NHS Funding Bill

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a pleasure to call Peter Gibson to give his maiden speech.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am aware that a large number of right hon. and hon. Members have come into the Chamber to hear the maiden speeches, quite rightly, but it is important that we also listen to other contributions. There was a bit of chatter going on before, so it would be very respectful if we all listened to each other’s speeches.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a pleasure to call Lee Anderson to make his maiden speech.

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[Lee Anderson]

This is my speech; thank you, Eddie.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw has only mentioned his 14,000 majority on one occasion to me—sorry, once a night as we go home across Westminster bridge. He tells me every single night, but I pay him great respect—he certainly has raised the bar.

Ashfield was once voted the best place in the world to live—by me and my mates one Sunday afternoon in the local Wetherspoons. It really is the best place. Ashfield is a typical mining constituency. To the south of the constituency we have Eastwood, birthplace of D.H. Lawrence, to the north we have Nuncargate, birthplace of our most famous cricketer, Harold Larwood, and further north we have Teversal, which is where D.H. Lawrence wrote probably his most famous novel, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”—a book I have read several times. We have many other great towns and villages in Ashfield, such as Sutton, Kirkby, Annesley, Selston, Jacksdale, Westwood, Bagthorpe and Stanton Hill, but the place that is closest to my heart in Ashfield is the place where I grew up, a mining village called Huthwaite.

Like with many villages, when I was growing up in the 1970s most of the men in Huthwaite worked down the pits. I went to a school called John Davies Primary School, and I was always told at school in the ’70s, as many of us were, “Work hard, lad, do well, take the 11-plus, go to grammar school and you’ll not have to go down the pit like your dad and your granddad and your uncles.” Unfortunately, a couple of years before we were due to take our 11-plus, the Labour Government at the time withdrew it from our curriculum, so I was unable to go to grammar school, and none of our school went as a consequence of that. Just a few years later I was down the pit with my dad—working at the pit where my granddad and my uncles had worked. I did that for many years and I am sure my dad, who is watching this right now—a decent, hard-working, working-class bloke—did not want me down the pit. He wanted better for me, but that was taken away. I cannot help but think that, had children in my day had the chance to go to grammar school, they would have had more opportunities and probably a better life. Because I am telling you now, when I worked down those pits in Nottinghamshire, I worked with doctors, with brain surgeons, with airline pilots, with astronauts—with all these brilliant people who never a chance. The Prime Minister is quite right when he says that talent is spread evenly across this country but opportunity is not, and my constituency is living proof of that.

People of Ashfield are a straight-talking bunch—a bit dry, a wicked sense of humour, a bit sarcastic sometimes—but that is borne out of our tough industrial past. You have to remember that we were the people who dug the coal to fuel the nation. We were the people who sent our young people—our young men and women—to war to die for this country. We were the people who made the clothes that clothed the nation. And we were the people who brewed the beer that got us all persistently drunk every single weekend.

In 1993, under a Conservative Government, we reopened the Robin Hood line in Ashfield, and all through the county of Nottinghamshire, which created endless opportunities for passengers to travel for work, for play and for jobs. Standing here as a Conservative MP in 2020, I am proud to say that this Government are once again looking at extending our Robin Hood line to cover the rest of the county. They are also looking at reopening the Maid Marion line, which will again carry passengers to the most isolated and rural areas of our country. It is all well and good having good education and good training, but transport means just as much to the people in my community.

My friends, family and constituents have asked me every single day what it is like to be down here in Westminster. I say, “It’s brilliant—amazing. We’ve got great staff—the doorkeepers.” Every single person who works here has been absolutely brilliant to me. It is an amazing place. I have met all these famous people—I have met MPs, Lords and Ministers—but the best moment for me was last Wednesday night, when I got invited to Downing Street, to No. 10, for the first time ever in my life. I walked through that door and there he was, the man himself—Larry the Cat. [Laughter.] Told you we were funny.

I was born at the brilliant King’s Mill Hospital in Ashfield. King’s Mill was built by the American army during world war two to look after its injured service personnel. After the war, the American Government gave King’s Mill Hospital—the buildings and equipment—to the people of Ashfield as a thank-you gift. What a wonderful gift that is from our American cousins—absolutely stunning. I cannot praise the current staff and management at King’s Mill highly enough. They have really turned things around. Just 20-odd years after the American Government gave King’s Mill Hospital to the people of Ashford, I was born there, and later my children were born there.

It is not just our hospital in Ashfield that means a lot to me; it is the fact that it has saved my wife’s life for many, many years now. My wife was born with a condition called cystic fibrosis. She was not diagnosed until she was 18, and for anybody, to be told that they have cystic fibrosis is like getting an early death sentence. But undeterred, my wife—my beautiful wife—went to work for a year. She then went to university, she studied, she became a teacher and she taught for 10 years, until she got to her early 30s, when she could not really carry on any more and gave up work. All that time, our brilliant NHS staff looked after her and kept her alive—I cannot thank them enough—but things got really bad in her mid-30s and she had to go on the list for a double lung transplant. She was on that list for two years, and we had five false alarms before we finally got the call on 19 December 2016. The operation was 14 hours and she spent three days in critical care. I thank my lucky stars for our brilliant NHS. They looked after her, they have kept her alive, and last year she was elected as a Conservative councillor in our home town.

I am incredibly proud, and when people say that this party is a party of privilege, I say to them, “I’m privileged to be in this party.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a pleasure to call Neale Hanvey to make his maiden speech.

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[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), who made powerful arguments in support of improving maternity services in her area, as well as other hon. Members who made their maiden speeches this evening. I am sure that we will hear a lot more from them.

I want to make a familiar argument about access to and funding of radiotherapy services. The Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), has heard this argument on previous occasions, but I am going to make it again because I am not convinced that the Secretary of State understands it. It is not rocket science: in the United Kingdom, radiotherapy accounts for just £383 million of the NHS resource budget, despite the fact that one in four of us is going to need it at some point in our lives. In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State referred to the Government’s commitment to invest in new diagnostic equipment and scanners. I very much welcome that, but he did not seem to get—I did not hear the penny dropping—the important link between diagnosis and treatment.

I must declare an interest: I am vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy. I am a cancer survivor myself and have benefited from this particular treatment. Basically, I want to make three points. I want to cover the cancer challenge, to briefly discuss the current state of radiotherapy and to set out a future vision for NHS radiotherapy. I am talking in the context of the Bill. I have tried to make key points in interventions about how vital workforce planning and capital budgets are. This is not just a case of replacing hospital car parks; it is about vital equipment. It is essential to improve cancer outcomes for our patients.

About 50% of people develop cancer at some time in their lives, and I am sure that even those fortunate enough to be spared the disease will all have a loved one who has been touched by cancer. I am not arguing from a completely selfish point of view, here—putting a case for me, my constituency or my region. As a magnanimous sort of individual who recognises the sentiment in the House, I am arguing that we should improve cancer services across the whole country. Access to world-class cancer treatment really matters to every single one of our constituents in every constituency in the United Kingdom.

I want to take issue with a statement that the Secretary of State has made on more than one occasion about cancer survival rates. Figures comparing nine comparative countries were published in The Lancet in November last year, just before the election. They showed that the United Kingdom had the lowest survival rates for breast cancer and colon cancer and the second lowest for rectal cancer and cervical cancer. Some 24% of early-diagnosed lung cancer patients are not getting any treatment at all.

In truth, although our cancer survival rates are improving—the Secretary of State is not telling a lie—we still have the worst cancer outcomes in Europe; the baseline is very low. I welcome the Government’s commitment to considering ways to improve cancer diagnosis, with a plan to set new targets so that patients receive cancer results within 28 days. That is great. But we still need to address issues of staff capacity and there is a desperate need for more radiologists and more skilled people in the imaging teams to address shortages in endoscopy, pathology and the vital IT networks.

Unlike chemotherapy, which I have also had on a couple of occasions, which impacts the entire body with chemicals, advanced radiotherapy targets tumours precisely, to within fractions of millimetres, limiting damage to healthy cells in close proximity to the tumour. Improved radiotherapy technology allows us to treat cancers previously treatable only with surgery, chemotherapy or a combination of both. Radiotherapy is also cost-effective for patients, the NHS and Ministers, who are obviously very keen to ensure that we get value for money. A typical course of radiotherapy costs between £3,000 and £6,000—far less than most chemotherapy and immunotherapy cures—and patients experience very few side effects.

The problem is that access to radiotherapy centres and this life-saving treatment is not evenly distributed across the United Kingdom. A 2019 audit showed that 32% of men with locally advanced prostate cancer in the UK had been potentially undertreated, with 15% to 56% of trusts in the survey not offering the sort of radical radiotherapy that those patients really required. In England, advanced curative radiotherapy is actively restricted for no good reason, with only half the 52 centres having been commissioned by NHS England to deliver advanced radiotherapy—stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, or SABR. That is despite the fact that its use is specifically recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

We are coming up to World Cancer Day on 4 February. The Minister understands this issue because we have spent a deal of time on it. I want him to make a commitment on behalf of the Government that the UK will become a world-class centre for patient-first radiotherapy so that we can improve our cancer survival rates. That will require an increase in investment. We need to address the issue of capital funding. Currently, radiotherapy gets 5% of the cancer treatment budget; we need that to be closer to the European average of 11%. There is an immediate need for £140 million of investment to replace the 50 or so radiotherapy machines—the old linear accelerators—that are still in use despite being beyond their recommended 10-year life by the end of 2019. We need investment in IT and to help establish the 11 new radiotherapy networks, which the Minister touched on. Again, that comes under capital and workforce training.

The all-party parliamentary group’s manifesto for radiotherapy is calling for a modest increase in the annual radiotherapy budget, from 5% to 6.5% of the revenue budget, and for the Government to establish some basic standards to secure our vision for radiotherapy. We need to recruit and train highly skilled clinicians, radiographers, medical physicists and healthcare professionals and to guarantee that every cancer patient has access to a radiotherapy centre within a 45-minute travel time. In 2020, the Government should set themselves a 2030 target for the UK to go from having the worst cancer outcomes to the best cancer survival rates in the world. We could do that, and we could make a start by delivering a world-class radiotherapy service.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am afraid that I have to reduce the time limit to eight minutes.

Health and Social Care

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I thought, Madam Deputy Speaker, that immediately I stood up you would announce that the time limit was down to three minutes.

The number of medically trained professionals who have come into the House has apparently risen dramatically. I am one of them, but I have been here a wee while. I warn the new ones that their profession will lean on them to put the case until they are driven to it, as I am today.

I wish to pick on child dental health in particular. For decades, the statistics have been absolutely appalling. Deciduous teeth—baby teeth—are particularly susceptible to decay: their enamel is much thinner than that of permanent teeth. Before SNP Members stand up to tell me about it, I should say that action has been taken on care and education, particularly in schools, and to some degree it is working, but those children for whom it does not work, or works only partially, will require extractions. I can remember looking at little kids in east London with appalling mouths—broken-down teeth, abscesses—who were crying and having sleepless nights, and having to refer them to hospital for a general anaesthetic.

The statistics today are terrible. Last year, more than 45,000 children and young people aged up to 19 were admitted to hospital because of tooth decay. They included 26,000 five to nine-year-olds, making tooth decay the leading cause of hospital admissions for that age group. Last year, there were more than 40,000 hospital operations and extractions for children and young people. That is 160 a day. It is a complete waste of money, it is completely preventable and it is occupying space in our national health service.

Education is starting to make a difference, but far and away the best-proven method to reduce tooth decay among children, and even more so among adults, is fluoridation of the water supply. In the United Kingdom, approximately 330,000 people have naturally occurring fluoride in their water supply. In addition, another 5.8 million in different parts of the country are supplied with fluoridated water. But that covers only 10% of the total population. The percentage covered in the United States is 74% and rising; in Canada it is 44% and rising; in Australia it is 80% and rising; and even little New Zealand has managed 70%. We have fluoridation legislation, but it is left for local authorities to instigate and compel companies to fluoridate their water supplies. There is no financial advantage for the local authorities, but the savings to the NHS would be considerable.

The second problem with the current legislation is that few local authority boundaries are coterminous with the boundaries of the water companies. That makes direction and implementation complex. The sensible answer is for legislation to apply nationwide. That is not in the Queen’s Speech. It could be put into a Queen’s Speech, but it will take a brave Government, I hope supported by the Opposition, to include and implement that. I warn that whenever I speak about fluoridation, the green ink letters fly and broomsticks whizz around my house as people complain. However, it works for child dental health care, which is deplorable in this country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a great pleasure to call Amy Callaghan to make her maiden speech.

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[Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the new hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan). Indeed, I congratulate her on her maiden speech. She spoke with striking personal elements as well as a very clear affection for her constituency. She clearly has strong views, and in that respect she evidently follows on in the long line of strong women representing her area, so I congratulate her wholeheartedly.

It is a privilege to be back here again representing my home constituency of the Vale of Clwyd following an unwelcome and enforced couple of years away. I am, of course, generously termed a retread.

I must start by placing on record my true thanks to all my constituents who voted for me, many of whom voted for my party for the first time ever. It is my ambition to live up to their hopes and aspirations, as well as to the hopes and aspirations of everybody else who did not vote for me. As I did in 2015, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Chris Ruane, who was well respected and represented the constituency very ably for more than 20 years in total.

On the doorsteps in November and December, there was no bigger domestic issue than health. I must declare an interest, as I am an NHS doctor and I am also married to an NHS nurse. Between 2017 and 2019, I worked full-time as a GP in my constituency in Rhyl and in other parts of north-east Wales and west Cheshire. This has given me a unique insight into the state of the NHS in north Wales and further afield. Health matters were transferred to Cardiff, almost in their entirety, 20 years ago. That includes the organisation, structure and basic terms of functioning of the NHS. The reality, though, is that there is still much confusion among the electorate about where powers lie, and my inbox has been inundated with NHS issues since my re-election.

The north Wales health board—the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board—has been in special measures for more than four and a half years, which my constituents and I find totally unacceptable. As yet, there is still no evidence of a turnaround, and my constituents are being let down by a systemic failure in the north Wales NHS. I am extremely limited for time today due to the number of speakers, but in future debates I hope to expand in detail on the issues that I have come across over the last two years in particular. Let me just emphasise that comparable and meaningful data to highlight the extent of this state of affairs is often lacking—if I am honest, I think that may be deliberate—especially given that one of the benefits of devolution was meant to be that we could compare performance of different policies across different parts of the UK. I will expand on the causes behind the problems that I have come across on another occasion, but let me say now that workforce is a key issue, including poor recruitment and retention of staff.

To conclude—in the 40 seconds or so I have left—I have outlined not only interesting statistics, but sadly an indication of unnecessary loss of life and of harm to real patients. At the very least, there is a need for UK-wide patient safety mechanisms and rigorous inspection regimes, underpinned by comparable statistical data on performance and outcomes. I urge the Secretary of State seriously to consider that when progressing the initiatives outlined in the Queen’s Speech.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a great pleasure to call Munira Wilson to make her maiden speech.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure—and slightly daunting—to follow so many powerful and emotive maiden speeches. I thought that the hon. Members for Luton North (Sarah Owen), for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) and for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) made particularly moving speeches. It is an honour to give my maiden speech, and I am especially proud that my five-year-old daughter is in the Gallery to witness this moment. With a record number of female and BAME MPs elected in this Parliament, I hope that I and others will be an inspiration to girls like her and other young women as we strive towards a more diverse Parliament that truly reflects British society.

As the new Member of Parliament for Twickenham, I follow in the illustrious footsteps—or should I say dancing shoes—of the right hon. Sir Vincent Cable. After all, he did get a 10 from Len on “Strictly”! Vince earned the respect of Members of all parties in this House, not just for his economic prowess, but for his dry sense of humour. Who can forget his infamous “from Stalin to Mr Bean” put-down of Prime Minister Gordon Brown?

Vince served Twickenham assiduously for 20 years. I have always been struck by how many people have told me that they or someone close to them have been helped by Vince when they have had a problem, and this is the work of which I know he is rightly most proud. Among his many local achievements, I thought it apt today—while we are debating health and social care—to highlight his work with a local vicar in establishing Homelink in Whitton, which is a day respite care centre for dementia patients. He has also been a patron and champion, since its inception, of Shooting Star Children’s Hospice in Hampton and its work in palliative care. The National Physical Laboratory in Teddington employs some 1,000 scientists, engineers and skilled professionals. Vince was particularly proud of supporting the NPL to secure long-term funding and become a global leader in metrology. Both Vince and his Conservative predecessor, the late Toby Jessell, campaigned hard locally to try to protect the Royal Military School of Music. Kneller Hall, which was founded in 1857, is sadly being sold by the Ministry of Defence and is set to close later this year. It is a huge loss to the local community.

All my predecessors, including the former Conservative Member Tania Mathias, were united in opposing the expansion of Heathrow airport, and I will continue that fight. As Heathrow is the biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in this country, regularly breaching statutory air pollution limits, building a third runway would be an immensely regressive step in tackling the climate emergency, and would have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of tens of thousands of local residents. I invite the Prime Minister to keep his promise to lie down in front of the bulldozers.

As well as planes, trains are a constant source of frustration for my constituents. The Hampton and Shepperton line via Strawberry Hill was built in 1864, and local residents may be forgiven for questioning whether the service has seen any improvement since then. It is the first service to be cut when there is any disruption. The South Western Railway franchise has been disastrous from the start, with constant cancellations and delays—my constituents suffered 27 days of strikes in December. With big question marks over its future viability, the Transport Secretary must urgently review the franchise.

We are extremely proud to have Teddington Memorial Hospital, which was opened in 1875, with just four beds, and which now provides important community services. The amazing League of Friends has raised tens of thousands of pounds to modernise parts of the hospital, and that jewel of a facility is rightly jealously guarded by local residents.

We have a moral obligation to ensure that every child and young person has the opportunity to flourish, but many have shared with me their frustration in accessing child and adolescent mental health services when they most need that support. Just last week, the mother of a 10-year-old with tier 3 needs in my constituency wrote to tell me how her child had been waiting four months for an appointment and would be waiting months more for treatment. My local mental health trust has seen demand explode fifty-fold in the space of four years for tier 3 treatment. Off the Record is an outstanding charity in my constituency working tirelessly with children and young people in this area. It provides a vital service under immense pressure, and I look forward to supporting its work.

My constituents are known for being an active bunch, and while Twickenham is the home of English rugby and Harlequins, it is also the home of Parkrun, founded in the stunning Bushy Park. I look forward to welcoming the officers and members of the Parkrun all-party parliamentary group to join me in Bushy Park one Saturday morning for a run.

I came into politics driven by a desire to tackle inequality, protect our environment and promote internationalist values. It is an immense privilege to have been granted the opportunity to serve both my local community and my country as a Member of Parliament, in order to champion those values. Twickenham, Teddington, Whitton, St Margarets and the Hamptons form a very special constituency, and I look forward, as Whitton’s woman in Westminster, to championing their interests first and foremost in this place.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a great pleasure to call Paul Bristow to make his maiden speech.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a great pleasure to call James Wild to make his maiden speech.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It is a pleasure to call Elliot Colburn to make his maiden speech.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The final two speakers have three minutes each.

The National Health Service

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I have good news. Because some colleagues have indicated that they will not attend the debate, I can put the time limit back up to six minutes.

Lower Limb Wound Care

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

Yes. We do not discriminate. We are keen to talk to everyone to get the best possible learning so that patients up and down the country can benefit from all the expertise that is available.

In thanking the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley for making the supreme effort to be here today, I reassure her that both the Government and the NHS recognise the importance of ensuring that patients have access to high-quality lower limb wound care and will continue to support the work of the national wound care strategy programme for England on improving the quality of wound care, including lower limb wound care, in the country. I thank her once again for being here to make her case so incredibly powerfully. I wish her a speedy recovery and send her all our love from this House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I echo the Minister’s warm comments about the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). We are all deeply impressed to see that she has come from her hospital bed on the 12th floor of St Thomas’s to raise this important issue in the House. I have known and been a friend of the right hon. Lady for more than 30 years and I know her courage and resilience so it is not a great surprise that she has done so, but nevertheless we are hugely impressed. Like the Minister, on behalf of the whole House, I wish her a speedy recovery and look forward to having her back full time in September.



Question put and agreed to.

Services for People with Autism

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

Thank you for chairing us this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I have heard it said that Parliament is not delivering for the people. May I send a message and invite everybody here to join me in sending a message to people with autism or Asperger’s and their families? With the voices of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood), the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friends the Members for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), my hon. Friend the Minister for Care—I thank the Minister for all her commitments this afternoon—and the many others who intervened, the message is that we understand the challenges autistic people have to go through every day, and we will be by your side and will do our best to make sure that you have the services you deserve.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered services for people with autism.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am sure that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) would have been very proud of all the contributions to the debate today, and I hope that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) will send her our best wishes.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you advise me, first, how we can get on the record that over 1 million people have now signed the petition calling for the revocation of article 50 as the best way to stop the Brexit madness that seems to be engulfing the country, and secondly, whether you have had any indication from the Leader of the House—she said this morning that if it got to 17.5 million signatures, she would start to consider it seriously, so only 16.5 million more are now needed—that she is planning to make a statement to the House?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I have not received any indication from the Leader of the House that she intends to come here today. He will know that, under the e-petitions system, the Petitions Committee will consider any petition that receives more than 100,000 signatures for a debate. It is a matter for that Committee when such a debate is scheduled. I am sure it will be looking at this petition in due course, and I am also sure there will be ample opportunities in the coming days for the hon. Gentleman to make his views known. In the meantime, those on the Treasury Bench will have heard his request.

NICE Appraisals: Rare Diseases Treatments

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. There is obviously some pressure on time, so we will start with an eight-minute time limit.

NHS 10-Year Plan

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We now come to the general debate on the NHS 10-year plan. Colleagues will notice that there is a bit of a time issue. I know that the Front-Bench spokespeople will be considerate in this regard, but it is only fair to warn colleagues that I will then impose an immediate three-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches. I call the Minister, Stephen Barclay, to move the motion. [Interruption.] I am sorry. Let me do that again. I call the Minister, Stephen Hammond.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The winding-up speeches will start at 10 to seven. If people take less than three minutes, it will help others.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am anxious to make sure everybody gets in so I must now reduce the time limit to five minutes.

Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Wollaston]

That is, indeed, a question that I have been addressing. What will happen to expats in Europe? What we absolutely must focus on, however, is what will happen 135 days from now if we do not have a deal and people are left high and dry. It is a very worrying situation.

The issue of the workforce does not just affect nursing staff. We should bear in mind that 5% of members of the regulated nursing profession, 16% of dentists, 5% of allied health professionals and 9% of doctors are EEA nationals. We cannot afford to lose any more of that workforce, or to demoralise them further. I think it shames us all that the Health and Social Care Committee heard from nursing staff from across the European Union some of whom were in tears when reporting that they no longer felt welcome here. That is a terrible Brexit penalty, and no one voted for it when they went to the polls.

This does not just affect the workforce either. The Brexit penalty applies to the entire supply chain of medicines and medical devices, from research and development to clinical trials, to the safety testing of batches of medicines, and right through to the pharmacy shelf and the hospital. There are many unanswered questions about the issue of stockpiling, and about contingency plans for products that may require refrigeration, or products with very short shelf lives that cannot be stockpiled. There may also be brand-switching issues: for people who suffer from conditions such as epilepsy, switching brands is not easy.

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will bring my remarks to a close shortly. [Interruption.] I understand that you were merely coughing, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will continue.

Refrigerated warehousing and special air freight do not come cheap. The companies whom we met, represented by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, made it clear that they were already having to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on contingency planning. The Government have said that they intend to reimburse companies, but the smaller companies need to know how quickly they will be reimbursed, because they may have cash-flow issues. They need to know the details of how the scheme will work, but they simply do not have the information that would enable them to make plans for the future. I hope that the Minister will be very mindful of that.

As I said earlier, the simple truth is that the many versions of Brexit have very different implications for the NHS, for social care, for public health and for research. Once this deal is published, we will have an opportunity to set out what this means, but, most important, to set all the risks and benefits of the deal that is on offer for the NHS and social care. The Minister will be aware of the important principle of informed consent in healthcare. No one would dream of going into an operating theatre and having an operation without someone telling them what is involved and setting out the risks and benefits so that they could weigh them up for themselves. That is called informed consent, and without informed consent, there is no valid consent.

Let me say to the Minister that we are all being wheeled into the operating theatre for major constitutional, economic and social surgery without informed consent, and let me ask him please to consider how things will be 136 days from now, after we crash out with no deal and when the serious consequences of that start to unfold and unravel and hit real people’s lives. What will he be saying to his constituents and the House if we have proceeded without informed consent?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I have now to announce the result of today’s deferred Division. In respect of the question relating to electricity and gas, the Ayes were 285 and the Noes were 223, so the Question was agreed to.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

Points of Order

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. What I was complaining about was that this was done with no notice—no notice to the shadow Secretary of State, no notice to me or the team, and no notice to Members of this House who were not here to ask questions. We should have had notice that this important issue was being dealt with.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Lady and the Secretary of State for their points of order. Obviously, the Secretary of State will have heard the point that the hon. Lady has made. I am sure that she will wish to pursue this further. The Secretary of State and the Leader of the House are here on the Treasury Bench, so I am sure that if there is further information forthcoming, that will be the way to proceed.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance as I am a relatively new Member of this House. It came to my attention on Friday that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was visiting my constituency at the weekend. I did not receive advance notice of his visit. I understand that the purpose of the visit was to hold a rally to do a number of things, but particularly to try to get rid of the Scottish Conservatives. Reassuringly, only a handful of people attended the event. I have given the hon. Gentleman notice of this point of order. Am I correct in thinking that it was appropriate for him to give me advance notice of visiting my constituency?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice that he wished to raise this matter. I am glad that he has confirmed that he also warned the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) that he was going to raise the point of order. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that there is a well-established convention that if Members plan to visit other Members’ constituencies for political—not for personal—reasons, they should give them advance notice. It is important that we maintain this courtesy to one another.

Bill Presented

School Uniforms Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Frank Field, supported by Tim Loughton, presented a Bill to require school governing bodies to implement affordability policies when setting school uniform requirements; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 November and to be printed (Bill 283).