Public Health

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Thanks to the superhuman efforts of our NHS teams, and to the Prime Minister’s forward thinking back in March 2020 in throwing all our UK resources into supporting industry and the global virology scientific networks in search of vaccines to becalm the threat of covid-19, there is light at the end of this lockdown tunnel. That total commitment across Government has proven worthwhile, and from all those across north Northumberland I pass on enormous thanks for the 24/7 dedication to finding a vaccine, alongside delivering that vaccine, now rolling off the production lines into glass vials in their millions, into trucks and to our hospitals, GP surgeries and, in the weeks ahead I hope, to sports centres and pharmacies.

My constituents, while frustrated at having to remain isolated from family and friends once again, are in a better place about supporting the PM’s difficult decision this week, because their vulnerable family members are indeed being vaccinated. However, we are anxious about the challenges of home schooling once again for all but SEND and key workers’ children. There will be many a difficult moment in all those households as students struggle to make the progress they would be able to make in the classroom. We must ensure, please, that the restricted schooling part of the lockdown is as short as possible, and that all pupils from primary to tertiary are back in their classrooms as soon as the R rate decline becomes clear. We know that schools are safe places, thanks to the efforts made by all our headteachers and their teams over many months, so the damage to our next generation must be as limited as possible.

I am particularly concerned that the cancellation of GCSEs and A-levels in their usual form will leave many long-term gaps in learning, created by the loss of a definite deadline to work to. As a mother of two children, both of whom worked only to an immovable deadline, this would have been a disaster in my household. I can only be grateful that they are now both grown up.

I know that compliance with the regulations in Northumberland will be high, because we appreciate the risk of our NHS being unable to deliver on the needs of all our patients if our excellent Northumbria NHS is overwhelmed. I want to end on an optimistic note. Last week I had the privilege of dropping into the Well Close surgery in Berwick to see for myself our primary care network’s roll-out of the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine. I can only say it was like going into a Christmas party, with the sound of bubbling, excitable voices as my wonderful over-80s queued patiently. They were given a timer because they had to sit and wait for 15 minutes to make sure they did not have a bad reaction, and then there was a ping as they were allowed to go home again, as if they had been fully cooked in their baking oven. It was simply the most extraordinary and encouraging afternoon that I have spent in many months. I thank Hilary Brown, who runs the service, as well as Dr Ben Burville in Amble and the whole team in the Alnwick cricket club for making sure that so many of my over-80s are now protected.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

A huge amount of work is under way to ensure that we are fully prepared for all eventualities this winter. It is an important piece of work across the Department.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I would like to thank the Secretary of State for his commitment to Northumberland hospital investment, with the Northgate Hospital investment announced last week. Does he agree that rural hospitals such as Berwick Infirmary—one of the most rural English hospitals—are places to develop the technology to enable us to reach many more patients, without them having to travel long distances to get to hospital?

[Matt Hancock]

We have ended where we started this questions session: with my delight at a new hospital that has been funded and announced by the Prime Minister on Friday—Newgate in Northumberland. That is a very important development. My right hon. Friend makes a wider point about the importance of community hospitals, which are local to where people live. With modern advances in technology, we can deliver more services closer to people’s homes and in people’s homes, and then in community hospitals, while of course needing to build those superb hubs of science and care that our great hospitals are.

Covid-19 Update

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. We need the scale of the national system and the resonance of the local system and the local knowledge. We are increasingly driving things in that direction, and I would love to talk to my hon. Friend, who is incredibly knowledgeable in these matters, to see what more we can do.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his and his officials’ incredible efforts over the last few days that have meant he was able to make the statement today that informal childcare will sit alongside formal childcare to allow those selfless grandparents across the north-east and elsewhere where local restrictions have to be brought in to make sure, out of the goodness of their hearts and the love of their families, that their sons and daughters can go to work—often low-paid, seasonal work with difficult hours. I thank him for that. Does he also agree that it is for all of us to be selfless, not selfish, as we try to get to grips with the second wave?

[Matt Hancock]

That is a good point on which to end, because my right hon. Friend has worked incredibly hard over the last four or five days to try to ensure that we find a way to protect people who use informal childcare without unnecessarily harming others by widening the exemption beyond what is needed. It is important to control the virus and keep listening to people as to how best to do that, and she has helped enormously. Her final point is critical, which is that we all have a role to play in taking seriously the rise in cases and hospitalisations that we have seen and making sure that we are all doing our bit to control coronavirus.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Ahead of 29 March, we managed to put in place a full programme to ensure access to drugs. Of course, the approach is not just about ensuring stockpiles—there are adequate stockpiles for so many medicines all the time—but is about ensuring the flow of materials and finished drugs across the channel via ferries and, where necessary, aircraft.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to increase the level of funding for health services in rural areas.

[The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)]

NHS England is responsible for funding allocations to clinical commissioning groups, which already take into account the relative health needs of local areas. NHS England is now introducing a new community services formula, which will better recognise the needs of rural, coastal and remote areas.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Will the Minister update the House in more detail on how the Department plans to support CCGs such as Northumberland, where managing the extra costs associated with the extreme rurality of communities like the Coquet valley, the most rural in England, means it simply is not possible for community nurses and general practitioners to reach as many patients in a day?

[Stephen Hammond]

Adjustments are already being made in the funding formula for differences in costs related to rurality or location. Northumberland CCG will receive an extra £1.1 million in funding this year to provide emergency ambulance services in sparsely populated areas. By 2023-24, Northumberland CCG will receive £98.5 million more funding.

My hon. Friend has already spoken to me about Rothbury Community Hospital in her constituency, and I would be delighted to speak to her about it again.

Whorlton Hall

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her robust efforts to get to grips with the matter. I have heard from my constituents overnight that they have no confidence in the CQC if it thought it could get away with assessing Whorlton Hall as good. If it takes an undercover investigator to highlight a message that whistleblowers are not getting through, why are the Government not taking immediate action properly to investigate every single in-patient centre so that the Minister can look us all in the eye and say, “I know which places are safe and which are not”?

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. I think the CQC itself admitted to this. In fact, some of its social media engagement over the past 24 hours has been unprecedented in its level of frankness and openness, and in the way in which it has shown a desire to change and make this situation better. It has been very disturbing for everybody concerned, and it is true that NHS England has started enhanced oversight and scrutiny of this particular group’s other learning disability and autism settings to try to ensure that we are not going to uncover any more stories of such horror.

Services for People with Autism

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who opened by saying that autism is about neurodiversity. Autism should probably be included on my list of interests, because I talk about it so often. My son is about to turn 20, and he has been diagnosed with Asperger’s. He is in his first year at university, and he is thriving precisely because, along with his personal courage, he had the great fortune to have teachers who took the time to learn how they could help him stay in a mainstream school. He has proved it is absolutely possible for these mostly young men, but some young women too, to thrive in adulthood and be everything they are born to be.

I want to raise three points. First, autism is classified as a mental health disorder in the fifth edition of “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”—an American diagnostic tool that is used globally—which is simply wrong. The Government need to take on that global network of conversations by saying it is unacceptable.

I have a particular beef about mental health, as everyone knows. Mental ill health is where medicine needs to come in and support people, because mental health is something we all have every day of the week—sometimes it is in good order, and sometimes it is not in such good order. Mental ill health is something specific. Those who are autistic do sometimes suffer from mental ill health because of the pressures put on them by situations they find too difficult to cope with, but they are not suffering from mental ill health by being autistic. Will the Government please do more to take on this international classification, which is simply wrong and drives all the wrong outcomes?

The visible symptoms of autism include difficulty with social interaction and, indeed, a lack of interest in social interaction. There is some interesting research going on at Stanford University’s school of medicine into why that might be, and there is a particular brain pathway, the mesolimbic reward pathway, that causes people to enjoy social interactions. If the pathway is not stimulated, it may not develop at all.

There is also work to identify neurological activity between the left and right sides of the brain, and those who are autistic seem to have much less interactivity between the two sides of the brain, which also reduces the social skills that we consider to be neurotypically normal. It is important we tackle this, because we need to get the classification of autism right. If we identify where autism sits in relation to the bit of us that is not like the rest of us, we will start to make policy that fits those with an autism diagnosis.

Secondly, I am proud to be a member of the all-party parliamentary group on autism, and I am working with the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on employment, specifically in the military. I am trying really hard to get the Ministry of Defence to let me do some work on why having an autistic spectrum disorder is currently an automatic disbarment from applying to the military in the United Kingdom. I have not looked at whether that is the case globally, but it is a fundamental failure on our part.

There are many senior members of our military who are clearly on the autistic spectrum, and they are brilliant leaders in their field. Many more young people are now being diagnosed, thank goodness, but they are being disbarred because they are listing themselves as having an autistic spectrum disorder, which should not be the case. We are losing the opportunity to employ the brilliant minds with extraordinary focus that we need in some areas of our military for the nation’s good. I challenge the Minister to help me break through that Main Building wall to see whether we can make some progress.

Thirdly, like everything, if we get this right at the beginning, we can make better progress. The diagnostic system is just not good enough. I paid a very large sum of money to get my then eight-year-old boy, James, diagnosed through the private system, which gave him and us a tool with which to work. We were very lucky to have great teachers, too, but that diagnosis gives parents a sense of power that they can look after their children.

We keep struggling on how to make progress, and I raise it again. Will the Minister please sit down with me and others to think about how we could have regional diagnosis centres? It is difficult to ask every single one of our 150 councils to have great teams of psychiatrists and healthcare professionals to get this right. Why do we not have regional centres?

When pre-school teachers see that young children who are not neurotypical have particular attributes and socialisation issues, and so could clearly be autistic, we could send those children to get a diagnosis very early. That would reduce the huge costs of mental ill health and school exclusions that often result, which the state is picking up. By the time these children are 18, they are often unable to interact with society in a constructive way because they have been battered for too long.

Can we please consider having regional centres of excellence for diagnosis to ensure we scoop up these young people much earlier and to ensure that we get the very best out of them? Alongside my son, I see many extraordinary young men and women who will bring great value to our country. We need to make sure that we do not lose any more of these children along the way.

Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Anne-Marie Trevelyan 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

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is an honour to speak in this Second Reading debate on a subject of real importance to some of my most vulnerable constituents across north Northumberland. I want to focus on one cohort of those for whom the Bill is important: those in care homes.

I first became aware that the deprivation of liberty safeguard system was not fit for purpose as a new parliamentary candidate some years ago, while visiting the excellent care homes across my rural constituency—the small, family-run care homes based in sparsely populated areas that elderly constituents have made their home, some by choice, many placed there by Northumberland County Council and some whose family could no longer care for them at home.

One of the first issues raised with me on those visits—even then, when the deprivation of liberty system had just been put in place for those who were unable to consent any more—was that the system was proving burdensome and not family or vulnerable person-centric, and that our local authority had become rapidly overwhelmed by the unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, with six separate assessments clogging up the system but failing to ensure protection and reassurance.

The care home managers in my wonderful small and otherwise person-centric care homes were drowning in paperwork and new requirements but could not get the answers they needed quickly from county hall or doctors. It seemed to all those whose careers—indeed, vocations—it is to run care homes that the bureaucracy was simply adding complexity without positive value or outcomes. Much of the work was simply going over the same ground already covered by local authority officials when the decision to place vulnerable elderly constituents into the care home had been made originally.

Busy managers felt they were simply going round in circles, but they were especially concerned by the distress that the system was causing their residents—not only those to whom the deprivation of liberty assessment related, but others with greater capacity who had to watch their co-residents’ anxiety increase and were concerned that when they became that frail, all that would happen to them too.

This Bill is a welcome piece of legislation to provide important safeguarding for our most vulnerable elderly and young adults with severe learning disabilities or autism, to ensure that the system functions better and to reassure us all. Whether it is members of our family or our constituents, we need to have confidence that where restrictions are deemed necessary by the carer of a vulnerable person, the checks in place are streamlined and effective. Good Government policy delivers on its aims. The original 2005 Act failed to do that.

It is encouraging that the Bill will strengthen the protections and rights of vulnerable adults who lack mental capacity and have their liberty deprived. It will introduce a simpler process that involves families more and gives swift access to assessments, which is really important and has been a problem. It will be less burdensome on people, carers, families and local authorities, and it will allow the NHS, rather than local authorities, to make decisions about their patients, allowing a more efficient and clearly accountable process—something that many GPs have raised with me consistently over the years.

The Bill will consider restrictions of people’s liberties as part of their overall care package, which should be a self-evident truth but has not been under the historical legislation, and it will get rid of repeat assessments and authorisations when someone moves between a care home, hospital and ambulance as part of their treatment. We have few ambulances in north Northumberland, and this has been a huge burden for the paramedics who have to deal with these difficult and complex cases. There is enormous frustration, because there is a sense that people are not getting patient-centric care, which is what everybody looking after them wants to achieve. These proposals go a long way towards creating a system that can be trusted by our constituents, and I look forward to working with the Minister to ensure that the Bill reaches the statute book quickly.

Assessment and Treatment Units: Vulnerable People

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s recent request to the CQC for an immediate review; it is very timely. Can the Minister assure the House, however, that the Government and the NHS are prepared to hear the uncomfortable truth, and change to find the right and compassionate care for those with autism and those with learning difficulties?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, which gets to the root of the issue. It is not enough to ask people what they think and set up commissions and reviews; we have to listen to what people are saying but then we have to act. The thematic review the CQC is starting straight away is reporting back in two phases. That is important as it means that, as soon as the first phase comes back, we can start action straight away.

Prevention of Ill Health: Government Vision

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The hon. Lady makes a great plea, which I will look into in some detail.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

We have a duty of care to support all our citizens to maintain good health by empowering employers in the private and the public sectors to motivate staff to invest time and commitment into their diet, fitness, and long-term health. How will the Secretary of State create that new ethos?

[Matt Hancock]

There is such an important role here for employers. It is not part of the culture of the UK, except in some excellent examples, that employers take a proactive view of the health of their employees. Other countries around Europe do that much, much more systematically. I am attracted to the Dutch model, but there are others, too, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support in doing that.

Budget Resolutions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan). Since the Chancellor sat down yesterday, much has been made by commentators of the question of whether austerity has indeed ended. However, surely that is the wrong question, because what the Chancellor’s speech set out yesterday was the most important point of all: fiscal prudence and careful financial management are what a good Chancellor should always focus his attentions on before all other things, so that when there is a need for more cash for urgent or unexpected events, it is possible to provide resources without jeopardising the long-term economic stability of our country.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to apologise if I became agitated yesterday during the Leader of the Opposition’s reply to the Chancellor, but that was because it is so very frustrating to listen to someone who offers himself as a potential leader of our country but has absolutely no interest in its financial stability. His willingness to borrow “to invest”, as he calls it, means simply a new vast mountain of debt, binding all our children and their future offspring to huge debt interest payments—real cash from real, hard-working taxpayers being used to service debt and therefore not being used for public services, for supporting those who cannot look after themselves, or for ensuring that we invest in the most advanced and flexible defences to protect and look after our constituents. He would rather enjoy the short-term self-gratification of handing out cash that we have not yet earned, but those who would suffer most are those who can least afford it. High interest rates would cripple people with mortgages. There would be a flight of capital investment from our business community, and the small and medium-sized enterprises and larger businesses that are the backbone of our jobs, and whose hard work and risk taking generate so much of the tax we need to pay for our public services, would stop investing, move abroad, and leave a Corbyn Labour Government to bankrupt our nation, as Labour has done before.

That is a scenario that Conservative Members—and, I believe, many on the Opposition Benches—cannot bear to consider for our constituents, who deserve so much better. The last eight years of fiscal rectitude have been hard, but we can now see the benefits of that graft, and the increasing tax take that the Chancellor can use to help to grow our economy and look after those in need. A stable economy means business investment, and that means real jobs, low interest rates and real investment in our public services.

The confirmation of £20 billion for our NHS is very welcome. I hope that the NHS five-year review will invest in local services and community hospitals, and address the rural sparsity factor, which has for too long been ignored by the centre.

There is the investment in the borderlands deal, a devolution programme that allows Northumberland and her neighbouring counties—regardless of the Scottish border, which is simply a line on a map as far as we in north Northumberland are concerned—to focus our investment on the areas of infrastructure and business sectors that we, as the locals, know will help to boost our economic growth most effectively. We will be able to work with our neighbours to achieve what those pesky border reivers never did: a coherent economic and cultural community based on geography and our natural assets; and, rather than fighting each other for personal gain, working together for us all in the most wild and beautiful part of our country.

The Chancellor’s commitment of £50 million for trees—funding to purchase carbon credits from landowners who plant qualifying woodland—is most welcome. This is real support to help those who commit to the slowest-growing crops: the trees that maintain good soil health; improve the water basin; reduce the risk of flooding in the valleys; and hold carbon dioxide while they are growing and then continue to be a carbon sink when they are harvested, with the wood used in housing and the wood trade.

It is excellent news that the Chancellor will be directing all road tax receipts into road investment and maintenance. That makes perfect sense and is welcomed by those who pay their taxes to use the roads every day. I had thought I might not be able to find a way to thank the Chancellor for his support, when he was Secretary of State for Transport, of my campaigning efforts to invest in the A1 through Northumberland in order to dual it and to make it into the safe and functional 21st century road it needs to be for local users, visiting tourists and businesses moving goods. He understands the investment concept of “build it and they will come”. The first £300 million, which he committed, is now being spent to dual the first 13 miles. With the commitment to allocate £28 billion to the national roads fund, he can be assured that I shall be returning to discuss the dualling of the last stretch of the English undualled road between London and Edinburgh shortly. Before that, however, the commitment to general road maintenance and the battle against potholes is most welcome. Northumberland County Council looks after over 3,500 km of roads. The “beast from the east” managed to shred many of our roads earlier this year, so this commitment to spending the monies collected from road users makes real sense to us.

I am also most grateful that the Chancellor has heard the call from my most rural communities for investment to ensure that we can get decent broadband to every property and business, wherever it is. This will ensure that we have long-term solutions that use technology to reach everyone.

Most welcome, of course, are the cuts to income tax, which will mean that my constituents will each have a personal allowance of £12,500 from next April, as well as an increased national living wage of £8.21. Could nobody tell my son, because that will really excite him, given that he will have earned even more when he gets down to the pub at the weekend? There is much for our small businesses to benefit from. The Chancellor has made a commitment to Brexit and to giving all Departments the cash that they need to get ready for the changes that will need to be put in place.

I thank the Chancellor for listening to the voices of so many MPs about one of those areas of Government spending that most people take for granted and assume is all working fine. I believe that we need to talk about this area of critical national policy much more than we do. It is a public service like no other, because this public sector workforce puts its life on the line for us every day. The question of defence investment and why a comprehensive insurance cover is necessary is not a subject of conversation every day among mums at the school gate. However, every parent’s focus is on keeping their children safe, well fed, healthy, and able to have a happy and safe childhood, so how is it that the most important role for any Government to fulfil—protecting their population—is too often forgotten or ignored in polling and questions of day-to-day spending? It is our insurance policy, but we assume that everything is all okay. I therefore listened with pleasure to the Chancellor committing nearly £2 billion over the next 18 months to help the Ministry of Defence to ensure it can maintain all our capabilities to keep us safe.

As we leave the EU, the one thing which remains fixed is our geography. We will remain, as we have always been, an island maritime trading nation—outward facing and trading across the globe. We need to keep safe the seas across which all our trade moves. We need to ensure that international waters are free of danger so that oil and other goods can move around the globe, whether they are British products being exported, or our imports into our thriving ports of the food in our supermarkets and the oil we need every day. Without the Royal Navy’s day-to-day invisible work, our economy would be profoundly affected. I am very pleased to support this Budget.