Oral Answers to Questions

Beth Winter Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Will Quince)]

My hon. Friend is a strong champion for Burnley, and I congratulate Burnley General Teaching Hospital on the incredible innovative work it is doing. He is right that rolling out 91 out of 160 CDCs is a tremendous effort, but we want to go further, and I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss these plans further.

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

T8.   Last week, the First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, said that pay awards are not being funded at the level they should be. The Wales TUC general secretary said that unless we have a fairer funding settlement for Wales, we are going to struggle going forward. When will this Government listen to the Welsh Government and the Welsh trade unions and provide the proper funded pay award that NHS staff deserve?

Oral Answers to Questions

Beth Winter Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maggie Throup]

My hon. Friend asks a really important question. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has advised that covid and flu vaccines can be given at the same time where that is operationally possible, and we will seek to maximise opportunities to co-promote and co-administer the flu and covid vaccines where it is possible and clinically advised, especially where this improves patient experience and vaccine uptake. Regardless of whether co-administration is offered, it is important that eligible people come forward as soon as they are called by the NHS for their jab, whether for flu or covid.

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

T8. Today, the Office for National Statistics reports that real pay is dropping at the fastest rate since records began in 2001. However, it is reported that the Government are going to punish our hard-working NHS staff even further by forcing through a real pay cut of between 5% and 6%. Will the Minister please dispel that by confirming that NHS staff will be awarded an inflation-proof pay rise?

[Steve Barclay]

The Government have committed to giving NHS workers a pay rise this year, on top of last year’s 3% rise when pay was frozen in the wider public sector. The independent pay review bodies base their recommendations on a number of factors, which include but are not limited to the cost of living and inflation, as well as the economic context and issues such as recruitment and retention. The Government are considering carefully the content of the pay review body’s report and will respond shortly.

Future of the NHS

Beth Winter Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

The impact of the Health and Care Bill on Wales is limited, but I have come to speak in the debate because over 150 of my constituents signed the petition, and because it is right for people from across the UK to defend the NHS as a service that is run publicly, in the way that the great Welsh hero Nye Bevan intended. I have real concerns about the situation faced by the health service and the care sector, both in England and in Wales.

The King’s Fund has estimated that NHS commissioners spend £9.7 billion on services delivered by the private sector, which represents around 7% of NHS revenue spending. While we are handing over NHS provision to the private sector, waiting lists are going up, waits for treatments are getting longer, NHS pay is going down, staff sickness is going up and staff vacancies are going up. The Health and Care Bill does nothing to address that—indeed, it will make things worse. Many of my colleagues have already set out concerns, particularly about the new integrated care boards and the private sector’s increasing role on them. The Bill will also reduce oversight of how contracts are awarded, and move the NHS from being a regulated market to a less regulated one.

The Bill will do nothing to improve social care. It has been two years since the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised a plan for social care. When will we see that plan? Unison has found that more than two thirds of care staff said they were so busy at night that they managed to get only a couple of hours’ sleep, and staff are sleeping on makeshift beds in offices. A quarter of the workforce are on zero-hours contracts, and only about 10% are getting the real living wage. Why is this Tory Government continuing to fail our social care sector, its recipients and its workforce? In 2019, I stood on a manifesto that pledged to establish a national care service. That would have been a historic development along the lines of the establishment of the NHS in 1948, but regrettably, we are not in a position to implement it.

I want to make a few comments about the position in Wales. I suggest that people look at the Welsh Government, because in spite of Tory austerity Governments and years of underfunding, we have successfully managed to retain a largely public sector NHS. We have free prescriptions, and we are now proposing significant extra funding for local authorities to help with maintaining and developing the social care sector. Last year’s co-operation agreement and the programme for government in the Welsh Senedd committed to the implementation of the real living wage and to establishing a Welsh national care service, which will be implemented by the end of 2023. Before Christmas, the Welsh Social Services Minister, Julie Morgan, pledged that the Welsh Government would provide Welsh local authorities and health boards with £43 million so that they can implement the real living wage—not the living wage that the Tories are proposing—from April.

I reiterate my support for those campaigning to defend a publicly owned and run NHS and to deliver a similarly public national care service. We are trying to do it, and we will achieve it in Wales, despite the barriers put up against us by the Tory Government. I really hope that we will have a Labour-led Government in Westminster soon to do the same. Diolch yn fawr.

Covid-19

Beth Winter Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab) [V]]

Rhondda Cynon Taf, the local authority within which my constituency of Cynon Valley is located, has the third highest covid death rate in the UK. This stark fact fills me with sadness. I am sad when I think about all the lives in my community that have been lost to this deadly virus. Behind the statistics are people who lived in, worked in and contributed to our valley in so many ways. Their deaths were needless and avoidable, and that makes me angry.

I am angry at the ever-widening inequality that is the root cause of the high death toll. The south Wales valleys have suffered decades of neglect and hardship as a result of the neoliberal agenda ruthlessly pursued by consecutive UK Governments. The demise of the coal industry in the 1980s was followed by a period of high unemployment, poverty, health problems and inequality. We have never been able or enabled to recover from this position.

I am angry that the past 11 years of Tory Government, with their careless attitude and austerity policies, have exacerbated poverty and inequality in my local authority, which has been stripped of £90 million during this period. My local authority is the fourth most deprived in Wales, with a quarter of people living in poverty and even higher rates of child poverty. The covid pandemic has exacerbated the hardship and suffering of people in my constituency.

I am angry that this Tory Government pay lip service to clapping for key workers, many of whom are on the minimum wage, have to use food banks to manage and are on zero-hours contracts. Our local economy is dominated by low-skilled, low-waged, insecure employment.

I am angry that the health and safety of DVLA workers in Swansea was put at risk during this pandemic. How could the Government let that happen? I support the PCS ballot and urge workers to vote yes.

We must now look at how we run our society and invest in the areas that have been hardest hit. I am optimistic neither that this Government will get it right, nor that they understand the problems that my constituents face. We need a benefits system that gives people security and dignity, not one that includes one of the worst sickness benefit rates in Europe. We need investment in infrastructure projects such as those that can provide green energy and broadband initiatives—projects that provide well-paid jobs and give young people a future in their home communities. The Welsh Government need funding to enable them to carry out such initiatives. We should not have to wait on the vagaries of a Tory Government to decide how and when Wales gets its fair share of funding, through either the Barnett formula or the shared prosperity fund.

We need an end to tax evasion and avoidance by the rich, a windfall tax on covid profits, and community wealth projects with fair work and pay, which put money back in the pockets of our community rather than its being hidden away in offshore bank accounts. We need policies that ease the burden of debt that so many will face. I am determined to challenge the gross inequalities that exist so that we do not end up with the poorest paying the greatest price every time. My experience in my community tells me that there is an appetite for doing things differently, and that fills me with hope.

Local Contact Tracing

Beth Winter Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

The purpose of test, track and trace is to save lives. Despite the Prime Minister’s promise of a “world-beating” system, the system that we have is shambolic. Health contracts worth £830 million have been handed to private companies using public money to run ineffective systems, instead of investing in our public services. In Wales, we have established a successful public sector “test, trace, protect” system, and recent figures show that 96% of close contacts have been reached—much higher than the Serco private sector system. Currently, however, testing in Wales is still partly dependent on the UK Government’s privately run and centrally managed testing system, which has caused confusion and placed people at risk.

I will illustrate the point with my experience in Cynon Valley, which has one of the privately run centres. It is a case study in how not to do things. On 17 September, because of a worrying increase in covid cases in my constituency, serious local restrictions were placed on us that meant that people could not travel in or out of the local authority area without a reasonable excuse. A Serco covid-19 testing site was established in the village of Abercynon, where it became apparent that operational failures were compromising the new restrictions brought in for the area. There was a shortage of testing kits, which resulted in the site being closed for several hours, and there were problems with the administration of the testing regime.

I was astounded to find that the centrally administered, privately run system was allocating appointments that required people to travel hundreds of miles across the UK, including families with children and vulnerable people. That was unacceptable and extremely dangerous to those coming into the high-incidence area, as well as to the local population in my constituency. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on that day in September with a series of questions, but I have yet to receive a response. That is totally unacceptable.

Thank goodness that in Wales we have a measure of independence from this Tory Government, and that we were able to act to address the problems through a system co-ordinated by a proactive local authority health board and the Welsh Government. As the public are asked to make sacrifices to reduce the transmission of covid-19, it is imperative for the Government to keep their side of the bargain and get the test, track and trace system right. Most importantly, I know from experience that local decision making in action is best, as are publicly owned services. Let us learn the lessons of Abercynon, invest in our public services and not let private profit and greed override the health needs in our communities.

Coronavirus Update

Beth Winter Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

There are 144,000 people who have been asked to isolate who simply would not have known that they were at risk before the large-scale track and trace programme was put in place. It is vital that we have the resources to act and that we have plenty of resources for testing and tracing. For a while, we faced criticism that we had too many people with not enough to do, but as shown by the royal colleges report released this morning, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt)—the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee—said and as my hon. Friend just alluded to, it is vital that we have that capacity, so that whenever we need to trace an outbreak of the virus, we can get right in there and take the action that we need to take.

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Every covid-19 death is a tragedy—a family changed forever. The tragic but inescapable truth is that the UK Government’s response to this pandemic resulted in one of the worst death tolls in the world. However, adjusted for age, the death toll in England is 81.9 people per 100,000, compared with 67.6 in Wales. Commons Library research indicates that excess deaths across the pandemic period have been 15% higher in England than in Wales, despite a significantly greater proportion of the Welsh population living with long-term limiting illnesses. What does the Secretary of State believe explains that disparity, and what lessons can his Department learn from the Welsh Government’s response in preparation for further local outbreaks and a potential second wave?

[Matt Hancock]

I have been engaged positively with the Welsh Government throughout, and where we have concerns—for instance, about the outbreaks the Welsh Government were handling in Wrexham or on Anglesey —we have been in communication about it, especially where there is an issue on the border. I would caution slightly against the sorts of comparisons the hon. Lady draws, but what I will say is that this exercise is best conducted together, and that is why we take the approach that we are tackling this virus together across the whole United Kingdom.