Jimmy Savile (NHS Investigations)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My right hon. and learned Friend is right. That is why, if we change the law on mandatory reporting in any way, we need to be careful that we do not inadvertently give licence to the suspension of common sense. It is why we decided not to accept only one recommendation—the mandatory disclosure and barring checks on all volunteers in hospitals, even if they are not in close contact with patients. We believe that common sense and vigilance at local level will be one of the key ways in which we stop this happening again.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Savile revelations never cease to amaze and shock, but are they in some respects a distraction from the bigger issues? The vast majority of abusers are not celebrities. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the bigger issues are the mindset that said, when concerns were raised, “Oh, it’s just Jimmy”, the fact that police were told to turn a blind eye, and suggestions that other doctors and clinicians were also active paedophiles and were complicit in the abuse in some way? Is not the bigger issue the institutional conspiracy to abuse? How will this report feed into the essential inquiry now under way with Justice Lowell Goddard?

[Mr Hunt]

What we are announcing today will be closely fed into the report that the Home Office is currently overseeing. My hon. Friend makes an important point. Clearly, some things in the report would not happen today. We can be confident that the culture across the NHS and social services has changed significantly in a positive way. There is much greater awareness of safeguarding issues. However, the report also said that elements of other things that it highlighted could happen today. That is why it is so important that we learn the necessary lessons.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (George Freeman)]

I am delighted to report that I have met colleagues from across the House and patient representatives of that campaign on a number of occasions. We have appointed the chair and made sure that the terms of reference for the inquiry are clear and comprehensive. It is not, I stress, a judicial inquiry; it is a medical inquiry looking at the evidence.[Official Report, 19 March 2015, Vol. 594, c. 1MC.]

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

A constituent of mine has pointed out that, despite it being a long-term condition, drugs for cystic fibrosis are not subject to an exemption from prescription charges, apparently because, when it was first diagnosed, it was considered to be only a children’s disease. Will Ministers look into this anomaly?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

This issue came up in a debate on cystic fibrosis last year and I am very happy to look at it again. I looked at it subsequent to that debate, in response to an inquiry from, I think, the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), but I am happy to look at it again and get back to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

GP Services

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Gentleman is certainly right about the figures, but I would argue that the direction towards greater privatisation is adding to the problem of fragmentation. I am happy for us all to focus on the issue of fragmentation. That is the bigger point I am raising right now and it is the biggest barrier to people receiving the care they need and deserve.

Intolerably long waiting times to see a GP have become a scandal that is putting A and E under strain and people’s health at risk. The inconvenience of increasingly unacceptable waits for an appointment will mean some people simply do not see a doctor about a persistent mouth ulcer or worsening mental health problem that they are trying to get checked, meaning that serious conditions that could be treated will be missed.

One GP told me this week that she knew of two colleagues who are leaving to go abroad. For her, retention of GPs is a crucial problem. Female GPs in particular, who have children and perhaps work part time, are finding themselves having to work long into the evening and sometimes long into the night. The issue of retention is ever more pressing as more GPs retire. The current older generation of GPs is starting to do so, and getting enough young doctors to become GPs to replace them is a serious issue.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

As my constituency borders the city of Brighton, some of the problems the hon. Lady recounts are similar to those in mine. I spent a lot of time with my GPs recently, sitting in GP surgeries. Does she acknowledge that part of the problem is the shortage of GPs being recruited and the heavy reliance on locums, if one can find them, which is much more expensive? GPs say to me that, despite the very best of intentions from central Government, they are still spending too much of their time filling in paperwork, chasing targets and doing admin when they should be spending that time with their patients.

[Caroline Lucas]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman and thank him for his intervention. Locums are costly and break up the continuity that so many GPs say is vital to being able to provide a good service to their patients.

The Nuffield Trust points out that in October the proportion of GP training places left vacant rose to an historic high of one in eight. NHS England has recently made efforts to make the sector more attractive, but it faces a difficult job with an underfunded, creaking primary care service beset by constant reorganisation and the kinds of fragmentation I mentioned earlier. The Royal College of General Practitioners estimates that about 543 practices in England could face closure in the coming years as GPs retire. Hundreds of thousands of patients could be forced to seek care from other overstretched surgeries, and there is a danger that this could put even more pressure on our hospitals. That exact scenario played out recently in Brighton, with what looked like the imminent closure of Eaton Place surgery in my constituency. That would have left 5,600 patients in limbo and put serious pressure on neighbouring practices. At the very last moment a solution was found, but not before many patients had been seriously worried about the future of the surgery and had started queuing to join other surgeries further afield.

There are serious questions to be asked about what we ask of our general practitioners and the burdens we place on them that are not directly related to patient care. Family doctors want to get to know their patients and to treat them. When I speak to GPs, the message that comes through loud and clear is that continuity is key for doctors and patients. It allows doctors to be more efficient and to get admissions to hospital right. One GP told me that doctors may be more likely to admit patients unnecessarily if they do not know them terribly well, because they do not know what their family or community support might be or how best to judge how great their needs are. On the other hand, the GP who knows their patients well is more likely to spot the early signs of psychosis in a patient who has previously never presented with mental health problems, enabling them to be admitted to hospital sooner rather than later before they have a major episode that puts them at risk.

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 has mitigated against GPs having the time to get to know their patients. New research from the Nuffield Trust and the King’s Fund finds there has been a significant drop, from 19% in 2013 to 12% in 2014, in the numbers of GPs who report being highly engaged in the work of their CCGs. GPs do not have the time to invest in the new structure and there are now fears that the CCGs could become unsustainable. Ministers should be seriously considering how to lift unnecessary burdens from GPs instead of adding to them, so that doctors can spend their time on patient care. With more resources, general practice can keep more people out of hospital.

I pay tribute to the innovative work on well-being that can take place when doctors have sufficient time to see their patients properly. That could genuinely transform lives. For example, in my constituency a GP told me how, after getting to know her patient well, she prescribed a dog to a man who was depressed after a heart attack. That might sound funny, but it was a simple solution that worked: it was more sustainable, made him much less socially isolated and provided him with regular exercise. Another example of innovative work in my constituency is the homeless health care project. It is incredibly impressive. It works solely with homeless people and people in insecure accommodation—for example, people in hostels or who do not have a permanent address—but it needs a more flexible funding formula to extend its groundbreaking work.

That kind of work captures where the health service needs to be going. The current system was designed for acute infectious diseases, which were a 20th century phenomenon. The current phenomenon is of chronic, complex, multi-morbidities with poly-pharmacy. The trusted family doctor who can spend time with an elderly patient with three long-term conditions and 12 different medications and who brings his wife in to discuss his care is not only providing a good, thorough and caring service, but saving the NHS money; helping to make it more sustainable; preventing the crisis by focusing on their physical, psychological and social needs; and treating them as a family and members of the community.

The local GP who gave me that example is meant to have that elderly couple dealt with and written up in her notes in fewer than 15 minutes—and she is lucky because most GPs are given only 10 minutes. Her practice decided that 15-minute appointments were more efficient, because allowing more time kept more people well, but the system will not cope if there are not enough hours in the day and not enough GPs doing that work. The kindness that is shown by giving longer appointments to prevent the elderly man and his wife from having to come back another time to discuss the different chronic conditions comes out of lunch breaks and evenings. The part-time GPs with kids give a lot in this system, and they are not going to stay if things do not get better.

I want to reiterate the importance of celebrating what happens in our NHS today, in spite of the conditions faced by some people. It is essential that we increase GP funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Natascha Engel]

Absolutely. I am deeply concerned about that, and about where the pots of money are that people are accessing. I will come to that in a moment. One thing I hear a lot locally is, “The problem is that we are all living longer.” Of course it is not a problem that we are living longer; it is fantastic, but we need to change the way we look after people as they get older. The problem is not just dementia, cancer or heart disease; diabetes, as we have heard, is an absolute killer. We need to invest much earlier to make sure that people can manage their illnesses or, hopefully, avoid them altogether. GPs have a fundamental role in that.

What I really wanted to talk about was the interconnection locally. We have had enormous cuts to the budgets of local authorities. Derbyshire county council, which is responsible for social care, has had its budget slashed to a point where it is difficult to provide the levels of care that were provided before. I have a sheltered housing facility called Mallard Court, where 50 people are living independently because they have a warden service. That warden service and the care line allow people to live active, social and healthy lives with a minimum level of support. Cuts to local authority funding mean that that social care can no longer be provided. We are looking at finding other ways to provide it, but taking that warden away means that those people will, in a matter of weeks or months, go into crisis, whereas now they are living independent lives. In looking at GP services, we need to look at that issue as well, as it is the local GP practices who will feel all the pressure of those 50 individuals.

That goes back to my point about pots of money and the ring-fencing of them. We can have social services, GP services and acute care in different places, which sucks up all the money in the NHS. Unless we start to look at all of this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) said, as one big picture, the solutions will not be found.

Younger generations are much more demanding, and people have access to the internet. It is good that people are more demanding. That gives a rocket boost to the NHS by making people develop and keeping them on their toes, but we really need to make sure that people are realistic in their demands. The group of practice managers that I meet regularly—they have joined us here today—would say that it is a question of people being realistic in the demands they make on GP services. As MPs, we need to promote that.

I want to talk about normal GP practices. Most of my practices have multiple members. At the moment, there is immense stress and strain on GPs who are partners and own the building that the practice is in. Those employed just as GPs in the practices do not have the same pressure, financial uncertainty and risk that a partner does.

What often happens is that partners retire young and sell their shares in the ownership of the practice. People are not taking on that risk, but are instead working, often in the same practice, as locums. As locums, they can earn around £100 an hour, and that is before they start charging for additional things on top. Rather than having all that stress and strain, and never really having the time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of where the GP practice is going, partners are standing down and working as a locum, doing the work that they want to do and getting highly paid for it; that is, so far as I can see, a no-brainer.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I, too, mentioned locums. Are not the pressures on and requirements of partnered GPs deterring many people? That is why it is easier for Worthing hospital to recruit doctors; it is looking to take on directly salaried GPs to place in the A and E department to relieve pressures there.

[Natascha Engel]

Absolutely, and we ought to look at the issue of ownership of GP practices quite quickly; perhaps more imaginative ways can be found of ensuring that NHS England and those in the areas finding things most difficult can take on ownership of individual practices and GP services. We need to consider all these different issues. The Royal College of General Practitioners has said that there is a shortage of 10,000 GPs, and we need to get on top of that urgently. We need to make it more attractive for GPs to go into practice. As the hon. Member for Clacton said, it is patients who suffer when there are not enough GPs in the service.

I have worked closely with Steve Lloyd, a GP who is chair of the Hardwick clinical commissioning group, which covers the southern part of my constituency. He took me through all the facts and figures, but the big point he made at the end was, “Cherish it or lose it.” I want to end on that note.

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady made the point not made by her Front-Bench spokesperson, which is that this is a long-standing problem. The disadvantage suffered by mental health has been there for a long time. Indeed, it was exacerbated, if I may say so, by the fact that access and waiting time standards were introduced for physical health, but the previous Government left out mental health. If that happens, it dictates where the money goes. That, combined with a funding system that sucks money into acute hospitals but which in mental health relies on a block contract, means that mental health always loses out. It is this Government who are determined to change that to ensure that mental health is finally treated equally.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Government can take credit for great progress in eliminating mixed-sex wards. The Home Secretary had some very encouraging things to say about children with mental health problems in police custody, and in the Department for Education great strides have been made in respect of kids in residential care homes not being placed well away from home. Many of us fought very hard during the passage of the Mental Health Act 2007 to get rid of the practice of children being placed in adult wards far from home. Will the Minister now, with the same urgency that led to those other successes, ensure that that is eliminated at last? In many cases it is not in the best interests of deeply troubled children.

[Norman Lamb]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the work he did in his campaigning on the Mental Health Act and more recently as a Children’s Minister in the Department for Education. I know his passion for the subject and I share his view that it is intolerable that children and young people should go to adult wards. It has been a long-standing issue—it is not new—but it should not happen, just as it should not be the case that children are still placed in police cells. That is why I take the view that we need to ban it in law so that it cannot happen, and there are consequences if it ever does happen.

NHS (Government Spending)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

The hon. Lady should know that there were provisions for advance appointments in the system that we had. Given that we have these pressures, with GPs being totally overstretched and having more and more people to deal with, and the shrinking number of GPs per head of population, she should not be surprised that we are in this situation. We have to do more to recruit and train more GPs. That is part of the way in which we would save the NHS from the situation that it is facing.

When all these different factors are combined with the high levels of winter flu and the growing population, we have an NHS in crisis—but there is an alternative. Yes, we have to repeal the competition-driven Tory changes, but we also have to deliver a sustained increase in resources and a fund designed urgently to alleviate the pressures. That is why, as shadow Chief Secretary, I want to take the time to talk about our £2.5 billion fund.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the shadow Chief Secretary, because I have sat quietly and listened to 16 minutes of his speech trashing the NHS. Will he take the opportunity to congratulate staff at Worthing hospital who, in very difficult circumstances, have met waiting times targets in above 98% of cases? Will he congratulate the staff who have cut hospital-acquired infections by 50% since 2010? Will he congratulate NHS staff who have reduced the number of people in mixed-sex wards from 11,802 in 2010 to 170? May we hear some good news about the staff who are doing a really good job?

[Chris Leslie]

We will hear this time and again from the Conservatives. They want to gag us when we dare to criticise their record on the NHS. We are not going to be quiet about it. We are going to fight for the future of the NHS. I would tell the hon. Gentleman that we do not have any criticisms of the staff in the NHS, or even of the managers who are trying their best in very difficult circumstances to keep the NHS on an even keel. He should know about the BUPA contracts in his West Sussex hospital—

[Tim Loughton]

indicated assent.

[Chris Leslie]

The hon. Gentleman nods. Those contracts have greatly destabilised his local hospital. He voted for that in the then Health and Social Care Bill, which was designed to drive competition all the way through the NHS by stealth, and what a mess it has created in his own patch. I am happy to give way to him if he wants to apologise to patients in West Sussex for the waste and distraction the BUPA contractual arrangement has caused there. Will he apologise?

[Tim Loughton]

I am delighted to intervene because the shadow Secretary of State, who has now appeared, mentioned that in his car crash interview last night. I do not know if the shadow Chief Secretary has been to Worthing or has looked at the contract, but it made no difference in money terms. As it happens, I opposed the contract, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), because there was no impact study. As a result, we will now get a better service—run by the hospital—that is more seamless for patients. Will the shadow Chief Secretary apologise?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Interventions must be brief. Mr Leslie, get back to your speech.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

The treaty’s provisions apply to the whole United Kingdom, so it will be for the delegated authority of the people of Ulster and their Administration to give effect to the treaty locally.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

2. What safeguards are in place for the sustainability of NHS facilities when clinical commissioning groups contract out local services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

The previous Government introduced greater competition to the NHS. This Government have ensured that it is for local doctors and nurses through clinical commissioning groups, rather than bureaucrats, to decide how best to procure NHS services in the interests of their patients.

[Tim Loughton]

As the Minister is aware, Coastal West Sussex CCG is controversially proposing to award a major contract for musculo-skeletal services to a social enterprise consortium rather than Worthing hospital. While I welcome new ways of working in the NHS, as long as the quality of care for patients remains key, what safeguards are in place to ensure that existing NHS services such as trauma and accident and emergency, which we campaigned so hard to protect at Worthing hospital, are not compromised?

[Dr Poulter]

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 ensures that commissioners must also have regard to delivering integrated health care services. I reassure my hon. Friend that the West Sussex CCG has clearly stated:

“The…CCG will continue to commission MSK related trauma from the current providers and the intention is for this to continue for the duration of this MSK…contract”.

Hospital Car Parking Charges

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who has worked with me from the beginning on this debate on hospital car parking, and the many other Members who have been involved, including Opposition Members.

We face three problems on hospital car parking. First, it has become a stealth tax on the most vulnerable. It has hit parents who cannot afford to visit their premature baby in hospital. The charity Bliss states that about 30% of parents of premature babies are unable to visit their baby because they cannot afford the hospital car parking charges. Those who can afford it pay an average of £32 a week to visit their sick child. I do not want to live in a country where parents cannot afford to visit their sick children. It was never envisaged that people with cars would subsidise the national health service.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock set out some hospital car parking charges. The most shocking are those at the Royal Free hospital in London, which I know because, sadly, both my grandparents passed away in that hospital. It costs £500 a week to park a car at that hospital. If there was ever an example of how hospital bosses have used car parking charges as a stealth tax, the Royal Free hospital provides it.

People say that we have to have these charges, but why is there such a wide range of charges across the country? Why do 25% of hospitals not charge at all? I am ashamed to say that my own county of Essex is one of the most expensive areas outside London for hospital parking charges. Why do so many hospitals in the north of England not charge at all?

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has done a fantastic job of leading this campaign. On the subject of neonatal intensive care, there is an added problem. Because of the shortage of facilities, parents often have to travel long distances and pay for accommodation in order to stay near their children overnight. It adds insult to injury that they have to pay hospital parking charges as well. This is a treble whammy, and the charges are particularly unjustified in such cases.

Mitochondrial Replacement (Public Safety)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

Even more worrying than the quotes I have cited from the HFEA is the fact that many scientists, national and international, have gone further in publicly stating that these procedures should not be authorised at all—and not necessarily because they are against them in principle, as some are not against them. Stuart A. Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York medical college has described these proposals as “inherently unsafe”. Paul Knoepfler, an associate professor in the department of cell biology at the UC Davis school of medicine recently wrote that a process of this kind

“could trigger all kinds of devastating problems that…might not manifest until you try to make a human being out of it. Then it’s too late.”

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and respect what she is saying. Safety is paramount, but for every year we delay bringing this science and technology forward, 6,500 children will pick up these horrible inherited diseases, and many of them will die. At what stage would my hon. Friend say that the risks of mitochondrial donation become proportionate to the severity of mitochondrial disease to which many of our constituents are subjected?

[Fiona Bruce]

I can respond in this way. In the general science, concerns have been referred to. A mismatch between nuclear and the mitochondrial DNA could cause severe health problems in children conceived with this technique: problems such as infertility, reduced growth, impaired learning, faster ageing and early death. Are those not sufficiently serious for us to be extremely concerned?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on introducing this debate. It is absolutely essential that Parliament has the opportunity to talk through these important details at greater length.

As my hon. Friend knows, I am usually very conservative on ethical matters such as this. I do not usually advocate anything that might be seen as playing God. I have severe reservations about euthanasia. I have always opposed and will always oppose anything that would modify human characteristics and be seen as creating some form of designer baby. However, there are times when one has to be pragmatic. I have met families of the victims of these terrible, deforming, disfiguring and life-shortening diseases. It is right that we should use our human knowledge for the good of fellow mankind. It is great that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Willetts) has said, British science is leading the way.

Science is about finding cures and solutions, and this is just a different way of preventing horrible things from happening to our children. It is fundamentally a human intervention and it should be judged purely on the basis of whether we are doing more good than bad. I believe that we are when one in 6,500 of our constituents each year contract, without any choice, these horrible inherited diseases. The longer we say, “We need more checks, more safety, more testing”, the longer we are delaying a cure.

We need to get on with it. It has been widely consulted on. I have received virtually no letters on this matter and we need to take a balanced judgment on when the risks of mitochondrial donation become proportionate to the severity of the diseases that are affecting our constituents now. As colleagues have said, it will be licensed by the HFEA based on the safety and efficacy of the evidence, and those licences can be withdrawn at any time.

“Mitochondrial donation only allows for unaltered nuclear DNA to be transferred to an egg or embryo that has unaltered healthy mitochondria. These techniques only replace, rather than alter, a small number of unhealthy genes in the ‘battery pack’ of the cells with healthy ones. Mitochondrial donation does not alter personal characteristics and traits of the person.”

That is an important consideration, because:

“Mitochondrial donation will enable mothers to choose to have children who are genetically related to them, with a natural combination of nuclear genes from both parents while being free from a potentially devastating disease.

Nuclear DNA is not altered and so mitochondrial donation will not affect the child’s appearance, personality or any other features that make a person unique—it will simply allow the mitochondria to function normally and the child to be free of mitochondrial DNA disease. The healthy mitochondria will also be passed on to any children of women born using the technique”—

so we are doing good for generations to come as well.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I agree with what my hon. Friend is saying, and I do not agree with the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), although I have great respect for her, as a fellow Christian in this House. The work at Newcastle university is being funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and by the families and the people whom it supports and works with. Does my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) agree that the fact that they are putting money behind this, speaks volumes about the motives behind the work and about not letting the bad be the enemy of the good?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think it is a great triumph that a British university is doing this important work. To those who say, “No other country allows this sort of thing,” I say, “Well, great; we are pioneering here, as British science has done in so many different areas.”

We need to be honest. We can raise a question about the ethics of it, but we should not hide behind safety considerations when certain people really oppose it for ethical reasons. Let us have that honest debate. I am prepared to give my support to these regulations and to us getting on with this science, with the assurances that there will be strict licensing conditions based on strong scientific evidence and that this in no way can lead to anything that can be remotely construed as designer babies, which I find completely and utterly abhorrent.

We should get on with it. Mankind has used its knowledge and skill to invent some pretty devastating and ghastly ways of disfiguring, maiming, neutering and killing human kind. We should celebrate this remarkable advance in using our scientific knowledge—our human skills—for good, and potentially for the good of generations to come in the families afflicted with these terrible illnesses.

NHS Investigations (Jimmy Savile)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I hope that I have gone some way to meet the hon. Lady’s concerns because, on behalf of the Government and the NHS, I have offered a full apology to all the victims for what happened, and I have accepted that there were failures at many levels. It is very important to say that the reports show that there was no evidence that Ministers or officials were aware of any sexual abuse by Savile. I pointed to the comments by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe because I wanted to make it clear that this Government are not defending actions which, as he has said, were indefensible then and would be indefensible now.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his measured statement. Indeed, I welcome the shadow Secretary of State’s comments about joining our call for an overarching inquiry, because this is the tip of the iceberg. There are still ongoing inquiries to do with Savile in the NHS, 11 local authorities, care homes and others.

Specifically on the subject of victims, there is something that the Secretary of State can do to help immediately. So many victims have very bravely come forward after suffering trauma over many decades and many are still calling the ChildLine and NAPAC—the National Association for People Abused in Childhood—helplines. However, for too many, the therapeutic support that they need to help them through such a particularly difficult time is absolutely not there. Police and health professionals have come to me to say that they know such people, but cannot do anything for them. With the resources in the NHS, the Secretary of State can help now.

[Mr Hunt]

I commend my hon. Friend for his campaigning for vulnerable children over many years. The letter I sent to NHS England this morning asks it to make sure that all the lessons are learned from the reports, and it includes the very clear suggestion—I want the NHS to interpret my letter in this way—that it should ensure that it commissions the support needed for children in these circumstances so that they get the very support that is necessary. This is not just about encouraging people to speak out; it is about making sure that when they do, they feel listened to and supported.

Care Homes

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

Many care homes are signing up to exactly those standards. The more that happens, the more we should applaud and encourage it. The hon. Gentleman is right that we should all be completely intolerant of such abuse and neglect. It is a challenge for the whole of society. Whichever Government are in power need to hold the line of being absolutely intolerant of any failures of care and must demonstrate that when they happen, there are real consequences that will hold people to account.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

As I found out recently when trying to find a suitable home for a relative, trying to get assurances about the quality of care and not just the quality of the buildings, let alone working out how one pays for it all, is a minefield. The truth is that this abuse was uncovered not by the CQC but by the BBC. Following on from the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), could we not have a reporting mechanism, be it through residents, their relatives or volunteer visiting friends, which would be particularly appropriate for those who lack capacity, that would trigger such an investigation by the CQC, with the use of undercover cameras and so on? Could we not have something as high profile as ChildLine that works and that people know about?

[Norman Lamb]

I thank my hon. Friend—or is he right honourable?

[Tim Loughton]

Just honourable.

[Norman Lamb]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Of course the work has to go way beyond just what the CQC can do. I mentioned in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) the fact that organisations focusing particularly on compassionate care now carry out inspections and make reports. I have also mentioned NHS Choices, which means that any member of the public can give their comments on the care experience of a loved one. The more people use their power to highlight unacceptable things that are happening in care homes, and indeed great things, the better.