The National Health Service

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who made a passionate speech, especially in respect of the women born in the 1950s who have been denied their pension rights.

I was disappointed to see only one reference to mental health in the Queen’s Speech, and even then it was a reference only to the Mental Health Act. I was disappointed to see in the attached background briefing that the Government’s much vaunted parity of esteem does not stretch to any new funding for mental health services. One in 10 children and young people in the UK suffers at some point with mental ill health. In Birmingham, nearly 40% of the population are under 25. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you will be horrified to learn that, despite that, for the whole of Birmingham, there is only one early intervention counselling service for young people.

The most recent count of the counselling service waiting list saw 400 young people waiting for a service—that is 400 young people in desperate need of support who require treatment urgently; that is 400 young people who will have to wait months to see someone; and that is 400 young people and families who, in most cases, have nowhere else to turn. This unwillingness to recognise or properly fund vital prevention is yet another example of the Conservative Government failing our children and young people.

Is the Secretary of State surprised that more and more young people are ending up in A&E when we neglect early intervention care? We need to listen to young people themselves about the growing needs that they have. The Government are not doing that, which is why I have launched a young people’s mental health working group, supported by Open Door, which is a local counselling charity in my constituency, and the Centre for Mental Health. This group will use its unique perspective to help to shape the services that young people use for the better.

Young people have a voice that we need to listen to, so what steps are the Government taking to ensure that they work closely with young people with lived experience of mental health when developing legislative and non-legislative actions related to mental health? Cuts have consequences. Slashing budgets removes safety nets for the most vulnerable in our society and has knock-on effects. I am sure that the Secretary of State knows that excluded students are 10 times more likely to suffer from mental health problems. What steps is he taking alongside his colleague in the Department for Education to support those students, rather than just hanging them out to dry?

An inquiry by Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust into 11 deaths found that they were probably avoidable. That is unacceptable, and it is vital that lessons are learnt. With one of the highest levels of beds occupied by patients with complex needs and one of the lowest numbers of beds per 100,000—coupled with cuts and underinvestment under the Conservatives—what steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that my constituents will be properly looked after, and that no more families will be forced to go through the pain and heartbreak of being told that a loved one’s death was probably avoidable?

I will touch briefly on the Secretary of State’s favourite private healthcare company—or at least the one he talks about the most and publicly endorses while simultaneously insisting that there will be no more privatisation of the NHS under him. The Secretary of State is not alone in his support for Babylon and, as I am sure the House is well aware, the most senior member of the Prime Minister’s team advised Babylon as recently as last year. The reason that hospitals such as the Queen Elizabeth in my constituency are being forced to take risks in using totally unproven private technical solutions is that they are not receiving sufficient support from this Government. Over the past nine years, the Tories have stripped the NHS and made it about profit, rather than patients.

My constituents are rightly worried about the continued growth of companies such as Babylon, as its tentacles in Birmingham reach out beyond the GP at hand. The Secretary of State holds this company up as a beacon of light for replacing face-to-face services, but 94% of enrolled patients are under the age of 45 and two thirds live in more affluent areas. Can he tell me how it will work for my more vulnerable constituents, and will he give us answers to the myriad other justified concerns of GPs, CCGs and professional bodies?

I conclude by paying tribute to the magnificent practitioners and staff who work day in, day out across our various health services. I thank those who come from around the world to support us when we need it—due to mental health problems, physical ailments, old age or any other issue. These people deserve to be supported, properly resourced and treated with respect, and they deserve a Government who give them more than empty rhetoric. I am sorry that, over the last nine years, under the coalition and then the Conservative Government, they have not been treated in the way in which they deserve.

Health

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and I fully support the need to break the stigma and talk about our own and others’ mental health. Public health has an integral role to play in improving young people’s mental health, but we live in a country where, because of the actions of the Conservative party, the funding and the ability to access care from trained professionals are being decimated. What happens when we realise that we need support? How long do we have to wait for help? What are we doing to provide support for people who are struggling and their families, who are left to cope without sufficient support? How do the Government expect to provide support when they have cut £700 million in cash terms of the public health grant to local government between 2015-16 and 2019-20, according to the Local Government Association, of which I am a vice-president?

Today I want to speak specifically about children and young people’s mental health. NHS figures show that one in eight people under the age of 19 in England have a mental health disorder, and half of all mental health problems start before the age of 14. I recently conducted a survey of schools in my constituency. In 10 of the 11 schools that have responded to the survey so far, the number of pupils suffering with mental health problems has increased over the last five years. One saw a 15% increase in the last 12 months alone, and all but one have seen these cases becoming more severe.

I want to place on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) for his chairing of the all-party parliamentary group on social media and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. The group’s recent inquiry found that 27% of children who are on social network sites for three or more hours a day have symptoms of mental ill health. That stands against 12% of children who spend no time on such sites. The Government’s online harms White Paper concurs with research by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which reported that there was

“moderately-strong evidence for an association between screen time and depressive symptoms.”

The Government need to take real responsibility for the children in this country and their wellbeing. Instead, we have heard that they will support further research without saying what that will be, and that they welcome industry efforts. What parent would feel reassured by that? The industry has taken some steps to regulate itself, but it is obvious that it is not doing enough. Public health cannot be left to businesses, and with the mental health of children and young people at stake, we need to look at the various contributing factors. It is not enough simply to acknowledge the problem and not to address what is seen to be one of the growing risks to our children’s mental health and wellbeing.

Let us take the next step of the process: when a child has mental health problems, how are they identified? Teachers are often the individuals on the frontline most likely to spot this need, but they are working with larger classes and increased pressures, without teaching assistants or additional support. Schools in my constituency and many across the country are doing an amazing job in trying to make appropriate provision for their pupils to deal with mental health problems—from developing their own wellbeing support to check-in sessions and peer mentors—but this is not sustainable. Schools in my constituency have told me that immediate support is usually unavailable to vulnerable children and parents; response times from overburdened mental health agencies are poor; there are long waiting lists; and early help support is limited. Because of the fall in the ability to access core public health services, schools are forced to pick up the slack despite often not having had the appropriate training or resources to do so. A quarter of 11 to 16-year-olds with a mental health disorder have self-harmed or attempted suicide, and that figure rises to as high as 46% among teenage girls with a disorder.

The Children’s Commissioner has said:

“There is a danger that we continue to have a system that fails to help children until they are so unwell that they need specialist intervention.”

Funding pressures mean many councils are being forced to cut early intervention services that support children with low-level mental health issues and avoid more serious problems in later life, which cost far more over the coming decades. If we are to improve provision of preventive and early intervention services, it is vital that the Government adequately fund public health in the forthcoming spending review, as reducing spending on public health is short-sighted and irresponsible at the best of times.

NHS Long-Term Plan

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

There certainly is. The pattern to date had been very different in tone between the two sides. My right hon. Friend is right to challenge the NHS on this, because the truth is that we do not adopt new treatments and new medicines nearly quickly enough. I hope that this new settlement will mean that we can change that.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Government have promised parity of esteem for mental health. Can the Secretary of State clarify whether there is a ring-fenced element of this funding for mental health?

[Mr Hunt]

I can clarify that NHS England has a mandatory—[Interruption.] I can confirm, if the Opposition would be kind enough to listen to what I am about to say, that NHS England has a mandatory mental health standard, which means that every CCG is required to increase its mental health funding by more than its total funding. That is an effective ring fence.

NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we have heard, this year marks the 70th anniversary of the creation of our national health service. The NHS is the jewel in our nation’s crown and represents the very best attributes that we as a society hold dear. I truly believe the creation of the NHS, which was born of a yearning desire for things to change following the death and destruction of the second world war, to be the greatest achievement of the Labour party and, indeed, any Government.

It is because both I and my party hold the NHS so dear that Labour Members are concerned by the parlous state in which it finds itself. Pushed to the brink by the biggest financial squeeze in NHS history and reeling from the worst winter crisis on record, the NHS is at breaking point. People are waiting far too long for operations, and performance targets are so far from being met that they are now about as realistic as the Government’s infamous immigration targets.

Official data show that patient waiting times, bed shortages and ambulance queues have hit record levels. The chair of the British Medical Association succinctly summed up the situation when he said:

“the ‘winter crisis’ has truly been replaced by a year-round crisis. Doctors and patients have just endured one of the worst winters on record…We cannot accept that this is the new normal for the NHS.”

Let us be clear that this is not an unavoidable situation or the result of some unforeseen circumstances; the situation has come to pass as a direct result of this Government’s policies. By stark contrast to the policies of the Conservative party, in our 2017 manifesto Labour promised immediate investment in our NHS and, just as importantly, explained how we would pay for it.

The issue of privatisation within the NHS is both an important and an emotive one. I believe in a publicly owned NHS, free at the point of delivery, but the creeping privatisation of services poses a very real threat to that most essential of principles. The figures are irrefutable. Since 2010, NHS expenditure on private health providers has doubled from £4.1 billion in 2009-10 to £9 billion in 2016-17, while the percentage of funding allocated to private sector providers has grown from 4.4% in 2009-10 to 7.7% in 2016-17. Spending on elective treatments outsourced to the private sector rose significantly from £241 million in 2015-16 to £381 million in 2016-17.

Since the Government’s disastrous Health and Social Care Act, one third of contracts have been awarded to private providers, some of which have resulted in failure and the waste of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. We have seen the grotesque spectacle of Virgin Care successfully suing our NHS for £1.5 million after losing out on an £82 million contract for children’s health services in Surrey. This has to stop. Labour is committed to reversing privatisation, repealing the Health and Social Care Act and reinstating the powers of the Secretary of State for Health to have overall responsibility for the NHS.

The creation of wholly owned subsidiary companies represents another concern. These new arm’s length private companies appeal to NHS trusts because they can reduce their VAT payments and cut the pay and pensions for any new staff. They result in millions of pounds being wasted on consultancy fees, with the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Birkenhead alone spending more than £660,000. That money could have paid for new staff to work in such hospitals.

I am fortunate to have the amazing Queen Elizabeth Hospital in my constituency. Among many other things, it cares for our brave men and women who are injured while serving their country in our armed forces. I want that hospital to continue to flourish and serve the people of Edgbaston and further afield, but I consider privatisation to be a threat to that happening.

Social Care

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have heard that the Local Government Association has estimated that adult social care faces a £2.3 billion funding gap by 2020, and the reasons for that are wide-ranging. They include a growing population requesting adult social care support, cuts to local authority budgets in recent years and increases in costs to providers, including the national living wage and costs relating to sleep-in arrangements. In addition, the adult social care provider market is increasingly vulnerable, with 69% of councils reporting to ADASS that they have been affected by providers ceasing trading or handing back contracts. That can have a massive impact on the lives of people relying on this care. These short-term pressures must be addressed with additional funding, alongside allowing local areas to use additional funds in the way that addresses their local health and care issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dunne]

I am sure that the hon. Lady will not want to confuse her patients by suggesting that relying on a single surgeon for prolonged periods is necessarily in their best interests. The facilities that remain in Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are intended to remain and include CHD outpatient services for adults and children. Level 2 services also continue to be provided in Manchester.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

15. What estimate he has made of the number of people living with unmet social care needs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

By passing the Care Act 2014, this Government established a national eligibility threshold that defines the care needs that local authorities are required to meet. This eliminates the postcode lottery of eligibility across England. Social care continues to be a key priority for this Government. That is why local authorities in England will receive an additional £2 billion for social care over the next three years. In the longer term, we are committed to establishing adult social care on a fair and more sustainable basis.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

Age UK estimates that nearly 1.2 million older people have unmet care needs. After the Government dropped their disastrous dementia tax policy during the general election, all they can offer people is yet another consultation. In the words of the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), the Chair of the Health Committee, is it not time the Government just got “on with it”?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I do not recognise Age UK’s assessment of unmet need. As I said, the requirements are enshrined in statute and local authorities should be held to that. In response to the hon. Lady’s final point, let me say that we are getting on with it, but we need a real cultural change in how we tackle these issues. There is a long-term issue to address in the fact that we are all living longer. This is not just going to need a sticking plaster; we will need to take the public with us. So this is not just another consultation; it is a vehicle for making sure that we as a society tackle this issue once and for all.