National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Debate between Barbara Keeley and Chris Ruane

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed. Now that the shortlist for bidding has been announced for end-of-life care, we find that five of the shortlisted bidders are private companies, with only two NHS trusts on the list. For cancer care, there are three private companies and two NHS trusts. Given the seemingly headlong drive for change we found in those commissioning this large and risky contract, a great number of questions were left unanswered. For instance, despite the key role that GPs play in end-of-life care for patients choosing to die at home, the prime provider of end-of-life care will not have control over the actions of the GPs involved in that care unless a specific contract is drawn up and GPs are paid for extra tasks.

The contracts for cancer and end-of-life care are to be placed in early summer 2015, and I invite anybody with an interest in this to review the evidence and, in particular, the unanswered questions in the session the Health Committee held on 14 October. I have yet to find assurances in the evidence I have heard that the profit motive of private providers can be squared with the objective of improving cancer care and end-of-life care for patients.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Cancer care for north Wales is provided by bodies in the north-west of England. MPs on the Government Benches are saying that I, as a Welsh MP, should not have a vote on this matter. What does my hon. Friend think about that? Should I be concerned about standards of care and the privatisation of the English health service? My constituents will suffer if it is hollowed out and privatised by the Government.

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend absolutely should be concerned and I know that he is.

One of the elements of cancer and end-of-life care given to us as an example of where improvement is needed in Staffordshire and Stoke was patient transport. However, we know in the north-west that going to new private providers does not tend to help. We have already had a negative experience since patient transport was contracted out to the bus company Arriva.

A number of my constituents have had problems with Arriva’s patient transport. One contacted me following a wait of more than three hours for ambulance transport to be arranged for her husband. He has terminal cancer and needed to be transported back to Salford Royal after oncology treatment at the Christie hospital. That was the second time in three weeks that this terminally ill patient had to wait two or three hours for transport. Staff at the Christie hospital told my constituent that such long waits were common, despite the fact that many oncology patients are very sick.

Tobacco Products (Plain Packaging)

Debate between Barbara Keeley and Chris Ruane

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. As an MP for Salford, I want to speak because smoking, smoking-related deaths and lung cancer rates are all too high there. One in four of the population in Salford smoke, which is a much higher rate than the average of one in five people in England as a whole. Consequently, we have much higher rates of smoking-related death and a higher incidence of lung cancer, with 175 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed each year. The worst statistic is perhaps the Cancer Research UK estimate that around 1,000 children in Salford start smoking each year; that addiction will kill one in two of them, if they become long-term smokers.

Early evidence from Australia on the introduction of plain packaging suggests that branded cigarette boxes can influence the perception of smoking among young people and that plain packaging might help the fight against starting smoking, which is what is important to me. In a study there, 70% of those interviewed who smoked from plain packets said that they thought that the cigarettes were “less satisfying”, and they rated quitting as a higher priority than those who continued to smoke from a branded pack. In an important separate online study, 87% of the children interviewed rated plain packets as “uncool” and said they would not want to be seen with them.

There is, therefore, weight behind the argument that cigarette packaging is the last legal form of tobacco advertising and that it has an influence on young people’s perception of smoking. That is why it is really important that we take action to introduce plain packs.

In the previous Parliament, we introduced a ban on smoking in public places and it made a difference. I visited Copenhagen earlier this year, and found myself in public places where people were lighting up. It is easy to forget how unpleasant it is to be in a public place where people are smoking and to come home with clothes and hair stinking of smoke, but worse is the effect of second-hand smoke on health. Since 2002, tobacco advertising has been banned from TV, billboards and sports such as Formula 1; the next step is to tackle the advertising on the packaging.

In 1950, 80% of men and 40% of women smoked. Cigarette advertising at that time used images of doctors and celebrities to promote the different brands. One brand even used images of Santa Claus smoking.

[Chris Ruane]

I mentioned two packs earlier. One I was not able to get hold of for today, despite my trying. It is a lovely 1950s retro pack, which opens up to show nice pink cigarettes inside—very appealing to a 12-year-old. What does my hon. Friend think about that kind of retro advertising by the tobacco industry?

[Barbara Keeley]

It just shows that all these methods are being used to attract smokers—particularly, and sadly, young smokers. To think that we once used Santa Claus to claim that a brand was easy on the throat. We have heard of the damaging impacts and the dreadful way in which people die.

I congratulate the stop smoking services in Salford, particularly for their programme that focuses on reducing smoking in families with children under 16. Research has shown that, if children do not see their parents smoking, they are less likely to start smoking themselves. Many of our programmes in Salford are targeted at families. I think it is true that most smokers do not want their children to start smoking.

All the advertising is pernicious. It focuses on young people, and on young women who want to remain slim and, for heaven’s sake, in the past, it used Santa Claus and doctors. It is time we moved on to take the next important step to close down cigarette advertising by introducing plain packs. It is time to prevent children and young people from starting smoking—I do not want to continue to see 1,000 children a year in Salford starting to smoke—and to reduce the large numbers of people affected by smoking-related illness and early death, in my authority and across the country.