The National Health Service

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important contribution. There is a cliff edge in our young people’s mental health services when they transition into adult mental health services. They have to start all over again and repeat themselves. There are a few places across the country that are creating mental health services for young people up to the age of 25, and that is welcome, but it is the exception rather than the rule. We need to do everything possible to ensure that young people have continuity of support in their mental health services at that fragile moment in their life, because not receiving that critical support can have a detrimental impact on their ability to access education, to maintain relationships with family and friends and to get into employment.

I am particularly concerned that we have seen a serious reduction in the state of our services in the past year. I refer to the Care Quality Commission’s “State of Care” report, which came out this month. It looked at acute wards for adults of working age, psychiatric intensive care units, child and adolescent mental health in-patient services and in-patient services for people with learning disabilities or autism, and it found a significant increase in the number of those services that are now rated inadequate. Those are services for some of the most vulnerable people in our country, and we should be improving them rather than seeing an increase in inadequate ratings from 2% to 8%, 9% or 10%. That is unacceptable, and I hope the Minister will address that serious point in his response. In particular, we know that this is as a result of too many of the people using mental health and learning disability services being looked after by staff who, according to the CQC,

“lack the skills, training, experience or support from clinical staff to care for people with complex needs.”

Again, I hope the Minister will respond to this important point.

This is not just about care for people with mental illness or disability. We are seeing that same story right across our NHS, with patients waiting far too long. We have heard significant figures, with millions of people across the country struggling to access services. They are also having to travel too far for the treatment they need, and too many areas still have too few staff and not enough resources. That is reflected in the 2019 British social attitudes survey, which shows overall satisfaction in our NHS falling by 3% in the last year to 53%. The main reasons given for that include long waiting times, staff shortages and a lack of funding.

Notwithstanding the announcements in the Queen’s Speech on patient safety and changes to mental health legislation, which I welcome, I want to reinforce the point I made to the Secretary of State that this is not just about changing the Mental Health Act and that we need to have the resources for the capital infrastructure to ensure that we raise the standard of mental health in-patient settings to the same standard as physical health in-patient settings, along the lines of the recommendations given by Sir Simon Wessely, who conducted that important review for the Government.

Let us be clear that the pressures on our NHS are urgent and that they demand action, before we even contemplate the existential threat to our NHS because of Brexit. I want to talk about Brexit, because we did not hear about it today from the Front Benches. We had a reference to it from the Secretary of State, but not an actual analysis of how Brexit will impact on the provision of our national health service. We know that the impact on our economy so far from Brexit has been between 1.5% and 2.5% of GDP since 2016, and by the Government’s own assessment, Brexit will impact on our GDP by up to 9.3% over the next 15 years. We are still waiting for those further economic impact assessments on the withdrawal Bill that we have seen in the past week.

We have already discussed the impact of Brexit on our NHS workforce. We know that 63,000 EU nationals work in our NHS and that 104,000 work in adult social care. We should be lining up to thank each and every one of them for the role they play and the contribution they make to our national health service, instead of making them feel like unwanted strangers. I am surely not the only MP who has received representations from people who are serving our NHS and social care service, who go above and beyond under incredible pressure to provide the best possible levels of care and who are feeling worried about what the future holds. They are particularly concerned about the Home Secretary’s proposed immigration rules and the damage that they will inflict on our ability to recruit doctors, nurses and social care workers from the EU and the rest of the world.

I could talk about the threat of access to medicines, the creation of a new medicines approval regime, which will lead to further delays, and the impact on medical research.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Luciana Berger]

Forgive me, but I only have 18 seconds, so I will not give way.

We should be addressing all that as a nation, and how we keep people well was missing from the Queen’s Speech. Other people have talked about prevention, and the lack of focus on public health in the Queen’s Speech is pitiful. We could be doing so much more, and I urge the Minister to refer to that in his response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gerald Jones]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The NHS in Wales has a good story to tell about the provision of parking, which I know from visiting my dad in hospital over recent weeks at the Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil.

[Chris Ruane]

Before we leave this list of Welsh firsts, does my hon. Friend agree that Wales pioneered presumed consent for organ donation, being one of the first nations in Europe to do so? The Conservatives criticised the policy, but they have now adopted it.

[Gerald Jones]

Wales is leading the way in many areas in health. Despite the bluff and bluster that we hear from the Conservatives, the Welsh NHS has many positive attributes. We must continue to be vigilant to ensure that our NHS is not subject to the vagaries of a Trump-style trade deal with the US. The Welsh Labour Government have stated emphatically that our NHS is not for sale, and that should be the case right across the UK.

At this point, I make a plea for the Government to do more to find a solution between the NHS and the pharmaceutical companies with regard to Orkambi—a drug for cystic fibrosis sufferers, including eight-year-old Sofia from my constituency. We need progress on this issue across the UK. I appreciate that progress made by this Government will apply in England, but any attempts to break the deadlock, wherever it is in the UK, will help CF sufferers right across the UK.

We all know that not only health, but public services generally have been under pressure for a decade due to hard Tory austerity. The Tories are certainly not the party of the NHS, as they claim to be, and the neglect shown by the Government in the Queen’s Speech to other areas, including social care, mental health and education, is a real cause for concern. The Queen’s Speech was a missed opportunity by this Government to tackle the hardship felt as a result of continued austerity measures, with cuts to things such as social care and local government funding. It is important to recognise that local government has an important role to play in public health and social care, and it has been significantly underfunded in recent years. Time and again, we have been promised an end to austerity, yet there was little in the Queen’s Speech to give us any evidence of the fact that this policy has come to an end. Our local councils are suffering. They are able to provide visible services that we are aware of, which people sometimes take for granted, but the opportunity to deliver those services is held back by the austerity measures to which they are subjected.

This Tory Government have starved our local authorities of resources for almost a decade, and although in the early years some councils were able to stretch their budgets to keep some of the vital services going, all that is left to cut now are jobs and services that are closest to the people. Although local government in Wales is devolved to the Welsh Government, we know that the budget given to Wales by this Government is some £4 billion less per annum now than it was in 2010, which has had a huge knock-on impact on public services across Wales. That is wholly wrong, and this Government must act to show that austerity really is coming to an end. For this Government, as they have done in recent weeks, to use the police as a political propaganda tool, after almost a decade of slashing budgets and making constant cuts to policing and preventive public services, while violent crime has soared and conviction rates have reached record lows, is shameful.

In the closing moments available to me, I wish to raise something that was not in the Queen’s Speech, and that was an error. The theme for today is the NHS, but we are talking about the Queen’s Speech more widely. One of the missed opportunities was that there was no mention of the Government’s plans to put right the cruel injustice felt by women born in the 1950s and address the anger felt by so many thousands of 1950s women in our country, many of whom would have worked in the NHS, social care and health services. It is more than two years on from the last Queen’s Speech, which also failed to make any mention of this issue, which at that time had already been a huge injustice for too many years. This shows just how long this Tory Government have failed to act on this issue. So they must act, to get a fairer deal for the many thousands of 1950s women and bring an end to this shameful legacy of state pension inequality. We all know—I include many Government Members—that this issue will not go away until justice is done.

We do not know how long this Government have left—I hope for the sake of the country that is not too long—but it is clear from this Queen’s Speech that the Government are out of touch and out of ideas.

Living with Dementia

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this important debate. I support their vision to make this Parliament the first dementia-friendly Parliament in the world. My staff and I have undertaken dementia-friendly training in my constituency office. It is important for us all to try to promote a more dementia-friendly society, sector by sector, institution by institution and, as mentioned previously, shop by shop.

It is great that so many Members want to participate in the debate—it shows how active this is in our personal lives and our communities. A wide range of issues has been covered so far. We have looked at the impact on loved ones who are living with dementia and their carers, financial assistance and protection for people living with dementia, research, social care costs, dementia-friendly shops and institutions, and therapies that can help people who are living with dementia, such as music therapy. I want to touch on the role that I think mindfulness can play in helping people who are living with dementia and their carers.

I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on mindfulness with the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). On Tuesday 14 May, we held a conference in the Macmillan room on mindfulness in an ageing world, including those living with Alzheimer’s. We had 150 people attending, including 15 of the charities representing elderly people, including the Alzheimer’s Society.

We heard from experts from around the world and the UK who have been doing research on mindfulness, ageing and Alzheimer’s. Dr Antoine Lutz of the centre for medical research at the University of Lyon has won a €7 million grant for research into ageing well and Alzheimer’s. We also heard from Dr Lone Fjorback from Aarhus University in Denmark, where they have a week-long festival for mental health to look at the issues in a positive light. From the UK, we heard from Dr Trudi Eddington, who is a British research scientist at City University researching those currently suffering with dementia. We also heard from Dr Eric Loucks, the associate professor of epidemiology, and behaviour and social sciences at Brown University.

There is promising early research out there. We used to think of the brain as set at the age of 25 and declining after that age. Now they have discovered neuroplasticity: how our brain changes size, function and shape over the course of our lives. Actions we take can encourage and discourage that. I ask the Minister and her advisers to assess that research, and particularly the research from the University of Lyon, which will be published later in the summer, and to meet officers of our all-party parliamentary group on mindfulness. I also ask the all-party parliamentary group on dementia and the Alzheimer’s Society to do the same. I pay tribute to that APPG and the Alzheimer’s Society, and all of those who work to lessen the suffering of those living with dementia and their carers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

Yes, I will. We work closely with partners such as the BHF to harness new technology. Ultimately, this is about using data—big data—to ensure that patients benefit, and that is at the heart of the health service.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

T10. We have an excellent advocate for those with motor neurone disease in north Wales, one Vincent Ryan. He has drawn my attention to the fact that the social care Green Paper was expected before the new year, but the Health Secretary has now said that it will be published before April, more than two years after it was first announced. Can the Secretary of State confirm that, whenever the Green Paper does arrive, it will address social care provision for adults of working age living with a disability as well as older people?

Austerity: Life Expectancy

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I will come on to those very important public health issues and what we need to do about them, because I care passionately about them, as probably everyone in the Chamber does. As the hon. Lady is from Scotland, it is also worth looking at what is happening there, because Scotland offers free adult social care and spends a higher amount on healthcare per head than England, yet still has a lower life expectancy than England. We need to get those issues firmly—

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Selous]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am going to make a bit of progress, because I am mindful of your admonition, Mr Paisley, not to take too long and I want all the Opposition Members to have their say as well.

What do we need to do about this situation? We have 25% more nurses coming into the system—that training has started—and 25% more doctors coming into the system. We will get the social care Green Paper in July; we cannot get it a second too soon. I for one, as a Conservative Member on the Government side of the House, put up my hand: I want to see increased spending on health and social care, probably through a hypothecated tax. I think that is necessary. If we want quality, we have to pay for it.

We also need to consider issues such as obesity, exercise, air quality and housing quality. If we look at the obesity epidemic in our country, we see that it is now the poor who are much more obese than other social groups, and we know what a massive impact obesity has on health through diabetes and so on. We have to do better there. Why are only 2% of journeys in London made by bicycle? In Amsterdam, it is 30%. The children there cycle, there is much less childhood obesity, and that feeds into better health outcomes and better life expectancy. I chaired the Health Committee’s Sub-Committee that looked into air quality. We need to do a lot better on air quality, and we need there to be good- quality housing.

I salute the intentions of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley. She is right to bring this issue before the House. But I would tell her to think of the broader economics and to look at the European comparisons and those important drivers of public health as well.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) on securing the debate. The issue of stalling life expectancy, and indeed of falling life expectancy in some areas, is very serious. The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) talked about living within our means, but people in my constituency are dying early without their means.

We must reach out across the party political divide on this issue, because the constituencies affected are in poorer areas of the country, as has been mentioned, but they are not anomalies; many different parts of the country are affected. I will give an example. Life expectancy for females at age 65-plus has fallen over the past five years by 0.8 years in Stevenage and by 0.6 years in Cheltenham. Life expectancy for males at birth has fallen in my county of Denbighshire by 0.6 years and by 0.9 years in Bromsgrove. This issue affects a great many of our constituents, across the political divide and across the country. There must be the political will for us to understand the root causes of what has resulted in this debate.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what is responsible for this situation is not just the restraint in spending, but the way in which spending restraint and austerity have played out on the frontline? The issue is the withdrawal of mental health services for people living at home. It is the teaching assistants who have all but been removed. In particular, it is the impact on services that help people to stay at home and manage conditions and the cuts to frontline policing that have led to the evisceration of not just life chances, but life expectancy itself.

[Chris Ruane]

I agree. All those issues are part of the mix as to why we are seeing a decrease in life expectancy. It is a complex issue that needs further inquiry.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Ruane]

I am afraid that I must move on, because I have been getting eyes from the Chair and I do not want to upset Mr Paisley.

The Government have said that the situation is a blip because of flu or the cold weather. The Department of Health has seemed to downplay fears about life expectancy, pointing out that smoking rates have gone down and cancer rates have gone down, but that is all the more reason to be worried. If those indicators are going down and life expectancy is going down, what is causing that? Those are good indicators, but there are some bad outcomes for certain people in certain areas.

A report by Professor Martin McKee, whom I had the pleasure of meeting yesterday, notes that the most recent period

“has seen one of the greatest slowdowns in the rate of improvement”

in life expectancy

“for both sexes since the 1890s”.

The relative data on life expectancy today is comparable to a time before workers’ rights, advancements in medicine and technology, and the welfare state. That slowdown, as reported by the Office for National Statistics last July, shows that the increases in the previous period, before 2010, meant that for every five years that a woman was living, she could expect to live one year extra. Now it is the case that for every 10 years that a woman is living, she can expect to live one year extra. The rate has been halved.

Let me add to those figures some of my own, which I received through parliamentary questions that I tabled in January. Between 2009-11 and 2014-16, 19.8% and 20.3% of local authorities reported a decline for females at birth and at 65-plus respectively. There are certain areas of the country, certain demographics and certain genders—women—who are feeling this the most. That is no surprise, because 80% of the austerity cuts made since 2010 have fallen on the shoulders of women. The link between life expectancy and cuts to social care budgets has already been highlighted.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire mentioned Scotland. I do not want to stick up for the Scots: they can do a good job themselves, especially the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), with her medical background. However, there are national and regional variations within the United Kingdom. If we look at local authorities in England, we see that 22% of them have seen a decrease in life expectancy.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. Could the hon. Gentleman draw his remarks to a conclusion?

[Chris Ruane]

In Wales and Northern Ireland the figure is 18%. In Scotland it is only 6.2%. In the north-east of England, 27% of local authorities have seen a decrease in life expectancy. There are regional differences. What we can draw from that is that where there has been devolution and kinder, gentler Administrations, there has been a less sharp decline.

Hope is a powerful motivator in the way we make decisions. Messages of hope won historic victories for my party in 1945 and 1997 and denied the current Government their majority last year. What the Conservatives proposed at the last election, after seven years of austerity, was another 10 years of austerity. There is learned helplessness out there. People are sick and tired, and they are dying because there is no hope. They have lost income—£2,000 for most people and £5,000 for teachers. Austerity is biting, not just in medicine but in social care, and affecting mental health and physical health. In the short time I have left, Mr Paisley, it is worth noting—

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Very little time.

[Chris Ruane]

There is very little time, so I will draw my comments to a close by saying that Professor Martin McKee and other academics, from Oxford and other universities, want the Health Committee to have an inquiry on this issue. It is complex. I have mentioned some of the causes, and other MPs, from both sides of the Chamber, have mentioned some of the other causes of the decline in life expectancy. It is a complex mix of issues and deserves an inquiry by the Health Committee.

Surgical Mesh Implants

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) on securing this important debate. In the brief time available, I would like to touch on the issues of how we allowed this situation to continue to for so long, consent, clinical quality and governance, including in the private sector, and what we should be doing going forward.

First, I pay tribute to the many women who have been courageous in coming forward and discussing intensely painful and personal experiences, not only with myself but with other Members. I would like to quote one, who said:

“I am in so much pain at times that I just give up on the day…The pain never goes, it just varies in intensity.”

We have heard numerous examples of how these devices are deeply impacting on people’s lives with life-changing symptoms. In many cases, those symptoms were not life-changing before the procedure. Many women have delayed symptoms or were unaware that they had these devices inserted in the first place. Women have told me that they did not consent to these devices being inserted and were not informed of the risks. A fundamental principle of consent is that unless the consent is informed, it is not consent at all.

It is very difficult for women to be properly advised of the complications when we have such poor data, and that goes to the heart of the scandal. The clinical trials of these products were inadequate. We know now that variations in the type of mesh lead to a greater or lesser risk of complications in the first place, yet these products were varied and introduced and marketed aggressively without adequate clinical trials, and that is why there has been such a long delay before action has finally been taken. I hope the Minister will address that in her remarks, because if clinical trials are not a fundamental condition for the introduction of new devices, we will see this situation with other devices.

Another concern is the way that such procedures are used. We saw variation in the techniques with which these devices were introduced. We must have an absolute guarantee that there will be proper clinical trials, just as we would expect for the introduction of medicines.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that if the companies failed to introduce proper clinical trials at the outset, they should now be queueing up to ask these women to come forward so that they can look at the specific cases where the devices have failed? They should be begging these women to come forward.

Contaminated Blood

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

The hon. Lady makes an important point.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her work on this issue. I welcome the fact that there will be a public inquiry, eventually and at last. Does she agree that that public inquiry should address why the UK was the last country in the western world to introduce a test for hepatitis C, why vital documents were destroyed by the Department of Health and why the UK took 13 years to be self-sufficient in blood products, when it took Ireland only five years?

[Diana Johnson]

Those are important questions for any inquiry to address.

On today’s announcement, the Westminster leaders’ joint letter of 7 July provided a blueprint for how such an inquiry should be conducted. First, as with Hillsborough, there should be a commitment to secure full public disclosure of details related to this tragedy, through a process managed by the affected community. There should be a mechanism to ensure all public bodies involved in the scandal are compelled to give oral and written evidence to the inquiry. There need to be assurances that the inquiry will cover the role of American firms in providing blood factor concentrates to people with haemophilia. There should also be an investigation not just of the run-up to the scandal but of its aftermath. Finally, the inquiry has to address the allegations of criminal conduct. As I said earlier, I hope the Minister will also be able to help us with a timetable for the inquiry, as those affected have waited so long to get to this point.

National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed. Now that the shortlist for bidding has been announced for end-of-life care, we find that five of the shortlisted bidders are private companies, with only two NHS trusts on the list. For cancer care, there are three private companies and two NHS trusts. Given the seemingly headlong drive for change we found in those commissioning this large and risky contract, a great number of questions were left unanswered. For instance, despite the key role that GPs play in end-of-life care for patients choosing to die at home, the prime provider of end-of-life care will not have control over the actions of the GPs involved in that care unless a specific contract is drawn up and GPs are paid for extra tasks.

The contracts for cancer and end-of-life care are to be placed in early summer 2015, and I invite anybody with an interest in this to review the evidence and, in particular, the unanswered questions in the session the Health Committee held on 14 October. I have yet to find assurances in the evidence I have heard that the profit motive of private providers can be squared with the objective of improving cancer care and end-of-life care for patients.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Cancer care for north Wales is provided by bodies in the north-west of England. MPs on the Government Benches are saying that I, as a Welsh MP, should not have a vote on this matter. What does my hon. Friend think about that? Should I be concerned about standards of care and the privatisation of the English health service? My constituents will suffer if it is hollowed out and privatised by the Government.

[Barbara Keeley]

My hon. Friend absolutely should be concerned and I know that he is.

One of the elements of cancer and end-of-life care given to us as an example of where improvement is needed in Staffordshire and Stoke was patient transport. However, we know in the north-west that going to new private providers does not tend to help. We have already had a negative experience since patient transport was contracted out to the bus company Arriva.

A number of my constituents have had problems with Arriva’s patient transport. One contacted me following a wait of more than three hours for ambulance transport to be arranged for her husband. He has terminal cancer and needed to be transported back to Salford Royal after oncology treatment at the Christie hospital. That was the second time in three weeks that this terminally ill patient had to wait two or three hours for transport. Staff at the Christie hospital told my constituent that such long waits were common, despite the fact that many oncology patients are very sick.

Health

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

For the first time in my life, I live in a majority Labour council in the borough where I was born. On 22 May, Redbridge—

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Aptly named.

[Mike Gapes]

Yes, it is now. That is true.

In a borough established in 1964, for the first time we have 35 Labour councillors, with 25 Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats declining to just three.

I want to highlight an issue that I had hoped the Secretary of State for Health would have been on the Front Bench to hear in person. I do not think that he appreciates its seriousness, given that this leaflet might have changed the result in the ward where it was distributed. The leaflet said:

“Official announcement from the Health Secretary

Whilst calling on residents over the last few weeks it has become clear that the most important issue is the proposed closure of King George Hospital A&E. Lee Scott MP together with the Conservative Councillors have pressured the Health Secretary into clarifying the situation. Please read his statement overleaf. The position is now very clear:

KING GEORGE HOSPITAL IS NOT CLOSING

KING GEORGE A&E IS NOT CLOSING

Ruth Clark, Vanessa Cole, Thane Thaneswaran”.

They were the candidates of the Aldborough ward of Redbridge borough in the Ilford North constituency. On the other side is a statement issued by the Secretary of State for Health.

I heard about the leaflet because the local newspaper, the Ilford Recorder, put on its website a story with the heading, “King George A&E to remain open beyond 2015, says Health Secretary”. That was published on 20 May. Members know the rules about purdah very well. I immediately phoned the Department of Health and asked whether a press statement had been issued by the Secretary of State that day. I was eventually referred to somebody in the press office—it took a little while—who said, “We have made no statements of any kind today.” I said that it had been reported by the Ilford Recorder that there was a statement by the Secretary of State for Health. I had not seen the leaflet at that point, but I got a copy of it later.

The press office said that it would refer me, if I so wished, to somebody in the private office who would call me back. I did not get a call from the private office—I did not really expect one—but I decided to get to the bottom of the matter. I have written to the permanent secretaries in the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health to ask for an inquiry into whether any officials, civil servants or Ministers were involved in the leaflet issued in Redbridge.

I hope that the Minister will convey to the Secretary of State that I give notice that I shall write directly to him after this debate to ask, under freedom of information legislation, for all the information about what contacts, if any, there were between officials, advisers or SpAds—special advisers—in the Department with councillors in Redbridge or anybody else about the publication of the leaflet before the election. As it turned out, Labour won all three seats in Aldborough ward and it was successful in winning control of the council, but it is clear that the leaflet was designed to influence the result of the election.

When I raised this matter in the business statement last week, I was told by the Leader of the House that there “was no announcement”, and that the leaflet was just a restatement of existing policy. When I made a point of order earlier, I could not quite hear what the Secretary of State said, which was why I raised it again. I will have to read tomorrow exactly what he said, but I think that he said that the leaflet was a statement of existing policy. If so, why was a leaflet put out that said:

“KING GEORGE HOSPITAL IS NOT CLOSING”?

Under the existing policy, enunciated on the Government Front Bench in 2011, both the maternity and accident and emergency departments at King George hospital were to close in about two years’ time. Maternity services closed last year. The A and E closure was supposed to be by 2014, and then it slipped to 2015 because of the chaos, the deficit and the fact that the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, covering both Queen’s and King George hospitals, has been put in special measures, and we now have yet another chief executive to add to the litany of chief executives over recent years who were supposed to have solved the problem. It is a shame that the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) is not in the Chamber, but perhaps he could come to Redbridge to appreciate what services are under a Conservative Government.

The reason the A and E department has not been closed is that it cannot cope with the existing pressures, and it would not be safe to close it. We have a growing population in north-east London, with very large numbers of young people and children, and a large migrant population. There are therefore enormous demands on services. We have relatively poor GP services—we still have single-handed GPs in some areas—so we cannot expect people to go to a GP. Many people are not registered or are temporary, and they therefore turn up at the hospital. These fundamental and deep-seated problems must be resolved before we can start to take away services. The people of Redbridge understand that, which is why there is a campaign to save our A and E at King George hospital.

I will continue to pursue this issue until I get to bottom of the complicity of someone in the Department in issuing the leaflets that were designed to mislead the public in the few days before the election. I assure the Minister that this will continue until I get the whole truth.

Tobacco Packaging

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

My right hon. Friend is right that we would need to be able to act quickly if, following the recommendation, we decided to proceed. The power to make regulations is being proposed in the other place exactly so that we may move quickly at the point we receive Sir Cyril’s review. I have looked at the draft schedule, and if the Government were minded to go forward with this policy, I see no reason why it could not be put through before the end of this Parliament.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party group on heart disease, I pay tribute to the work of the British Heart Foundation, Cancer UK, ASH and other campaigning organisations that have helped to bring about this U-turn. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) specifically mentioned the impact on such charities if the lobbying Bill goes through—they will be neutered and silenced in the run-up to the general election. What lessons should be learned from this?

[Jane Ellison]

The hon. Gentleman refers to another Bill, rather than the issue we are discussing now. I have heard none of those concerns from the charities he mentioned, which I understand have warmly welcomed today’s announcement.

Tobacco Products (Plain Packaging)

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, said:

“Give me the boy at seven and I will give you the man.”

I think that the strapline for the tobacco advertising industry is, “Give me the child smoker at 12 and I will give you the early grave.”

The advertising industry is finely honed. It uses psychology, science, art, craft and design to get a message across. It is not just happenstance or chance; the packages that cigarettes come in are dedicated to capturing hearts and minds. I am holding one—this is what we are talking about here today. This is a “super-slim” cigarette. What 12-year-old girl would not like to be super slim? It is a fine, elegant-looking bullet—or cancer stick. See this other one I am holding up. Guess who it is aimed at—14-year-olds. These packages will be responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths of UK citizens over the next few decades. It is the most pernicious form of advertising in the country.

[Ian Paisley]

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I remind him that in 2008 the then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), said in a statement to the House that:

“there is no evidence base that”

plain packaging

“actually reduces the number of young children smoking.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 945.]

He had sought to introduce the policy himself, but then dismissed it.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is right. Labour did many good things. We curtailed advertising. We introduced the ban on smoking in public places. But we did not do enough and we need to do more. When I spoke about this package at an anti-smoking do in Parliament, JTI—Japan Tobacco International—had a spy in the room and wrote to me afterwards, saying, “Mr Ruane, you’ve got it all wrong. These are called 14s because there are 14 cigarettes inside the packet.” It was a Miss Laura Oates who castigated me and she went on to criticise the Labour Government for not doing enough on proxy purchasing.

I agree: I think that we should take up Miss Laura Oates’s cry for more pressure on the tobacco industry and concentrate on that. This is just one step in the campaign to cut and then eliminate smoking in the UK. Thanks go to Laura Oates for suggesting other campaigns as well. I think that we should have a whole string of them over the next 10 years. It should be a long-term policy to—

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No, I will not; I have given way once.

It should be a long-term policy to eradicate smoking in our country. The tobacco industry is very successful at capturing young hearts, minds and lungs, to such an extent that 567 children a day start smoking. A majority of those smokers will continue smoking until the day they die—early.

The industry has been forced to get new recruits because people are dropping off on the other end. Mature people, adults, older people are stopping smoking. They are also dying—150,000 people a year are dying, so the industry needs to get new recruits as early as possible; the earlier it gets them, the more profitable it is. If it can get 50 or 60 years of smoking out of a 12-year-old, that is much more profitable than getting an adult at the age of 18. It is an extra six years of profitability, built on the back of that child’s life—or death.

I know that we should not be party political, but the Government have back-pedalled on this issue and that of the unit pricing of alcohol. There is time for a rethink. There is a lot of co-operation and support in the Chamber and outside. We ought to work together to force this issue and force it quickly.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I have managed to constrain the urge to intervene, in accordance with your exhortation to us this morning, so I will be reluctant to accept any interventions myself, on the basis, as you said, that we want to have as many speakers as we can.

I am, as most people in the room know, I suspect, on the side of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) in this matter. I take the view that plenty of measures are already in place to protect children from smoking. Let us face it: it is already illegal to sell cigarettes to children.

The principal point that I want to make to start with is that we ought to be taking more measures to enforce the laws that we have already. There is already a ban on advertising, a ban on the display of cigarettes in large supermarkets, which is shortly to be extended to all shops, and a ban on smoking in public places. We already have extensive education measures.

What really starts children smoking is peer pressure. We have seen that, as a result of all the measures in place already, the numbers of people smoking are falling. Government figures from the general lifestyle survey show a national fall in the number of smokers, from 39% in 1980 to 21% in 2011—19% in England and 24% in Scotland and Wales. I have never met anyone who, when I asked why they smoked, said, “I took up smoking because I was attracted by the colour or style of the packet and I wanted to have one in my pocket.”

[Chris Ruane]

Get rid of it, then.

[Mr Nuttall]

It is all very well saying that, but the Minister said in a previous debate that the new packs were not going to be plain packaged at all, but were going to have lots of glamorous, glitzy holograms on them in different colours. [Interruption.] The Minister did not say “glamorous”, but she did mention different colours and holograms. The point is that I never met anyone who said that it was the packet that made them want to take up smoking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. As an MP for Salford, I want to speak because smoking, smoking-related deaths and lung cancer rates are all too high there. One in four of the population in Salford smoke, which is a much higher rate than the average of one in five people in England as a whole. Consequently, we have much higher rates of smoking-related death and a higher incidence of lung cancer, with 175 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed each year. The worst statistic is perhaps the Cancer Research UK estimate that around 1,000 children in Salford start smoking each year; that addiction will kill one in two of them, if they become long-term smokers.

Early evidence from Australia on the introduction of plain packaging suggests that branded cigarette boxes can influence the perception of smoking among young people and that plain packaging might help the fight against starting smoking, which is what is important to me. In a study there, 70% of those interviewed who smoked from plain packets said that they thought that the cigarettes were “less satisfying”, and they rated quitting as a higher priority than those who continued to smoke from a branded pack. In an important separate online study, 87% of the children interviewed rated plain packets as “uncool” and said they would not want to be seen with them.

There is, therefore, weight behind the argument that cigarette packaging is the last legal form of tobacco advertising and that it has an influence on young people’s perception of smoking. That is why it is really important that we take action to introduce plain packs.

In the previous Parliament, we introduced a ban on smoking in public places and it made a difference. I visited Copenhagen earlier this year, and found myself in public places where people were lighting up. It is easy to forget how unpleasant it is to be in a public place where people are smoking and to come home with clothes and hair stinking of smoke, but worse is the effect of second-hand smoke on health. Since 2002, tobacco advertising has been banned from TV, billboards and sports such as Formula 1; the next step is to tackle the advertising on the packaging.

In 1950, 80% of men and 40% of women smoked. Cigarette advertising at that time used images of doctors and celebrities to promote the different brands. One brand even used images of Santa Claus smoking.

[Chris Ruane]

I mentioned two packs earlier. One I was not able to get hold of for today, despite my trying. It is a lovely 1950s retro pack, which opens up to show nice pink cigarettes inside—very appealing to a 12-year-old. What does my hon. Friend think about that kind of retro advertising by the tobacco industry?

[Barbara Keeley]

It just shows that all these methods are being used to attract smokers—particularly, and sadly, young smokers. To think that we once used Santa Claus to claim that a brand was easy on the throat. We have heard of the damaging impacts and the dreadful way in which people die.

I congratulate the stop smoking services in Salford, particularly for their programme that focuses on reducing smoking in families with children under 16. Research has shown that, if children do not see their parents smoking, they are less likely to start smoking themselves. Many of our programmes in Salford are targeted at families. I think it is true that most smokers do not want their children to start smoking.

All the advertising is pernicious. It focuses on young people, and on young women who want to remain slim and, for heaven’s sake, in the past, it used Santa Claus and doctors. It is time we moved on to take the next important step to close down cigarette advertising by introducing plain packs. It is time to prevent children and young people from starting smoking—I do not want to continue to see 1,000 children a year in Salford starting to smoke—and to reduce the large numbers of people affected by smoking-related illness and early death, in my authority and across the country.