Acquired Brain Injury
Debate between Chris Bryant and Caroline Dinenage(4 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on again securing a really important debate on this issue. He is such a brilliant and effective champion of people with acquired brain injuries. His passion is incredibly infectious and set the tone for the rest of the debate, which I think everybody would agree has been incredibly constructive and thoughtful; there have been excellent contributions from everybody. The hon. Gentleman leads the all-party parliamentary group on acquired brain injury, about which all its members are very passionate. They have done superb work.
I thank everybody who took part in the debate: my right hon. Friends the Members for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and the hon. Members for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson).
As hon. Members will know, it is estimated that the total cost of brain injury in the UK is at least £1 billion per annum and that the number of people living with ABI is more than half a million and could be as high as 1 million. Many hon. Members have explained that, as with many long-term conditions, the impact of ABI is not limited to an individual’s health but is felt across many aspects of their life, including family, work, relationships and finances. Of course, such an injury could happen to any one of us. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead spoke about traffic incidents and collisions. That could happen to any one of us on our way home today.
I join the hon. Member for Rhondda in taking this opportunity to recognise, first, the outstanding work done by professionals in this field and, secondly, the wonderful work undertaken by charitable organisations such as Headway, the United Kingdom Acquired Brain Injury Forum and the Children’s Trust, which he mentioned. They are incredibly highly valued by those affected. They do invaluable work in raising not only money but awareness and by providing incredible support to those with the condition, as well as to their families and carers.
I have had quite a long-standing involvement with Headway in my region of Portsmouth and Gosport, since before I became an MP; as an MP, I have met my local team on a number of occasions. They are remarkable and offer the most fantastic support to people in my area. They certainly make a difference to people’s lives and they are so inspiring. On one occasion, I visited them with a member of my team, and she was so buoyed up by the visit that she decided to go off and do the Great South Run to raise funds for the Headway charity. I am not going to follow her example: literally nothing apart from someone chasing me would make me run 13 miles, but people can see how—
Caroline Dinenage
Thank you; that is a very generous offer. People can see what an inspiring group Headway is.
We have heard a lot about the excellent and wide-ranging APPG report from 2018. As the hon. Member for Rhondda said, the Department of Health and Social Care co-ordinated with officials from across Whitehall to deliver the response, which was a truly cross-Government response, but I certainly feel his frustration at how silo working across Whitehall can be an impediment to getting the change that he wants. A number of right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned that today, and I will certainly take forward the idea of a real, collaborative cross-Whitehall group to discuss this. Even from the issues raised today, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Transport, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office—I am sure there will be others—all need to be involved in the conversation.