Brain Tumour Research Funding

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Seven Members are trying to catch my eye. I will start the wind-ups at 4.30 pm. That will mean eight minutes for Back Benchers, 10 minutes for the two wind-ups and then two minutes for Mr Thomas. If we stick to the eight-minute mark, everyone will get roughly the same time, so I ask everyone please to show some consideration for their colleagues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I actually got it wrong. There are only two wind-ups of 10 minutes each, plus two minutes for Derek Thomas, so Members have a bit more than eight minutes. Just don’t go wildly over, please. I call Siobhain McDonagh.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I crave the indulgence of the House for the speech that I am about to make.

On 27 November 2021, my beautiful, unique, tough, resilient, successful sister collapsed in front of me and had a series of fits. Five hours later, in University College Hospital, two doctors named Henry told me that they suspected that she had a brain tumour, but as this was the NHS, MRI scans were not done at the weekend, so they could not confirm their diagnosis. On Wednesday, when I stepped on to her ward, she demanded—and everybody here who knows her will be able to hear her say it—that I ask the ward doctor to come and speak to her. She said, “It’s bad, Siobhain, because he can’t look at me.” And it was.

For the woman who had run Labour’s only two consecutive successful general election campaigns, and achieved her ultimate ambition to see two full-term Labour Governments, the diagnosis was of a glioblastoma. All her toughness evaporated, and there was my little sister with a diagnosis that meant that she might have nine months left—a condition for which there was no cure, for which treatment had not made progress in over 30 years. Just before Christmas, she had the tumours removed by two amazing female surgeons, Róisín Finn and Anna Miserocchi at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, but this was post Brexit, so there were not enough nurses to keep all the operating theatres open, and Margaret’s operation was cancelled three times. I leave it to Members to guess my reaction to that, and how we got that operation in the end.

The best piece of advice I have ever received in my life, and I have received many bits of good advice, was from the clinical nurse specialist. When we asked her where Margaret should go for post-operative treatment— St George’s, down the road from where we live; the Royal Marsden, around the corner; or to stay at University College—Róisín said, “We have Professor Paul Mulholland, and he is the best. He is the best in the UK, and he is the best in Europe.” I want to confirm to the House that he is the best. He is why Margaret is still alive.

What you get when you have your tumour removed, if you live that long—many people do not—is six weeks’ radiotherapy, followed by six months’ chemotherapy with a drug called temozolomide. That drug was introduced in 2005, and since then there have been no variations to the gold-standard treatment in our NHS, so when you read articles such as the one in The Times on Monday, telling us all how successful cancer treatment in the UK is—how 85% of people with a breast cancer diagnosis, 55% of people with a bowel cancer diagnosis, and 98% of people with a prostate cancer diagnosis will get to live for 10 years—do not believe that it is the same for brain cancer. The Times may have chosen a brain as the photograph for the top of the article, but those statistics do not apply.

Margaret had her treatment in early new year 2022; like so many, she could not go through with it—the treatment would have killed her. At that point, where do you go? There were no alternatives. It is not that there are a few trials: there are no trials, and there is nowhere to go. So, like so many of us who are lucky enough to have friends and family and access to money, we looked to the private sector and international travel. Margaret has been on a course of treatment with nivolumab, a Bristol Myers Squibb drug that was seen to be unsuccessful in the treatment of brain cancer, and Avastin, and has been going monthly to Düsseldorf, Germany for four days. That might seem an easy thing to do, but taking a seriously ill person on an aeroplane to a hotel, with no access to healthcare and no emergency services, would be foolhardy unless there was nothing else in this country. There was, and is, nothing.

The help that we received from Dr Sahinbas and his wife, who runs their small clinic in Germany, with hyperthermic treatment was amazing. Their kindness was overwhelming, but there were times when I thought that I would not be able to get Margaret on the plane—that somebody would stop her because she was so unwell. There was one night when I stayed and stared at her, because I did not think she was going to make it through the night, and how would I explain that to anybody?

By June 2022, Margaret had a scan, and they could not see the tumour. When I asked Dr Mulholland, “Is this normal for this treatment?”, he said, “Normal? I have never tried this on anybody before.” Nobody has ever had this drug so early in their treatment or at the quantity that Margaret has had it, or at the same time as hyperthermia therapy. Those who know about Margaret’s experience have come to me and sought support from Dr Mulholland because there is nothing else. The number that the NHS is currently forsaking and, for the lucky people who can get the funds to do it, abandoning to international travel is nothing short of a complete and utter national scandal. I wonder what my mum who came here in 1947 to train as part of the first generation of NHS nurses from Ireland would say about the NHS abandoning her daughter.

But things can be different. Things can be better—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, and maybe not within Margaret’s lifetime—and they can be different if we want them to be different. I ask the Minister to please not give the NHS or the cancer research charities any more money until they guarantee that at least 200 sufferers every year get access to a trial—that would be 1,000 patients over the lifetime of a Parliament—because with those trials we can begin to understand what works and what does not.

The Minister should give no more money to the NHS trainers until they commit that every young doctor training to be a medical oncologist has to go through a course on brain tumour. At the moment, there is no compulsory training. The reason why there is nobody on those wards and nobody doing the work is that we are training nobody, and we are training nobody because nobody is required to do the course, and it was like that 15 years ago with melanoma. Some 15 years ago, the survival rates were so poor, but somebody came up with the idea that immunotherapy would be successful, and today we see successful survival rates equivalent to the best in any discipline. We also see young doctors wanting to take on the specialism, because it is exciting, there is hope, there is a future and there are alternatives.

Who in their right mind today would become a medical oncologist in glioblastoma? There is no hope, no future, no trials—nothing. It would have to be someone with the belligerence and tenacity of my sister Margaret, and we have found that person in Paul Mulholland, but there needs to be more Pauls and more determination. We must have access to trials for 200 people and the training of medical oncologists, and we must require the pharmaceutical industry—because we will make no progress without it—to trial every drug that gets licensed to deal with tumours on those with brain tumours, so that there is access to existing drugs that can be repurposed.

I am sorry about the time I have taken for this speech, but I want to tell the House that when I go to bed tonight I will keep my ear open for Margaret to hear her call my name, I will get up and I will go into her room, and it may be that she is asleep and I have imagined that she has called me. I accept that. That is my duty. It is what I have learned from my family, from my faith and from my politics. I accept that. That is my duty. It is what I have learned from my family, what I have learned from my faith, and what I have learned from my politics. I accept my responsibility. All that I want is for the NHS, cancer research charities, and pharmaceutical companies to stand up and accept their responsibility, and give some hope to the 3,200 people who will be diagnosed with a glioblastoma this year.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That was a very brave speech, Siobhain. And please send our love from Parliament to Margaret.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)]

I have to admit that, until the last few days, I knew virtually nothing about brain tumours and brain cancer—after the last few days, I know just a tiny bit more. Often, members of the public are cynical about all-party parliamentary groups, but they do a huge amount of work, including to raise awareness for the public. One of our privileges in this place is that we can work with our constituents, who share their stories with us and tell us why we need to be aware of them so that we can do our jobs to, hopefully, raise awareness and have an impact on Government policy and different types of funding.

I am here because, as in many cases, a constituent, Julie Alison Grimble, wrote to me to ask whether I would attend the debate in order to help raise awareness about brain tumours. Her husband Neil went to the optician for an eye test, which revealed that he needed to be referred to hospital. When he went for his appointment, he was diagnosed with a stage 4 brain tumour. He was only 55 years old. He had two children, a son-in-law and one grandchild at that point. As we have heard with many colleagues’ cases in this debate, he was given a diagnosis of 12 to 18 months for how long he would be with us. Sadly, in 2021, at the age of 56—just in that year —he passed away.

This enables us to realise the amount of work that the APPG and Brain Tumour Research are doing to raise awareness, because if it had not been for Julie writing to me and telling her family story, I would not be able to try to help in a small way to raise awareness. The fact that Neil was diagnosed at stage 4 reveals that we need to make members of the public much more aware of the symptoms or signs to look for. I would like to thank the opticians and ophthalmologists out there, because it is quite often through an eye test that people learn that they need to have treatment. It is not just brain tumours; people can have a whole range of different health issues diagnosed from going to their optician. It is very important that people understand that.

As colleagues have said, the “Pathway to a Cure” report, commissioned by Brain Tumour Research and the APPG, has revealed that, astonishingly, there is an underspend in the funding for research. That also raises the point that it needs to be easier for researchers to apply, and for there not to be so many different types of funds, which makes it more complicated for people to access such research funds. On a more practical level, perhaps people studying medicine, those actually practising it and researchers may not actually be aware of what is available. I was talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) about this situation, and we know that every treatment comes from a breakthrough, but if there is not enough research, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to have breakthroughs and make connections with other types of cancer as well.

I would just like to thank Julie very much for getting in touch with me. I will continue to work to raise awareness and, I hope, show that we can do some good, which is the value of debates such as this.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now come to the Front-Bench speeches. I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady pre-empts not only that I am coming to a close, but my final response. I have a little more time than I would ordinarily, but in closing such debates, one never quite gets the opportunity to answer every single question. I have never turned down a meeting with a colleague, and I do not intend to start doing so today—it is important that we consider some of the issues that have been raised this afternoon, including the report’s recommendations—and, of course, I would be very happy to meet senior clinicians and scientists in the field as well.

In closing, I want to say how much I appreciate the vital work of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours, of all those who have spoken so powerfully today, and of the powerful advocacy for more research on brain tumours and better treatments and care for patients, not least in last week’s report and in this important debate. It has been my pleasure to respond to the powerful points that everyone has made.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Mr Derek Thomas for the final word.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you very much. May I say what a privilege it has been to chair this debate?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered brain tumour research funding.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We understand that the Government have just announced huge delays to High Speed 2 and other road and active travel projects via written ministerial statement at nearly 5 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. That is an outrageous attempt to avoid scrutiny for what is a very significant announcement that should have been made to this House first. Tens of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of economic growth depend on that project. The Secretary of State should have had the decency to come to the House and explain to Members why the Government are doing that. Have you been notified of any ministerial statement on this important topic?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving forward notice of it. She is right that a written ministerial statement was laid not so long ago. There are two points here. The first is that Mr Speaker has made it absolutely clear that announcements of this type should be made to the House of Commons first—we understand that journalists were briefed this afternoon.

The next Transport questions is after Easter, and we are not sitting tomorrow or this weekend, clearly, so it will be at least three days before Members have an opportunity to question Ministers about what is a substantial statement. Although the Chair does not have the power to bring Ministers to the Dispatch Box, there has to be an expectation that Members will have the earliest opportunity to question Ministers on this statement. I hope that the Minister will take that back to the Department.

NHS Workforce Expansion

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Only Opposition Members are left now to contribute. I am not going to impose a time limit, but if nobody exceeds five minutes, at least they will allow everybody to get in and have roughly equal time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

Royal Assent

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the King has signified his Royal Assent to the following Act:

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Organ and Tissue Donation) Act 2023.

Future of the NHS

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

I am as keen as my hon. Friend to explore all those different things and I am happy to take them up with him following this debate. Many things I have been talking about in this speech, the new technology we are putting in for GPs and the new ways of working, are crucial not just to getting taxpayers better value for money, but to protecting the NHS in the long term by enabling people to do more. The NHS is an enormous source of pride in this country. It is free at the point of delivery and it always will be, giving high-quality care for all. That remains our enduring commitment to our national health service.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The final word goes to Kate Osborne.

Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We are under a lot of time pressure today, so may I ask the remaining Members and those who are going to take part in the next statement to please think of very short, focused, single questions?

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and the extra investment in the NHS. It was a privilege to visit Bournemouth Hospital recently and meet the dedicated staff, and as the Secretary of State will know, it is expanding with a new A&E facility. Will he visit Bournemouth, meet the staff, and see the progress taking place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay]

That last question gives me a beautiful opportunity to correct an earlier answer regarding the constituency of my hon. Friend. He knows I am familiar with this issue, because I remember calling him at about half past 10 one evening to discuss his A&E when some particular issues had come to the attention of the media. I am familiar with the pressures on his hospital—[Interruption.] I was just placing the constituency of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) vis-à-vis that of my hon. Friend. Now clarified on place, I am familiar with the fact that that hospital is under pressure. I know the Minister of State is due to visit, and I am sure she will look forward to meeting both the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and responding to questions for over an hour.

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

On delivery by Labour, over the many years of a Labour Government, Dover and Deal saw its health service absolutely decimated, service by service. What has happened under a Conservative Government? There has been a new hospital built for Dover, the first dementia village in the country, built for Dover and Deal, one of the first 40 diagnostic covid hubs, delivered for Dover and Deal, and a new GP training centre, delivered for east Kent. Of course, there is more to do on health, but we have the plan—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Interventions must be brief by definition.

[Wes Streeting]

I cannot believe that the Member for Dover and Deal seems to be standing up and telling her constituents that when it comes to the NHS they have never had it so good. I know she is desperate and scraping the barrel because Prime Minister after Prime Minister have broken their promises on immigration and the Prime Minister is not dealing with small boat crossings, but I am afraid that pretending the NHS is working will not save her at the next general election.

To govern is to choose and the last Labour Government showed that investment plus reform equals better standards for patients. You do not need to do A-level maths to get to that equation. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) asked his Health Secretary:

“What is our long-term plan? We cannot leave the Labour party to have a long-term plan while we do not. How are we going to reform this centrally controlled construct?...What is the Secretary of State’s plan?”—[Official Report, 9 January 2023; Vol. 725, c. 297.]

What indeed is the Secretary of State’s plan? He has been in power for 13 years. His Government have presided over this record and still, after 13 years, they have no plan. Conservative Members asked what my plan was and I outlined it: a fully costed, fully funded plan to deliver the biggest expansion of NHS staffing—[Interruption.] They are saying, “Where is it?” I will repeat it for them again: double the number of medical school places; 10,000 more nursing and midwifery clinical training places; 5,000 more health visitors; and doubling the number of district nurses qualifying, paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status, because we believe that people who make Britain their home should pay their taxes here, too.

I understand that, in their partisan fury, because they cannot bear the fact that Labour has a plan and they do not, Conservative Members cannot swallow humble pie enough to take our plan and run with it. If they do not believe me, they should at least believe their own Chancellor, because this is what he said about Labour’s plan:

“I very much hope the government adopts this on the basis that smart governments always nick the best ideas of their opponents.”

If we were in any doubt already, this is not a smart Government and it will take a Labour Government to deliver Labour’s plan. That is why we end up with these sticking plasters, as we saw on Monday, to deal with this crisis.

Why did the Government choose to leave 230,000 patients languishing on NHS waiting lists when the spare capacity was there for them to be treated in the private sector? We know what our priority is: get patients treated as quickly as possible, pull every lever available to make it happen and make sure that patients do not have to pay a penny. The Government could act on doctors’ pensions to stop doctors retiring early for no reason other than that there is a financial disincentive to stay, but they still have not done it. They could bring strikes to an end by negotiating with the unions instead of threatening to sack the staff, but they still have not done it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. As Members can see, there is a great deal of interest in this debate. Before I call the Secretary of State to move the amendment, let me advise Back Benchers that we will start with a speaking limit of five minutes, but that will rapidly be reduced so that we can get as many people in as we possibly can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay]

Yes, I will.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before the intervention is taken, I advise Members that there is a lot of interest in this debate, and each intervention is cutting into the contributions that can be made. We will be down to a three-minute limit very quickly, and some people still may not get in.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I wish to bring the Secretary of State back to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who pointed out that in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the coalition Government legislated to allow NHS hospitals to make up to 49% of their money from private patients. She asked whether he regretted that, but we did not get a response, so I would like to hear the Secretary of State’s response. Will he also tell us what assessment he has made of the impact on waiting lists of non-NHS patients taking the place of NHS patients in our hospitals?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call Barbara Keeley, I remind everybody again that interventions eat into the time of those at the end of the speaking list, so please have a little bit of care and consideration for your colleagues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The hon. Member for Ilford North pointed to the lack of funding for the NHS in Wales, but since 2010, only the Labour Government in Wales have ever cut NHS funding—no other Government in the UK have done that. When I was the Secretary of State for Wales, we renegotiated a funding formula that the First Minister, who was the Finance Minister at the time, said was a very fair deal. That formula means that Wales receives £120 for every £100 that is spent in England, and there is a funding floor attached to it. That highlights the generosity and fairness of the settlement, bearing in mind the inequality that the hon. Member for Ilford North highlighted earlier.

In my final minute, I will comment on the strike action. Every point that the Leader of the Opposition has made about the challenges of strikes, and every criticism that has been made of the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, could equally apply to the First Minister and Health Minister in the Welsh Government. That demonstrates the complexity of the situation. The Welsh Government say that they cannot act until they have more money, but they need to remember that they are getting £120 for every £100 that is made available in England, and they have tax-varying powers. Are they saying that they want to tax the English more in order to spend more in Wales? They can vary taxes however they want—[Interruption.] They can vary taxes and that is the choice that they have to make. They decide where they spend their money. In closing—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sorry, time is up. We have to be fair to everybody.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The next two speakers, Sir John Redwood and Mike Amesbury, are on five minutes and then we will go down to four minutes.

NHS Workforce

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

As there are only people on the Opposition Benches remaining to speak, I will try to do without a time limit. That may be hope over expectation, but none the less, if people stick to around about seven minutes, that should be okay, because we will be starting the wind-ups no later than ten-past 4, with any anticipated vote at about half-past 4.

--- Later in debate ---

[Taiwo Owatemi]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to put on the record that my mum is a practising nurse.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I think we would all be proud to make that declaration, which stands on the record. We must now look to a speaking time of six minutes or thereabouts, or less if you can, to give everybody fair time. Please focus and, if you take interventions, do not add time on mentally.

World AIDS Day

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It is my honour and privilege to be in the Chair for at least the opening of this particular debate. I call Lloyd Russell-Moyle to move the motion.

Contact in Care Settings

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for that intervention. The Government have previously pointed to guidance as a defence against bad practice, and we have enough evidence to show that that is not good enough. Indeed, while there are excellent examples of good practice across the sector, significant levels of uncertainty and variability throughout the system seriously undermine the rights of individuals. The guidance leads to a postcode lottery as separate settings interpret guidance differently.

That difference is compounded by the response of the Care Quality Commission, which is an organisation that many have had difficult and negative interactions with. The Government encourage those affected to report care providers who do not meet the guidance to the CQC, but by then it may be too late. The poor response is not because the CQC ignores complainants, although there was evidence of that as well, but that it simply does not have the proper powers or data to support people who have their access rights compromised. In the CQC’s own words:

“We do not have the power to require care homes to report live data on levels of visiting, neither do we have the power to take action against those care homes that are not reporting changes to their visiting status to us.”

The CQC, which regulates all health and care services in England, bases its enforcement action on the capacity tracker. However, providers are not obligated to use the tool—they are merely encouraged. That has led to very little, if any, clarity on the true extent of the problem.

By comparison, in Scotland, the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, places a duty on Ministers to require providers to comply with any direction made regarding visiting. What assessment has the Department made of the Bill and would it be minded to introduce similar provision in England? The evidence suggests that the only way to guarantee contact in care settings is a legal right to an essential care supporter. An essential care supporter would be able to visit or accompany a person in any health and care setting to help communicate their wishes and needs, and to ensure they receive the correct care. If the Government are serious about their support for these calls, if they are serious about acting in the interests of families and loved ones, if they are serious about balancing clinical restrictions with the impact of restrictions on residents’ health and human rights, then I ask the Minister to immediately consider how to put that into law.

I cannot think of any other issue that commands such unanimous cross-party support. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who I know supports these calls wholeheartedly, said at our meeting in Parliament:

“How can anyone be opposed to this?”

There are also 35 organisations in this area who support these calls, including Mind, Mencap, Disability Rights UK and Dementia UK. The new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), has previously signalled support for this right. We are ready and willing to work with the Government to make this legal right a reality as swiftly as possible. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has also been unequivocal in its call for legislation in this area. In its report from July this year, “Protecting human rights in care settings” it stated:

“The Government must introduce legislation to secure to care users the right to nominate one or more individuals to visit and to provide support or care in all circumstances, subject to the same infection prevention and control rules as care staff.”

We have not yet had a response from the Government to that report, so may I ask the Government Minister to take that up? We have opportunities in the draft Mental Health Reform Bill and the Bill of Rights to codify this right. The Government could also introduce secondary legislation, which I know campaigners are in favour of. Will the Minister meet me, others and the affected families as soon as possible to discuss making this right as strong and effective as possible? The Government have previously said that legislative options are under active consideration, so please can the Government give much more specific detail on what that actually means?

I want to finish by paying tribute to the tireless campaigning of organisations in this area, in particular the Rights for Residents campaign group, the Relatives and Residents Association and John’s Campaign. The work of Jenny Morrison, Diane Mayhew, Helen Wildbore, Julia Jones, Nicci Gerrard and Kate Meacock has been absolutely inspirational, and they are all in the Public Gallery today watching this debate. Their dedication to this campaign has been phenomenal. I pay tribute to them. In the face of immense loss and personal grief, they have shown incredible selflessness and service to guarantee that no other family member will have to endure the pain of being denied contact again.

Families do not deserve any further delay; they have suffered enough. We must learn from this trauma and bring in legislation. I hope that when the Minister rises to give the Government’s response, she will agree and set out the steps that we can take to get this right.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Deepest condolences on your loss, Dan.

I call the debate’s co-sponsor, Tracey Crouch.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

Ordinarily when we stand up in the Chamber, we say that it is, for example, “a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend,” but given the very powerful speech from the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), may I say that it is an absolute privilege and that I am very humbled to follow him in this debate, which I am very proud to co-sponsor? I echo his thanks to the people who have engaged with us and taken time to give us their testimony, especially the groups and the people he referred to, as well as those who have sent briefings for the debate.

In 2015, my father had a stroke, which left him physically and neurologically impaired, requiring him to spend the rest of his days in residential nursing care. My sister and I visited him on a regular basis, observing his decline from manly patriarch to someone with childlike vulnerabilities in just over the course of a year. I will not romanticise the relationship that I had with my father, which had been fractured since my teenage years, but I can honestly say that those months of us visiting him in care were the closest that we had felt to him in years. It is true to say that, during covid, I often remarked that I was glad that he had died long before the pandemic, because while no one wants to see their parent or loved one lying on a bed—a thin, pallid skeleton—saying their final goodbyes, blessings or apologies hours before their death, nor should they be denied that right.

Tragically, during the pandemic, and in some cases still today, many of my constituents and others around the country were denied visiting rights, whether that was to care, to celebrate or, sadly, to say goodbye. We should pause for a moment to cast our minds back to the start of the pandemic in early 2020, when the virus was ripping around communities, transport systems, offices, retail places and, of course, health and social care spaces. It was killing people in large numbers, especially the most vulnerable in society. People were frightened and our understanding of the virus was limited. We went into lockdown and isolated our loved ones because we thought that it was the kindest and safest thing to do. We all understood why.

When I looked back through my casework files in preparation for the debate, I found hardly any complaints about limited access to relatives in the first lockdown, because in a Blightyesque spirit, we got on with it and found alternative ways to communicate with those we could not ordinarily see. Many of us here stamped our feet about care workers not getting enough personal protective equipment and rightly included them in our doorstep clapping, because they were heroically looking after their residents when family and friends could not visit any more. We understood the fear that if one resident caught the virus, it could be devastating for the entire setting, and the duty of care that they held. But then lockdown ended, the summer arrived, the virus declined, our understanding of it improved and our hopes of going back to see residents in health and social care settings were raised—yet when I looked at my casework, I saw that that was when the problems began, and, unfortunately, they still continue.

I stress that I am in no way criticising any individual care home manager or any staff for the examples that I am about to cite. My criticism lies squarely with the Department of Health and Social Care. Its guidance that was published for managers to interpret was wishy-washy at best and is why I now firmly believe that, although we can still respect the individual business that a care home is, a right of access should be enshrined in law to give the manager, the resident and the relative clarity about visiting.

In November 2020, I was contacted by Francesca, whose nan was admitted to a care home following a short stay in a local hospital. Francesca’s family were not able to visit, despite having been told that Francesca’s nan was dying and that they would potentially be allowed only a one-hour goodbye. That was hugely distressing, not only for Francesca and her family but for her grandmother, who was coming to the end of her life without her loved ones around her.

The guidance was often cited, but its lack of clarity left care settings making decisions that were understandably in their own interest, but not in the interest of the resident or the family. After my intervention, visits to Francesca’s nan were allowed and goodbyes were said, but the uncertainty and distress caused could perhaps have been averted with a simple right of access that was clear in its intention.

Likewise, Mura’s mother was in a specialist nursing home that houses some very vulnerable and elderly people. Everyone, including Mura, understands the need for caution. When the virus surged in December 2020, care settings like the one that Mura’s mother was in effectively went back into lockdown. Named visitors were allowed if they underwent testing, a process that no relative has ever complained about. However, because the guidance enabled homes to design and implement their own covid outbreak procedures, many were able to prevent access even to the defined essential care giver, denying love and support from loved ones during another period of isolation.

One important point was reiterated when I listened with colleagues to powerful and—as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton said—harrowing testimony on access and support rights from campaigners, many of whom are in the Gallery today. This is not just about older people in care homes, or those at the end of life. We heard from Wendy Mitchell, who is living well with dementia, as those who follow her joyous Twitter feed know. She highlighted her experiences of going to appointments alone during the pandemic. I do not need to explain in detail the utter idiocy of allowing people with dementia to attend a healthcare setting where there are discussions about condition, medication and so on. In the head of a 1970s scriptwriter, it would have formed an idea for some sort of sketch show, but it is serious and potentially extremely dangerous.

Youngsters fared particularly badly during the pandemic, and those within care settings were affected quite acutely. I was reading back through my correspondence relating to a young man called Thomas, who has learning disabilities and is in a residential care home. He had a birthday coming up, but the care home was denying his parents the ability to take him home to celebrate, despite the fact that it was—wonderfully, I hasten to add—taking Thomas out for community visits. My correspondence to the care home explains perfectly well what the problem was:

“I have managed to speak to colleagues in both the Health Department and the Education Department about Thomas’ particular set of circumstances and both encouraged me to look at the ethical framework that care settings are required to operate under. I was also reminded that those with learning disabilities, such as Thomas, are not considered clinically vulnerable and therefore do not require shielding in the same way as others with significant health conditions.

I know that Government guidance in residential settings has not exactly been perfect and that care home managers and teams are doing their absolute best to navigate their way through, doing what they think is best for both the client and their staff. However there is a difference between the home Thomas is in and that of an older much more vulnerable person and therefore flexibility is perfectly possible.

It is with that in mind, and with the guidance for the whole nation being slowly eased to allow greater human interaction, alongside an appeal to your sense of compassion given Thomas’ mother’s deteriorating health condition, that I write to urge you to reconsider your decision to not allow Thomas to visit his family home tomorrow for his birthday. There are no ‘rules’ that stop you from doing this and I know that the family will forever be grateful.”

I am pleased to say that the home did allow Thomas to go home for his birthday, but the fact that Thomas’s case related to two different Departments, and the unclear guidance, caused great anxiousness.

In September 2020, a similar case arrived from Dawn about her son with complex medical needs living in 24-hour nursing care. She rightly noted the impact that the first lockdown had had on her son. She wanted me to write to the then Minister, who I am pleased to see back at the Dispatch Box today, to make it clear that a family member could be recognised as an essential part of the care home staff and be allowed to come as much as any member of staff. She felt that homes like the one that her son was in were never mentioned because people automatically thought of care homes in respect of our elderly population. I think that Dawn’s message and that of many others was heard, but its application remains sketchy, even today. [Interruption.] Oh—here is a lesson for Members: make sure you take the last page of your speech off the printer. [Laughter.]

Having reread the accounts of those cases and having listened, back in March, to the testimony of others who had suffered as a result of being unable to visit loved ones, I believe it is a no-brainer to have an absolute position on this matter. The guidance was not clear enough, and it caused distress to residents and relatives as a consequence. I know that the Minister will cite CQC guidance, but it is not strong enough, which is why so many now feel that it needs to be enshrined in one form or another. The Minister will note that there is cross-party support for such a move. We could do it quickly, in time for the winter, so I hope she will consider our pleas seriously. This would protect care home managers, as well as giving residents the right to have their loved ones with them providing whatever support and care are necessary.

We can learn a lot from the pandemic, and I am sure that we will. One of the lessons must be about the devastating impact of isolation on the physical and mental health of those in social care settings. Let me finally repeat my initial point, drawing on my experience with my own father, six years after his death. No one wants to see their loved one vulnerable, incapable of basic functions or in their final hours, but nor should anyone be denied that important time with them. Sadly, many were and some still are, and it is with that in mind that I urge the Minister to think carefully about her response this afternoon, but ultimately to introduce legislation as soon as possible.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the other co-sponsor of the debate, Daisy Cooper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Four Back Benchers wish to contribute, and we have three Front-Bench contributions and Mr Carden at the end, so I ask people to consider the length of their contributions. We will be going to the wind-ups just after half-past 4.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I made a speech in the previous debate on the national food strategy and food security and I inadvertently forgot to declare my interest in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a farmer and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, for which I wish to apologise to this House and to put the record straight.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order and for making it at the earliest possible opportunity. That is now on the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) and the hon. Members for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) for securing this hugely important debate. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton will forgive me for saying that I thought he spoke incredibly bravely and powerfully about his father, who I am sure would be very proud of him today.

The terrible consequences of banning families from seeing their loved ones in care homes is an issue very close to my heart. It is something that Labour has been campaigning on since the very first covid lockdown in June 2020. Indeed, we first called on the Government to bring forward a legal right for care home residents to see a family member or friend in February 2021. We continue to do so today because, as we have heard in the debate, this issue has not gone away, and because with winter almost here and, God forbid, in the event of any future pandemics, we need to ensure that the rights of residents and relatives are clearly guaranteed by law. We make this case because it is good for residents, good for family members and good for care staff.

I will say more about that later, but I want to start by thanking the organisations that have campaigned so hard on this issue, including Healthwatch, Mind, Mencap, the Alzheimer’s Society, Parkinson’s UK, Dementia UK and Disability Rights UK. I especially want to thank the Relatives and Residents Association, John’s Campaign and Rights for Residents, which have been at the forefront of the campaign. In particular, I pay tribute to Jenny Morrison and Diane Mayhew from Rights for Residents—two phenomenal women who have blazed a trail on this issue. After their terrible personal experiences, they set up Rights for Residents, to give a voice to all the other care home residents and families who had been banned from seeing their loved ones. The reaction to their campaign has been astonishing, which I saw for myself on joining them in Downing Street—or, rather, locked outside it—in September 2021, when they presented a petition calling for a change in the law, signed by more than 250,000 people.

Almost all the campaigners I met had never been involved in protests or petitions before. They were not there because of any political agenda, but because of their personal experience and the fact that they wanted to see a change. The reason why so many people joined Jenny and Diane is that this issue really matters. It matters to the thousands of families who have faced unbelievable anguish, guilt and distress because they were banned from seeing the people they love most—their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters—at a terribly frightening time. It matters because of the physical and mental impact that isolation has on older people and, as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford said, crucially, on people with physical and learning disabilities. We have heard much evidence about increased depression and anxiety, and people losing weight because they are not eating. The truth is that, as the hon. Member for St Albans said, families are not just visitors; they are an essential part of the care given to residents, and should be treated as such.

Banning families from seeing their loved ones also matters to care home staff. There is lots of international evidence that staff in many countries have faced increased workloads because some of the emotional and other support that was normally provided by families, such as helping people with eating and taking them on walks, completely disappeared when they were banned.

There is much I could say about all the powerful things that hon. Members said about their constituents; I was contacted by many deeply distressed constituents too. Because time is short, however, I will emphasise something that has not really been mentioned today, which is that families have always understood the need to protect their loved ones from covid and never wanted to expose them to unnecessary risks. All they wanted was to be treated the same as care home staff. They could not understand, once the PPE, testing and vaccines were finally available, why they were banned and treated differently from everybody else.

Throughout the pandemic, the Government have resisted calls for residents to have a legal right to see their family member. They have consistently said that the guidance they issued was enough, but the guidance, which changed more than 30 times during the pandemic, is not enough, as we have seen time and again. I will make two points. First, anything that is issued 30 times will be totally unclear. People will lose track and it will not be properly followed. Secondly, the clue to the problem with guidance is in the name—it is guidance, which can be ignored.

Neither is oversight from the CQC enough. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said in May 2021 that there was an

“astonishing lack of awareness by the CQC as to whether care homes are…allowing visits”.

The Chair of the Committee, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said at the time that the CQC’s assurance

“that visits are being allowed…is wholly unconvincing”.

We have heard evidence today that that remains the case and we know that the guidance and regulations are not working or being enforced.

The Relatives & Residents Association and Rights for Residents recently surveyed more than 650 families. They found that visiting restrictions during the majority of covid outbreaks between April and September this year were more restrictive than advised by current Government guidance. One in five outbreaks saw residents confined to their rooms. One in nine outbreaks saw residents not allowed any visitors at all. Shockingly, 45% of families who responded said that there were visiting restrictions in place despite there being no covid outbreaks. That is why those organisations have repeated their call for a new legal right to guarantee people’s access to in-person support from at least one care supporter—a person important to them, such as a relative or friend.

Opposition Members agree, as does the cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights, which says that the default position must be that those in care homes can receive visits from a “significant person” and that blanket bans are in breach of the legal right to family life. We can learn quite a bit from other countries on this issue. I understand that the Dutch Parliament recently accepted a corona Act that guarantees that each resident has the right to welcome at least one visitor in the case of covid-19 outbreaks.

I ask the Minister to look at this subject again. She should heed what families want, what organisations representing residents and families demand, and what is done in other countries, and put this legal right in place.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind the Minister to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) to wind up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for chairing the debate. I was watching the faces of the campaigners in the Gallery, who I am sure wish they had a voice in the Chamber. Having said that, I will take the Minister at her word. It may have been a bit much to ask that, on her first day, she would commit to legislation, but she knows that the campaigners will not be going away and that I and other hon. Members will continue to make their case.

We must put right what has gone wrong during covid. Loved ones are an essential part of care and, as many colleagues have said, there is an easy solution: essential care givers and loved ones should be treated in the same way as staff. The only way to resolve the situation is for this place to put a right in law through legislation. I think that we can all agree on the principle that, whether it is the state, a privately run care home or a hospital, it does not have the right to separate family and loved ones. The right to visit a loved one in a care setting is one that we should all enjoy across the country.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It has been a privilege to chair this emotional and effective debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of guaranteeing the right to maintain contact in care settings.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The shadow Home Office team has been seeking clarity on security breaches involving the Home Secretary and serious discrepancies in the information provided to Parliament. Yesterday, the Prime Minister stated in this House that the Home Secretary

“made an error of judgment, but she recognised that, she raised the matter and she accepted her mistake.”—[Official Report, 26 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 289.]

That was contradicted last night by the former Conservative party chairman, the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Sir Jake Berry), who stated that the Home Secretary was presented with evidence of her breach, rather than proactively reporting it. Similarly, the Home Secretary has claimed the breach related to a written ministerial statement on immigration, but the former Conservative party chairman claimed it related to cyber-security and other media reports state it was a set of Cabinet papers.

The Cabinet Office has now reportedly confirmed that it will investigate neither the circumstances of the Home Secretary’s original departure nor her reappointment. These are questions of national security and are incredibly serious. The public and Parliament deserve answers. Mr Deputy Speaker, this is the latest in a series of attempts to get answers. I ask your advice on how we can compel the Home Secretary to come to this House and answer questions about the accuracy of her resignation letter and the media briefings that have followed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for advance notice of it. The Chair does not have the power to compel Ministers to come to the Dispatch Box in the way that she is asking, but there have been previous points of order on this matter and urgent questions—indeed, it was raised at Prime Minister’s questions. I know that the next question time for the Home Secretary is some way off, but none the less I have no doubt that there will be other opportunities for this matter to be raised. Those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the point of order and will ensure that it is brought to the attention of the Home Secretary.

Diagnostic Hospital: Stockton

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Vickers]

I agree. I know how much work my hon. Friend has put in to try to seal the deal in his part of the world. I am sure that the Minister will have good news for us all. It is well earned if it is there.

I hope that Ministers will back the bid that has been put forward to provide my area with the much-needed increase in diagnostic capacity so that my local NHS is fit for the future, fit for patients, and fit for its amazing staff. I know that the Government are committed to modernising the NHS and have announced massive investment that will fund healthcare across my region. I know that the Minister is probably sick of hearing from me on this issue, but I will continue to push for the resources we need to tackle the heartbreaking health inequalities that my area faces. 

I thank the Minister for her attention and look forward to her response.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Alex Cunningham.

Urgent and Emergency Care

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman on the importance of the air ambulance. As a rural MP, I know full well the importance of the service it provides across the Cambridgeshire fens, and I know that it provides an essential service for his constituents. Again, if there are any specific issues, I am happy to ensure that the Department looks at them, but he is absolutely right to draw attention to the importance of the air ambulance within the wider response.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for responding to 25 questions. We now move on to the final statement today, which is on energy prices.