Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

Debate between Mary Glindon and Jim Cunningham

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is probably necessary for the Government to bring proposals to the House for us to consider? There is not a lot of understanding about the disease outside the House and the public could be better informed, whichever way the decision goes.

[Mrs Glindon]

I agree. There is probably not enough understanding within the House, either.

The Minister had previously said:

“licensed fertility clinics are only required to report instances of OHSS to the authority that require a hospital admission with a severe grading, although in practice clinics often report moderate OHSS as well.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 157W.]

The figures that do exist indicate there has been a small recent increase both in the total number of recorded cases and in those cases categorised as “severe” rather than “moderate”. About 50,000 women go through IVF in the UK each year. The fact that we do not collect proper data on a potentially life-threatening condition that may affect a third of them, seems an astonishing oversight in the collection of official health statistics. Mandatory reporting of all cases is an essential first step in this process, but should only be the start of more effective and careful collection of statistics.

This issue has a particular pertinence at present because of proposed changes to the law on mitochondrial transfer and the Government’s stated intention to allow the creation of three-parent embryos. I am sure that many Members may be struggling to get to grips with the details of this procedure, but simply put both of the techniques used in mitochondrial transfer require a significant supply of donor eggs. Any such eggs will have to come from women who have been through controlled ovarian hyper-stimulation, with all the attendant risks.

amendment of the law

Debate between Mary Glindon and Jim Cunningham

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The tragedy of the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) is that he actually believes what he said. I think that we need to be a bit more realistic now. For the past four years, we have heard the Conservatives blaming the previous Labour Government for the economic recession—[Interruption.] If Members want to follow North Korean doctrines such as that of the “Dear Leader”, they should just carry on, but let us get a little bit real.

The recession started in America. I am sure that my colleagues remember Lehman Brothers and Fannie Mae. In this country, we had a problem with Northern Rock, which the Labour Government tried to address. All of this talk about us running up a deficit is nonsense. Basically, we had to save the banks. When the Labour Government came to power in 1997, they cleared the national debt. They inherited the policy of 50p of every pound paid in tax going to pay off the national debt; crumbling schools; patients waiting for treatment in hospitals on trolleys; and declining manufacturing, especially in Coventry and the west midlands. Coventry was losing thousands of manufacturing jobs a week, and household names such as Standard Triumph were disappearing. I am sure that my colleagues remember that.

The previous Tory Government attempted to rebalance the economy. They moved from manufacturing for export to the service industries, which led to the crisis of 2008. When we left office, we still had our triple A rating. We had introduced low interest rates to help families and pensioners and quantitative easing to help the economy and we had bailed out the banks to protect savings. Growth was returning. We had persuaded George Bush, an American Republican conservative President, to pump billions into the American economy.

When the present Government were in Opposition, they said that they would maintain our spending levels. They opposed freedom for the Bank of England and said that the economy was over-regulated and that they wanted to cut red tape. That was their solution to a worldwide crisis that started in America and spread across the world. Their plan was to pretend that it was confined to Britain so that they could blame the previous Labour Government and justify breaking their election promises to the British people.

We must remember that 13 million people are still living below the poverty line in the UK and that 350,000 people used a food bank last year. Energy prices are high, housing is inadequate, wages are low and the Government are offering nothing at a time when many people are suffering. The Government have very little to offer.

My first major problem with the Budget is that it is extremely unfair to our young people—a group who have been undervalued and forgotten by this Government. The Government should be ashamed of how they have simply abandoned a whole generation, who will suffer the most during this recession. Some 282,000 people under the age of 25 have been jobless for a year or more. That figure is at its highest since 1993 and has almost tripled since 2008. More than 900,000 young people are still out of work. That is a serious problem and the Government seem completely complacent about it.

The Government are pleased about the employment picture, but they have not considered the experience of young people in this country. What about young people who can find only part-time work? What about young people who have work, but in a different field from that in which they are trained, or for which they are overqualified? The Local Government Association has warned that a third of all young people will be out of work or trapped in underemployment by 2018 if we are not careful.

A young person’s first job is just a statistic to this Government, but someone’s early career can make a huge difference to their life. For someone who went to university, studied hard and hoped for a job in a particular field, it can be highly disheartening to work in a non-graduate job or a completely unrelated field. Nearly half of recent graduates are in non-graduate jobs. That can be a blight on their future in competitive industries.

Similarly, when people are burdened with financial pressures, being able to find only part-time work is a problem. We are talking about hard-working, driven young people who want to get on but instead spend their whole lives in jobs that are well below their capacity. Yet the Government smugly pat themselves on the back for the employment figures.

Our young people are being abandoned. If the Government do not see that as a serious problem and begin to take action, we are looking at a lost generation. That reminds me all too well of life for young people under Thatcher.

The Government’s flagship Youth Contract has been declared a failure by their own advisers and the Work programme is finding work for only one in six of the long-term unemployed. That is simply not good enough. Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee scheme, which would be funded by a tax on bank bonuses, would ensure a paid job for every young person under 25 who was out of work for more than a year.

It looks to me as though the Government have given up on young people, perhaps because they think that they have not forgotten about tuition fees, or perhaps because they know that Labour will give the vote to 16-year-olds and they will not. Either way, they have simply decided that the youth vote is not worth chasing and they are going after pensioners instead. That is disgraceful. Young people are being forgotten. A Government should be a Government for everybody, not just for the people who might vote for them or the people who they are afraid might vote for the UK Independence party. That is no way to run an economy.

The Budget does shockingly little to address the fact that women are so unfairly hit by the cuts. Women are bearing the brunt of the cuts and the Budget is no exception.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Women form the majority of employees in the public sector, so the cuts to that sector are doubly affecting women. Does that not show that the Government are going about this in an unfair way?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Jim Cunningham

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

15. What assessment he has made of the effect of spending reductions in each fire and rescue service area.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

16. What assessment he has made of the effect of spending reductions in each fire and rescue service area.