and to cut backlogs, one of our top five priorities is to spend more than £8 billion from 2022-23 to 2024-25, in addition to the £2 billion elective recovery fund and the £700 million targeted investment fund made available last year. As well as having 4,800 more doctors and 10,900 more nurses than this time just last year, we have 89 new surgical hubs and 92 community diagnostic centres already up and running—the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) talked about the one in his local area.
As part of this elective recovery, we continue to deliver the huge investment in mental health that was set out in the long-term plan for the NHS, with £2.3 billion extra by next year, supporting an extra 2 million people to get the treatment they need each year. Taken together, that elective funding could deliver the equivalent of about 9 million more checks and procedures, and means that the NHS in England is aiming to deliver about 30% more elective activity by 2024-25 than it was delivering before the pandemic—that is a huge increase. We are aiming to end 18-month waits by April and the NHS is making good progress towards that.
Turning to general practice and primary care, I know that GPs are under huge pressure, and I am incredibly grateful to them and their teams for their hard work. We are investing an extra £1.5 billion to create an additional 50 million general practice appointments a year by 2024. We are doing that by increasing and diversifying the workforce and we are well on our way to hitting that target. In December and indeed January, there were, on average, 1.34 million general practice appointments per working day, excluding the covid vaccinations that GPs are doing. That is about a 10% increase on pre-pandemic levels. GPs are doing more than ever before and a wider range of things than ever before, and they are really working hard.
Since 2019, we have recruited more than 2,000 more doctors into general practice and more than 25,000 additional clinical staff into general practice. So we are well on the way to hitting the 26,000 extra commitment that we made ahead of schedule. They are covering a wide range of extra roles, from pharmacists to physios, mental health specialists and more. So GPs are now effectively leading a diverse team with many different specialist skills. We also had a record-breaking number starting training as GPs last year—it is up from about 2,400 a year to 4,000 a year now. As we committed to do in our plan for patients, we have amended funding rules to bolster general practice teams with new roles. We have increased the clinical services available from community pharmacies already and we are looking at how we can go further. We have introduced new digital tools and improved IT systems, where, again, we are looking to go further.
Of course, we know we need to do more. In the autumn statement, we committed to creating a recovery plan for primary care that addresses the challenges facing general practice. That plan will aim to make it easier for the public to contact their practice and easier for practices to see their patients sooner. That is due to be published in the coming weeks.
Kate Osborne
Can the Minister clarify something for me? He talks about the workforce plan. Can he tell us whether it is fully funded and whether it includes social care?
Neil O’Brien
It will be about both what is needed over time—some of the time horizons might be longer—and what we are going to do about it.
Let me complete the thought about primary care—
Neil O’Brien
I want to make a bit of progress. I am sorry, but I will perhaps come back to the hon. Lady in a bit.
Let me complete the thought on primary care. We will also be saying more about dentistry, which was an issue raised by the hon. Member for Bolton South East. She mentioned some of the reforms that we made. We are trying to make dental practice more attractive. We started reforming the contract and creating more unit of dental activity bands to better reflect the fair cost of NHS work and so incentivise it. We have introduced the minimum UDA value to help where it is particularly low. We are letting dentists deliver 110% of their contracted UDAs to encourage more activity. We have changed the law to make it easier for overseas dentists to do NHS work here, which someone mentioned earlier. Plans are advancing for centres for dental development in Ipswich and places such as Cumbria. But there is much more to do, as the hon. Lady said, and we will be saying more about that soon.
On adult social care, we are taking decisive action, with record investment, making available up to £7.5 billion over the next two years to support adult social care and discharge. That historic funding boost—that record investment in adult social care—will put the system on a much stronger financial footing and help local authorities to address pressures in the sector.
Kate Osborne
I thank everyone who has contributed today. I also thank all NHS staff who are taking industrial action to save our health services. No one takes strike action lightly, especially those who are caring for the most vulnerable in society, but this Government have left them with no choice. I thank the campaigners who are out every week, highlighting the impact that 13 years of Conservative Governments have had on our NHS. Those groups would not be necessary if this Government were funding the NHS properly, but they are necessary.
Across the country, there are groups, including the Save South Tyneside Hospital Campaign in my Jarrow constituency, campaigning to save hospital services and calling for the Government to fund the NHS properly. I also thank the organisations that got in touch ahead of the debate, including Diabetes UK, the British Dental Association, Age UK, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Heart Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, Keep Our NHS Public, Parkinson’s UK, the MS Society UK, Cancer Research UK, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Your NHS Needs You and the trade unions.
Health spending in the UK is 18% below the EU14 average. The UK would have needed to spend £40 billion more a year every year for the past 10 years to keep up. That shows just how far behind we have fallen. The root cause of this crisis is that the Conservatives have failed to provide the NHS with the resources and staff it needs to treat patients on time. Labour will train a new generation of NHS staff, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status, so that the NHS has the workforce it desperately needs. As the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), said, why will the Government not commit to doing that, as the Chancellor has suggested?
I thank all who contributed to the debate, which has highlighted a number of urgent requirements of the Government to secure the future of our NHS, including increased funding, the accountability of the private sector, a fully funded workforce strategy and a strategy to deal with health inequalities. I hope that the Minister has listened—I am not sure as he has not made eye contact with many Members—because without immediate action, we will see thousands more avoidable deaths, including the death of our NHS.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of the NHS, its staffing and funding.
Ambulance and Emergency Department Waiting Times
Kate Osborne Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing the debate.
In the north-east, as across the UK, our healthcare system is in crisis. We have an NHS staffing crisis and a lack of GPs, millions waiting for routine operations, a loss of hospital beds, and direct cuts to mental health services funding. The Health and Care Act 2022, which came into force this month, fails to address the serious challenges facing the NHS and public health and social care, and will likely make all the problems worse as local boards will make decisions based on financial constraints, rather than patient health.
The North East Ambulance Service claims to be one of the best performing in the UK on ambulance waiting times, but that ignores the unacceptable waiting times that individuals face even in the most serious cases. Ten per cent. of people who had emergencies such as strokes or serious chest pain were left waiting for 40 minutes—more than double the target wait time—and some waited for more than 90 minutes. Shockingly, 10% of individuals with urgent conditions who needed treatment and transfer to hospital waited more than three hours, and some waited as long as five hours.
Disgracefully, just a few weeks ago, reports emerged of a cover-up in the North East Ambulance Service regarding patient safety and possible deaths. There were allegations that the service withheld details from coroners in more than 90 cases between 2018 and 2019. My constituency of Jarrow is covered by the North East Ambulance Service, and such reports are obviously very concerning.
NHS England is now investigating the tragic failings of NEAS, but it is clear for everyone to see that our NHS is at crisis point. That is not the fault of individual staff members who do their best to cope with an under-resourced and understaffed NHS; nor is it just the impact of the pandemic. For too long our NHS has been pushed to the brink by the Tories. We entered the pandemic with the longest financial squeeze in NHS history, with thousands waiting longer for cancer treatment and the A&E target not met for six years. A&E waiting times are at an all-time high with 30% of people waiting more than four hours in A&E. Those waiting times have become progressively worse over the last decade.
The South Tyneside and Sunderland trust in my constituency has 39% of people waiting longer than four hours to be seen. Our emergency services are there for us in times of crisis, making life and death decisions in an instant and providing care and comfort to us at our moment of need. They need our support and they need the Government to start investing directly in our NHS. I want to put on the record my thanks for the great work that the Save South Tyneside Hospital campaign is doing in its campaign for the future of South Tyneside Hospital and its acute and emergency services.
Instead of investing in our NHS and staff, the Government insist that staff take a real-terms pay cut and attack staff sick pay, at the same time privatising as much as they can get their grubby little hands on. Our NHS cannot sustain the current level of attacks from this Government. Inevitably, both staff and patients will suffer. It is a disgrace that the Government are attacking the workers who have kept us going through covid—the workers who put themselves at risk every day and who go to work to protect us, who are called heroes one minute and vilified the next.
More and more is being outsourced to private companies using a false narrative of bringing down waiting times. The more the private sector becomes involved, the worse the situation becomes as capacity in the NHS is reduced and private companies cherry-pick easy and lucrative cases. All of that has the devastating consequence of forcing more and more people in pain and desperation to take out loans and crowdfund on the internet to pay for an operation because the wait is too much for them to bear. A two-tier health system is being privatised by the back door.
It was the NHS’s 74th birthday yesterday. Nye Bevan said:
“Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.”
If we want to make sure that future generations do not have to pay when they are ill, we must urgently ensure that our NHS is funded, and that all the parts that have been privatised are brought back in-house.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Osborne Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Maria Caulfield
The Government recognise that menopause services need to improve, which is why menopause is a priority area in our women’s health strategy. We recognise such services are often best provided in primary care, but that some women need specialist services. We are looking at that in our women’s health strategy and the menopause taskforce.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
In December last year, the Department of Health and Social Care promised three urgent actions to tackle the gender health gap: the appointment of a women’s health ambassador; legislation to ban hymenoplasty; and the publication of the women’s health strategy for England in spring 2022. Can I ask the Minister when those vital actions are actually going to happen?
Maria Caulfield
I can let the hon. Lady know that interviews have taken place for a women’s health ambassador. We are expecting an announcement on the appointment any day now. We will be publishing the women’s health strategy in the coming weeks.
Covid-19 Update
Kate Osborne Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Sajid Javid
Work is being done on this variant not just in the UK but by our friends across the world. At the G7 meeting I attended earlier today, we all agreed to co-operate and share whatever information we get. My right hon. Friend is right to mention the importance of the flu vaccine, and I am glad he has reminded the House that, although we have understandably been talking about the importance of the covid vaccine, and of the booster vaccine in particular, the flu vaccine remains vitally important this winter. That is one reason why we have the largest flu vaccination programme this country has ever seen.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
I am pleased to hear there are no plans to close schools, but what assessment have the Government made of the potential for new self-isolation requirements that could keep children out of school? What steps will be taken to mitigate time out of education, because our children and young people cannot afford to spend any more time away from their educational settings?
Sajid Javid
We will keep the new self-isolation requirements under review. At this point in time, I think very few children will be affected because, as the hon. Lady knows, the new requirements apply only to close contacts of those who have tested positive with a suspected case of the new variant. We will keep it under review, and the education of children will always be a huge priority.
Covid-19 Vaccinations: 12 to 15-year-olds
Kate Osborne Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
Let me, again, slightly push back on that. It is not teachers who are being asked to do this; it is our clinicians, who are well trained and incredibly capable because they do the same thing year in, year out for the purpose of school-age vaccination programmes. They will be offering the vaccines, and ensuring that parents have enough time to read the information and then give their consent before a vaccination takes place.
This is very much not about a situation involving division. I think—I hope—my hon. Friend agrees that throughout the vaccine deployment programme that we began in earnest back on 8 December last year with Pfizer-BioNTech and continued on 4 January with the AstraZeneca vaccine, we have endeavoured never to stigmatise anyone and to provide as much information and transparency as possible, which has led to the highest level of vaccine positivity in the world. I believe that according to the Office for National Statistics data on vaccine positivity in the UK, more than 90% of adults have said that they are very likely to take the vaccine, or have already taken it.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
Many children will be anxious and worried on hearing the news that they will be receiving a vaccination, and I share the concern expressed about that by a number of Members this evening. How will the Minister be working with schools and teachers to ensure that children are informed about the vaccine in an age-appropriate and sensitive way?
Nadhim Zahawi
It is important to remember that the clinicians who deliver the school-age vaccination programme around the country are very well equipped to deliver information about these vaccines, as they do in respect of others. The information will of course be made available to parents, and, as I have said, the consent procedure will be followed very closely. The infrastructure is not new; it is not something novel about which we might have to hesitate and worry. It is already there, and it is well able to deliver this programme.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kate Osborne Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
I agree with my hon. Friend that it is good news that we can move away from restrictions and towards guidance. On the rationale for the decision he referred to, it is about vaccine effectiveness: we know that for those with both doses, vaccination is estimated to be 78% to 80% effective against symptomatic covid-19. The introduction on 16 August of the changes to which my hon. Friend referred will mean that more people will have been vaccinated and will help to reduce severe illness.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab) [V]
Sajid Javid
I want to reassure the hon. Lady—because this is such an important question for so many people across the country—that cancer remains a huge priority for this Government. She is right to refer to the work that Macmillan has done on this issue because, sadly, during the restrictions thousands of people have not come forward in the usual way and their cancer sadly remains undiagnosed. We urge anyone who feels that this is an issue for them: please, go to your GP—please come forward. That is one reason why we have launched the “Help Us, Help You” campaign. We have also provided additional funding for rapid diagnostic centres.
Tobacco Control Plan
Kate Osborne Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and the APPG for securing this important debate.
I must first announce my interest in the debate as a former smoker. I grew up in the ’80s, and most of my peer group smoked. I can recall purchasing cigarettes at the local sweet shop, which was happy to accommodate the limited budget of schoolchildren by allowing us to buy our cigarettes individually. I came from a household in which there were adult smokers, and for me to take up the habit seemed almost inevitable. I have fought a lifelong struggle against smoking to kick the habit, but it was not until I was pregnant with my first son that I felt able to give up. Although I have returned to it once or twice, I am pleased to say that I have now not smoked for more than a decade.
The tobacco industry’s excessive profits are built on establishing an addiction in people like me in their teens, who unfortunately will often not succeed in stopping before it kills them. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) spoke about the figures in Gateshead, which is one of my local authorities. Smoking is estimated to cost my other local authority, South Tyneside, about £37.9 million every year. That is through smoking-related health and care needs, lost productivity and premature deaths.
I support the recommendations made by the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health for a comprehensive strategy. It calls for additional regulation and targeted investment, with the full engagement of health and care services and a shared mission to end smoking. The communities where smoking is still part of the daily fabric of life need investment to ensure that the support is there, particularly for those with high levels of addiction. Services need to be much closer to the people who need them—in social housing, mental health services, children’s centres and LGBT service settings. Wherever the need is greatest, we should make the support available. I agree with the APPG that it is not the taxpayer but highly profitable tobacco companies that should foot the bill for these important services. Funding is needed now—we cannot wait—so does the Minister agree that the Government should include provision for a smoke-free 2030 fund in the health and social care Bill and bring this measure into force in 2022?
Funding and investment in communities with the greatest need are important to help more smokers to quit, but we also need to prevent young people from starting. Reducing the availability of tobacco to young people can help to achieve that, and existing laws on age of sale need to be fully enforced. Although retailers need a licence to sell alcohol, no licence is required for the sale of tobacco products. Therefore enforcement action can be slower and more complex and, ultimately, have less impact on retailers that break the law than would be the case if a licensing scheme were in place. Data from both YouGov and ASH, which I thank for their help with my contribution, show that retailers and the public support the introduction of a licence for retailers selling tobacco products.
Introducing a licence need not be costly. The tracking and tracing system is already in place for tobacco retailers. As a result, there would be minimum extra burden for retailers and wholesalers in turning it into a public health licensing scheme; there would be little additional administrative cost. At the same time, it would equip local authorities with more effective powers to protect their local communities from those who sell tobacco products to children. Will the Minister commit to establishing a public health licensing scheme for tobacco retailers to make it easier to prevent underage and illicit sales of tobacco in order to further protect children from taking up smoking?
The NHS has committed to supporting more smokers through the NHS long-term plan, but as with all plans, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. With all the pressures in the system right now, there is a risk that the roll-out is uneven, with smokers who need support missing out. Integrated care systems are responsible for putting in place prevention plans for their populations, and those plans need to meet the needs of smokers and ensure that the commitments in the long-term plan are delivered on. Will the Minister ensure that all ICS prevention plans are published and include as an objective achieving a smoke-free 2030? Finally, I hope that the Minister will consider tasking NHS England with establishing an operational plan to support all smokers in primary care and community mental health settings.
NHS Pay
Kate Osborne Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) for securing this important debate.
I pay tribute to NHS staff across the Jarrow constituency for all they have done and continue to do in our fight against covid-19. I also pay tribute to all the South Tyneside District Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital workers who have delivered vital care to many of my constituents throughout the pandemic.
NHS staff up and down the country have worked tirelessly in extremely challenging circumstances for the past 12 months, which makes the proposed 1% pay rise completely unacceptable. It is basically a slap in the face for more than a million hard-working NHS staff. I agree with the 14 health unions representing 1.3 million health workers who have called for a significant pay rise for NHS workers. It has been encouraging to see in my inbox messages of overwhelming public support for them. I am sure that colleagues have had the same experience.
As highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), a fair and decent pay rise is supported by recent independent analysis by London Economics. It found that the net cost of a pay rise is only around one fifth of the Government’s stated cost once factors such as the additional tax gained and the economic impact of extra consumer spending are taken into account.
There are currently an estimated 100,000 vacancies in the NHS. It is crucial that the NHS can recruit and retain existing staff to assist with the national recovery from the pandemic, because as we recover, the NHS faces new challenges such as the continued delivery of the vaccine roll-out, the potential for further waves of infection, the long-term increased demand on NHS services from long covid, as well as the clearance of the backlog of care that has built up over the last year. I hope the Minister will agree that a significant pay rise for NHS staff would make the NHS a more attractive career option, as well as help to retain those already working within it.
Many of us have applauded NHS staff from our doorsteps for keeping us safe throughout the pandemic. But sadly, clapping on our doorsteps does not put food on the table or pay the bills for those who have suffered 10 years of a real-terms pay cut under Conservative Governments. I hope the Minister will agree that a significant pay rise would finally reflect and respect the value we place in their work. Throughout the pandemic, the Government have wasted billions on failed track and trace and given hundreds of millions to their friends and donors in contracts for faulty PPE. If they can do that, there is no reason why a decent pay rise cannot be funded for people who put their lives on the line every day throughout this pandemic.
Covid Security at UK Borders
Kate Osborne Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab) [V]
The Government must finally act on securing our borders by introducing a comprehensive plan to protect the country against the import of new strains and maximise the effectiveness of the vaccination programme. With that in mind, however, it must not be overlooked that increased border measures come with increased pressure on the aviation industry and staff in the sector.
Earlier in January, the Home Office imposed a fixed roster on the Heathrow primary control point in what is widely viewed as a rushed implementation that has led to equality concerns, with many staff with disabilities and caring responsibilities unable to work to the new roster. As outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), that led to officers processing passengers at Heathrow passport control points to vote overwhelmingly for strike action over the imposition. Feedback from PCS union members on the primary control point has described the newly introduced fixed roster as a “shambles” and “chaotic”. Additionally, Border Force is currently only spot-checking 10% of all passenger locator forms, which provide the necessary information for quarantine compliance. The Government must ensure that sufficient support and resources are made available so that border staff are able to do their jobs properly.
Alongside this, the Government must announce a sector-specific support package for aviation. The largest aviation union, Unite, suggests [Inaudible.] already lost their jobs. It is about time that the Government stepped in to put in place a sectoral deal, like they promised, and protect those jobs. The Government must make good on their promises, act fast, and step in where necessary to protect employment and our economy across all sectors. However, this must not be an unconditional bail-out for companies. Tackling climate change needs to be central to this support, both for the aviation sector and for building back greener across our whole economy. I hope everyone across this House will support this motion to ensure a robust plan is in place to protect jobs and set clear commitments to help tackle the climate emergency.