Health and Care Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab) [V]]

We all know that the last top-down reorganisation of the health service was a disaster for our people and those who work in it, so I was quite excited to hear of the plans to sort it out. I must have been mad. Instead of bringing forward a Bill to deal with their own mess and sort out the health crisis they have created, the Government have introduced a hotchpotch, which will do neither and could make it worse.

The Prime Minister’s response to decades of regional inequality and underfunding of communities such as mine is pathetic. It seems that, instead of introducing robust proposals to reskill our people, invest in our services and tackle their homemade crisis in the NHS, the Government are telling us that an increase in al fresco dining and an extension to the service of takeaway pints are the answers. That sort of trite nonsense is downright insulting to people who live in constituencies such as mine.

People in Stockton North live shorter, less healthy lives than others in more affluent areas by virtue of geography alone. As Cancer Research UK has said:

“If the UK is to tackle inequalities and make sure no community is left behind…then health must be hardwired into the Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.”

If the Government are serious about levelling up for communities such as mine, they will have to take meaningful action to tackle the health inequalities that plague them.

In Stockton North, 7.4% of the population suffer from asthma, higher than the 6.5% who suffer across England. In England, the level of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among the population is 1.9%; that rises to 3.1% in my constituency. There are other inequalities, too, and we need action now. Will the new Secretary of State come good where others have failed and provide Stockton with the new hospital it desperately needs?

Some 13.2% of adults in Stockton-on-Tees are smokers, and smoking-attributable hospital admissions and deaths are increasing, yet Government action to reduce smoking has generally stagnated. Measures in the Bill to tackle obesity are welcome, but smoking is the leading cause of preventable premature death, and yet there are no proposals to tackle it. The Bill represents an ideal opportunity to introduce a US-style “polluter pays” levy with tobacco control, as recommended by the all-party group on smoking and health, and which the Government promised to consider two years ago in their prevention Green Paper. The all-party group—I declare my interest as the vice-chair—has provided a model for this approach, and I am grateful to Action on Smoking and Health and others for their work. The all- party group published a comprehensive set of recommendations that would help the Government to achieve their ambition of a smoke-free 2030, including further regulatory measures to de-normalise smoking, but nothing has happened.

Cancer Research UK has estimated that, on current trends, we will not make England smoke free until at least 2037, and it will be longer for poorer communities. We need action now. The Government say that we need bold action; they should take it now. That is one step towards tackling inequalities that blight our country.

Health and Care Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

First, I apologise for being late to the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I appreciate your calling me to speak, and I will be brief.

Amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 92 is all about increasing women’s choice, not about taking choice away from anyone. The basis on which the amendment can be judged is the evidence we have gathered, not in a short period of time, but during two years in which 150,000 women have used telemedical abortion care. Judge the amendment against that backdrop; it is done not on a whim or a fancy, but after two years of intensive analysis.

While I might want to agree with those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are calling for a reasoned debate in the House of Commons on the broader issues of abortion, the truth is that we do not have those debates because the Government talk about changes to abortion provision coming from Back Benchers when that provision is now so out of date in our country that we need the Government to look at it more broadly. I will support the amendment because it is the right thing to do. The amendment is backed by a huge range of organisations and a significant body of evidence, and it requires the Government to look more broadly at abortion—to take this as a responsibility and to stop shoving it back on to the Back Benches.

Continuing telemedical abortions will be supported and regulated in exactly the same way as face-to-face abortion care, and to suggest otherwise is to be factually incorrect. Members really need to think about the evidence showing that online sales of abortion pills from unregulated providers have decreased since telemedical abortion was made legally available. Rather than push people back into an unregulated market, let us keep what we have, which has worked for 150,000 women over the past two years. But please, please, Minister, let us have a reasoned look at abortion more broadly. Stop saying that this is an issue for Back Benchers. It is not.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I will speak specifically to Lords amendments 85 to 88 on tobacco control. First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) who put so much work into tobacco control amendments in Committee but is unable to be here. Like her, I am an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, and I strongly support amendments 85 to 88 on the “polluter pays” levy on tobacco manufacturers. I heard what the Minister said about a levy being complicated and how it might take years to implement, but a way must be found to make big tobacco pay for the crisis that it sustains every day that it remains in business.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham, I represent a constituency in north-east England, which is the most deprived region of the country and has high rates of smoking. We have reduced smoking significantly in recent years, but, despite that progress, it is still the leading cause of premature death, killing more than 400 of my constituents a year. In my constituency, smoking costs society more than £62 million, which is money that our community can ill afford. I also worry that nearly 15% of local pregnant women are still smoking at the time of delivery, which is 50% higher than the national average. We all know that smoking in pregnancy significantly increases the risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, sudden infant death syndrome and foetal growth retardation. The levy would raise vitally needed money for investment in deprived areas such as ours in the north-east to break the cycle of addiction, disease and premature death. At current rates of decline, Cancer Research UK has calculated that the smokefree 2030 ambition will not be achieved for our most disadvantaged communities until 2047.

[Steve Brine]

This is such an important subject, so it is good that we are discussing it as part of the Bill. I am so puzzled by the Government’s approach because money is clearly short in the Treasury and the levy would be a new source of income that could help with a public health aim and save millions in the long run. The reason for it was summed up beautifully by the chief medical officer when he said that

“a small number of companies make profits from the people who they have addicted in young ages…to something which they know will kill them.”

We have an opportunity to do something about that at no cost to the Exchequer.

[Alex Cunningham]

It is exactly that; I could not agree more. I am sure that Ministers will work hard to try to find ways in which we can make the polluter pay—that is a polluter who pollutes the bodies of our people.

Achieving the smokefree 2030 ambition is the most effective way to achieve the health missions in the Government’s levelling-up White Paper to reduce the gap in healthy life expectancy between top performing and other areas by 2030 and to increase healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035. Becoming smokefree will also improve my constituents’ employability by reducing levels of sickness, disease and disability.

I am pleased that tobacco control is not a party political issue, and I am pleased to work closely on it with the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). We have very different political views on many things—he has heard me say this—but we are as one on this issue. It was a Conservative Government who committed to making England smokefree by 2030, but that ambition is shared by all political parties in Parliament. It is also supported by the public, but, like the all-party parliamentary group, they recognise that this ambition needs substantial funding to be delivered.

A survey of 13,000 people carried out last month for Action on Smoking and Health found that making tobacco manufacturers pay for measures to end smoking was supported by more than three quarters of the public, with little opposition—I think that 6% of people were opposed. Let us remember that, over the last 50 years, smoking has killed an average of 400 people a day year in, year out, which is far more than covid has or will. It is only right that big tobacco, which has lined its pockets from the human misery caused by polluting the bodies of our people, is forced to pay the price of ending this lethal epidemic. I urge the Government to accept the amendments as a step on the track to achieving the smokefree 2030 ambition that we all share.

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham). I will speak briefly to Lords amendment 84 and to the Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 92.

On Lords amendment 84, on the licensing of cosmetic procedures, I just want to thank the Government for putting this in. Non-surgical cosmetic interventions such as Botox and fillers are the wild west of the healthcare world. We do not expect something that we can easily and legally get done in the safety of our own home to be able to blind us, but that is the case. It is high time that this was sorted and it is a huge step forward for women’s health, so I thank the Government very much.