Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will happily give the hon. Gentleman the figures, but if he is shocked by the amount that was spent on consultancy, he will be even more horrified to learn that it was vastly greater under the last Labour Government. We are paring that down precisely because we want money to be spent on the front line.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State share my hope that the Government’s joint commitment to increasing NHS spending and dealing with the legacy of private finance initiative debt will help areas such as Gosport, which is living under the umbrella of a huge PFI hospital that was approved under the last Government and is sucking up most of the NHS budget?

[Mr Hunt]

PFI debt is costing the NHS more than £1 billion every year. In some cases that money was well spent, but it was often very poorly spent. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we want the money to be spent on front-line care, which is why we have drawn a line under the appalling deals negotiated by the last Government. We are spending money where it should be spent, in order to help patients.

EU Working Time Directive (NHS)

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie]

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend. One of the most destructive things is that the directive puts a cap on excellence. If people want to put in extra time to become excellent in their field and be a world-leading expert, they will not be allowed to because someone in Brussels and the new deal says no. That worries me tremendously in terms of our competitiveness with the rest of the world. We have some of the world’s leading experts in many fields of medicine, but America and Australia do not have such restrictions and they will pull away because we simply will not see talent coming through. Worse than that, a country that says to bright, talented young people who are going into a service occupation to serve the public, “We are going to put a cap on your endeavour” is a country of which none of us would want to be part. The precedent that that sets is absolutely diabolical.

Let me come to an issue that is much more difficult. It is easy to sit and point to problems, but some things are much more difficult, especially, as hon. Members have said, when they involve the dreaded E-word—Europe. What can we do? There is no doubt that there is a massive consensus across the medical profession that something needs to be done. The Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians, the NHS Confederation and NHS employers all say that they have massive concerns about the country’s health service. However, an interesting omission from that list is the British Medical Association, which seems absolutely content. It wants to keep the opt-out, but it seems absolutely content with the SiMAP and Jaeger rules that are playing havoc with our hospitals and with situations that are driving many junior doctors to despair and sick notes. I guess that it negotiated the new deal, but it is odd and disappointing that, on this issue, it seems so unrepresentative of so many fields of the profession.

Ministers have said that they are working urgently with Europe for a solution. I have no doubt that that is true, and I appreciate the complexity of the situation. However, I am beginning to think that waiting for a solution to come out of Europe is like waiting for Godot. As hon. Members will know, this debate has been revolving around the European Commission and the European Parliament for almost a decade. It has come back again, and people are still trying to agree on what they are going to discuss. They have until September this year to agree that, but given past history, I have no faith whatsoever that an agreement is on the cards, let alone any results, and the precedent that has been set is not encouraging. While that farce has been going on in Europe, the clock has been ticking every day. Every day, patients’ lives are put at risk; every year, new generations of doctors enter a system that does not serve them, their patients, or the country.

What can we do? First, we should look at what we want. As I have said, no one wants a return to the bad old days when junior doctors were working ridiculous hours and were too tired to function, and patient safety was put at risk. The professions say that they want flexibility. For example, the Royal College of Surgeons has said that a working week of up to 65 hours, with a bit of flexibility, would be extremely good, and that will differ from discipline to discipline. Anaesthetists may want something slightly different from the surgeons, but the point is that our professionals know what they are talking about and what they are doing, and they deserve the flexibility to drive their services as they see fit. The Government have taken seriously the agenda to put professionals in the driving seat. We want flexibility, not arbitrary limits on times.

What can we do? My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) has already mentioned what some other countries do. In the Netherlands, for example, doctors are classed as autonomous workers, because they earn more than three times the average wage in that country. We can look at such a classification, although that might be a complicated solution.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

Let me add my voice to the chorus of praise for my hon. Friend who has secured this debate. A number of medical professionals from my constituency have raised this issue, and some of them feel so strongly about it that they are present in Westminster Hall today. Other services such as the armed forces, the police and even deep-sea fishermen have been granted an exemption from the working time directive. Does my hon. Friend think that the Government should issue an exemption for medical professionals?

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, although we do not want to return to ancient history when things were conducted in a regrettable way. It is of great regret that, when trade unions and the BMA were negotiating with the then Government about how to implement the directive, the option of a sectoral opt-out was removed. Other hon. Members will have greater expertise on this matter, but I have been looking at the ways that a sectoral opt-out can now be negotiated. However, because time has passed since the original negotiation, it is now a lot more difficult to go for a sectoral opt-out. None the less, the common sense of the comment is apparent to everyone. It is a disgrace that the previous Government oversaw the implementation of one of the single biggest damaging factors to our NHS, as well as supplanting it with the new deal. We should make more of that because it has eroded so much confidence in our profession and it will have ramifications for a long time to come.

Spain applies the 48-hour limit to contracts and not to individuals, which is something that we could consider. In Ireland, training is not counted as work time. I am sure that there are lawyers all over the place who will say, “We can’t do that.” They will give all sorts of reasons why not. Again, I say to the Minister that this is a question of priorities. There are always procedural reasons why not, but if we consider what is at issue, the stakes could not be higher.

In conclusion, I urge the Minister not only to continue his energetic negotiations in Europe with colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but to look again carefully at what practical measures we can take to alleviate and mitigate the effects of this absolutely disastrous directive on our NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

The hon. Lady, of course, offers no solution, merely a problem. I say to her that this Government identified £7.2 billion of additional investment to go into social care over the life of this Parliament, and those resources are being used creatively by some local authorities to protect front-line services. I urge her to applaud the authorities that are doing that and join me in condemning those that are cutting services despite being given the resources.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

17. What steps he is taking to raise the professional standards of health care workers and care assistants.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)]

The Government have commissioned Skills for Health and Skills for Care to develop a code of conduct and minimum training standards for health care support workers and adult social care workers in England. That will inform the development of a system of assured voluntary registration for this group, which will be reviewed after it has been established for three years.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Have the Government made any assessment of the cost of rolling out mandatory regulations to health care support workers?

[Paul Burstow]

I will write to the hon. Lady with any specific details about the precise costs of rolling out such a register. I say to her that, for the first time, we have a Government who have decided that leaving unclarified the training requirements, standards and codes of conduct for health care assistants and care assistants is unacceptable. That is why we have commissioned this work. It will involve working with unions and other health care professionals to make sure we get those standards right, because we know that that is key to delivering dignified care.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

Blake maternity unit in Gosport is temporarily shut and its long-term future is by no means 100% secure. In conversations with local health care bosses, I have learned that it is not because of cost but because of a national shortage of midwives. Are there any policies or plans to address this issue?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not know the particular circumstances in Gosport, but I shall happily write to my hon. Friend. Nationally, we have more midwives than we have ever had—[Interruption.] I am being provoked by those on the Opposition Front Bench. There was a 16% increase in the number of live births in this country, but only a 4.5% increase in the number of midwives. That is the point I was about to make. The Government of whom the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) was a member failed to invest in midwifery when there was an increase in live births. That is why hospitals across the country have too few midwives, and that is why we are putting the investment in—because we did not listen to the Labour party when it said, “Cut the NHS budget.”

Maternity Services

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I will be brief, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) said. My constituency has a midwife-led maternity unit, Blake ward, at Gosport war memorial hospital, but it has been shut down temporarily on the basis that there are not enough midwives to cover the area. They have all been put into the Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth. I am concerned about that because Gosport is a peninsula serviced by the A32, which is an unbelievably difficult road at the best of times, and I am worried that babies will be born somewhere along the road or on a roundabout.

I desperately wanted to bring that to everyone’s attention, particularly the Minister’s. The ward has only been shut until January, but this follows an incident earlier in the year when the birthing pool was shut down. Now the ward has been shut down temporarily because of a baby boom caused by the snow earlier in the year. I sometimes feel that these are closures by stealth and that eventually the ward will be shut permanently. It is important that everyone understands the huge importance of these wards, particular the midwife-led maternity units, and especially in areas such as Gosport, which has high levels of social deprivation.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I echo others this afternoon in saying how much I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate—a debate should that have happened many years ago. I also reiterate the tributes to the victims and their families, some of whom are watching our debate. The tragedy of contaminated blood is undoubtedly one of the biggest medical disasters in the history of the NHS. It is important to establish how this medical catastrophe was allowed to happen, and to protect those whose lives were devastated as a result.

I recently met a delegation of people who had suffered through the Equitable Life disaster. Although I have every sympathy with their plight, today’s debate puts that matter into perspective because we are talking not about the loss of life savings, but about the loss of life itself, loss of livelihood and of the chance to grow old, and losing the chance to become a parent and see one’s children grow up.

It seems wholly appropriate that people whose lives have been devastated by this disaster should be fairly compensated. After today’s discussions about how much it will cost, I very much look forward to hearing the Minister speak later about whether this is affordable. I do not believe, however, that the relatives are purely after money. As George Santayana said:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

That explains why this debate is so important, as it ensures that the tragedy will not be forgotten and, with the help of Lord Archer’s recommendations, that it will not be repeated.

One of those affected was from my Gosport constituency—a haemophiliac who had just a 10-day window of NHS treatment for his condition, but those 10 days proved to be his death sentence, as he was infected with both HIV and hepatitis C. This man suffered in every way as a result of his infection. He lost the chance to father children and to further his career; he suffered pain, humiliation, poverty, prejudice and, ultimately, death. His family lived a lie to avoid the stigma of HIV, and were therefore cut off from the possibility of much-needed support from friends and neighbours. His stepdaughter talks of a “lost childhood”. Such was, and in many cases still is, the fear and prejudice in relation to HIV that sufferers whom I have met who were open about their illnesses had their homes daubed with red paint and their children hounded from their schools.

That man’s family suffered financial hardship. As he was unable to obtain life assurance, his widow was left not only a single mother but with a mortgage to pay. He died on Christmas Eve 1998 at the age of just 40. He died of a life-threatening condition and three terminal diseases. He died struggling not just against his illness but against huge financial worries and fear for the future of his family, and under the oppressive burden of injustice.

Now, 12 years later, his widow is still fighting against that injustice. She talks of her fight against the sense that somehow the life of this man, her husband, did not count, because no Government seemed to care. Her simple desire is not to wake up every morning of her life and think of that. She talks of the frustrating myths that prevail. One is that victims were compensated. The truth is that the Skipton Fund drew a line in the sand—an arbitrary date in 2003 after which relatives of people who died were given small ex gratia payments. My constituent died in 1998. His widow was told that her husband had died five years too early; to her mind he had died 45 years too early.

Today in the House we have a fantastic opportunity. The contaminated blood tragedy has finally been granted a platform, and we as elected Members have a responsibility in the coming months to ensure that we fight for a just outcome for the tainted blood community. That tiny community of sick, bereaved and dying people, many of whom are living in poverty, will go on fighting no matter what the outcome today. We as parliamentarians should feel humbled by their bravery and take up the fight on their behalf.

Martin Luther King once said:

“when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’— then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

That is how this little community goes on: waiting and dying, dying and waiting.

Whatever happens as a result of the vote today, we must ultimately put an end to this. No amount of money can bring back those who have suffered and died—their dead will remain dead, their losses will remain lost—but we can help them to shed the burden of injustice and regain financial security. My hope is that my constituent will one day again be able to wake up in the morning knowing that each day is a day to be loved, a day to be lived, and not a day to be fought.