Adoption: Support for Birth Families

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Jim Shannon

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I recognise that the headlines from the House today will be about the Chancellor’s autumn statement, but I am afraid that he has only made things worse for those whose lives are the subject of my Adjournment debate. Nevertheless, I am pleased to have secured this debate on a subject that is often overlooked by Chancellors, Prime Ministers and many others. I am talking about the adoption process by which children are removed from their birth parents and placed in the care of, and ultimately adopted by, parents other than their birth parents.

This year’s John Lewis Christmas advert gives a moving and positive representation of the adoption and care sector, and has brought welcome attention to the topic. I am not ashamed to say that it also brought tears to my eyes when I watched it on the train to the north- east last week. I commend the work of John Lewis and Action for Children on the advert.

Children are the most vulnerable in our society, so it is imperative that the child’s interest is first and foremost in the care and adoption process. Indeed, I would go further and say that the care and adoption process can be successful only if it is child-centred and everyone involved upholds that principle.

That does not mean, however, that birth parents should go without support. For every child adopted, there is a parent or parents who have to go through the process of losing their child. They are often parents in challenging and difficult circumstances, some of whom may not have the social or educational skills to easily navigate the complex adoption process, which is traumatic for many. It is not in the child’s interest to leave their parents without help, for the sake of the parents and the child, because a child placed in care and/or adopted may one day want to make contact with their parents, as is their right.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this debate forward; I spoke to her beforehand. Does she agree that, often, when children are not told that they have been adopted, or when information about their birth parents is kept hidden from them, that can be a distressing occurrence for adoptive parents that can cause resentment and, in some cases, even a complete breakdown of the relationship between the adoptive parents and the child?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and he makes a good point. I would always recommend honesty and transparency in everything and there can obviously be challenges where that is not followed. As I said, everything should be done in the long-term interests of the child.

Electric Car Batteries: Disposal and Recycling

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this important debate. Although the Budget and, unfortunately, the coronavirus crisis will take the headlines today, the climate emergency and our transition to a net zero economy remain the greatest challenges facing humanity. We will have to change many aspects of our society to address them, and that includes what we drive.

Under the Government’s plans, 15 years from now internal combustion engines will no longer be sold new in this country. Moving away from petrol-based engines is a challenge, but also a huge opportunity for the UK automotive industry. Transport makes up 26% of emissions and the automotive sector can make a dramatic contribution to achieving a net zero economy and saving our planet. That will require a massive rise in the number of electric vehicles in the UK.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders expects registrations for electric vehicles to rise by 77% this year, and National Grid predicts that they will rise from 100,000 to 36 million by 2040—an increase of 36,000%. As part of that, the number of electric vehicle batteries will rise exponentially. There are a few hundred lithium cells in a Nissan Leaf and thousands in a Tesla—a second-hand market will undoubtedly develop. I want to emphasise what amazing technological innovation there has been in batteries in the last few decades.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

This is obviously an important issue. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to be pre-emptively working rather than waiting until everyone owns an electric car? A massive environmental aspect has not been fully considered and planned for. The sheer volume of the cars that will be using these batteries demands better forward planning. We need that planning right now.

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Gentleman might well have read my speech, because those are exactly the points that I hope to make.

Returning now to innovation, when I studied electrical engineering at Imperial some decades ago, batteries were big, boring and messy. Now they are at the cutting edge of many exciting developments. We are getting down to the fundamentals of physics in the storage of energy and its applications everywhere from our smartphones to our national grid. Batteries are getting smaller, safer, more sustainable and more manageable, but we must also acknowledge that we are entering an era of battery reuse, recycling and transportation the like of which we have never before seen.

[Chi Onwurah]

I am sure that the right hon. Lady will understand if I say that I shall be pressing the Minister to address how the investment will be coming to Newcastle and the north-east.

Through this debate, I hope we can gain a greater understanding of the significant opportunity for our recycling sector across the country, but particularly the contribution that the north-east can make.

The most common battery types in modern electric cars are lithium-ion. They hold a high-energy density, with up to 700 watt-hours per litre, which is seven times the density of traditional LED batteries. That means that lithium batteries are more suited for use in electric vehicles as they can hold charge for longer-distance journeys. The expanding electric vehicle market will mean many more lithium batteries, and the typical warranty period for these batteries is eight years or 100,000 miles. Legislation requires that manufacturers take back the batteries, but it does not say what they should do with them. It says:

“Producers of automotive batteries must collect waste automotive batteries for free from their final holders, such as garages and scrapyards.”

There is no mention of lithium batteries in the Batteries and Accumulators (Placing on the Market) Regulations 2008, nor in the amendments in 2015. The European directive 2013/56/EU and the Capacity Labelling of Portable Secondary (Rechargeable) and Automotive Batteries and Accumulators Regulations all admit the legal framework for recycling. I hope the Minister will address that. In the not-too-distant future, we are likely to be facing a large lithium-ion battery mountain with nowhere for it to go unless we put the processes in place now.

Lithium batteries are not considered suitable for electric vehicle applications when their cell capacity falls below 80% of its original value. Their reuse at this point is known as second-life application, and there is interest in, for example, securing supplies to recondition for energy grid value balancing, or for using again in electric vehicles, or other applications.

Indeed, I should say that I underwent a revelation when I realised that the increasing demand for electric storage caused by the unpredictable or cyclical nature of many renewable energy sources, such as wind and tide, could be balanced quite literally by the fact that every car owner in the future will have a significant battery storage capacity sitting on their drive. That is true during the lifetime of the battery, but it is also a factor afterwards.

For example, in China selling a reused end-of-life battery can raise up to 10 times more for the owner than recycling. However, second-life applications delay, rather than eliminate, the challenge of recycling. Research also suggests that safety issues increase with second-life applications, given the absence of a regulatory framework. Stockpiling is unsafe and environmentally undesirable, and it is illegal to send electric vehicle batteries to landfill, so if the direct reuse of a lithium battery is not possible, it must be recycled. There are further environmental considerations. Batteries are made with expensive and rare minerals, the mining of which raises environmental—and often human rights—concerns. Recycling helps to minimise the need for new mineral extraction and provides the UK with resilience in the light of supply chain risks. I hope the Minister will agree that we should be encouraging a significant recycling programme.

There is also the safety risk. Without the capacity to recycle a large number of batteries appropriately and affordably, we could see overuse, fly-tipping and unregulated reselling. In the short time that electric vehicles have been about, not many battery packs have reached the end of their eight-year life, and there were only 1,262 electric cars registered in the UK eight years ago. That is going to change.

Petrol cars have significant safety risks too. Two cars in every 1,000 registered in the UK catch fire each year, but these are known to our fire services, who can extinguish petrol or diesel vehicle fires within one hour. By contrast, lithium-ion battery fires can take up to eight hours, and require different skills and tools to extinguish. Research from Newcastle University found that a damaged battery ignited twice within 24 hours and then again six days afterwards, with violent explosions being a potential feature of electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery fires. Furthermore, electric vehicles are not legally required to be marked with information on the batteries they contain for the information of arriving emergency services.

Ongoing work by the UK health and safety of energy storage governance group—chaired by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, of which I am a member—raised concerns that the Home Office system used by the fire brigade to report incidents does not actually have a category for energy storage systems. The group is working on a code of practice to support professionals, and I hope the Minister will discuss this with her colleagues.

There continue to be advances in battery technology, and I pay tribute to the work of the Faraday Institution’s SOLBAT project in seeking to bring solid-state batteries to the market. They lack the flammable liquid electrolyte found in lithium-ion batteries, and are therefore safer. However, we must assume that lithium-ion batteries will continue to dominate for some years to come.

There are no facilities in the UK to recycle electric car batteries, so the small volume currently being created are exported to Europe, where they are destroyed in high temperature furnaces. This enables the recovery of valuable critical elements such as cobalt and nickel, but at least 50% of the battery materials are not recovered. Currently, the number of electric vehicle batteries being sent for recycling in this way is so low that the Environment Agency does not even record the figures. When UK firms export their batteries to Europe, they have to pay a gate fee of thousands of pounds. This is not feasible in the long term, given the expected increase in numbers. I understand that ECOBAT Logistics, the largest UK recycler of non-lithium-ion batteries, is looking seriously at initiating a lithium-ion battery recycling industry in the UK. Is the Minister in talks with that company?

There is also a Brexit question. Without a recycling facility of our own, we will be in a vulnerable position when the EU transition period ends. The Government have yet to set out the UK’s equivalent of the waste batteries and accumulators directive 2006. We may face export restrictions or duties, and we would have to accept external prices since these materials cannot be landfilled. Given that, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, it will take planning and investment to develop the processes and permits for a battery processing factory in the United Kingdom, it is essential to get started now. We have to remember that it is not safe to stockpile these end-of-life batteries and let them accumulate in the UK.

I have talked a little bit about the challenges, because I want to emphasise to the Minister the importance of taking the right decisions now, but there are also opportunities that can help to level up our nation. The Faraday Institution-funded ReLiB project is researching ways to facilitate a circular economy in lithium-ion batteries, and Newcastle University has benefited from some of its work packages. Newcastle University is also proposing a battery safety health and environment hub on Tyneside. That is a fantastic idea. This hub would upskill and train those working with lithium batteries to safely manage and dispose of them, helping to address worker safety issues and some of the concerns I have raised. Would the Minister support such a hub?

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Chi Onwurah]

I am sorry, but I need to give the Minister some time to answer my questions.

At the moment, our fire services do not have the appropriate resources, training and personal protective equipment necessary to deal with these new challenges. It is estimated that up to 25% of the 510 fires in UK material recycling facilities in 2018 were caused by small lithium batteries. In 2019, one such fire in Dunbar, Scotland took over 40 firefighters to contain. A specialist training facility such as that proposed on Tyneside would have helped to reduce the pollution and damage. A recycling plant could have entirely avoided it.

Recycling plants, touching on the point made by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), do need to be regional. Electric vehicle batteries are classed as hazardous waste, and the further they are transported, the greater the risk. As we have the skills in the north-east to support such a plant, we would welcome one in our region. We are a global leader in electric vehicles. The Washington Nissan plant introduced electric cars to Europe in 2011, creating a brand-new lithium battery plant from scratch in 18 months. Washington’s Envision-AESC factory is the first of its kind in the UK and leads the world in battery technology. It is eager to expand and exploit the new market opportunities offered by the lithium-ion technology revolution, and it has the knowledge to do so. We are going to need at least five battery gigafactories across the country to meet our decarbonisation targets—let us have one in the north-east. I know that that is more a matter for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but I hope the Minister will speak to BEIS about it.

Newcastle University is a centre of excellence in electric vehicles, leading a £300 million pound project entitled “Driving the Electric Revolution”. It has performed fascinating research on the systems integration of electric vehicle charging points. Northern Grid is actively looking at ways to integrate battery technology into the network. I am grateful for the Government’s commitment of £274 million between 2017 and 2021 to the Faraday Institution for research on the development and scale-up of world-leading battery technology in the UK. This has supported some of the research at Newcastle University. However, I am concerned that future funding remains unclear after this year. Will the Minister speak to her BEIS colleagues and meet me to discuss how Newcastle and the north-east can play a critical role in the safe storage, transportation and recycling of electric vehicle batteries?

We clearly need a circular economy for lithium batteries. Regulations, codes and standards are an important part of this, as are research and development to deliver at-scale recycling facilities, and safety guidance and training. I hope the Minister will welcome the opportunity to work with me to ensure that Newcastle can be a centre for all those things.

Sexual Exploitation: Newcastle

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

All of us here will have tremendous sympathy with the victims of sexual exploitation and the challenges, barriers and burdens they face. I want to pay tribute to the bravery, strength and perseverance of the victims of sexual exploitation, who deserve not merely our sympathy but our concrete, committed and long-term support.

Last August, a jury returned guilty verdicts on 17 men and one woman who had committed abhorrent crimes in Newcastle. This was the culmination of Northumbria police’s Operation Sanctuary, a three-year investigation into the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and girls. No convictions would have been secured without the bravery of the victims in testifying against their attackers, re-living their terrible experiences, in some cases more than once. To be subject to such abuse is more than anyone should have to bear. To then describe it to a court full of strangers shows the sort of courage that the rest of us can only hope to equal.

I feel personally ashamed that the city in which I grew up, and which I now have the privilege to represent, harboured men who groomed, exploited and raped women and young girls. They targeted women and girls because they were vulnerable, turning the vulnerable into victims, but I am also grateful to the victims for their courage, which has made Newcastle a safer city.

At the end of 2013, Northumbria police were contacted by a woman who informed them of sexual exploitation in the west end of Newcastle. Northumbria police responded rapidly. The national charity Changing Lives has worked extensively with the victims, and it told me that the police believed the victims immediately and maintained unconditional positive regard throughout the process, which has not always so in other sexual exploitation cases.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I spoke to the hon. Lady beforehand just to tell her some things that we are doing in Northern Ireland. The Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland said that people who have had up to six adverse childhood experiences—in this case, sexual exploitation—are not only traumatised but, it is estimated, could die some 20 years earlier as a result of their experiences. Does she agree that this clearly underlines the need for more support to be given at an earlier stage and that the police need to be more active for the victims of sexual exploitation, whose lives are shortened as a result of what they have experienced?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree that the impact of such sexual exploitation on the lives, mental health and long-term opportunities of the victims is significant. That is why long-term support is required, and I will touch on that in more detail later.

The police acted upon 1,400 pieces of intelligence, identifying 278 victims and arresting 461 suspects. Eight crime gangs were identified, all of which are now subject to ongoing disruption, and 220 child abduction notices have been issued, warning suspects that they face arrest if they contact children. The professionalism with which Northumbria police conducted Operation Sanctuary has made Newcastle safer. As April’s police and crime panel report put it,

“it is difficult to overstate the positive impact of Sanctuary.”

That was not only because perpetrators were taken off the streets; there was also a recognition that victims would need long-term support provided by various agencies.

Girls and ICT Careers

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. It is certainly the case that the video games industry is a modern one; one would hope that it would be reflective of society, including those who play games, but it is not. I shall show a little later that the figures I have for females in the video games industry are even worse than the hon. Gentleman’s 17%.

At the same time, half of the UK’s co-educational state schools send no girls at all to sit A-level physics. In 2012, 2,400 female students from the UK went on to full-time undergraduate computer courses, as opposed to over 15,000 men. Between 2001 and 2011, the percentage of technology jobs held by women declined from 22% to 17%. My figures show that only 6% of those who work in ICT in the UK games industry are women, despite the fact that they make up 50% of those who play the games.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) raised an important issue earlier. I spoke to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) before the debate, asking if I too could intervene on her speech.

According to e-skills UK in Northern Ireland, the potential for Northern Ireland to be a global leader in the field of technology will increase over the next few years, and 9,200 jobs will be needed over a five-year period. Along with the industry, e-skills UK in Northern Ireland is taking active steps to encourage ladies and young girls to become involved. Does the hon. Lady think that the active measures that are being taken in a region of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland might serve as an example for the rest of the United Kingdom?

[Chi Onwurah]

I agree that we need to be very active in encouraging girls into the industry. I am pleased to hear about the job opportunities in Northern Ireland. There are other job opportunities throughout the country, and we need to ensure that girls are in a position to take advantage of them.

Gender segregation is at its most extreme in skilled trades such as that of electricians. Women constitute only 1% of the work force in such occupations, which is barely significant in statistical terms. I commissioned House of Commons Library research which has armed me with a large—depressingly large—number of similar statistics. It is clear that we are doing much worse in this regard than many of our European and OECD counterparts. I want to focus on what we can do about it, “we” being the ICT sector, civil society and, as I hope the Minister will acknowledge, the Government.

I worked in ICT as an engineer for 23 years. I must emphasise that I was often fortunate enough to have great male bosses who were determined that working in an all-male, or almost all-male, environment should not be a barrier to a successful career for a woman. However, I have known other managers who were not so supportive, and company cultures that worked against attracting girls and women into ICT and did absolutely nothing to help them to stay there.

Last year, when I was a shadow business, innovation and skills Minister, I wrote to 10 of the leading companies in the engineering and technology sector to ask what they were doing to improve the situation. I wrote to BAE Systems, Google, Microsoft, IBM, ARM, Rolls-Royce, BP, Shell, Ford and Jaguar Land Rover. Their responses are summarised on my website. What was quite amusing was that two of the companies addressed their letters of response to “Mr Onwurah”. I shall not name them, but it did make me wonder how accustomed they were to engaging with women.

Not surprisingly, nearly every company claimed that it was hiring women in proportions above the national average. The exception was ARM, which candidly said that the proportion of women was higher in its divisions outside the UK, especially in India. Female literacy in India is just 65%, while male literacy is 82%. The fact that India is doing so much better than we are in regard to ICT gender balance is particularly striking for that reason.

It is also striking that IBM did not respond to my inquiry despite repeated entreaties, while Google and Microsoft responded but refused to release any figures. As relatively young companies, at least in comparison with, for instance, Shell and Rolls-Royce, they might be expected to be at the forefront of gender equality. Both Google and Microsoft cited confidentiality as their reason for not revealing the proportion of women whom they employed in ICT. That is rather strange, because it suggests either that Google and Microsoft do not know how to aggregate and anonymise such information—which, given that they are leaders in big data management, is worrying—or that they have so few women employees that giving the figure would necessarily identify individuals. That is also very worrying.

The more traditional companies were more open about releasing figures, with Ford giving the most detailed breakdown across different job types. Most firms said that the main problem was a lack of qualified female candidates in ICT, engineering and science, and all the firms said that getting more women into those fields was a corporate priority. Most outlined steps that they were taking, from overhauling corporate procedures, for example, making sure that women were on interview panels, to intervening early in schools to steer girls towards STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects and careers.

Companies emphasised the importance of female role models in encouraging female graduates or apprentices to join them, and detailed the steps they were taking to develop networking forums or to push high-potential females up the employee hierarchy. ARM was the most forthright when asked what private or public sector initiatives firms found useful. It said

“most initiatives that directly address the issue are clearly failing at a national level and make little difference.”

According to the ARM representative, the most effective means would be role models and TV commentators or presenters who make the subjects sexy and exciting. I agree in part. A high profile ICT series on TV would probably change perceptions overnight. We saw what the success of “Silent Witness” did for the proportion of women in forensics.

The responses I received showed that there is such a wide range of challenges to address that we need a wide-ranging response, as was mentioned earlier.

Clean Coal

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah]

I will come to that point. I shall consider it a pleasure to push the Minister, just as the hon. Gentleman describes.

Coal importation does not raise the same issues as gas importation. In terms of energy security, there is no vulnerable single coal pipeline and there is a wider supplier base and a more competitive market for coal, but transporting millions of tonnes of carbon around the world is hardly green and, more importantly, there is in this country the budding technical knowledge to exploit coal in a cleaner way than our competitors.

The first industrial revolution was fuelled by coal and we are now having to deal with the consequences in the form of climate change. Clean coal, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is any technology that reduces harmful emissions from burning coal or avoids the need for burning coal altogether to generate electricity in a more sustainable manner.

Carbon capture and storage and underground coal gasification are two areas where the UK has the opportunity to become a world-beater in clean energy production, but we cannot wait for ever. Underground coal gasification is the gasification of a deep coal seam to convert coal to a high energy synthetic gas, which goes by the lovely name of syngas. Both the technology and the gas produced are relatively clean, compared to coal-fired generation and surface mining.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing the matter to this Chamber.

The potential for clean coal is estimated between £2 billion and £4 billion, perhaps with some 60,000 jobs as well. Does the hon. Lady feel that we should be embracing the technology in totality, especially as oil has reached its highest price in the past two years?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the important economic potential of clean coal, especially at a time of high energy prices. I shall mention that.

Health Inequalities (North-East)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I said, the causes of health inequalities are complex. Alcohol dependency certainly varies significantly throughout the country. We need, and we are seeing, targeted campaigns to address that. I hope that the Government will introduce concrete measures to address alcohol dependency, such as legislation and a minimum price if that is appropriate.

Labour prioritised addressing health inequalities. We could not overcome the legacy of inequality in 13 years, but we made real progress, as the figures for infant mortality show. However, that is set to change. There are three main ways in which the Government are undermining work to reduce health inequalities.

First, the Government have changed the funding formula, and reduced the component designed to address health inequalities. I have been in Parliament for 19 months, and I have raised this matter directly with Ministers four times, not counting written questions. I am hoping it will be fourth time lucky for receiving a direct answer. Will the Minister confirm that in 2010 the Secretary of State decided, against the advice of the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation, to reduce the health inequalities component of the primary care trust target funding allocation from 15% to 10%? Two weeks ago, during an exchange on the Floor of the House, the Secretary of State cited a 2.8% rise in funding when I asked him about changes to the funding formula. Will the Minister address the change to the formula, rather than the overall increases that the Government claim?

During a speech on the Floor of the House in December 2010, I asked the Secretary of State to confirm that more will be invested in health services for every man, woman and child in Newcastle for every year of the comprehensive spending review as the Government claim that they are increasing NHS spending. He declined to do so, so will the Minister step into the breach?

Clearly, if funding is changed to reduce the amount associated with health inequalities, the north-east will lose out. The Minister will say that the Government have ring-fenced public health spending and handed it over to local authorities. She may refer to the public health outcomes framework, which was published yesterday, just in time for today’s debate, and is very interesting reading. It includes 66 measures, which will be monitored, but they cannot distract from the assault on public health that the Government’s wide-ranging cuts represent for local authorities. For example, cuts to fuel poverty reduction programmes such as Warm Front will leave pensioners in Newcastle colder and more vulnerable to illness. Cuts to area-based grants such as the Supporting People programme mean there will be less investment in support services for those with mental health issues.

The second way in which the Government are undermining work to address health inequalities is the top-down, unnecessary and destructive health care reforms. It is estimated that they will cost £3 billion, and we now know that in the north-east the NHS has been asked to put aside £143 million for those organisational changes. The Government claim that efficiencies will make up for that, but the service is already being asked to meet the 1.5% efficiency cuts challenge at a time of wholesale reorganisation. As the Select Committee on Health said today, it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to make such efficiency savings when everything is changing.

In the north-east, our strategic health authority and primary care trusts are being abolished. Funding will be in the hands of GP consortia. Newcastle already has a pathfinder consortium in place. Newcastle Bridges GP commissioning consortia covers most of the city, and has shown that it is keen to work with other stakeholders across the city to promote public health, but it is having to make it up as it goes along in the face of huge uncertainty and change in the public sector and in the third sector, with unprecedented local authority cuts, watched over by an eager private sector that is keen to take advantage of the profit-making opportunities that the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary have promised.

A recent letter to the Health Service Journal, signed by more than 40 directors of public health and more than 100 public health academics, argued that the Bill will increase health inequalities, not reduce them. If the Government will not pay attention to what the Opposition say, perhaps they will pay attention to what the profession says. Michael Marmot told the Health Committee that there is little evidence that the health premium will reduce inequalities. Indeed, he said that it is most likely to increase them. Seven former presidents of the Faculty of Public Health have said that the Bill will “exacerbate inequalities”.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to the Chamber. I am a Member not for the north-east, but for Northern Ireland, where health is a devolved matter, but she is expressing concerns felt by many people throughout the United Kingdom, even where such matters are devolved. There are two reasons for that. The problems for her constituents, to which she referred, are as real in my area as they are in other areas of the United Kingdom. The Government’s reduction in the block grant for Northern Ireland means that our health will also be affected. The changes in health care here will be the marker for future changes for us. Does she believe that the service that the NHS is offering is not the standard that we in the United Kingdom expect and are accustomed to, and is not of the standard that is needed to address core health issues?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I believe strongly that the national health service is one of the best, most efficient and most effective health services in the world. The evidence shows that, as I will explain. It is absolutely right to say that the concerns I am expressing on behalf of my constituents and the north-east are felt throughout the country, and with good reason. The proposed measures will have an impact on the health of all constituencies in the country. The profession believes that the changes will have a negative impact on health inequalities. The Health Committee’s recent report on public health warned that the Bill poses a “significant risk” of widening health inequalities, yet the Government are pressing ahead.

The third way in which the Health Secretary will widen regional health inequalities is through the wholesale marketisation of the national health service. Before the Minister pretends otherwise, let me quote her colleague, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who admitted last year that the Bill will turn the NHS into a “genuine market”.

We should recognise that despite having serious health inequalities, we suffer relatively little from inequalities of access. I am no expert on health services, but I am told by those who are that the stent insertion that Prince Philip recently underwent at Papworth hospital did not differ materially from the treatment that any of my constituents would have received at the Freeman hospital if they had suffered a similar condition. That is fantastic, but it is not the case in the United States of America where there are terrible health access issues due to its private health care system. In the short term, the Government’s reforms are diverting funds away from patient care, which will have an impact on waiting times. Those who can afford it will tend to seek private health care, but those on low incomes will be unable to do that. In the longer term, the Bill is about the privatisation of the NHS. Strong independent evidence indicates that the NHS is one of the most efficient and equitable health systems in the world. Why would we want to make it into a market? The Bill misses an important opportunity to focus on the real issues and the wider determinants of health in this country.

I shall therefore finish by asking the Minister these questions. The Government have signed the recent World Health Organisation declaration to deal with the social determinants of health inequalities, so what concrete actions will Ministers take? The previous Government accepted the Marmot review’s recommendations in full. When will the current Government do the same? What are the coalition’s proposals for introducing a national minimum unit price for alcohol? Will the Government confirm a commitment to undertake a consultation on plain and standardised packaging for tobacco products, and on what date that will take place?

Does the Minister share my concern about the Royal College of Midwives and Netmums survey showing that women from lower incomes were denied antenatal classes and the choice of a home birth? Will that not entrench health inequalities from before birth? The Minister looks somewhat surprised at that question, but differences in health access do exist in our country.

As Blane said, no law of nature decrees that the children of poor families should die at twice the rate of children born into rich families. In the north-east, there are more poor families. Will the Government commit to reversing their changes to the funding formula component designed to deal with health inequalities?

The national health service’s first Minister of Health, Nye Bevan, famously said that when a bedpan falls to the floor in Tredegar, it should echo in the Palace of Westminster. The Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford, quoted that with some amusement and disdain and proclaimed that those days were long gone, so what does this Minister think should echo in Westminster? Does she accept responsibility for reducing health inequalities? Can she assure me that health inequalities between the north-east and the rest of the country will reduce over the term of the present Government?