Oral Answers to Questions
Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
Britain is world leading at treating cancer when it is discovered, but we do not diagnose it early enough, so we will radically overhaul our screening programmes, roll out rapid diagnostic centres for people with early symptoms, and expand mobile lung screening units. Our ambition is to ensure that three quarters of cancers are diagnosed at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, up from half today.
Matt Hancock
Yes. Focusing on early diagnosis will help to save lives. Indeed, the cancer survival rates have never been higher than they are now. About 7,000 people who are alive today would not have been had mortality rates stayed the same as they were in 2010. However, we want to use the most cutting-edge technologies in order to save more lives.
Kwasi Kwarteng
In respect of early screening, how does my right hon. Friend expect the measures that he has introduced to move the service forward in the way that we want to see?
Matt Hancock
Absolutely central to this is ensuring that we address cancer at the earliest possible opportunity. The earlier the diagnosis is made, the greater is the likelihood of survival, so we want to see more cancers diagnosed earlier across the board.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
I value every person who works in the NHS and in social care, because everybody plays a part in improving the wellbeing and the health of the nation. I care deeply about that. On the question of sleep-in shifts, I saw the decision by the court and I have already had conversations with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which leads on this regulation, to ensure that we can get the rules right for the future.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
Alcohol addiction has a devastating impact on individuals and their families, and it is unacceptable that children bear the brunt of their parents’ condition. That is why we are investing £6 million over three years to support vulnerable children living with alcohol-dependent parents. I pay tribute to the former Secretary of State and to the shadow Secretary of State for their leadership in making this happen.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I thank the Minister for his answer, but this is obviously a much wider problem, affecting more than just the children of alcohol-dependent parents. Will he tell the House what more can be done to ensure that people in the wider community can access that kind of help?
Steve Brine
We are working on an alcohol strategy, which is being led by the Home Office, and I have spoken to a number of stakeholders in the last two weeks at the various roundtables I have been holding. On the question of alcohol-dependent parents with children, we are working through local authorities, which is important, but as part of the investment that I have mentioned, there is also £500,000 going into expanding the helpline provision for children who find themselves in this position. I have heard time and again when talking to children affected by this that being able to say that they are not alone in this is often a great place to start. The helpline will be very important in that regard.
Neuroblastoma
Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
I am honoured to be called to speak in this Adjournment debate. It is a great honour, as a Member of Parliament, to be able to make representations in this House on local cases, and this particular case is something I have been very much affected by. I have met the parents of the young boy concerned, and I would be grateful if the House allowed me to explain the nature of the case I am here to plead this evening. I wanted to hold this debate on funding for the treatment of children who are diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a specific form of childhood cancer. It is very debilitating, arises in immature nerve cells and is the third most common type of childhood cancer, affecting about 100 children every year in Britain.
Members may be familiar with the case of Bradley Lowery, a young boy from Sunderland who struck up a friendship with the England footballer, Jermain Defoe, after appearing as a Sunderland mascot. Bradley suffered from neuroblastoma and his cheerfulness and great courage touched the hearts of so many people. Very sadly, Bradley passed away last year. He was only six years old, but in his short life he touched the hearts of millions.
It can be very difficult to spot the early symptoms of neuroblastoma, as they can be vague and mistaken for other childhood conditions. There are options to deal with the illness, but the case I briefly want to describe involves a young boy, Alfie Ward, who is now 15, and who lives in my constituency in Ashford. He is now battling this disease for the third time. The problem we have is that the NHS, under its current dispensation and policy, funds treatment only in the first instance. However, as Alfie started nursery, having battled the disease and survived this appalling affliction, it became apparent that it had come back.
At this point, I want to make the case for the NHS to review its policy on not funding relapses. As I understand it, about half the people who suffer from this appalling illness relapse, if they recover. It seems very harsh to adopt a policy whereby people can be funded the first time that they are affected by the illness, but not for subsequent relapses. In Alfie’s case, he has been denied treatment. As I said, this is the third time that he has had the illness. Now he, his family and his parents are under the extreme pressure of having to raise something like £600,000 so that he can get treatment.
In wrapping up my remarks, I want to say that £600,000 is a huge amount of money. It is to their eternal credit that Alfie’s parents, who I have met—
Jim Shannon
I could not let the debate go by without commenting on a young gentleman in Northern Ireland. Some things in Northern Ireland cross the barricade, and one of those was the touching story of young Oscar Knox, whose battle with neuroblastoma touched people from every part of the Province and in whose memory I stand in this House today. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must do more to fund the treatment of this cancer in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, instead of parents having to try to raise money to help their children? We must look towards more treatment options as well. Does he agree with that? I know the answer.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has made representations from his part of the country. People face this problem across the country. It is not widely known, because the absolute numbers are not great, but the suffering is severe. We absolutely have to try to think of a way to reach an accommodation on funding, because £600,000 is a huge amount to raise.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this very serious issue to the House, and I am sure that many people in Coventry and the west midlands would support him too. It is tragic to pick up a newspaper and read about families trying to raise money for treatment abroad that they cannot get in this country. We wish him well in his endeavours to get some justice for his constituents.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am touched by the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. It is delightful to see cross-party agreement on this. It is a great honour to raise this issue—it goes to the heart of what one does as a constituency MP. I have met Alfie’s parents and have been incredibly impressed by the way they have conducted themselves, and by their bravery and courage. They are totally devoid of self-pity. They have just got on with it and raised a great deal of money, and I am hopeful that they will reach their target.
In the case of relapses, however, the obligation should not fall on the shoulders of parents and friends to go through what is a very stressful experience. We have all raised money for various causes in our time, and it is a stressful and time-consuming endeavour. As a society, we have to consider ways in which the NHS or the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence can fund treatment for relapses so that the parents of young boys such as Alfie Ward do not have to go through that kind of suffering and pressure simply to give their son a fighting chance of life.
I am grateful to have secured this debate, on an issue that has been raised by other people, and it is a privilege to have raised it in this forum. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
NHS Pay
Kwasi Kwarteng Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
It is a great honour to have been called in this serious debate. I am pleased by the way in which it has been conducted, as we have heard some very good speeches, in particular the maiden speech by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan). It was an amusing, entertaining, heartfelt and serious speech, and I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will make valuable contributions in this Parliament and in years to come. It was a salutary speech because it gave one faith in the House of Commons.
Having been a Member for seven years, I have seen many debates—and some yah-boo politics—in which people apportioned blame for the crisis. Labour says that the Tories cut too much and that it was all the bankers’ fault that we had a deficit of £160 billion—the largest peace-time deficit in our history. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who was a Front-Bench member of the coalition Government for their full five years, will remember clearly the context in which we came up with the difficult policy of the pay cap. It was not a whimsy, and we did not do it for the hell of it to put people under pressure. The pay cap was a serious response to a difficult and chronic problem—the deficit.
I do not want to apportion blame, and I echo my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in recognising that the global crash was not entirely Labour’s fault—I am willing to give it that—but the history of the public finances from 2001, eight years before the financial crisis happened, shows that we ran a deficit in every single one of those years. To borrow a phrase—a mantra—from a departed colleague, Labour did not fix the roof while the sun was shining. The Labour party had a record of fiscal incompetence, and it was against that backdrop that public sector pay restraint became an issue. It is important to look at the history to explain why the pay cap was instituted in 2011.
Eleanor Smith
The hon. Gentleman talks about eight years, but Andrew Lansley’s Bill basically destroyed the NHS. That is why we are in this state with the pay cap. I think the hon. Gentleman has forgotten about that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I would like to allow the hon. Lady to speak early on, and there is nothing wrong with intervening, but we do need short interventions. That would be great. I need to know if Members will be giving way, too. I would like to get all speakers in, but the more interventions we have the less chance there is that I will be able to do that.
Kwasi Kwarteng
That was a fair intervention, but I completely disagree with the hon. Lady’s point. The deficit had nothing to do with the then Secretary of State for Health. It was not the previous Secretary of State for Health who caused the £160 billion deficit the Government inherited in 2010. Naturally, when running a huge deficit—I think it was something like 12% of GDP—one has to find savings in the budget. The question I pose to Labour Members is, how would they find the extra money? There are only two ways to do that: the Government can either raise the money through taxation, or the Chancellor has to borrow the money. It is very unclear to me what the Labour party proposes to do to increase the pay of public sector workers. No doubt it will have a plan to increase it by 5% or 10%—I do not know by exactly how much it wants to put up public sector pay—but it would have to fund that. I looked at the Labour election manifesto and I think it spent the tax on people earning over £80,000 about 10 times over to fund their various projects and policies.
We cannot go on kidding ourselves and kidding the British people. I very much like the point made by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk about the fact that we have to be serious about how we are going to fund the NHS and social care provision. He described the current model as—his word—unsustainable. I do not share that view—I think we can fund the NHS adequately for the rest of the Parliament—but his general message was right. It does not make any sense for Labour Members to scream, holler and shout about Tory cuts without having a serious proposal.
Norman Lamb
To work together in a constructive, rational and mature way requires the Government to agree to do it. We are still waiting. I met the Prime Minister in February. Please make a decision.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am not privy to the conversations the right hon. Gentleman has had with the Prime Minister—that is something he might wish to take up with her—but this is a serious debate. As he said, we cannot be honest with people on this issue if we are simply screaming and shouting across the Dispatch Box.
Conservative and Opposition Members have made the point that we have extremely impressive professionals across the public services. The level of public service provision here in Britain is right at the top of the global rankings. I have spent time in Europe, Africa and across the middle east. The public services we have in Britain are really world class and we must never lose sight of that in these discussions. The nature of the debate has been very fruitful and we have had a measure of courtesy, but it does not make sense simply to holler “Tory cuts.” That is what I have heard in seven years of trying to address what are very serious problems.