Health: Deaf People

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, on securing this debate on much needed improvements for the health needs of deaf people. Although deaf people have the advantage, unlike the blind, of being able to see, the fact that deafness is not a visible disability, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has said, means that other people are not necessarily aware that you are deaf. Therefore, less immediate attention is given in trying to help with any problems that the person will be facing. Perhaps that lack of awareness of deafness also helps to explain why so few Members of your Lordships’ House are taking part in this important dinner-break debate.

As someone who has had hearing problems since my children were born, and as I have now reached the limit of what hearing aids can do to help me understand what people are saying, I have some, although obviously not a complete, understanding of the problems and frustrations that deaf patients face. Most definitely I have sympathy with the concerns so graphically illustrated in the pamphlet How the Health Service is Failing Deaf People. It clearly makes sense for doctors’ surgeries or hospitals to have the kind of BSL support or other technical arrangements to hand that the authors of this pamphlet are advocating should be routine but clearly are not. Although I suspect that not everyone who is deaf will mind having someone close to them speak to the doctor, the individual’s wishes should be paramount.

Surely, it must be of concern to us all that so many deaf people have a considerably poorer health record than the average citizen. I was glad to see from a Healthwatch briefing sent to me over the weekend that a few areas of the country are beginning to realise the extent of the problems that deaf or hard-of-hearing patients face. In 2013, Kirklees Healthwatch followed up numerous concerns identified in its survey of the area. I hope that at least some of these—for example, deaf awareness training being developed and rolled out for provider staff, including handling phone calls, personal visitors and booking of BSL interpreters—are beginning to happen. Healthwatch also reports the beginnings of awareness and action in areas such as York, Wakefield, Staffordshire and Stockport. As well as the important reasons in the pamphlets for the relevant help proposed, there are other reasons why a greater priority needs to be given to those who are deaf or in the process of going deaf. Ageing, by itself, inevitably brings hearing loss. As people are living considerably longer these days, they will have hearing problems for a longer period of their lives. As well as that, the way that today's young expose their ears to incredibly loud media sounds will inevitably mean that when age kicks in, their hearing loss is bound to be considerably worse, last longer and probably start at an earlier age.

Interestingly, in your Lordships’ House, despite all the modern hearing loops that are fitted in the Committee Rooms, which others may also have found quite difficult to communicate with, I find that the very best hearing loops available are those that we can switch into in the Chamber in itself—where we are at the moment. This has a great deal to do with the considerable improvements that have recently been completed here, but I suspect that it is also helped by the way that the microphones all hang down from the ceiling and speakers are located in the seats of every Bench for people to listen through.

As in so many other ways, because so many noble Lords themselves are going through the stages of ageing, including hearing loss, apart from each one of us checking that appropriate equipment and help are available in our own doctors’ surgeries—which I certainly hope every one of us here today will do—debates such as this that seek government backing can also help to raise awareness of the necessary action to be taken.

With that in mind, I look forward to what the Minister can tell us about what the Government will do to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, about his six questions and the others that we have added. These considerable changes must take place in doctors’ surgeries and hospitals to meet the wide range of needs described so graphically in the pamphlet, How the Health Service Is Failing Deaf People. To continue with such failure would surely be a disgrace.