Covid-19 Update

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I love the idea of work out to help out. It is undoubtedly true, from the science that I have seen, that obesity contributes to a worse impact for those who catch coronavirus. This is something the Prime Minister has spoken about with great passion, and it is something we want to tackle, so I will absolutely look into that idea. I would also say that we have changed the proposals for people who are shielding, even in the highest risk, tier 3 areas, who should always be clear that outdoor exercise is a good thing.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

My constituents are being denied routine blood tests because the Swiss company, Roche, that supplies the labs in Bedford is having supply chain issues. If one company with one supply chain problem can cause a national shortage of medical components that are vital to patient care for at least three weeks, is the Secretary of State as concerned as I am about the disruption to medical supply chains during a pandemic when we leave the EU in just over two months?

[Matt Hancock]

We have prepared for years to ensure that we have the supplies that are needed, and I have of course been in contact with Roche over this distribution issue. It is actually an issue about distribution from a warehouse in England, and these distribution issues do happen from time to time in very large organisations such as the NHS. We are working closely with Roche, and I thank it for all its efforts to solve this technical problem.

Coronavirus

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, mental health services absolutely are open and people who need support with mental ill health should come forward. They should go to their GP in the first instance. The good news in this area is that telemedicine is particularly effective for psychiatry. Of course, it cannot be effective for all mental illnesses, but it can for many, and it is being used very effectively by psychiatrists across the country.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]]

The initial findings of the investigation into Bedford’s now decreasing infection rate shows that women between 30 and 59 have been most affected. Will the Secretary of State remind everyone that this invisible virus does not just affect the older generation? Does he agree that the published data must include details on ethnicity, the older generation and workplace factors if we are to eliminate the virus and keep the public safe?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes; we are publishing more and more data about the virus and who has caught it, in the same way that we are giving more and more information to directors of public health so that they can use it for the same purposes. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that the virus does not only affect those who are older. Although more people who are older tend to die from the disease, anybody can transmit it, and that is the big risk. I am glad to say that the numbers of cases in Bedford are coming down. We keep a watchful eye to ensure that that continues to be the case.

Covid-19 Response

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, of course I can. I will take that up immediately and we will try to get a resolution. Thankfully, we have the testing capacity to be able to resolve such problems.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) [V]]

One of my constituents has written to me as a worried grandmother and the mother of a teacher. When scientists are divided over the coronavirus risk for children and how they might spread the virus, is this grandmother not right to ask me why Parliament is virtually empty due to social distancing measures, but her grandchild, who is least able to socially distance, is expected to return to school?

[Matt Hancock]

We have taken a cautious, balanced and safety-first approach to restarting schools. That is why we have we taken the approach of just three years being proposed for return in the first instance, to ensure that there can be more social distancing at schools. Of course, as the father of three small children I get that that is more challenging than among adults, but it is necessary. The approach that we propose is safe and is signed off by medical advisers as safe. Of course, because there is hardly any impact on children of this disease—a very small number of children are badly affected—that means that parents can be confident that if they send their child to school, it is a safe environment for them.

Covid-19

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I have discussed that point with my German counterpart, and I am afraid that I wish there was something we could learn because it is important. We think that the reason for the difference in ratio is that the early cases in Germany were largely people who had been skiing in northern Italy and therefore were more healthy, whereas the mortality of this disease is very strongly correlated with age.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I live with my 80-year-old mother, my wife who has a heart condition, my daughter and sons, who attend educational settings, and my three-year-old grandson. What advice can the Secretary of State give to multi-generational households such as mine, where self-isolation is not a viable option and alternatives are far from obvious?

[Matt Hancock]

That point is incredibly important and is directly addressed in the advice that will be on the gov.uk website.

Nursing Workforce Shortage: England

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the nursing workforce shortage in England.

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I start by recognising the skills and expertise that nurses bring. Nursing shortages impact on patient care and staff wellbeing. Wherever there are people, there are nursing staff. They work in public services, across the NHS, social care, public health and the independent sector. They are with us at every stage in life, from birth to death. I am grateful for all that health and care staff do in my constituency and across the country.

This debate was secured in response to petitions handed in by nurses from the Royal College of Nursing, calling on the Government to fix the workforce crisis. I am pleased to be their voice—and that of everyone who works in the health profession—in Westminster today, and call on the Government to do all they can to tackle nursing shortages, which have huge knock-on effects on our NHS and wider health and care system, as well as on patient safety and staff wellbeing.

There are about 40,000 nursing vacancies in health and care services in England. In my region, the east of England, the nurse vacancy rate is 10.7%, which amounts to more than 3,600 nurses. Worryingly, the vacancy rate for mental health nurses in my region is even higher, at 15.3%. Nurses are crucial in health promotion and improving population health, yet the numbers of health visitors, school nurses, community nurses and district nurses have dropped at a rapid rate and are in long-term decline. We need to see significant growth in the NHS cancer workforce as well.

I expect that the Minister will tell me that almost 8,000 more nurses work in the NHS since this time last year. Although that figure is correct, it must, as with all stats, be viewed in the relevant context. That is a growth rate of just 0.4%, which is nowhere near the scale needed to provide enough nurses now or in the future. The pace of growth is not sufficient to reassure patients that we have a workforce ready to meet their needs, and it is nowhere near the rate needed to cope with the increasing demands that are predicted to be placed on the NHS by our ageing population.

For every NHS nurse employed in hospitals last year, there was an equivalent of 214 admissions. Patient need is rising faster than the growth in our nursing workforce. Social care and public health are also without thousands more nurses. It is difficult to calculate the number of vacancies in those settings because the data is incomplete. We have no understanding of plans to support and fund social care, which I hope the new Minister will confirm are a priority.

Nursing shortages directly impact on patient safety. Even with the small increase in staff numbers, hospitals and other services are struggling more than ever. Last week, the RCN published findings from a survey of emergency care nurses, who are increasingly forced to provide care in corridors. Some 95% of survey respondents said that patient dignity is compromised, and 92% worry that patients may be receiving unsafe care. December saw the worst performances on record for A&E departments in England, with every single department failing to meet the four-hour waiting time target. Those stats should alarm us all. Chronic underfunding has led us to this point.

Trust papers from Bedford Hospital, a district general in my area, show just how intense the pressures are on our frontline workers. Staff are doing as much as they can to keep patients safe and to provide high-quality care, but the situation is outside their control. Staffing shortages are systemic, and addressing them requires political will and action.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions staffing shortages. My vast and remote constituency, which has a large and ageing population and is the most remote mainland constituency in the UK, has problems not only with recruitment but particularly with retention. Health is devolved to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, but as and when the UK Government develop an approach to keeping people in the most remote and rural areas, where they are needed most, I hope that that intelligence will be shared with the Scottish Government.

[Mohammad Yasin]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There are nursing shortages in every part of the country, and nurses are struggling to provide good care. I will come to that point in a moment.

Nursing shortages also impact on staff wellbeing. One testimony from an emergency nurse describes the realities of working in the profession:

“When I witnessed elderly patients being assisted onto bed pans while on ambulance trolleys, surrounded by paramedics, other patients on trolleys, and relatives all squashed in a freezing corridor…I realised that I can no longer preserve or protect my patient’s dignity, and that I am failing them as a nurse. Dignity is the first thing that the patients are stripped of when in a queue in a dark, cold corridor, closely followed by safety.”

Sharon, a community nurse who recently responded to a House of Commons digital debate on this Westminster Hall debate, said:

“I have worked in my locality for four and a half years. In that time, we have never been fully staffed. This puts enormous pressure on the whole team and many people have left because of it. Often, we are rushed, we forget things, and we cannot give the quality of care that we would like as we are just too thinly spread. Many of us end catching up on our notes or management at home, working way over our contracted hours. We are exhausted, frustrated and disappointed.”

This is an appalling situation for all concerned, and I know from these responses that this happens daily in hospitals up and down the country. Talk of a winter crisis is meaningless when staff and patients experience crisis every day, all year round. We must all focus on fixing this.

There is a long-term plan for the NHS, but its ambitions are dependent on having enough nurses. We have no funded workforce plan, even though it was promised by the Government when they announced the funding allocations back in the summer of 2018. Will the Minister tell us when the long-promised NHS people plan will be published, and whether it will include bold and funded policies to recruit, train and retain vital nursing staff to meet the needs of our population?

Nursing students in England can receive grants of up to £5,000 a year, and for some they can go up to £8,000. However, these do not reflect the true cost of living. Just as importantly, tuition fees are also a huge burden on nursing students, and it is important that this is addressed in the forthcoming Budget. As a father of four, I believe that financial barriers to education must be removed.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes some important points about the pressures facing nursing in England and the cost of living. Does he agree that one way that this could be resolved is by supporting bursaries and offering more financial support to student nurses? The Welsh Labour Government have kept those throughout this entire period, ensuring that the bursary was not scrapped in Wales.

[Mohammad Yasin]

My hon. Friend is right. Cuts to bursaries have impacted hugely on the recruitment of new staff. The Welsh Government did the right thing in a difficult situation. If we do not look after our staff, it will be hard for them to stay in the profession. That is why we have a shortage of nurses.

As a father of four children, I believe that financial barriers to education must be removed so that everyone who wants to go to university can do so, particularly those who want to become nurses. We should encourage young people to train in these critical professions. Why are the Government putting up barriers to young people who will go on to contribute such vital services to society and saddling them with huge debts before they have begun working?

This problem has been years in the making. Such stark shortages do not occur out of the blue. In England these shortages are due to the complexities of political decisions and structural issues.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

As has been mentioned, these issues are compounded in rural areas, where we have problems with recruitment and retention. A cottage hospital called Stratton in my constituency has just had its minor injuries unit closed overnight due to nurse shortages. What more can we do to promote staff retention across the whole of the UK?

[Mohammad Yasin]

The Government must listen to nurses and the Royal College of Nursing. They are pleading for the Government to act now. Getting nursing bursaries back in action might help, but the problem is now so deep that we must take urgent action to tackle it.

This problem has been around for a long time. It is not a short-term problem. It will affect us in the long term unless we act now. Who is responsible for the health and care workforce? It is shocking that no one is. There is no clarity in law on the role of and responsibility and accountability for growing and developing our health and care workforce, or the various layers that drive our health and care services.

A nurse walking on to a short-staffed shift has no option but to carry on. The buck stops with them. They carry the professional, physical and emotional impact. Nurses have no power to recruit more staff. That is true of all professionals in our taxpayer-funded health and care services, including nurses, medics, physiotherapists, psychologists, social workers, support workers and many others. The Government should be accountable for the provision of the labour market that staffs our health and care services. The taxpayer must be assured that the services they have paid for are safe and effective.

The former MP for Wolverhampton South West, Eleanor Smith, who is also a nurse, was here last summer setting out the same concerns. This is the 37th debate on workforce issues in health and care services since 2017, and it will not be the last. In recent responses to parliamentary questions, the Government have considered the merits of safe staffing legislation and ways to close the workforce accountability gap. The Royal College of Nursing has been campaigning, along with several other health organisations, for accountability to be secured in legislation, so the Government’s consideration is welcome.

The long-term plan Bill is the way to make progress on that agenda, but it must include an explicit framework for the role of and responsibility and accountability for workforce supply and planning at all levels at which decisions are made across the system, including the Government. Achieving accountability in law provides an opportunity to safely staff our health and care services in the future. I hope the Minister will commit to safe staffing legislation for England and update us on what her Department is doing to ensure that the NHS long-term plan Bill is forthcoming. Will that Bill explicitly provide for accountability for workforce provision?

I suspect the Minister will want to discuss the Government’s promise of 50,000 more nurses over five years. We have heard a lot about that commitment but not in detail. How will 50,000 more nurses be recruited, especially when the Government appear to be ramping up the hostile environment rhetoric and making the UK as unattractive a place as possible to come and work? The loss of many NHS workers from the EU is a tragedy.

Bedford Hospital had to recruit 237 nurses from Australia, India and elsewhere to fill vacancies left largely by EU nurses who left because of their fears for the future and the ill treatment they received in the UK. It is a testament to the hard work of the hospital’s chief executive, Stephen Conroy, that, despite those staffing difficulties, the hospital is projected to reach full recruitment of band 5 nurses for the first time in many years, but that will be achieved only by recruiting nurses from overseas.

We also need to increase capacity in clinical placements, to support nursing students at universities. How will the Government achieve that? How many nurses do the Government expect to retain? When will the Government publish their plan in full? Will the Secretary of State report on progress made in this Parliament?

This year, the World Health Organisation is celebrating the first ever year of the nurse and the midwife, at a time when the spotlight is on the nursing profession across the globe. As their elected representatives, we must stand with them and celebrate this diverse and dynamic profession. I will do everything possible to ensure that our health services are staffed safely. It must be a priority for us all. The problems are well known. The evidence continues to mount. We need decisive action, but we are not getting it from a Government drowning in Brexit uncertainty. Nursing staff need action now, as do their patients. We cannot wait any longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mohammad Yasin]

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this important debate, and thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), and the Minister, for their responses.

To be honest, I am disappointed with the Minister’s response. We have heard it many times before. It is time to take solid action. I ask her to read the responses to the digital engagement team’s survey, because she will be shocked by people’s comments, which should be an eye-opener for the Government. We are in crisis when it comes to nursing vacancies and getting nurses into jobs. The Government need to take action now, before it is too late. We cannot afford any more delays.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the nursing workforce shortage in England.

Health and Social Care

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow), who made important points about the need in our health and social care system. I look forward to working together to make this Government realise how important health and social care are for the people of this country.

The NHS is in crisis. Trusts across the country are under considerable strain as they seek to absorb additional demands for care, caused largely by the cuts that this Government have made since 2010 and the more than 100,000 vacancies in the NHS workforce. In December, we learned that A&E performance had dropped to 79.8% against the four-hour standard—the worst figures since records began. The Government’s response was not to fix the problem but to scrap the target, which could lead to a near-catastrophic impact on patient safety.

Health and social care provision have been decimated by this Government. We hear the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary crowing about making the “biggest ever cash investment” in the NHS in England. It is too little, too late—and I do not believe that it is true. The Prime Minister announced that 40 new hospitals would be built, and then we found out that there would be only six. It is nowhere near the biggest funding injection in the NHS in real terms when inflation is taken into account. The truth is that, prior to 2010, the long-term funding increases in the NHS were 4% per year. The Tories’ commitment is an increase of just 3.1%, and there have been huge cuts to social care.

We were promised a new plan for social care in December 2016, but still we have nothing. The Prime Minister previously said that he had prepared a “clear plan” to fix the social care crisis. Now we know that there is no plan, let alone a clear one. Last year, 34,860 people died while waiting for a decision on their application for social care. To think that social care could be fobbed off for up to another five years is a disaster for the 1.5 million people who cannot get the care they need today, a disaster for those in my constituency who must travel tens of miles to access in-patient mental health care, and a disaster for patients in my constituency who struggle to access GP services.

The NHS is seeing the first sustained fall in GP numbers in the UK for 50 years. Large workloads and feelings of demoralisation are behind a surge in the number of GPs wanting to quit. It is clear that the Government must be more ambitious in their GP training plans, because right now, eight out of 10 GPs feel unable to deliver safe care. Patients are waiting weeks to get an appointment and are being put at risk.

The investment promised by this Government may well keep our health service on life support, but the service needs real investment to meet the needs of the future and deliver the improvements we want to see to keep our patients safe.

[Several hon. Members rose—]