Hospice Funding

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

I have scribbled my own note—the right hon. Gentleman says that he “agrees”— but the issue is that his Government did nothing over 14 years to support or make a change. That is why the announcement we are making is so important. I reiterate my earlier point, which I will repeat every time I am at the Dispatch Box: the Conservatives have not read the Darzi report; if they do not agree with the diagnosis, they cannot agree with the solution. That is their fundamental problem.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

I welcome the announcement of additional funding, as will many families across the country. Although it is not in my constituency, Rowans Hospice is used by people in Pompey. Indeed, my nan Pearl and my very dear friend Fiona spent their last few weeks in the hospice’s care, and what a wonderful place it is. At a city council meeting this week, concerns were raised about the future of that amazing service. Will the Minister confirm that the Government are committed to ensuring that every person has access to high-quality end of life care?

[Karin Smyth]

That is absolutely what we want to do, and today’s announcement is a step towards it. As my hon. Friend highlights, hospices are very special places, but most people want to die at home with their loved ones, in the place they know well, and many parts of the sector will be able to use this money to help more people to die peacefully at home.

Winter Preparedness

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth]

As I said in my statement, we have begun plans to stabilise the workforce and the employment Bill is going through the House, so I do not agree with the hon. Lady on that point. We know that it will take a long time, and we will of course be working with colleagues to ensure that we do develop that national care service.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

Let me begin by echoing the Minister’s words and thanking the fantastic NHS workers and those in the wraparound service who provide a vital service in Portsmouth all year round, but particularly in winter. Let me also thank all the Members who turned up for the joint NHS consultation with me and with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan).

Unfortunately, owing to the scale of the damage done to the NHS by the last Government, our NHS providers have to make very difficult decisions at this time. Can the Minister reassure me and my constituents, that patient safety, and emergency services in particular, will be this Government’s first priority during the winter?

[Karin Smyth]

I am very pleased to reiterate that safety is the watchword for winter, as it is all year round, and to stress that that is why NHS England wrote about it today. I commend my hon. Friend for meeting her constituents locally, and I urge all Members to do the same. We are getting some fantastic ideas from staff and from patients about how to reform and change the system for the long term.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Amanda Martin Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. From the engagement that I have had with members across all parties in local government—elected members, officers and directors of public health—I know that they want these measures. They are up for introducing them, and for helping us to get them right.

The hon. Member for North Shropshire raised the issue of ID checks, as did a number of others. I gently say to those who expressed a degree of scepticism that most retailers already follow recommended practice and regularly ask customers for ID. We are stopping people from ever starting smoking, and 83% of smokers start before the age of 20. That means that someone who has never previously smoked is highly unlikely to want to take up smoking later in life. Our published modelling shows that smoking rates in England for 14 to 30-year-olds could be close to 0% as early as 2050 with the measures in this Bill.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

As a former teacher, I hope that the Government are working across Departments. Will we work with the Department for Education to ensure that these conversations are had in our schools, right from the beginning, at primary level, and all the way through?

[Andrew Gwynne]

That is absolutely crucial. With this legislation, we have to make sure that we do not take our foot off the pedal when it comes to education and informing the next generation of children of the harms of smoking and vaping through our public health initiative.

Infected Blood Inquiry

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

We must always remember that at the heart of any public scandal, there are people. So many of my hon. Friends this afternoon have told tragic stories, but also stories of courage and humility. Alongside other brave, courageous victims and their families, Becca, Jess and their siblings have campaigned for justice for people infected and affected, in loving memory of their father, Joe. Like me, they welcome the decisiveness and commitment from this Government. With families like them in mind, I would like to ask the Minister to outline when he expects the second set of regulations to be laid before Parliament, how victims and their families can continue to be involved and informed of progress, and how claims can be made.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Income Tax (Charge)

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Chief Secretary to the Treasury agrees that those on the depleted Government Benches continue to paint a picture showing that the last 14 years of Tory neglect were not a choice. That is made even more delulu by attacks on the changes that this Government have made to fix the foundations and improve the lives of people in constituencies up and down the country. This shameful attempt to rewrite history would be laughable if it were not so tragic for the people who live in my city.

The Budget is the first step in a different and positive direction. I am proud to say that the Government have seized the opportunity to create real change for my constituents. There are 9,600 minimum wage workers in my constituency, a number proportionally higher than the national average, and many work in our public sector. Increasing the national living wage to £12.21 per hour is a huge win for those low-paid workers, and the increase to £10 for those aged between 18 and 20 gives young people a decent chance to start their independent lives.

More than 12,300 unpaid carers are fighting to provide vital care in my city. Unpaid carers deserve our unwavering support, and I am proud that we are raising the threshold for carer’s allowance, which will provide a vital boost for many families. The review of the carer’s allowance overpayment scandal that we saw under the last Conservative Government is very much overdue, and I am pleased that we are launching it.

Some 63,000 people are waiting to start treatment at Portsmouth’s NHS trust, with almost half waiting more than 18 weeks. The injection of spending into the NHS represents a real-terms growth rate of 4%. The additional funding will support the delivery of extra appointments, reduce waiting times and deliver an 18-week target, which is vital for my constituents. I am looking forward to hosting the first joint NHS public consultation in December with my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), and to feeding our city’s views into the 10-year plan for the NHS. In Portsmouth North, 6,730 people are on universal credit. Our reforms to universal credit will mean the introduction of a fairer debt repayment rate. We are bringing the rate down from 25% to 15%, which will help so many people.

As a teacher, it would be remiss of me not to mention the 43,000 children in my city who are in education. We are bringing in breakfast clubs to ensure that children are set up every day, and removing the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools, so that 94% of the kids in our country get money into their schools. We are recruiting teachers and, crucially, supporting 14,000 children with SEND in my city.

Access to Primary Healthcare

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

As the Darzi review shows, one of the most egregious examples of the neglect and incompetence of the past 14 years is the underspend on capital. We are clear that a number of premises across the country can be repurposed, and that the bureaucracy needs to be cleared out of its way. As the Prime Minister said earlier this week, we will have a mission about smart regulation and clearing the bureaucratic barriers to change.

We are also cutting red tape so that GPs spend less time pushing paper and more time face-to-face with the patients they serve. We are working to bring back the family doctors and to end the 8 am scramble. We have done more for primary care in the last 14 weeks than that lot did in the last 14 years.

On dentistry, we will introduce supervised tooth brushing for three to five-year-olds in deprived areas, ending the national scandal of tooth decay. And we are rebuilding the bridges that the Conservatives burned with the British Dental Association. I have already met the BDA, and we will deliver a rescue plan that gets NHS dentistry back on its feet, with 700,000 additional urgent appointments, starting as soon as possible, in those parts of our country that need them most.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

Given the shocking state the last Government left us in, is it not good that the grown-ups are now in the building and that we have seen the urgency needed in the NHS, commissioning the Darzi report and investing £82 million, alongside making our commitment to tackle dentistry, use pharmacies and reduce the unnecessary burden?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for getting the strikes sorted within a week of us taking power—what a change that has made. We will reform the dentistry contract to make NHS work more attractive, boost retention and deliver a shift to prevention.

On pharmacies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) made clear, we will shift the focus of our NHS out of hospital and into the community, empowering more pharmacists to prescribe independently, and freeing up GP appointments for those who need them most. That shift from hospital to community is vital for demand management in the primary and acute sectors.

On the whole, this has been an excellent debate, but I find it absolutely extraordinary that not a single word of humility or contrition was uttered by the official Opposition. Where was the apology for the fact that they spent 14 years bringing our NHS to its knees? Where was the mea culpa for the way in which they spent 14 years scapegoating the workforce, dodging the tough questions and passing the buck? Where was the acknowledgment of the fact that they called the election and ran away from their £22 billion black hole and from the multiple crises in our public services?

While the Conservative party continues to live in a parallel universe, we on the Government Benches are living in the real world. We are honest about the scale of the challenge, and we are up for the fight. While the mountain before us is daunting, we are not daunted. Instead, we are focused on the future, reform and rebuilding, and on shifting from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention, and from analogue to digital. Let us roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.

NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation

Amanda Martin Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

Honestly, Madam Deputy Speaker, “brass neck” springs to mind. Once again, the hon. Member gets to her feet and fails to say the word “sorry”. If she wants to correct the record, how about she stands up and corrects the abysmal record that she and her predecessors lumbered this country with? They took the NHS from being the very best—that is how it was left in 2010—to being the very worst; that is how she inherited it. If she wants to talk about humility, she might like to start demonstrating some before her time in Parliament comes to an end.

If the hon. Member wants to distance herself from her former dentistry Minister, let us turn to the candidate seeking to lead her party who is head and shoulders above the rest with its membership, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch). She wants to go even further. On whether the NHS should be free at the point of use, she told The Times last month:

“I think we need to have a serious cross-party, national conversation.”

That is what she said about whether the NHS should be free at the point of use. I suspect that she has blamed the journalist for her own words since, but just so that Government Members are clear, that will happen over my dead body. This Labour Government will always defend our NHS as a public service that is free at the point of use, so that whenever someone falls ill, they never have to worry about the bill.

The problem is not, and has never been, the fair, equitable model of funding. It is the same model that we had in 2010, when the last Labour Government delivered the shortest waiting times and highest patient satisfaction in history. A universal, single-payer health service is the fairest, most equitable way to provide healthcare. More than that, in a way that could never have been predicted in 1948 by Attlee and Bevan, it makes the NHS the best placed healthcare system in the world for the revolution taking place in genomics, technology and life sciences. The NHS has the right funding model, but it is not taking advantage of the opportunities in front of it. That is what we need to change.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

Under the previous Government, poor investment and a lack of respect for NHS workers, particularly in primary care, resulted in Portsmouth North having over 3,000 patients per GP. That has resulted in over 1,800 people waiting more than a month to see a GP. Despite that, Lord Darzi notes that many of the solutions can be found in parts of the NHS in our constituencies. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge the fantastic initiative and hard work of GPs in Portsmouth North, as they work alongside trainee GPs from King’s College London, and look to push that across the country?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is right. In Portsmouth and right across the country, there are people who, against the backdrop of the previous Government, have none the less tried to innovate, do things differently and improve services for patients. Especially given that they sent her to represent them here in Parliament, I am sure they are relieved that they now have a Labour Government on their side.