NHS Strikes

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. We have worked constructively with the Royal College of Nursing and, as I say, I was happy to put on the record my acknowledgment of the exemptions it had previously granted. I hope that between now and the end of the month, it will further reflect on the fact that the 48 hours of continuous strike action will happen without consultation with other staff council members and without waiting for the decision of other trade unions that are currently balloting. He will know that “Agenda for Change” is a deal that covers all the trade unions, not just the RCN in isolation, and I think it is right to wait for all the trade unions to vote and for the staff council to meet.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I draw the attention of Members of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

On Friday, I was working at the hospital and my usual clinic had cancelled all but one patient. I spoke to the secretaries about the various cancellations they had had to make as result of the strikes, and I was really sad to hear not only that they had often been verbally abused by people who were upset, but that they have had to cancel some patients on two occasions because of the earlier strikes and the more recent ones. I was also sad to hear that we are looking at further strikes in the next few weeks.

Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking the members of staff who came into work, who did not strike and who continue to deliver a very important and valuable service? What is he doing to expedite the legislation on minimum service guarantees, so that we do not have any implications from strikes on emergency and intensive care in particular?

[Steve Barclay]

First, I thank my hon. Friend for her service and for the work she was doing on Friday. I join her in putting on the record my thanks to all those staff who did provide cover, as I said in my opening remarks. She is right to highlight the minimum service legislation, and we will obviously need to reflect on recent events in that context. She also points to the fact that the decision by the BMA junior doctors committee to advise members not to notify hospital management about whether they were striking obviously made it more likely that clinics would be cancelled, even when it then transpired that doctors could have provided cover. That is clearly regrettable and indicates the need for resolution, and we want to work constructively with the junior doctors on this.

NHS: Long-term Strategy

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Through neglect, ideological hostility and incompetence, the Tory Government are presiding over the worst crisis the NHS has ever seen. Some 7.3 million people are on the waiting list; there has been a virtual collapse of emergency response; and people cannot see a GP or get follow-up treatment without unacceptably long waits. Today, there have been reports of more than 1,000 excess deaths a week—the highest total, excluding the pandemic, since 1951. There have been many, many preventable deaths on the Government’s watch, and each and every one is a tragedy.

Our NHS is in crisis from top to bottom. There are patients in hospital beds who cannot be discharged because there is no domiciliary care and nowhere for them to safely go. Ambulances are queuing for hours, unable to admit critically ill patients. There are inhumane waits in A&E before anyone can be admitted to beds they desperately need. Staff, who are already burnt out from the stresses of the pandemic, are unable to care properly for patients and are barely able to get through a shift because of the emotional exhaustion of having to deal with those failures.

A nurse at Arrowe Park in the Wirral, which serves my constituency, wrote to me recently. After 21 years of service to our NHS, she says she has

“never worked in such an unsafe environment”.

She says:

“Staff are literally on their knees, leaving shifts late in tears, and leaving in their droves”.

My constituent went on to detail a case in another local hospital in which a patient had a cardiac arrest in a hospital corridor. Frankly, a hospital should be the best place to have a cardiac arrest if somebody is going to have one, but it is now not so in Tory Britain. The individual collapsed and died.

With 132,000 NHS vacancies in England—over 17,800 in the north-west alone—our NHS is dangerously understaffed, under-resourced and under-respected. That is why NHS staff at the end of their tether have taken the desperate decision to go on strike. That is why any Government worth their salt would have decided to negotiate properly with them, to listen to them and to try to deal with and recognise that, in the last 13 years, a real-terms cut of 20% in nurses’ remuneration is simply not acceptable, but what did they do? They chose to have a divide-and-rule strategy, and they chose to try to scapegoat and blame NHS staff for the terrible conditions I have been talking about.

Perhaps the Government should consider legislating for a minimum service outside of strike days, because we are going to be in the absurd position of having, by law, guarantees on strike days—they could be negotiated anyway and always have been—that do not apply on non-strike days. It is an insult when the Secretary of State meets the health unions and says they have to increase their productivity. They are working beyond any amount of time that any human being should be asked to work.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I confess to being a bit confused by the Labour party’s position on minimum service levels. We all want to ensure that our constituents are as safe as possible. The ambulance workers want to ensure that people are as safe as possible. The hon. Lady has said herself that these things would be negotiated anyway. But the challenge people face on the ground is not knowing who is going to come in, the fact that people do not have a say on whether they are going to come in and the fact that a negotiated settlement might be different in different areas of the country, which makes messaging and public health messaging very difficult and puts people at risk. So why is Labour so against minimum service guarantees?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I think the hon. Lady, and I know that she is a doctor, needs to recognise that these agreements have always been made when there have been strike days in the NHS—always. I think she also needs to recognise that any Government who were being responsible would have negotiated to put an end to these strikes, recognised the fantastic service that nurses have given and dealt with the issue, instead of going for confrontation.

[Dr Johnson]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am not giving way again.

I am going to leave the last parts of my speech to another constituent of mine, an 83-year-old who fell alone in his home and was left. The ambulance was called at 4.15 in the afternoon—it was thought he had a fractured hip—and he was warned of a potential 14-hour wait. My constituent said he

“naively thought this must be the worst case scenario and thought it was very unlikely to be that long”.

He could not move, he could not sleep and he could not go to the toilet. Eighteen hours later, the ambulance arrived—18 hours later—at 10.15 the following morning. At the hospital, things got no better. There were patients on trolleys lining the corridors. For nearly another 24 hours, this 83-year-old man immobilised with pain was to lie on a trolley in a hospital corridor after 18 hours of waiting for an ambulance.

This is in no way acceptable. This should not be accepted by any Government worth their salt. They should hang their head in shame at what they have done to our NHS. We need to have a Government finally, which we will after the next election, who will solve these problems, instead of seeking to blame everybody else—the weather, the pandemic, the staff and any number of other things. It is about time we had a Government who have the guts to take responsibility for the decisions they have made and put it right. We are going to have such a Government soon. Shamefully, we have not now.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

No one can deny that the health service is under extreme pressure. No one can look at it and not realise that there has been a big surge in extra demand, that there are problems from the hangover of covid when a large waiting list for less urgent treatments built up, and that we are short of doctors and nurses, not because Ministers will not authorise their appointment but because there are vacancies to be filled. As one of those who has been urging for some time to see a published workforce plan, I welcome the decision of Ministers to insist on that, and the sooner we get it the better. However, I am quite sure that there are a whole series of workforce plans already in the many dozens and hundreds of working trusts and quangos that constitute the NHS. It is about aggregating and making sense of those plans.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

We often talk about the shortage of doctors. We know we cannot create a doctor overnight. It takes a substantial amount of time to train them. The Chancellor, a former Health Secretary, invested in five new medical schools to increase the number of doctors in training. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Chancellor, with the Health Secretary, needs to invest more money in more medical schools and medical school places, but also look at how we increase the number of doctors by reducing the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork they have to fill in, so that they can spend more time doctoring and less time filling in forms?

[John Redwood]

Yes, indeed. From my hon. Friend’s own expertise, I am sure she is right. When people talk about productivity, they do not believe that hard-pressed staff have to work harder; they are saying there must be smarter working, making jobs more manageable or enabling them to concentrate on the things they are most skilled at, with more relief for the other necessary record keeping, which may indeed need slimming.

My hon. Friend is right that we could expand our training places further, but as we have heard there has been a big increase in educational provision and it takes seven years for it to flow through. I am glad we are getting to the point where we will see some benefits from that. We need more homegrown talent. Many people are attracted to the privileged career of being a doctor and the more we can allow to do that, the better. However, given the immediate urgency of needing more capacity, and therefore more doctors and nurses, the most obvious place is to look at all those who have already had the training and have left the profession or the NHS for one reason or another. Some may be in early retirement. That is probably not something my hon. Friend wants to change because she enjoys her new job, but there are many others who are not in a very important job like her who might be attracted back. I hope the Treasury will be engaged in the review, because I hear from doctors, as many do, that the quirk in the tax system at just over £100,000 where some of the better paid doctors are resting, producing a more penal 60% rate, is an impediment to extra working. I also hear about the pension problems that have been cited on both sides of the House. The Government need to take those issues more seriously if they wish to accelerate returns.

Ministers have very clearly set out that they want more NHS staff and have obtained much larger budgets in the last three years to help bring that about. They have also said very clearly that the public’s priority—and indeed the Opposition’s priority—is to get more treatments and get those waiting lists and waiting times down for those needing more urgent or emergency care. Those Ministers must translate that through the senior health service managers into ways of spending that extra money. If it needs a bit more extra money, there is always some extra available—every time we meet another additional sum is announced—but it has to be well spent. It has to be spent on motivating and recruiting the medical workforce.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I refer the hon. Lady to the autumn statement, in which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out a wide range of support packages to help with the cost of living across the United Kingdom, including the cost of energy. That is part of wider discussions that we have on a regular basis with the Treasury.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The pandemic has had a devastating effect on the number of people waiting for treatment. In 2019, there were 54 women waiting more than a year to see a gynaecologist. That number is now more than 40,000. What is my right hon. Friend doing to reduce this wait?

[Steve Barclay]

This is a good illustration of the challenge the country faces with backlogs that are very much driven by the pandemic. We are working with senior figures such as Jim Mackey and Professor Tim Briggs and the Getting It Right First Time programme to look at patient pathways, how we use our diagnostics and our surgical hubs and streamlining the way we get services to patients where backlogs have built up.

Diagnostic Hospital: Stockton

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on securing this debate. He will appreciate that I am standing in for my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who has been promoted to the Cabinet and the Home Office, so I ask him to forgive me if I do not have the answers to all of his questions, but I will ask the Department to write to him with those.

I know that this is an important subject for my hon. Friend and that he works tirelessly for the people of Stockton South on healthcare and on other matters. The waiting time for a diagnosis or an all-clear can be a very anxious one. It is something with which all of us who have been on a waiting list, or who have had a family member, a friend or a loved one on a waiting list, will be familiar. It is right that we do all we can to support services to recover from the pressures of the pandemic and to innovate and improve so that patients can have tests and receive diagnoses in a quicker and more convenient way.

Today, I will outline the work being done through the elective recovery programme to improve access to diagnostics and how that will impact patients across the UK, including in Stockton South. The waiting list for diagnostic tests in England currently stands at more than 1.5 million patients. Some 30% of those patients are waiting more than six weeks. That is up from a little under 1 million in 2019, before the pandemic. In the north-east and Yorkshire region, the waiting list for diagnostic tests is more than 213,000 patients, 26% of whom have been waiting more than six weeks. Community diagnostic centres are part of the answer and are a fantastic example of how we are providing more efficient, easier and more convenient access to vital services in the community.

The Government have committed £2.3 billion in capital spend as part of the 2021 spending review to support diagnostic services to recover and improve and to ensure that patients have access to often life-saving diagnostic tests that they need. This includes money to allow the NHS to continue to roll out a community diagnostic centre programme across England. This is a new way of delivering care, and it will ensure that elective diagnostic services are resilient in the face of winter pressures, because they have ring-fenced elective diagnostic activity.

Local healthcare systems, including NHS trusts, integrated commissioning boards, and local authorities, which know their patients and communities best, are being empowered to plan and bid for funding for new CDC sites, ensuring that they are placed where there is the greatest community need and the most clinical value, with successful bids ultimately signed off by the Secretary for Health and Social Care. I am pleased to say that 89 CDCs are currently operational across the country in a variety of sites, including hospitals, football stadiums and shopping centres, ensuring that patients have access to the care they need where they live. Those centres and hard-working NHS staff have so far delivered more than 2 million tests and are well on their way to providing capacity for 9 million tests a year by 2025.

With regard to the provision of a community diagnostic centre in Stockton, I am pleased to be able to inform my hon. Friend that the business case for the centre is currently in development. He will be pleased to learn that a large-model CDC, including capacity for imaging, physiological measurements, pathology and endoscopy, is planned for construction on the Castlegate shopping centre site, with plans for the centre to be fully operational by March 2025.

Castlegate is an ideal site for a CDC because of its accessibility for different population groups experiencing health inequalities, with excellent transport links. It is exactly the sort of area where the new centres can have the biggest impact. The Castlegate CDC will add to the 12 existing CDCs in the north-east and Yorkshire region and the four hub and spoke sites in the Tees Valley area, which have delivered more than 200,000 tests for patients in the north-east and Yorkshire region. Ten further sites across the north-east and Yorkshire are due to be approved in the near future and will all be operational by March 2025 to support our target of up to 160 CDCs.

I heard the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), but I am afraid I do not have the answers for him today. I will ask the Department to write to him with information on his specific bid.

[Alex Cunningham]

This is music to my ears. We have all worked very hard for this—local authority, health authority and politicians—and I am grateful for the positive message the Minister is giving us. Now I am going to be even cheekier and say that we desperately need a new general hospital to serve Stockton and the wider Hartlepool area. We need new facilities there. I hope, 12 or 13 years after the original hospital was cancelled, that this Minister will be the one to deliver it.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. The building new hospitals programme is in process and bids are in play, so I am afraid I cannot comment any further, as he will appreciate.

In conclusion, I encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South to continue his productive conversations with both his local ICB and NHS England to ensure that new developments in Stockton continue to support the local community health needs. I will ensure he is made aware when the proposal for the new centre has progressed further and when he can expect to see it open in his constituency.

I look forward to continuing to work with NHS England, local NHS systems such as the North East and North Cumbria ICS and fellow Members of the House to ensure that as a Government we meet the challenge posed by diagnostic waiting lists and ensure that patients are able to receive the often life-saving diagnostic tests that they need, as quickly and conveniently as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Baby Loss and Safe Staffing in Maternity Care

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

First, I thank all the Members who have taken the time to attend the debate and those who have spoken so openly about their own, and their constituents’, experiences and concerns. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) for securing the debate and enabling us to have this important conversation.

Let me take this opportunity to recognise the work of everyone who has been involved in Baby Loss Awareness Week. It is important that we make it easier to speak about pregnancy loss and enable people to have open conversations about their experiences, which in turn can help those who have experienced the tragic loss of a baby. I also take this opportunity to commend the work of the charities that provide excellent support to families experiencing baby loss, including all the members of the Baby Loss Awareness Alliance and the Lily Mae Foundation, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Saqib Bhatti).

As we take time to reflect, I want to acknowledge how difficult the loss of a baby is. Everyone’s grief will be different. It is a personal, individual process, which people will try to navigate in many different ways. Although it can be challenging to reflect on such tragic losses, this week provides an opportunity for people to remember, reflect, share and seek support and comfort from other people.

This is the seventh year in a row that a debate has been held to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week. I am honoured to take part as the new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care and to work with everyone to continue making a difference in an area as vital as maternity and neonatal safety.

The independent review into maternity and neonatal services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, as mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), was published last Wednesday. I take this opportunity to extend my condolences to the families who suffered due to the care they received and express my gratitude to the individuals who were instrumental in establishing the review and to the inquiry team for carrying out the review to such a high standard. The Government and I take the findings and recommendations of that report extremely seriously, and I am committed to preventing families from experiencing the same pain in the future.

Our maternity safety ambition, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool, is to achieve half the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths, and brain injuries in babies occurring soon after birth. Since 2010, the rate of stillbirths has reduced by 19.3%, the rate of neonatal mortality for babies born over 24 weeks gestational age has reduced by 36% and maternal mortality has reduced by 17%. However, it is important to note that there was an increase in the rate of stillbirths between 2020 and 2021. This increase occurred at the same time as the covid pandemic, and detailed work is going on to establish why that was the case. I reassure hon. Members that we remain committed to our maternity safety ambition.

Every woman giving birth has the right to a safe birth, and the Government and NHS England are committed to providing women with personalised and individual maternity care. The role of NHS staff in maternity services is critical to safe care for families, and I recognise all the great, hard work by teams across the country and thank them for it.

Members on both sides of the Chamber have talked about funding and workforce. NHS England has invested £127 million in bolstering the maternity workforce even further and in programmes to strengthen leadership and retention and provide capital for neonatal maternity care. We will keep that funding under review. That investment is on top of the £95 million investment made last year in the establishment of 1,200 more midwifery posts and 100 more consultant obstetrician posts. There are increasing numbers of midwifery and obs and gynae trainees.

I am grateful to the APPGs on maternity and on baby loss for producing their report into the maternity workforce, and I acknowledge the important themes in it. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) raised the issue of retention. NHS England has established a nursing and midwifery retention programme, supporting organisations to assess themselves against a bundle of interventions aligned to the NHS people promise and it will use the outcomes to develop high-quality local retention improvement plans. In addition, in 2022-23 we made £50,000 available for each maternity unit in England to enhance retention and pastoral support activities.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dr Johnson]

I will not, because I have a lot of questions to get through in a really short time.

Many hon. Members talked about bereavement. In the difficult scenario of baby loss, we understand that bereavement care for women and families is critical. We continue to engage closely with the bereavement sector to assess what is needed to ensure that bereaved families and individuals receive the support that they need. This year we have provided £2.26 million of national funding to support trusts, expand the number of staff trained in bereavement care and directly support trusts to increase the number of days of specialist bereavement provision that families can access.

In the women’s health strategy, which hon. Members mentioned, published earlier this year, we discussed the introduction of pregnancy loss certificates for England. This will allow a non-statutory, voluntary scheme to enable parents who have experienced a pre-24 weeks pregnancy loss to record and receive a certificate to provide recognition of their baby’s potential life. The certificate will not be a legal document, but it will be an important acknowledgement of a life lost, and we hope that it will provide comfort and support by validating a loss.

We understand the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on mental health, especially for those affected by the loss of a baby, and we are committed to expanding and transforming our mental health services so that people can receive the support that they need when they need it.

As part of the NHS long-term plan, we are looking to improve the access to and quality of perinatal mental health care for mothers and their partners. Mental health services around England are being expanded to include new mental health hubs for new, expectant, or bereaved mothers. These will offer physical health checks and psychological therapy in one building.

[Guy Opperman]

I accept that my hon. Friend has many things to cover today. As a former Minister, may I advise her that she might want to be encouraged to write to everyone with detailed answers from civil servants to the points raised?

Does my hon. Friend agree on one key point—that the collation of data and the consistency of approach must be nationwide? While we have many wonderful trusts, that has to be driven by the NHS, for which she is a Minister.

[Dr Johnson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

Going back to the issue of perinatal mental health, we have previously funded Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, to work with other baby loss charities and the royal colleges to produce and support the roll-out of a national bereavement care pathway to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the NHS and ensure that, wherever a woman and family are being cared for, they get a high standard of care. The pathway covers a range of circumstances of baby loss, including miscarriage. As of April this year, 78% of trusts in England had committed to adopting the nine national bereavement care pathway standards.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) talked about pre-eclampsia. NHS England is establishing maternal medicine clinics. These are specialist networks across the UK, which will manage pre-conception, antenatal, post-natal and medical issues in women, and reduce long-term morbidity, thereby improving outcomes for those women who have co-existing medical conditions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) spoke about the maternity unit in his constituency. I know that he is a doughty campaigner for that unit. I will write to him with further information on progress in that area.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) talked about the Scottish health service and how it is performing in relation to maternity care. It is, of course, a devolved issue in Scotland, but I was moved to hear about what is happening in areas of the north of Scotland near Elgin. I would encourage the devolved Scottish Administration to consider carefully what is going on there and to see what they can do to improve care. It seems unacceptable for women to travel 102 miles to give birth.

The NHS in England has a medical education reform programme, co-sponsored by NHS England and Health Education England, to direct investment for specialty training for population needs back towards smaller and rural hospitals. That programme entered its implementation phase in August 2022.

Hon. Friends mentioned The Lancet recommendations. While the pregnancy loss review will be published shortly, I am not in a position today to commit to what it is going to say, but we will consider it carefully.

[Feryal Clark]

I understand that the Minister is not in a position to comment on that review, but now that she has had the opportunity to review the recommendations from the East Kent investigation by Dr Kirkup, is she in a position to say whether the Government will accept those recommendations, or when the Government will announce whether they are going to accept them? They will have a nationwide impact.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. We were both horrified by the East Kent report, which made for extremely difficult reading. We are carefully considering the review. The hon. Lady will appreciate that we are having a change of Prime Minister today and possibly a change of Minister too, so it is difficult for me to make any commitments at this stage, beyond that the Government will consider the matter carefully and further information will be provided in due course.

Let me conclude by making three broad points. First, we appreciate how difficult and distressing baby loss can be at any point in pregnancy and childbirth. I highlight again the importance of sharing experiences and coping mechanisms that may guide other families through their own bereavement. It is important to continue this conversation past this year’s campaign and, again, I thank my hon. Friends who shared deeply personal experiences.

Secondly, I touched on the important range of targeted programmes we are developing to better support families with their bereavement and ensure all families have access to the care they need and deserve, such as pregnancy loss certificates and the national bereavement care pathway. We understand how difficult baby loss can be, and families deserve compassionate and personalised care from their local health professionals.

Thirdly, we are committed to our maternity safety ambition to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirth, neonatal and maternal death, and brain injuries in babies occurring during or soon after birth. NHS England will consider the actions from both the Ockenden report and the East Kent report and map a coherent delivery plan for maternity that will be delivered through the maternity taskforce programme. We have also established a joint working group led by the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to help deliver the plan as effectively as possible. I thank hon. Members for taking time to be here today and I thank everyone who took part in Baby Loss Awareness Week.

Covid-19 Vaccines: Safety

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for his kind words regarding the covid vaccine programme, and for bringing this important and timely debate to the House. It is timely because we started the covid-19 boosters autumn scheme just a few weeks ago.

Before I respond to the points that have been made in the debate and try to answer all the questions posed by right hon. and hon. Members, I thank Members—particularly those on the Opposition Benches, including the hon. Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar)—for their support for the vaccine scheme. I also thank each and every person in the country who has come forward for their jabs, as well as the tens of thousands of NHS staff and volunteers who made that happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington asked why the vaccine programme had worked so well. It worked so well because of the dedication and hard work of all who were involved in it—from the Government to the NHS, and from the volunteers to pharma. I was honoured to volunteer alongside people from my local area as young as 15 and as old as in their 80s. It was truly a community effort.

The take-up of the covid-19 vaccine has been huge, and over 151 million vaccines have been delivered in the UK, meaning that more than 90% of people aged 12 and over have received at least one dose and more than 40 million have received a booster or third dose. We have also made a great start to the autumn booster campaign. Since the start of the campaign on 5 September, more than 10 million people in England have stepped forward for their jabs.

Our safe and effective vaccines have underpinned the Government’s strategy for living with covid-19. They have allowed the economy and society to reopen, and the country’s ability to live with the virus in the future will continue to depend on deeper and broader population immunity. Critically, they have also reduced the pressure on the national health service and allowed us to start to tackle the elective care backlog.

Vaccines remain our biggest line of defence as we head into a challenging winter period. Vaccinated people are less likely to get seriously ill with covid-19 or seasonal flu, or to be admitted to hospital, and there is also evidence that they are less likely to pass the virus on to others. We know the covid vaccine has saved tens of thousands of lives—that is tens of thousands of mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters who are thankfully still with us.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Is the Minister aware that excess deaths run somewhere—there are two different sets of figures—between 18,000 and 25,000 this year alone?

[Dr Johnson]

I am referring to the covid vaccine, which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I take my hon. Friend’s point, but there is no evidence that those deaths were caused by the covid vaccine. Let me acknowledge and pass on my sympathies to the very small number of people for whom vaccines may not have worked as intended, and who may have suffered an adverse reaction from vaccines.

I turn to vaccine safety. All vaccines used in the UK covid-19 vaccine programme are safe. In the UK we have some of the highest safety standards in the world. The MHRA is globally recognised for high standards of quality, safety and medicines regulation. Each covid-19 vaccine candidate is assessed by teams of scientists and clinicians on a case-by-case basis. There are extensive checks and balances at every stage of vaccine development. It is only once each potential vaccine has met robust standards of effectiveness, safety and quality set by the MHRA that it will be approved for use.

It is also important to stress that the surveillance of vaccine safety and adverse reactions does not stop once a vaccine has been approved. The MHRA and the UK Health Security Agency constantly review a wide range of available data on the safety of vaccines, including UK and international reports of adverse reactions.

[Sir John Hayes]

People outside the House will not know that although the Minister has been in her job a relatively short time, she is a remarkably dedicated and diligent person. No Minister is more likely or determined than she is to get to the facts when looking at the international data. Will the Minister give the assurance that she will consider all the information available, including that international data, when she draws conclusions about the content of this debate and the cases that have been made by many of my constituents and others?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words. I will, of course, look at all the evidence. He is aware of my experience as a clinician and he knows that I will look at the evidence-based medical process.

As part of the surveillance into currently used medicines and vaccines, the MHRA continues to review all the suspected adverse drug reaction reports—known as the yellow card reports—relating to covid vaccines, which right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned. Through the MHRA yellow card scheme, members of the public and healthcare professionals can report any suspected side effects. A comprehensive surveillance strategy alerts us to any unforeseen adverse reactions to the vaccine, to enable us to act swiftly when required.

In April 2021, we quickly responded to reports of extremely rare cases of concurrent thrombosis and thrombocytopenia following vaccination with the first dose of AstraZeneca. At that point, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advised that adults under 30 without underlying health issues should be offered an alternative vaccine to the AstraZeneca if one was available. That was later extended in May 2021 to adults under 40 without underlying health issues. The MHRA, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) said, has undertaken a thorough review of UK reports of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. While the estimated incident rate has increased over time as awareness of the condition increases across the healthcare system, the number of cases remains extremely low, given that more than 49 million doses of AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine have been administered.

A number of colleagues asked about myocarditis. There is no evidence that people are at an increased risk of cardiac arrest in the days and weeks following the vaccine. The risk of getting myocarditis or pericarditis after the vaccine remains very low. A large study of 4 million vaccinated people in Denmark, published in the British Medical Journal, found that there were no deaths or diagnoses of heart failure in people who were diagnosed with myocarditis or pericarditis after being vaccinated.

In the highest-risk group, those aged 18 to 29, until the end of September this year there were 29 cases for every million second Pfizer doses and 68 cases for every million second Moderna doses given in the UK. The risk is much lower after a booster dose, and in other age groups the risk is lower still. However, it is worth remembering that catching covid-19 can significantly increase the risk of cardiac arrest and death, and the risk of developing myocarditis. There are an estimated 1,500 cases of myocarditis per million patients with covid—far greater than the risk of myocarditis following vaccination.

Let me turn now to some of the questions that have been asked. My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington asked about the inquiry and how people would be able to contribute to it. It will listen to and consider carefully the experiences of bereaved families and others who have suffered loss as a result of the pandemic. It will not consider individual cases; instead, listening to such accounts will inform its understanding of the impact of the pandemic and the response, and any lessons to be learned. Individuals will be able to engage through the inquiry’s listening exercise and the details of that will be brought forward in due course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) asked about informed consent. Indeed, I think that he produced the leaflet that provides the information that allows people to understand that the JCVI has recommended the vaccine because on balance it is beneficial to people; it is more likely to be of benefit to them than harm. Equally, however, each individual will be provided with information about the vaccine, as they are with all medical treatments, so that they know the benefits they can expect and the risk of side effects, however small, as well as what they are. As I say, he produced an example in the debate of a leaflet containing such information. What is important is that people are aware of the benefits and risks and can make informed decisions. Vaccination is not compulsory, but we are aware that it is of great benefit to the population and to individuals at risk of covid.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

What happens if somebody suffers a 50% disability as a result of having the vaccine, through an adverse reaction, or an unusual event? What do the Government do to help that person? They do not provide any compensation, or any special help through the health service, or a clinic, so what do they do?

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is talking about the vaccine damage payment scheme, which has been running since 1979 and provides a payment of up to £120,000—a tax-free lump sum, a one-off payment—for people who have been severely damaged by vaccines, on the balance of probabilities, which is determined when people apply. That does not prejudice any claim that they may have in a legal sense and they can still pursue a civil claim should they wish to do so. It has been asked whether there should be a separate scheme for covid, but of course it is right that all vaccines are treated in a similar fashion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) asked a few questions. He asked about the terms of reference of the inquiry being a matter for the chair, which indeed they are. He also asked whether I would commit the chair of the MHRA to meet specific people, but that is not for me to decide; it is up to the chair. My hon. Friend’s other question was about children’s vaccines. He is aware of my thoughts on that: it is important when we vaccinate children that the vaccines are of benefit to the child themselves. I am aware that when the vaccine was approved that was the decision made by all four chief medical officers and it is very important that the Government listen to and take medical advice. Since then, some things have changed. Natural immunity is more widespread and school disruption is no longer an issue. I understand that very shortly, at its next meeting, the JCVI will consider whether children’s vaccines should continue to be recommended, on the basis of the current situation. I think it is right that medical research is reviewed regularly as it becomes available and is taken into account.

The position of the MHRA remains that for most people the benefits of the covid-19 vaccine continue to outweigh the risks. The surveillance strategy is working, as we have discussed. We are able to respond quickly to ensure safe administration of all covid vaccines. I reiterate that the public should be very confident that all tests are completed to the very highest standards and that vaccines are safe.

Despite the progress we have made, we must not become complacent.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Would the Minister be willing to address the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage in a private meeting, so that she can hear at first hand some of the concerns that members have?

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He will be aware of events today and I will at least have to see whether I remain in post before I potentially commit somebody else to such an event.

As I was saying, despite the progress we have made, we must not become complacent. We cannot risk an increase in serious illness, hospitalisations and deaths from covid. The UKHSA estimates that vaccinations had averted up to 128,000 deaths and 262,000 hospitalisations by the end of September 2021, and many more since then.

We must do everything in our power to protect those who are most vulnerable to the virus and keep pressure off the NHS in a tough winter period. Viruses such as covid-19 spread much more easily in winter when we socialise indoors. To protect those most at risk and help to reduce pressure on the NHS, we are delivering an autumn booster dose to those who are most in need of an extra layer of protection. Even if someone has had all of their jabs so far, and perhaps had covid too, they might still need an autumn booster to strengthen their protection. I encourage everyone who is eligible to come forward for their covid booster and seasonal flu jab today. To encourage vaccination against covid and flu and boost uptake, the NHS is making every effort to make it as convenient as possible for individuals to take up the offer, including offering both covid and flu vaccines at the same time, where possible, to reduce the number of appointments needed. Our NHS staff and volunteers are pulling out all the stops to deliver the next phase of the covid vaccine programme at speed once again, with more than 3,000 sites up and down the country involved.

The NHS was the first healthcare system in the world to deliver a covid-19 vaccine outside clinical trials, and it is now the first to deliver the new, variant-busting vaccine. Bivalent vaccines target two different strains of covid-19. They will give us a broader immunity and therefore potentially improve protection against variants of the virus. Whatever vaccine people receive in the autumn booster programme, they can be assured that it remains effective in preventing severe disease against all current variants and any potential future variants.

As I draw to a close, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington for bringing this important debate to the House at such an important time. The Government have already commissioned a public inquiry into the pandemic, and covid vaccines will be reviewed as part of that inquiry. There are no plans for an inquiry solely on vaccine safety. We face a tough winter ahead, and collectively we must do everything we can to protect those who are most vulnerable and to reduce pressure on the NHS. I encourage everyone who is eligible to step forward for their covid and flu vaccines as soon as they are able.

East Kent Maternity Services: Independent Investigation

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the review into East Kent maternity services.

Few things could be as tragic as the death of a child, yet knowing that that death was “wholly avoidable” comes with its own unimaginable pain. It is thanks to the tireless efforts, courage and determination of families in east Kent that we have been able to shine a light on maternity failings in East Kent Hospitals University Trust. Dr Bill Kirkup’s report, published yesterday, contains some stark and upsetting findings. From examining over 200 births in that trust between 2009 and 2020, he found that, had care been given at nationally recognised standards, 45 babies might not have lost their lives, and many more families might not have experienced such distress at what should have been their time of joy. He also found a toxic culture within the trust, with a

“disturbing lack of kindness and compassion”

and victims’ families even blamed for their devastating losses. Before I say more, Mr Speaker, I want to say this: I am profoundly sorry to all the families affected. This should never have happened, and we will work tirelessly to put it right.

With the report having been published just yesterday, I am sure hon. Members will understand our need to carefully consider all of its details. I will be reviewing all the recommendations, and will issue a full response once I have had time to consider them. However, given the gravity of what the report reveals, I felt it was important to come to the House today and update colleagues on the steps we are already taking to improve maternity services in east Kent and across the country.

The report itself is a litany of failure that makes for very difficult reading. It details failures of team working, failures of professionalism, failures of compassion, failures to listen, failures after safety incidents, and ultimately a failure of leadership. The review heard about women and family members feeling patronised, ignored or told off, with one woman hearing from a doctor:

“Some parents just aren’t supposed to have children.”

Some people felt they were unimportant, or too much trouble. One woman was reportedly told by a staff member that they were sorry for her loss, but that her baby was dead, and that there were other babies who were still living who needed attending to. These kinds of failures showed up at every level of patient care, with no discernible improvement over the whole timeframe of the review. The trust failed to read the signals and missed every opportunity to put things right.

These are difficult things to hear, and especially hard because I know that so many of us have experienced for ourselves the brilliant care that NHS maternity services can offer. We must take nothing away from the hundreds of thousands of incredible people working day and night in maternity services across the country, yet we cannot pretend that the story of East Kent is a one-off. Reviews from Morecambe Bay and Shrewsbury and Telford paint a more disturbing picture. While they may be some of the most extreme examples—and we must hope that they are—they are certainly not isolated incidents. Colleagues will know that, just last month, Donna Ockenden began her independent review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

We entrust the NHS with our care when we are at our most vulnerable. Everyone has the right to expect the same high-quality care, no matter who they are or where they live. We are already taking a number of steps to improve the quality of maternity care in East Kent and across the country. An intensive programme of maternity support was put in place at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust in September 2019, overseen by NHS England, the Kent and Medway integrated care system and the trust’s board. The trust has been allocated a maternity improvement adviser and an obstetric improvement adviser. We will also continue to ensure the highest standards at national level.

I am grateful to Dr Kirkup for the extensive recommendations in his report, but it is vital that they are not viewed in isolation. As Dr Kirkup said, since his Morecambe bay investigation in 2015,

“maternity services have been the subject of more significant policy initiatives than any other service”,

so his recommendations must be considered alongside existing work to improve maternity outcomes.

First, there is our independent working group. The group is one of the key immediate and essential actions from the Ockenden review and has begun its important work. The group, chaired by the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, is advising the maternity transformation programme in England on how it can take forward the findings of both the Ockenden and the Kirkup reports. Next, our new maternity quality surveillance framework is a vital tool for proactively identifying problems in trusts, so that they can get support before serious issues arise. In March 2022, NHS England announced a £127 million funding boost for maternity services across England, to help ensure safer and more personalised care for women and their babies. Even with that essential work, we recognise that there is still a long way to go and much more work to be done to put things right.

In closing, I want to thank Dr Kirkup and his team. His experience has been invaluable, and I know that his approach of putting families first has been welcomed. I also know that hearing the accounts of families has been a harrowing experience at times, yet, as he said, it is difficult to imagine just how much harder it was for the families as they relived some of their darkest days. I am sure the whole House will join me in paying tribute to those families, whose tireless determination to find the truth and tell their stories has brought us to this important point. Nothing we do can bring back the children they have lost or fill the tragic void of a life never lived, but now we know their stories, we will listen, learn and act, so that no other family should ever experience such pain. I commend this statement to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. The report paints a tragic and harrowing picture of poor maternity care at East Kent Hospitals. She talks about accountability. She will be aware that the chief executive and chairman of that trust board have changed, and that those new in their posts are working hard to ensure that things are turned around and improve.

The hon. Lady talked about funding and workforce. I understand why she did that, but if she reads Dr Kirkup’s report, it is clear that they were not causative factors in this case. This was about culture and workplace practice, not money and staffing levels. She also asked how that money has been spent. It has been spent on staffing, workforce and training. She also asked about culture change and how that will be measured. It is being looked at in several ways, particularly in terms of the outcomes, such as healthy babies and the mother’s experience of their care.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, first, thank you so much for facilitating this statement. You know that as not just the constituency Member of Parliament, but a father and a grandfather, this is a matter of profound importance to me personally. Can I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box for the first time and thank her for the tone of her remarks?

Nothing is going to bring back the children who were lost in the Margate unit. Nothing is going to erase the pain felt and continuing to be felt by the parents. I would like to commend them for the quiet dignity with which they have fought their cause under horrific circumstances for so long. I would also like, if I may, craving your indulgence, Mr Speaker, to thank Bill Kirkup and his team for the sensitivity with which they have handled this and listened to the harrowing stories from so many people—stories that should never have had to be told.

What we can do is to try to put this right, so that this never ever happens to another family again. It will come at a cost and, with a Treasury Minister on the Front Bench, I have to say that £33 million-worth of investment is now needed immediately in the maternity unit at Margate. What I would like to do at this stage is to ask my hon. Friend to tell me from the Dispatch Box that she is willing to bring her medical expertise, which is considerable, to Margate, and to come herself to see the unit, meet the staff and meet the new chief executive and the new chairman, who are determined to do their utmost to make amends and to do so as swiftly as possible.

[Dr Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. I note that he has been a doughty campaigner on this issue, and I know how much it matters to him personally, as well as as a Member of Parliament. I would of course be happy to come to Margate to meet the staff he describes.

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement, Dr Kirkup and his team, and the families and staff who took part in the inquiry. It is clear that there has been an utterly toxic and dysfunctional culture within maternity services at the East Kent hospitals trust. It is shocking and disturbing, and made so much worse by the revelation that the trust tried to cover up these cases. Mothers were treated appallingly and babies died. I cannot comprehend what they have had to endure, and I am so angry on their behalf. How can the Minister assure my constituents that action leading to immediate change will not involve any of the staff and managers involved directly in these cases? And given that former staff and a governor have said publicly that they cannot recommend the service, how can MPs in East Kent tell our constituents that our maternity services are now safe?

[Dr Johnson]

I know that this is a matter on which the hon. Lady has been campaigning furiously on behalf of her constituents. I share her anger, and her shock when I read the report, at some of the cases and some of the ways in which patients have been spoken to during their time at their hospital. It is truly unforgivable.

On the question of safety, that was my first question when I read the report: are we sure that patients going in today to have their babies are safe to do so? So I met Anne Eden, the regional director of NHSE, yesterday to talk to her about safety, and I have been reassured about both quality and outcomes. On outcomes, I have been reassured that, looking at crude data, which I appreciate has not been published yet, the numbers of stillbirths and neonatal deaths over the last year or so have fallen substantially. On quality, it is doing a review, so each woman is contacted six weeks after her delivery to ask about her experiences, and where experiences have not been as they should be—although they are in almost all cases—that has been further investigated in each case.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

This report is a terrible read, particularly, obviously, for bereaved parents, who have gone through untold anguish, including some at the William Harvey Hospital in my constituency. What makes me particularly angry is that this was going on for more than a decade under several different management regimes at the trust. Can the Minister give some reassurance to women in Ashford who are about to have a baby at the William Harvey that they will be treated safely and respectfully, and can she assure the House, looking further afield, that the terrible repeated examples of similar tragedies and scandals around the NHS are now at an end?

[Dr Johnson]

I know that my right hon. Friend shares the House’s desire to ensure that such events do not reoccur, and that his constituents are safe. He asked about failures over time. In fact, there were signs as early as 2010 that problems were being raised with the trust. The failure was not so much to find those problems, but that they were not properly dealt with when they were found. Yesterday, I received assurances from the regional director of NHS England, as I described a few moments ago, and I will meet her regularly to receive updates to ensure that the process is not just put in place but followed through.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The stories of the families are harrowing to read. I hear what the Minister says: that staff shortages cannot be used to excuse the poor practice that has taken place. None the less, it is disturbing that NHS England has abandoned its safety targets under the midwifery continuity of care model. When more midwives are leaving the profession than coming into it, as a matter of urgency to avoid such occurrences in other places, what are the Government going to do to turn around that loss of midwives?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

NHS England has announced that it is investing an additional £127 million into the maternity system in the next year. That money will go towards the maternity workforce and improving neonatal care. In addition, £95 million was invested last year to support the establishment of more than 1,200 more midwifery posts and 100 more consultant obstetric posts. Work is already under way as part of the biggest nursing, midwifery and allied health care professional recruitment drive in decades. That will help us to increase the number of midwives in East Kent but also elsewhere.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her statement, and particularly for the tone in which she made it. Dr Kirkup’s report is harrowing reading, but nothing compared with the harrowing experiences of the parents whose babies were severely injured at birth, stillborn, or lost in the days after they were born, particularly when so many of those incidents were avoidable. It is a shocking litany of clinical and management mistakes, missed opportunities, failures to take responsibility and an incomprehensible normalisation of baby death, despite all the efforts to improve safety since the Mid Staffs scandal. I ask my hon. Friend to put herself in the shoes of an expectant mum—I know that as a mum she will be able to do that, as well as from her experience as a clinician—and categorically assure me and all the parents to be who are soon to have babies in the East Kent trust, that the maternity units in those hospitals are safe for them to give birth?

While there are worthwhile sections on actions in the report—I commend Dr Kirkup for his report—it does not get to the bottom of the problem, which is truly one of accountability. Can my hon. Friend assure me that never again will a trust find reasons to excuse catastrophic outcomes, that never again can critical reports be dismissed as a “load of rubbish”, and that never again can staff blame patients for a hospital’s failings? How will she assure herself as a Minister—I know this is a difficult role—that every maternity unit in every hospital across the country is safe for mothers to give birth?

[Dr Johnson]

I know my hon. Friend has campaigned hard as both a Minister and a Back-Bench MP for safety in the national health service. On safety at the East Kent trust, we have already talked about the regional team there. There is also a maternity safety support team in the trust working actively on the ground to ensure that lessons are learned and services improved. I have been given some figures that demonstrate that the outcomes are improving. As I said earlier, steps are in place to ensure the quality of service and to feed back the quality of service to ensure that no woman is spoken to in the way described in the report.

From a wider perspective, we are looking at both the workforce as described but also at how we ensure that problems are not just picked up, but developed and followed through. We are also looking at the Kark report that looked at how managers are held responsible. We will talk more about that in due course.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

Many of my constituents have raised the point that black women in the UK are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth. Can the Minister explain what action is being taken to end that scandal?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

From a wider perspective, the Government have a target of reducing stillbirths and neonatal deaths across the country and that, obviously, includes women of colour.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

What was particularly shocking about the report, coming hard on the heels of Shrewsbury and Morecambe Bay, was the culture of cover-up that it revealed, the lack of empathy—extraordinarily—among staff and the fact that it took parents and grandparents such as Derek Richford to campaign to get the exposé. Does the Minister agree that, given that liveborn children were described as being stillborn so coroners could not investigate, it underlines yet again the need for my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019, which was passed by the House three and a half years ago and gives powers to coroners to investigate stillbirths, to come into force at last? Will she go and speak to the Justice Secretary and liaise between the Departments to get that measure enacted straightaway to give some confidence to those parents who have been through these terrible experiences?

[Dr Johnson]

I understand my hon. Friend’s passion in this area. I am happy to meet him to discuss it further.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

We have seen several tragedies in health and social care services across the country. Both the Ockenden review earlier this year and this recent upsetting report by Dr Kirkup highlight serious multiple failings. It should go without saying that health outcomes should never be determined by location. We must tackle the inequalities that exist between rural and urban maternity services to ensure that people living in rural and coastal areas can access the same range of birthing methods and support. Will the Minister support the Maternity Services (Rural Areas) Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) to end maternity service inequalities for people living in rural and coastal areas?

[Dr Johnson]

As a rural Member of Parliament, I understand the need for rural services to be just as good as those in more urban areas and to ensure that they are improved where they are not adequate. A medical education reform programme that is co-sponsored by NHS England and Health Education England is expected to direct investment for specialty training more towards area population need—to smaller and rural hospitals. The programme entered its implementation phase in August. Morecambe Bay, East Kent, James Paget and Shrewsbury and Telford are included in our current smaller hospitals list. I am not certain about the hospital in the hon. Member’s constituency, but I can find that information and write to him about it.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

This is clearly a shocking and disturbing report. I found myself agreeing with the shadow Minister when she said that this represents a serious collective failure across our maternity services, because I know that it is not an isolated incident. Does the Minister agree that there is a role to be played by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, which has set up a stream of work on maternity services? Could she redouble her efforts in conjunction with that body to ensure that we learn the lessons of the cultural failures in this case and that that learning is spread throughout the system? That is the only way we have an opportunity to ensure that these things do not happen again.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend will be aware that within HSIB the Government are establishing a new special health authority specifically for maternity investigations, with specialist expertise. This independent body will continue the work of HSIB from 2023. In the meantime, maternity investigations will continue without interruption until it is fully operational.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. We are very pleased to have her expertise and knowledge in that role as Minister. This House will benefit from it. I would also like to express, on behalf of myself and my party, my sincere sympathies to all those who have lost loved ones. I think it is fair to say that we all have those families in our thoughts and prayers. Will the Minister outline what discussions have taken place with devolved health trusts in the devolved nations to share information and ensure UK-wide reform? It is clear that the pressures that led to this terrible scenario in Kent are ready to be replicated through the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as midwives battle with understaffed, unsupported and exhausted wards that are on the brink of life-and-death disasters. Through no fault of individuals, midwives will carry that all to their graves. I know the Minister is committed to making it better. How can we do that for all of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Dr Johnson]

It is, of course, important that information is shared across our great country, so that people in all areas of our nation get the best-quality care. Health is a devolved issue, but I will continue to work with Ministers from the devolved nations to ensure we share the lessons and learn from each other.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

My constituent Helen Gittos, whose healthy full-term daughter Harriet died in 2014, said:

“Too often during pregnancy, in labour and afterwards, rather than being listened to, we were treated dismissively, contemptuously and without a desire for understanding. It is hard enough to come to terms with the death of a child; it is even harder when you are implicitly blamed for what happened.”

Will the Minister commit to ensuring the implementation of all five recommendations, to beginning the process of doing so by recess, and to making an oral statement to the House detailing what progress has been made, again by recess?

[Dr Johnson]

I know my hon. Friend shares my horror at the report and my horror at the way women and their families were treated at East Kent maternity hospitals. The report was published only yesterday. I will be considering it very, very carefully and will further update the House in due course.

East Kent Maternity Services: Independent Investigation

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

I wish to inform the House that the independent review into maternity and neonatal services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust has today published its report, which can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/maternity-and-neonatal-services-in-east-kent-reading-the-signals-report

NHS England commissioned Dr Bill Kirkup CBE to undertake an independent review into maternity and neonatal services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust in February 2020, following concerns about the quality and outcomes of care. On behalf of the Government, I would like to thank Dr Kirkup, the families, and all those who contributed to the report.

The report details the poor maternity care that over 200 families received at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust between 2009 and 2020. The trust failed to provide safe care and treatment which resulted in avoidable harm for mothers and babies, causing tragedy and distress that no family should have to experience. I am profoundly sorry to all the families that have suffered and continue to suffer from these tragedies. I also wish to pay tribute to the families who have come forward to assist the review.

In line with the review team’s families first approach, I am pleased to hear that the families were able to see an advance copy of the report this morning ahead of the publication.

I, and the Government, take the findings and the recommendations from the report extremely seriously and I am committed to preventing families from experiencing the same pain in the future.

My Department along with NHS England has already established the independent working group, chaired by the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. The independent working group will help guide the implementation and next steps of the immediate and essential actions from the Ockenden report and the recommendations from the East Kent report. The group has met twice to date, and the next meeting will focus on reviewing the recommendations for the East Kent report.

In March 2022, NHS England also announced a £127 million funding boost for maternity services across England that will help ensure safer and more personalised care for women and their babies.

I will be reviewing and considering all the recommendations from the report, and I will issue a full response once I have had time to consider the recommendations.

[HCWS329]

Covid-19 Vaccine Supply

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

It is normal practice when a Government Department proposes to make a gift of a value exceeding £300,000, for the Department concerned to present to the House of Commons a minute giving particulars of the gift and explaining the circumstances; and to refrain from making the gift until 14 parliamentary sitting days after the issue of the minute, except in cases of special urgency.



I am writing to inform you that while Parliament was in recess the Department of Health and Social Care has started to donate approximately 30,000 doses of surplus covid vaccines to Barbados and Antigua & Barbuda. The combined value of these donations exceeds £300,000 and the donations will be accounted for as gifts since both countries are not eligible for official development assistance (ODA).

I want to take this opportunity to explain that we proceeded with these donations as a matter of urgency. The doses were surplus to the requirements of our domestic vaccination programme and were requested urgently by the recipient countries, including to vaccinate children before schools returned during September. Donating these doses with maximum available shelf life meant that they could be used rather than expiring and having to be destroyed.

The Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health and Social Care has written to the Chairs of the Public Accounts Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee to notify them of these gifts. This statement provides retrospective notification to the House of Commons.

HM Treasury has approved the decision.

[HCWS318]

Liver Disease and Liver Cancer: Diagnosis

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Caroline Johnson)]

I thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) for securing a debate on this important issue. She has been a great advocate on this topic, and I share her commitment to tackling this serious disease. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for his kind words and for sharing his family story and speaking about some of the personal, family impact of these terrible conditions.

It is a year ago this month that our colleague, Sir David Amess, was tragically taken from us. He had a huge interest in liver disease. He was the co-chair of the APPG for hepatology and did so much to raise awareness of this disease in Parliament. One of the many ways we can take forward his legacy is to improve the lives of those with liver disease. That is why, although the Minister responsible for this topic was unable to attend, I wanted to ensure that I took forward this important debate and updated hon. Members on the work we are doing.

Many have talked about the scale of the problem, so I will not go further into that, but I want to talk about what we will do to address it. First, the NHS plan will help us to do that. It recognises the importance of preventing avoidable liver disease through targeted policies to address alcohol consumption and obesity. Unfortunately, most people are diagnosed with liver disease at a late stage, when it is less treatable, and they are often diagnosed during an emergency hospital admission. It is for that reason that liver disease is often called the silent killer.

To help detect early signs of liver disease, NHS England has a number of trials in train. One is evaluating intelligent liver function tests. That is when patients get a normal liver function test, and the laboratory has a process in place, based on those results, to test the same sample further, not necessitating a further appointment, so we can work out which patients need further investigation and treatment.

The NHS health check for 40 to 74-year-olds also identifies people particularly at risk of alcoholic liver disease and refers them in for further treatment and investigation. On top of that, we have the fibroscans, which have been rolled out through community diagnostic centres. They help to identify fibrosis in the liver at a time when we can try to treat it and before it becomes worse. Last year’s spending review allocated £2.3 billion for diagnostics to increase the number of community diagnostic centres to at least 100 by March 2025. That will boost diagnostic capacity to diagnose liver disease and improve earlier diagnosis and health outcomes.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about education for children about alcohol. Education on alcohol is now a statutory component of relationships, sex and health education in England.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) talked about a review of liver disease and liver care. That is taking place in 2022-23, and there should be a report after that. He and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) raised transplant care. I will ask the responsible Minister to write to them with further details about what is being done in that area.

The hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Strangford said that many liver diseases can be prevented and are preventable, particularly in relation to alcohol, obesity and hepatitis, and I want to talk a little about what we are doing in those areas. Alcohol is the leading risk factor for liver disease, and identifying disease early in those at risk and supporting them to stop drinking is critical. If they stop drinking, that can halt or even reverse damage to the liver. People at risk of alcoholic liver disease are being identified and given early access to tests, to detect emerging liver disease through the health check and other means.

The NHS has also invested in the treatment of alcoholism: £27 million has been used to establish specialist alcohol care teams in hospitals with the highest rates of admissions related to alcohol dependence. Those specialist teams will help identify alcohol-dependent patients, start them on specialist alcohol treatment in hospital and support their transfer to community alcohol services.

Since April 2022, NHS England has introduced a measure known as commissioning for quality and innovation, which incentivises providers to improve earlier detection of liver disease for alcohol-dependent in-patients in acute and mental health services. We are also committed to increasing liver health investigations in community treatment settings. Through the drugs strategy, we are making the largest ever single increase in drug and alcohol treatment and recovery funding, with £780 million of additional investment over the next three years.

As hon. Members said, another major risk factor is obesity. Tackling obesity is a major priority for the Government. We have seen some important successes since 2016. The average sugar content of drinks subject to the soft drinks industry levy decreased by about 43% between 2015 and 2019. This month, regulations have been brought in about store placement of products that are high in fat, salt and sugar, so that they cannot be displayed in areas of the store that are attractive and available to children. There have also been the provisions set out in the Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021 and an investment in further weight management services for people living with obesity.

I would like to turn to hepatitis B and C, which are also important risk factors for liver disease and primary liver cancer. Through the NHS hepatitis C virus elimination programme, we have reduced the number of people living with chronic hepatitis C virus infection in England by 37% since 2015. New treatment with direct-acting antivirals has massively improved the success of the treatment, with mortality from hepatitis infections falling by 35% since 2015. So that has already reaped rewards.

There is a new opt-out pilot programme of testing for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C in emergency departments in areas of the country where HIV is most prevalent, which is a proven way of identifying new cases. During the first 100 days of the pilots in London, Blackpool, Brighton and Manchester, 328 people with hepatitis B were newly diagnosed, with 30 found to be lost to care. Each of them is an individual who will now be able to be treated effectively for the condition, which will reduce the risk of passing it on. Similarly, 137 people were newly diagnosed with hepatitis C, of whom 23 were found to be lost to care. Those are promising early results in just the first 100 days, and we now looking at what we can do to perhaps roll this programme out to other centres.

Many hon. Members talked about primary liver cancer, which has a tragic impact. As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington said, the number of recorded deaths has more than doubled in the last two decades. Cancer Research UK statistics show that there are around 6,200 new cases diagnosed each year and, tragically, 5,800 deaths. Unfortunately, the five-year survival rate for people with liver cancer is poor, at only 13%, and that could be markedly improved by earlier diagnosis, as I mentioned.

To contribute to achieving a long-term plan ambition to diagnose 75% of cancers at an earlier stage by 2028, the NHS cancer programme has launched the early diagnosis liver programme. The programme aims to detect more liver cancers at an earlier stage, so that more patients can benefit from treatment. More people at a high risk of liver cancer are referred to six-monthly liver surveillance. The national cancer programme is working in partnership with the hepatitis C virus elimination programme to deliver 11 community liver health check pilots.

The pilots aim to support early detection and diagnosis of liver cancer by identifying and referring people with cirrhosis or advanced fibrosis into a liver surveillance pathway, and providing them with a peer supporter who can help and guide them through future appointments. The pilots will target people experiencing significant inequalities and those who disengage from the healthcare service, including homeless people, those with alcohol and substance addiction, sex workers, people in the justice system, disabled people and others. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) mentioned the workforce; she will be interested to know that over the last five years there has been a 20% expansion in the number of consultant hepatologists.

This is an important debate on a very important issue. We have heard some heartfelt contributions about the pain that liver disease and liver cancer bring to so many people and their loved ones across the United Kingdom. This Government are determined to take action and to make the changes that are needed to tackle this deadly disease.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Margaret Ferrier has one minute to wind up.