Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry
Lee Rowley Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate.
I start by saying something with which I hope most Members can agree: I welcome the announcement of a public inquiry and I am glad that the Government are committed to learning the lessons from one. After the most unprecedented time of our lives, when there was no prior institutional memory of what was likely to happen and the risk calculation suggested that a pandemic based on coronavirus was extremely unlikely, we none the less need to learn lessons from what we have gone through and work out how, if there is ever a future pandemic, which I hope there never will be, we ensure that we approach it differently. We must also try to learn lessons from a wider community, society and government perspective.
If we all agree with the concept of a public inquiry, that there are lessons to be learned and reviews that need to happen, and that we need to understand how to work better in future, what do we disagree on? Why are we here, other than for another debate to push forward the suggestion of Scottish independence, in all but another name? The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who is no longer in his place, said clearly that he wishes to see a public inquiry this year; the first obvious thing on which we disagree, then, is the question of when. I acknowledge that there are arguments for both—I understand and accept that there is a logic to a quick inquiry and a logic to a longer one—but to me the basic premise is that an inquiry should have the opportunity to review what has happened calmly, and not while in the middle of or even near the challenges, or while we run the risk of those challenges coming back. That does not seem to be an inappropriate approach to take.
We have obviously made a huge amount of progress in recent months in terms of resuming normal life and hopefully being able to move back to what we did previously when we get to 19 July, but it remains the case—I presume that, when we pull back all the hyperbole and political machinations, everyone in the Chamber would accept this—that we are not necessarily absolutely and completely out of the woods yet, and throughout the winter a huge amount of work is going to have to be undertaken to make sure that we hold the line and do not go back to lockdowns and the like, to which we do not want to go back. With that in mind, I simply do not understand how we could conclude, on the balance of risk and the weight of evidence, that the inquiry should start immediately, or nearly immediately, when that would almost be guaranteed to take capacity out of our ability to prevent or reduce the chances of any problems over the coming winter. I think most average men and women on the street would accept that.
The second thing on which I fundamentally disagree—or on which those on the Government and Opposition Benches seem to disagree—is how cautious and careful we want to be about the conclusions we draw. I want to learn lessons from this pandemic; it is clear that there are lessons to be learned. I want the Government to improve and to be as effective and as efficient as they can be in terms of their procurement and processes—I say that as somebody who served on the Public Accounts Committee for 18 months in the previous Parliament and saw lots of examples of where we need to improve—but we forget the context of last year, simply to score political points, at our peril.
On procurement, the hon. Member for Inverclyde said that any junior procurement officer would understand from day one exactly how they should approach this. Well, any junior procurement officer would understand from day one that the circumstances of last March and April were entirely extraordinary and are unlikely to be repeated. The concept of procurement is to ensure a process that takes time to get a satisfactory outcome, but if we do not have that time then we have to accept that we are undertaking a prioritisation exercise that pits time against outcome.
If there are people on these Benches, including the hon. Member for Inverclyde, who genuinely think we should have gone through the process of tender, submissions, reviews, notices of publications, cool-off periods, mobilisations and all the things that so many of us who have operated either in local government or in this place for many years know about and understand—we understand the amount of time it takes to get through them—then they should come to this Chamber right now and argue that in March and April last year we should have put out a series of call to tenders for things we needed in our hospitals, our care homes and across our society. That was simply not proportionate or reasonable.
Joanna Cherry
I do not think anyone is suggesting that there should not have been an emergency contract tendering process. What people are suggesting is that there should not have been bias in who the contracts were awarded to. That is what the courts said.
Lee Rowley
I am so grateful for the hon. and learned Lady’s intervention. She just spent about two minutes talking to this Chamber about the difference between bias and apparent bias, and she has just conflated the two points to make a political point.
On the need to be cautious and careful in the conclusions we have drawn, I just say calmy and gently to Members that there were opportunities for two approaches last year, and we should be very careful about drawing a conclusion on one that would not have put us in the best place to deal with the problems we were seeing last spring in an already very difficult circumstance.
Finally, what we clearly and obviously disagree with is the utility of the inquiry. All those who are calling for the inquiry to be brought forward and asking for additional scrutiny, as the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) rightly went on about, do not actually seem to want to scrutinise things or to be that interested in the evidence, because they have made their decisions already. The level of hyperbole, smear, rumour, gossip and assertion in this debate, from the moment it was started in that unseemly way by the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, shows that they are not interested in having a cool, calm and collected discussion about how we learn lessons, make things better and ensure the inquiry puts us in a better place if we are ever to suffer this or something similar again. They have decided what their answer is. They know what the outcome is. They know what the conclusion will be, and I certainly disagree with them on that basic premise.
Should lessons be learned? Yes, absolutely. Should an inquiry happen? Definitely. Should we do the exact opposite of what the SNP and to a lesser extent Labour have done and not seek to predetermine the outcome before we draw conclusions? I would certainly think that that was relatively sensible. Do I expect problems to be found and that things will need to be done better next time? Of course I do. That is the point of an inquiry. Will we, in a mature political democracy, acknowledge the difficulties of last spring in simply trying to ensure we had the things we needed at a time that we were never expecting and that it was never reasonable to assume would happen? Well, I certainly would, and I hope, in a cool, calm and collected way, that some of those who have engaged in hyperbole in this debate will acknowledge that too when things are not quite as political as this debate has been. Should we play political games with this? No, we should not. The one thing I agree about with the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber is that these are serious matters. They deserve to be treated with seriousness as a result.
Covid-Secure Borders
Lee Rowley Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to the debate this afternoon. I rise to speak not because I do not accept that coronavirus has created acute and challenging issues on the border, not because there are not difficulties and constraints for many people around the UK who either need or want to travel abroad and not because there are not real challenges for the aviation and transport sectors caught up in a maelstrom created by one of the most unprecedented times in our lives—there are and I absolutely accept those challenges and those difficulties, which I do not think anyone in this House would question. However, the question for this place today is not about that; it is about what the Government could do and what it was reasonable and proportionate for them to do.
In a year of difficult decisions, border policy is a particularly difficult one to get right. Too prescriptive and the United Kingdom runs the risk of withdrawing unnecessarily from the world and of leaving its key role as a member of the international community, all for limited to no economic, societal or health benefit and, compounding that—which then creates an effective Catch-22—the UK’s approach would in effect be determined by things that it does not have primary responsibility over. On the other hand, too laissez-faire, and we run the risk of squandering the great advantages we have built with vaccinations.
Given that tremendously nuanced and sensitive situation, one would hope that border policy could be determined and discussed with a similar level of nuance and sensitivity, but this is of course an Opposition day debate, and as has been the case for the four years I have been in this Chamber, such hopes are dashed each time. Frankly, the illogical arguments we have heard so far from the other side of the Chamber—so eloquently outlined by the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), who is no longer in his place—are more a reflection of how this is just another political stunt than a serious attempt to scrutinise the Government, hold them to account or provide constructive attempts to improve the policy.
In the coming weeks, we are going to be one of the first large countries in the world to be pretty much as vaccinated as we can be. In time, that should, and hopefully will, open up new opportunities so that in the coming period, when we are going to need to work meaningfully to properly restart parts of life such as international travel, we should be looking at broadening the tools at our disposal, recognising new ones and accepting that we have a set of balanced judgments to make.
Knowing full well that this is the situation, what does the Labour party propose? Not nuance, sensitivity or thought, but instead, exactly the opposite: the removal of one of the tools—one of the lights of the traffic light—that allows us to take different approaches for different countries, dependent on different situations. We can debate which countries go into which traffic light colour, but surely it is reasonable that there can be more than two options for international travel in the coming months as we try to get it going again.
Secondly, if the Labour party does want a completely binary proposition for international travel, which, by default, can be only no travel or travel, perhaps it could articulate how that is sustainable over the long term and what criteria it would apply to flick the switch from “Don’t travel” to “Do travel” with nothing in between. For countries where the risk is reducing, do we keep them on the red list longer than is necessary for no advantage to our country, or do we move them to the green list in advance of us being totally comfortable with them being there?
If the amber list is going to be abolished, how do the Opposition propose to resource that? Hotel quarantine is a difficult policy and one that appears sustainable at only a relatively small scale. As places such as Australia have shown, there is challenge and unintended consequences within that—people who cannot get home, important family or medical trips that are difficult to go on, and so on. Will Labour stop British citizens coming to the UK, and could Labour Members explain how they are seeking practically to make a policy work that is already strained for a country of 20 million people with 20 million visits and which they are now apparently seeking to try to apply to a population of 70 million, with 145 million visits?
There has also been a liberal sprinkling of references to the arrival of the Indian variant in the UK, starting with the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds), and then the hon. Member for Weaver Vale. There have been nebulous suggestions that this could have been prevented with greater border control. That is just not correct. The Labour party appears to be arguing with science. The Indian variant was here on 22 February, a full month before even the Indian Government highlighted to the international community that there was a variant. Borders were closed 22 days before the World Health Organisation declared the strain a variant of concern. Right now, according to GISAID, on a small sampling, the variant is dominant in Russia, Canada, Indonesia, Pakistan and Malaysia, and is on its way to being dominant in the USA, Japan, Thailand, Portugal, Luxembourg, Bangladesh, South Korea, Qatar, Finland and most likely many other countries. If the Labour party has a viable proposition for international travel, I would like to hear it, because it has not been articulated yet.
Covid-19
Lee Rowley Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to this debate. In doing so, I thank again everybody in North East Derbyshire for everything that they are doing. In the most difficult period of our lives, what our constituents have done, are doing and will continue to do is incredible. We will get through this together, and I thank them for everything.
Today, I want to focus on the last mile in front of us and a very vexing part of the public debate around that. It is hard to believe that only a year ago today the World Health Organisation confirmed the existence of a coronavirus in China. That year has felt like 10. The virus has turned our lives upside down repeatedly and yet, ragged, weary and older, we persist.
Even as the light draws nearer, with the vaccinations, we still have much work to do. Even with hundreds of thousands of jabs going in arms on a daily basis, suppression at this last stage remains vital. Yet every day, I am contacted by residents who remain unsure about the strategy that we are pursuing and who rightly challenge and question. They are absolutely right to do so.
Most accept the position once we discuss it.
A small number remain unsure; they want to be supportive of the Government’s actions, but they are buffeted by the continual suggestions—particularly on social media—that the virus is some kind of collective mirage. Given the siren voices on those media, I can see why the alternative view is so alluring. They suggest easy choices, benign realities and soft landings—that we are in a casedemic; that the pandemic was over in the summer. It would be fantastic if that were true, yet it is not.
This tiny, unrepresentative group, basking on past glories or extended CVs, continues to argue against reality. For a time, I thought they were valuable voices of scepticism in the debate; then, that they were just wrong. Now, I am not sure I can accord them that benign intent.
Bob Stewart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I entirely agree. It seems to me that someone does not need to go to medical school or law school or any other professional establishment to get a qualification these days; they can become a professor just by going on the internet.
Lee Rowley
I am grateful for that contribution from my hon. Friend. It highlights that just because somebody has a certain number of letters after their name or a title in front of it does not necessarily mean that we should not apply the same element of scepticism to what they say, particularly when they are saying things that are not accurate. This small group of people operate in a grey space, suggesting that because something is not happening right now, it is impossible for it to happen and that it cannot possibly be the case that there may be catastrophic outcomes if we are not careful.
I should be clear: I do not seek to silence these people. They are free and should always be free to make their statements, whether they are correct or otherwise, but I seek to highlight that they are wrong. What they assert, they must justify, and when they cannot—as was the case when I spoke to one of them directly a few months ago about repeated assertions on the inaccuracy of the PCR tests—they should be treated with the disdain that they all treat us with by making these false assertions in the first place.
Our hospitals are full. Our death statistics are high. We can see the virus in our communities. On this last mile, please do not listen to these people. We will get there and hold on. Together, we can do this.
Covid-19
Lee Rowley Excerpts(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak today.
It is incredible how quickly things change. The last time that I properly spoke in this Chamber about coronavirus was in September when virus rates were lower, restrictions were looser and hospitals were emptier. Covid continues to dominate us in a way that we never wanted it to do and our lives remain shaped by the battle against it. Throughout it all, however, there has been one constant: the continuing resolve of everyone to get through this.
I want to say thank you to everyone in North East Derbyshire. We know how difficult this is. We know that our ability to work, to love, to live, and to offer support are being affected every single day, and we are grateful for their forbearance at this difficult time. And in the past few days, the reason for that endurance is becoming clearer. Our job of suppressing the virus was never for nothing. All along, we have been building a bridge to a time when we have other weapons to fight this problem, and the announcements of this week may be showing that we are actually starting to get there. Light is on the horizon, yet we know that we will not get there immediately. Even if solutions are coming, we still face soul-searching questions.
The first big question remaining will be one of evidence. Every day, massive decisions are being made on our behalf and we are grappling with the foundations upon which these are made. In searching for evidence, we face a blizzard of data and hypotheses. Right now, within a few clicks, the web will tell us both that the case fatality rate is negligible and that it is substantial, that tests work and that they do not, that masks are life-savers and that they can be life-takers. Should we wish, we can literally choose our facts, even though only one set of those premises is actually true. It is no wonder that constituents are confused.
That goes to the second challenge that also bedevils us: uncertainty. Our natural instinct is to recoil from ambiguity, yet this virus forces us to deal with it. There is uncertainty about how it works and how it will act in the winter. The virus forces us to make decisions now on the basis of what might happen in 40 days’ time. It is a challenging mix, which, quite understandably, has worn people down. Yet our job is to deal with the world as it is, not how we wish it to be. For those residents who are frustrated or anxious, I say that I am, too. But if there were a quick answer, it would have been found already. If there were a single solution, it would have been used. We are here because, for now, we think that what we are doing is proportionate and the least worst option while we wait for the alternatives, and those alternatives are coming. This cannot, must not, will not last forever, but, for the first time in our history, we may actually be able to turn back a pandemic in mid-flow. If that happens, it will be the most remarkable test of our ingenuity, our resolve and our willingness to get there. I say hold on, we will get there.
Covid-19 Restrictions: South Yorkshire
Lee Rowley Excerpts(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Edward Argar
The hon. Gentleman knows I have huge respect for him—indeed, a huge fondness for him —but I am afraid I cannot agree with what he says. We have been working very closely in a collegiate way with local authorities. It is absolutely right that, alongside that negotiation or discussion on the package and support they need, we recognise that we have to be fair and proportionate across other regions that are in the same tier. We have to ensure that the approach we are adopting, which we are, is both fair and proportionate.
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
North East Derbyshire sits on the outskirts of South Yorkshire and many towns and villages, such as Dronfield, Eckington, Killamarsh and Ridgeway, look towards Sheffield for work and education. For the benefit of those residents, will the Minister confirm that there has been no change to the tier level in North East Derbyshire, that the rules remain the same unless those residents are travelling to Sheffield and that North East Derbyshire will continue to be dealt with on an independent basis, while working closely with Sheffield when we review our tier status in future?
Edward Argar
As my hon. Friend knows, I know Dronfield having spent a very happy day there with him in the course of his successful election campaign. I can reassure him that the situation, as I stand here, remains exactly as he sets out.
Covid-19
Lee Rowley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to this timely and important debate in the place where I thought I was supposed to be contributing.
I come to this debate as a self-professed libertarian Conservative, and somebody who strongly believes that states are most effective when they tend to concentrate on doing some things well, rather than lots of things badly. I want to explain why I as a libertarian can be supportive of the measures that have been taken by the Government, and I want to explain to those who share my ideological views or just those who are frustrated at the moment, whose views have come into all of our inboxes, why I think what we are doing is proportionate and appropriate.
There are two times when I think that big states and big governments are appropriate: one is in a time of war, which I hope none of us in this Chamber ever has to go through, and the second is in a public health emergency, and we are in a public health emergency. The virus exists; it is not flu, as some of my constituents seem to want to tell me. It transmits: it transmits well in social scenarios, and for a small but very important number of people, it creates very difficult outcomes and can be fatal at certain points. That is a public health emergency by any definition.
We can debate the approach, we can debate the enforcement, we can debate the scrutiny and we can debate the strategy, but I do not think we can debate those facts. We should debate the enforcement, we should debate the scrutiny and we should debate the approach, and when we are debating that, I look at it from two principles: one of liberty and one of risk. On the liberty point, I am a strong proponent of freedom and choice and bringing them to as many people and as many constituents as I possibly can. But the ability to have the freedom to do things comes with the requirement not to harm others. It is that second part of the principle of liberty that we need to ensure that people understand. There is an externality in terms of what we do on a day-to-day basis. If we do not ensure that that externality is understood and regulated, then we are not only constraining our freedom but will potentially extinguish the freedom of others.
Lee Rowley
I am so grateful to my hon. Friend; I did not even ask him to do that.
The second point is one of risk. I recognise that this is a nuanced and difficult discussion where there are no clear-cut answers for us all. This debate, I accept, has been unbalanced over the past few months during coronavirus. We have had a focus on some of the short-term, hugely important and hugely tragic issues—my own family have faced some of those—whereas the more hidden, longer-term consequences of similar things that we are debating and discussing are often not brought to the fore because it is more difficult to do and more difficult to articulate. It is a question of the level of risk that we as a society are willing to tolerate.
We cannot tolerate zero risk. I have zero time for the members of the Independent SAGE who populate the pages of The Guardian with the idea that zero cases is somehow achievable. It is an impossibility, and we should cease to even entertain it as a serious idea in solving the problem that is in front of us. By the same token, we cannot have complete risk. We cannot have complete freedom to do things, because of the externality that I spoke about. That means, ultimately, that we need a proportionate approach. For now, based on what we know, and understanding the challenges that we face, the Government’s strategy is proportionate. It accepts that there are challenges and problems, and it is trying to balance those.
We may find out more in the next few weeks about whether there will be changes to how the virus is moving, we may find out in the next few months whether we have a solution to this, and perhaps we will have to change strategy in the future as a consequence. But we have to be honest with people: there is no straightforward answer to this. There is no absolute science. There are no easy comparisons with other countries, and people should be very careful about making those. There is no constraint on liberty that can last for ever. Ultimately, no laws, no edicts and no enforcement can boil down to what we all need to do as individuals and citizens, which is to do our best for ourselves, our community and our society as a whole. For those who value liberty and agree to a temporary constraint for others, for community and for society, I support that, but not for one minute longer than is necessary, not for one more person than is required, and not for one more element of society that we need to change as a result.
Covid-19
Lee Rowley Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Like so many Members who have spoken in the Chamber and by video link, I want to start by paying tribute to all the work that has been done in my constituency over the last few difficult months. In particular, I want to put on record my thanks to everybody at Chesterfield Royal Hospital who has dealt so brilliantly with such a challenging time, to the healthcare workers in the community, to the people working in our GP surgeries across the towns and villages of North East Derbyshire, to the pharmacists who have been in touch and are working hard, and to everybody working in our care homes and social care settings across north Derbyshire. My thanks go out to all those who are working so hard at this incredibly difficult time.
And it goes beyond that. I also want to thank the people working in our jobcentres in Chesterfield and Staveley, those who are helping in our schools to allow the sons and daughters of keyworkers to continue, and our local councils. Derbyshire County Council has been ensuring that the people who need to shield—of whom there are 1 million across the country—by staying out of the community for their own safety get the medicines and food that they need. North East Derbyshire District Council has done some wonderful work over the last few weeks, contacting those who are self-isolating to make sure that they get the support and help they need and to check up on people where necessary. I am incredibly grateful for all the work that has been done.
The little acts of kindness are particularly important, and I want to mention a few that have come through my inbox in the last few days alone—the PPE that is being created by Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School and St Mary’s at the moment; the pupils of New Whittington Community Primary School who have done a video to say thank you to their teachers; Mrs Shelagh Cheetham and her friends, who have made thousands of pieces of PPE for local hospitals and healthcare settings; and James Cutts from Wingerworth, who goes on his daily run around the village not in normal running wear but in a Batman or Superman suit, to cheer up local children when he goes past their windows. I am grateful for all that they are doing, and I hope that they continue.
In the time I have left, I want to spend a few moments looking at the broader challenge that we face. Members have raised many different questions today. Some are fair questions. Some, in my view, are unfair questions, but I understand why they are being asked. A series of broader truths has come forward over the past few weeks. We live in unprecedented times. There is no absolute certainty in decisions, and fundamentally, it reminds us all of the frailty of humanity. We think that we control our environment. Actually, our environment controls us. However brilliant our science, however able our politics and however fantastic our communities, ultimately, decisions are sometimes beyond us.
We have done so much over the past couple of months to get on top of this virus, and I am confident that we will do more in the coming days, weeks and months. This is the first pandemic in a century that we have had to deal with, and it is the first pandemic in a globalised world. We are seeking to do something that has never been done in the history of humanity: to turn back the tide of a pandemic and stop it overwhelming us. We have made huge progress, and I am grateful to everybody for the work they have done. Together, we will continue to do that work, and together, we will get through this, to a better world at the end.
NHS Funding Bill
Lee Rowley ExcerptsTuesday 4th February 2020
(4 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Legislative Grand Committee (England) Amendments as at 4 February 2020 - (4 Feb 2020)
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
Members across the House have spoken about the importance of unanimity of purpose on mental health and maternity, but I want to speak against amendments 2 and 5, for the simple reason that this funding, although so welcome and necessary in my constituency—and those of Members across the House—will be useless to my constituents unless it results in improved outcomes. Rather than talking about ring-fencing funding for specific things, we should be talking about outcomes—what they mean for our constituents, and how we make their healthcare better.
My hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) and for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) raised similar points. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) rightly drew attention to the ambitious targets in the NHS long term plan. Those are the targets that we should be tracking ourselves against. Those are the targets that we should be talking about, and we should monitor whether the improved funding has enabled us to make progress against them. We should not just talk about whether to put a certain amount of money into a certain pot; on its own, it makes no sense and will not make anyone’s life better. The main point I want to make is that we should focus on outcomes rather than forever tracking inputs that do not improve our constituents’ lives.
The NHS long term plan has some very ambitious targets for maternity and mental health. I shall dwell on the target to achieve 50% reductions in stillbirth, maternal mortality, neonatal mortality and serious brain injury by 2025. It is incredibly important, and it is crucial that the House is updated on our progress against it. We shall do that, yes, through funding, but funding linked with policies that will drive that outcome and drive improvements.
I want to focus on midwives and maternity care. Under the coalition Government, a commitment was made to give each mother a named midwife. That is obviously extremely important, both for the mental health of the mother and for her care, because it means that there is someone who, throughout, is observing how that woman is doing—understanding how she has changed from one appointment to the next. It is not just a tick-box exercise, with a person who has never met the mother before looking at a list and saying, “Have you actually done this? Then you must be fine.” It is a person looking at the woman and thinking, “Actually, is this someone who needs a bit of help—whose mental health has deteriorated since the last appointment, who is looking a little bit more anxious?” Ring-fencing the funding is not enough in itself.
In addition, the long term plan talks about the shortage of neonatal capacity. As someone who has had the misfortune to have to use a neonatal unit recently, I know the tragic and immense strain that the movement of babies can put on parents who have to use neonatal units. We absolutely must put this money into expanding capacity in our neonatal units, and try to ensure that parents are assured that when they move into high-dependency units, they will never be downgraded because of capacity. That is incredibly important.
My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) spoke very movingly about the issues that she had in her trust. Moving forward with policies such as these will prevent any repeat of such issues.
On a linked issue, it is important that we look at outcomes for multiple births. Neonatal capacity is part of that, but in addition the Twins Trust has been doing fantastic work in terms of a maternity checklist, which has been piloted by a number of trusts but not yet all. We can look at funnelling some of the money into increasing those trials. That will drive outcomes, which is what we are all here to ensure.
Finally, I want to mention money for anaesthetists. We talk about mental health outcomes for mothers. Part of the problem has been that, according to frightening reports, women who are in terrible need of pain relief during childbirth have not been able to get it. That is a cultural issue in some trusts. They seem to view childbirth as different from having an operation on one’s leg. I would like to see anyone who would undergo an operation on any other part of their body without pain relief, but that seems to be something that some trusts believe women are able to do, and it is wrong. Investment in anaesthetists, and funnelling money into that area of the NHS, is incredibly important.
To summarise: outcomes, please, not just pots of money. That will make everyone’s constituents’ lives better.
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), not least because her last sentence is what the next 10 minutes of my speech are about. [Interruption.] I am sure many Members probably want me to sit down now, but I will continue none the less.