Early Childhood Development

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) and her cross-party colleagues in the important work that they are doing in highlighting the issues we are discussing. The manifesto is accessible, understandable and persuasive. Speaking as a relatively new dad, so much of it is also very intuitive. It makes one think, “Yeah, of course; that is pretty straightforward and obvious,” although we need to see a lot more of it happening.

I want to take a slightly different angle and talk a little about social mobility and the effect of the first days and years of life on children’s eventual chances. When considering child development, it is always helpful to have in mind a sort of pyramid—in fact, there is such a pyramid in the manifesto. It creates a hierarchy of need. The sharp end of the pyramid is the very sharp end of the scale—the acute cases where, frankly, social mobility is not the top priority. The top priority is child protection, basic safety and health; social mobility is a worry for another day. At the base of the pyramid is the massive part—the world at large; most people. In the middle is the section of children I want to talk about today: those born into poverty and disadvantage who are not quite in the acute bracket.

We know that social mobility in this country is low by international standards—we are usually bracketed with Italy and the United States—and it has not been improving. On average, those of us here in our forties—including, as of a couple of days ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine)—have been less mobile in our lives than those of us here in their fifties. That is a poor state for any advanced democracy to find itself in. Why is that the case? When I was on the Education Committee, we used to find that everyone blamed the stage before. If we spoke to universities, they said that they were not getting the kids coming through from sixth forms; the sixth forms blamed the teachers doing the GCSEs; the secondary schools blamed the primary schools; the primary schools blamed the nurseries; and the nurseries said, “We are just not getting the kids through the door anymore.”

There is an element of truth in what they all said. The more one studies social mobility and children’s life chances, the more one realises that it increasingly does come down to the very earliest age. The all-party group on social mobility published a report called “Seven key truths about social mobility”. Truth No. 1 was that the point of greatest leverage for children’s life chances is what happens between the ages of zero and three—that is what we said, although it could equally be what happens between the ages of zero and two. The problem is that, of course, this is the public sector—we are trying to influence the Government and so on—and most of what happens between the ages of zero and two or three does not happen in a state-controlled or influenced setting; it happens at home. That makes things much more difficult.

Why is this a social mobility issue? How children are brought up is not particularly, or does not have to be, dependent on parents’ income, but there is quite a strong correlation. Figures from “An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK”, a report made by the previous Government at the end of their term, show that on school readiness, for example, children from the poorest fifth of households reach about a third of the way up the percentile scale at age 3, versus more than 60% of children born into the wealthiest third. There is a bunch of statistics like that.

It is frightening that even toddlers’ cognitive ability test scores vary more dramatically according to their parents’ income than according to innate differences in ability. In the millennium cohort study, which tracks children through time, that gap does not narrow between the ages of three and five; in fact, it seems to widen as children go through school. Why? I am careful not to infer any direct causality. All sorts of factors may be involved, but there are significant differences in some things that people associate with home learning environments, and so on, according to socio-economic groups. In the lowest socio-economic group—the poorest fifth of households—only about 40% of children are read to every day at age 3, as opposed to more than 80% in the top 20%. Again, those figures are from “An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK”. Those things can be tracked with a series of measures, including bed time, and so on.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

The hon. Gentleman may not be aware of work undertaken by the chief medical officer of Scotland, Harry Burns, on brain development in children from families with generations of economic deprivation. It showed that their brains were developing differently: the fight-or-flight part of the brain was overdeveloped. That shows that there is a real link between children’s life opportunities and deprivation.

[Damian Hinds]

Clearly, there is a link—a range of studies suggest different ways in which that link manifests itself—and I do not think that any commentator argues about its existence, but there is nothing inevitable about that; it ought to be possible to equalise children’s life chances. Of course, there are examples of both brilliant and awful parenting in every income bracket. Children’s development is no respecter of the home they happen to have been born into. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) says,

“it is primarily parents who shape their children’s outcomes—a healthy pregnancy, good mental health, the way that they parent and whether the home environment is educational”.

As he and many others say, what parents do is much more important than who they are.

Home life is difficult territory for the state. I suggest that we need to think harder about how to communicate what is known about successful, positive ways to parent—a quite substantial body of evidence—in a way that does not come across as, and in fact is not, telling people how to bring up their children.

Geography, as well as income group, reveals other interesting differences in early child development. There is a particular difference in London. When people are told this, they assume that child development is worse in London than elsewhere, because of all the issues in a big city like this. However, that is not so. There was another report last week about the different school results of children growing up in London, versus those growing up elsewhere. That is often attributed to the London Challenge, which started in 2003. There are a number of reasons to believe that the London Challenge was not the sole or primary cause of those improvements. One reason to disbelieve that is that the difference in attainment scores for disadvantaged children is apparent way before they get to secondary school; in fact, it is apparent even in pre-school assessments: on average, disadvantaged children in London seem to do about 20% better on the “good level of development” scale than disadvantaged children in the rest of the country. A bunch of things are different about London children and families.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Excuse my missing the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, Mr Weir. As someone who was involved in the London Challenge, I should like to know what the relationship is. I am not clear about that. If it was not the London Challenge, what made the difference?

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman asks a big question. I do not want to test your patience, Mr Weir, by debating the London Challenge, rather than early child development. I will talk in a minute about societal differences that may or may not be driving factors. The honest answer is that we do not know, but there are reasons to disbelieve that the simple explanation for London’s improvement is the London Challenge. First, the differences are apparent long before children reach secondary school, and the hon. Gentleman will recall that it only started in 2003. Secondly, when translated from London to the black country and Manchester, there were not the same results. Thirdly, so many other things that are different about London are worth looking into.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend speaks so authoritatively on social mobility. It is always interesting to listen to him. However, I put it to him that one reason for London’s exceptionalism could, of course, be that its large immigrant population comes from a different cultural place. My opinion, as opposed to a research view, is that immigrant populations have not suffered the same degree of family breakdown. We found, through my work with the parent-infant projects, that often in immigrant populations there is much more of a family network. Therefore, the bond is often quite secure, even in areas of great deprivation, because of the support for the earliest period of the baby’s life.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend anticipates where I am going. We are into the realm of speculation. We do not know. It is true that many things are different about family structure, and so on, in London, compared with the rest of the country. We do not know what is the causality, if any, of any of those things or of the outcomes.

Let me start by mentioning some of the things that are the same. There is no significant difference in gender mix, age and birth weight of babies born in London; mothers tend to be older—we know that that is a factor in child development—and better educated; families are bigger in London, and children are more likely to have brothers and sisters; and the mix is massively more diverse than in the rest of the country, both in terms of ethnic diversity, recent immigrants and families with English as an additional language.

In London, there is a slightly lower percentage of children with either a single mother or both parents working; in other words, there are more families where at least one parent is at home. This surprises people. There is also lower participation in pre-school provision and use of formal child care, which, again, surprises people, because ordinarily we expect that participation in early years settings and use of formal child care is associated with positive improvements in child development.

Finally, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned, although it is, bizarrely, difficult to get reliable statistics, it appears that London is above the national average for the proportion of families with children in which parents are married. That flies in the face of what most people would assume about this city. However, that raises an important question. A massive debate has been going on in America in the past couple of weeks about a Harvard report by Chetty et al. called “Where is the Land of Opportunity?” which presented a number of challenging results in the US context, in terms of social mobility. Its No. 1 conclusion is that family structure is the single most important determinant of social mobility in America and that, interestingly, it affects not only the immediate family, but has a broader effect. In other words, in a neighbourhood where most children are born to two-parent families—specifically, families where the two parents are married—even if people are not in one of those families, by being in such a neighbourhood, they have more chance of getting on.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is making a fascinating point. I entirely agree with the personal views of my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on the different complexion of London, but one only has to look at Mediterranean countries to see the far lesser influence of family breakdown, which is related to inter-generational support. We have spoken about support for parents, the preference for having two parents and how marriage makes for greater stability. Places such as Barcelona have been rebuilt with a view to having different generations living on top of each other, whereas in this country, grandfather and grandma increasingly do not live round the corner, or within easy distance, to help look after the children, which adds extra pressure on the family. There is a bit of a clue, if we look further south, about the influences that may result in different outcomes in London.

[Damian Hinds]

I have a similar instinct. I want to be careful not to imply a causality that we do not know to exist, but one factor in some ethnic communities is that there is greater multi-generational support and more extended families. Intuitively, it makes sense that such support can be an advantage.

Where does all that leave early child development from the perspective of social mobility? First, the Government have to address, head-on, the thorny question of how to help parents to parent, while keeping in mind the pyramid of need, with acute cases at the top, children born into poverty and disadvantage in the next layer down and everyone else below that. I suggest that that should start pre-natally, which is a big part of the manifesto “The 1,001 Critical Days”. Speaking as a recent dad, it is amazing how little we were told or read about what was going to happen after birth, because we were so fixated on pain and the other things that people worry about at the moment of maternity. Sure Start and Sure Start outreach can play an important part in that. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester said on the variety of views on what Sure Start is. On the Select Committee, I always used to ask people to define Sure Start, and even when talking to professionals in the field, I would get different responses.

There is also a question about the role of television and new media in supporting mums and families to bring up children. Bookstart is fantastic, but it could be more targeted. I was surprised when we received free books through our door. If people in the income bracket of all of us in this Chamber are failing to buy books, or to get them out of the library, to read to our children, it is not a problem that will be solved by being given two or three books when the child is born. Like my hon. Friend, I pay massive tribute to the work done by Home-Start UK and others on direct one-to-one support.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman also pay tribute to Mumsnet? Mumsnet is a safe, non-judgmental and anonymous place where mothers can chat and seek advice and information.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. Mumsnet is the sort of thing to which I was alluding when I talked about new media. When we talk about Mumsnet, we are obliged to say that Netmums is also available. There is a range of sources of non-judgmental peer-to-peer support, which is vital.

Secondly, the importance of evaluation also comes out of the manifesto “The 1,001 Critical Days”. Intuitively, we all know that there are lots of things that we can do in the earliest years of life that will make a massive difference to a child’s development and later opportunities, but it is difficult to persuade other people of what those things are. Evaluation therefore trades at a huge premium. I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) on early intervention, which I hope will change our mindset as a polity on how we intervene.

Thirdly, I am not suggesting for a moment that I think I have the answers, but we should not be afraid of talking more about the wider social context and what some of the impacts might be. While respecting people’s life choices and celebrating the diversity of society—families now come in all shapes and sizes—we should not, for the sake of children, be agnostic about what those choices are. We should also see what we can learn from the differences between communities in different parts of the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger]

My hon. Friend makes knowledgeable points that, given his experience on the Children, Schools and Families Committee, he is well placed to make. The example that I shared with the House—this is separate from the 1,001 days manifesto—shows that there are many activities going on around the country to address some of the issues, but the challenge is that the activity is not happening everywhere. We need to lead from best-case examples, which is why data sharing is so vital to make a difference. Will the Minister comment on what steps the Government are taking to encourage these activities to happen throughout the country?

I am also keen for the Minister to address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who is no longer in her place. She mentioned the early intervention grant, which has funded many of the programmes that we are discussing. When the fund was first introduced, it totalled nearly £3 billion, but by 2015 it will have almost halved to around £1.5 billion. We have had contributions this afternoon about Sure Start centres, many of which have relied on the funding of the early intervention grant, and it is a blow that 576 such centres have had to close their doors since the last election. The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) commented that he did not know what Sure Start was for—

[Damian Hinds]

To be clear, I did not say that—

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Luciana Berger]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Damian Hinds]

To be clear, I was talking about what happened when I was on the Education Committee, the successor Committee to the one chaired by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). When we asked people what the purpose of Sure Start was, we got different answers, even from practitioners in the field.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his clarification. I apologise if I misrepresented his words.

[Luciana Berger]

The point that I wanted to make about Sure Start, as a result of what has been said by both Government and Opposition Members, is that it is widely acknowledged that the centres have made a real difference to families. I have Sure Start centres in my constituency; Liverpool city council has gone out of its way to do everything possible to keep all centres throughout the city open—it has had to remodel and look at a hub-and-spokes model, given that we will have experienced cuts of 54% by 2016-17—all because of the centres’ importance to communities.

In one of the most deprived wards in my constituency, the Sure Start centre is giving vital support to parents in the most deprived households. It is providing meal packets for £1—fresh food with recipes—to encourage parents to cook for their children. That is making a real difference to those children’s nutrition, in particular in their early years. In another, more affluent, part of my constituency, the children’s centre is tailoring its services to the need in that area, because this ward has a high incidence of multiple births. That Sure Start centre is providing a vital support service for mothers who have twins and triplets—for parents contending with the challenges presented by a multiple birth.

Those centres are making a real difference in my constituency. Their staff—including Liz Parsons, a manager in the Picton Sure Start centre, to name just one person—provide vital hands-on support to parents, often first-time parents or parents with lots of children. The centres provide support, including parenting support, to many families in my constituency.

[Damian Hinds]

Like the hon. Lady, I pay tribute to the staff in the Sure Start centres in my constituency; they do a fantastic job. We all know that there are fantastic Sure Start children’s centres out there, but it is also worth dwelling on the fact that at the macro level we may not quite have cracked the formula. If we compare the millennium cohort study with the previous one, for the children who have been alive throughout the Sure Start period, the gap between the rich and the poor has not been narrowed at age five.

[Luciana Berger]

Towards the end of my contribution, I shall reflect on the hon. Gentleman’s points about social mobility. He commented that the gap between rich and poor might not have changed. Nevertheless, Sure Start centres have provided vital services to parents and families who might not have contended with that specific issue, but have dealt with a lot of other ones that we have discussed.

In the debate, we have not touched on health visitors, who are integral to this issue. It is welcome that the Government are committed to increasing the number of health visitors. The latest figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre, however, show that there are 1,234 more health visitors than in April 2010, but that is less than a third of the way towards the Prime Minister’s target of 4,200 new health visitors by April 2015. With the deadline looming, will the Minister please offer some words of assurance about meeting the target?

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

I think the hon. Lady will find that it was getting harder under the previous Government. It was not helped by the fact that, as we know, although it was not the fault of GPs, the contract that GPs were presented with by the previous Government made it difficult for many patients in many parts of the country to access primary and community care out of hours.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

8. What progress his Department has made on introducing a cap on care costs.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

Everyone will be protected against catastrophic costs by the insurance that, in line with the Dilnot commission recommendations, the cap provides from April 2016. We are currently considering the responses to the recent consultation on how the cap will work, and will publish draft regulations and guidance later this year.

[Damian Hinds]

Thanks to tough decisions from this Government, we can look forward to a time when people will no longer have to sell their home to afford care, but what can be done to raise awareness of this landmark policy so that older people, and indeed younger people, can be reassured?

[Norman Lamb]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I am immensely proud that this coalition Government are reforming a grossly unfair system—something that should have happened a long time ago and is massively overdue. This Government completely recognise the absolute importance of an awareness-raising campaign, which will be carried out by local government, national Government and the financial services industry.

Health Transition Risk Register

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

It does not say that. Before Labour Members get up to read out the Whips’ handouts, why do they not read the document that was published on Tuesday about what is in the risk register and how we have mitigated these risks? The hon. Lady’s point is unjustified, not least as regards nurses, because the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, in April 2011 and again in December 2011, sat in my office and told me, “We support the Bill.”

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend detail the changes in Department of Health policy on the publication of risk registers before or since May 2010?

[Mr Lansley]

The Department of Health’s risk management strategy is the same now as it was in 2009 or 2010.

Social Care Funding

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Robertson, and it was also a pleasure to hear the speech by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton). She referred to me, unusually—because I think that I am the only hon. Member here who was born during the second world war, and I survived it, but only just: we were evacuated shortly before a V1 landed on our house and blew it up, but nobody died. Fortunately I was with my grandparents in Leicester at the time. We are concerned about elderly people who fought in that war and now are either in care or being cared for in their own homes.

A headline in The Daily Telegraph of 28 October read, “Misery for millions as elderly care funds cut”. The Telegraph is not a newspaper of the left. It is normally supportive of the Conservative party, and I would hope that that is the basis for some sort of consensus, because we can all agree on this. I do read the Telegraph and find it very useful, and quite a good newspaper at times. I have no particular dislike of it, and it is spot on in that headline.

Importantly, it has been observed on more than one occasion that we do not care enough for our elderly people. Our attitudes to the elderly in Britain are not good, especially compared with those of some minority communities that have come from abroad, which have a kind of reverence for elderly people. Perhaps I would say that, because I am not as young as I was, but I think they value elderly people in a way we do not.

In some circumstances elderly people are regarded as a bit of a nuisance. I have some rather horrifying quotes from Professor David Oliver, who is senior lecturer in elderly care medicine at the university of Reading and secretary of the British Geriatrics Society. He said:

“Not long ago, a senior doctor walked onto my ward, turned to a nurse and laughingly asked: ‘How do you stand working with all these crumblies?’”

That kind of attitude is utterly poisonous. On another occasion a senior doctor said

“he was spending too much of his time ‘market gardening’—ie, looking after cabbages (old people)”.

Those are dreadful things to say, and people who say them should not be around elderly people. We must make sure that the people who look after elderly people have compassion and empathy, and a bit of reverence for people who have spent their lives working in society and contributing. I raise those incidents in a sense to shock us all into realising that in many instances we are not doing right by our elderly people.

That said, I know that there are many people who do wonderful work. I had two local authority care homes in my constituency and I visited them on several occasions. They had devoted staff, whom the residents loved; they thought they were really cared for. The visiting professionals all said that the care homes and what went on in them were first class. They have both been closed down, essentially forced to close by central Government. It is wrong that we should forcibly encourage local authorities to close local authority care homes and send the residents to private care. Some of the people who left may well have gone to Southern Cross homes—some of those that are now being criticised by the Care Quality Commission. We are not doing right by our elderly people, and we must do more.

As to costs, some 12 years ago the royal commission on long term care recommended that all care should be free of charge—free at the point of need, like the national health service. It was not a unanimous recommendation because, I think, the Government of the time, rather mischievously, made sure that one or two members of the commission brought out a minority report opposing free long-term care. Since that time Ministers have time and again said, “Oh, it wasn’t unanimous, therefore, implicitly, we don’t have to do that.” I took a different view, and tabled early-day motions in two successive Parliaments, calling for the Government to implement the recommendation for free long-term care. That did not happen; it was all about cost in the end, but I still believe that is the way forward. The costs involved would be significant, but in the scheme of things not an enormous amount.

I am the chair of the support group in Parliament for the National Pensioners Convention and Andrew Dilnot came along to present his recommendations to us two or three weeks ago. He is quite brilliant, frankly. His analysis and what he has come up with are first class. That should be the minimum default position, which any Government should take. I would like to go further than he went, but I think he is realistic, and, thinking that pushing Government to spend will be hard, wants to find the fulcrum point at which they might accept his idea. What he did was brilliant. The National Pensioners Convention, like me, believes that care should be free at the point of need, like the national health service, but Dilnot has come up with a fine scheme.

The National Insurance Act 1948 recommended that there should be a capital limit, which I think was £8,000 at the time. The minimum amount of capital that people could have was £8,000. If that is indexed forward it comes to a figure of between £250,000 and £300,000, so when Dilnot talks about £100,000 he is way below what would have been the case if we had simply indexed the figure forward. What we have now is disgraceful.

One result of what we have is that working-class people who managed, through saving and struggle, to become owner-occupiers are now having that little bit of equity in the family taken away from them. The wealthy do not have to worry. They have plenty of equity, and to look after granny when she has dementia they can perhaps take a little cash out of their overseas account, so it will not be a problem. However, for working-class people who have bought their home and become the first owner-occupiers in their family—and perhaps all of us would support in principle the idea of owner-occupation, if at all possible—that is being taken away from them. Many people in my constituency bought their council houses. I was not in favour of selling council houses, but it is just those people who now find that their capital has been taken away to use to look after granny. Typically, the grandchildren who would have inherited that equity and gone into owner-occupation will now not be able to do so.

People have come to my surgery and reluctantly admitted that they are keeping granny at home deliberately because they are desperately fearful that if she goes into a care home her house will be sold, the equity will be lost and their children will not be able to get into owner-occupation; there are no council houses to rent and they will be forced into private rented accommodation, and will have a much poorer quality of life as a result. That is the reality—it is actually happening. Those admissions are made reluctantly, because it is not something people want to say. Granny—it is usually granny because women live so much longer than men—may be suffering, and not getting quite the care that she should have, because she is staying at home. In the best of all possible worlds we all want to stay at home for as long as we can, and it is right that we should do so, but even care at home is not up to scratch.

I have examples, as I am sure others do, of care companies that look after elderly people in their own homes. The carers sometimes are not kind and are a bit impatient. The elderly person has to get out of bed when they turn up and go to bed when they turn up, and is sometimes left sitting in a chair all day with stale sandwiches on a plate beside them, not being able to do anything—not even go to the toilet. We are not getting the care even when we have paid-for carers coming in, so a radical change is needed. We must not only pay for care but ensure that it is good care, and that the people who deliver it are caring, compassionate and professionalised.

I spent much of my life before Parliament working as a research officer for the major public services trade union, Unison. In the past, many care home staff would have been Unison members, but the private care homes are not unionised. In my constituency, when one of the care homes I mentioned was privatised—closed down—I had a difficult conversation with the senior officer at the local authority, who eventually, after an hour, said: “We are doing it to cut costs. There will be fewer staff, they will not be in unions, and they will have shorter holidays, lower pay and poorer conditions of work. We can get the costs down.”

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it can be difficult to find people who want to be carers, whether in the public or the private sector, at home or in a care home setting? Perhaps we need to find new ways, beyond just unions, of elevating the status of the job as a profession or occupation, in the same way as social workers are now considering creating a college of social work.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree absolutely about elevating the status, but we do that first by having the carers professionally trained, ensuring that we get the right people to begin with, having them properly paid and having staffing at the right level. If someone is looking after too many patients and cannot cope, either in a hospital or a care home, the patients do not get proper care. In most areas of life, as quality improves we want higher productivity, which means a lower level of labour intensity, but in this area we want more people working, with each care person or nurse looking after fewer patients, to ensure that everyone gets the care they need, rather than having one junior nurse looking after a large room full of elderly people and not being able to cope late at night.

In the past couple of weeks we have heard some distressing stories about elderly people in hospitals not getting the care they need. We will all be elderly one day, and some of us might finish up in care because we might not have extensive families to care for us. I do not like the idea of being in pain and suffering at night and not being able to get anyone to help. I am physically fit and doing well at the moment, but we shall all be old one day. People are suffering in that way now, and the only way to deal with it is to ensure that we put in sufficient resource. I think there are people around who want to do these kinds of jobs but they will not do them if they are going to be overworked, undertrained, underpaid, and treated badly by private companies or care managers in hospitals.

Congenital Cardiac Services for Children

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

The review document is called “Safe and Sustainable”, and that is absolutely the right title for it. It is worth repeating what has been said by every speaker today, and by the clinical leadership of the review: this is about saving lives, not about saving money. We must bear in mind the link between scale and quality and between quality and safety. The “scale” factor applies to the number of procedures per surgeon per year and to the number of surgeons per unit. The challenge was summed up best by the statement from the Royal College of Surgeons, to which the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) referred, that although the country has the right number of surgeons carrying out these complex operations, they are too thinly spread. Change is clearly needed.

Coincidentally, in the last three weeks my family has had occasion to rely on the paediatric intensive care units and surgery at Southampton General hospital, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), where we benefited from outstanding care. This was not heart surgery, but the experience gave me plenty of cause to reflect on the value of not just convenience and location but, above all, quality of care. In such circumstances, families will do what they have to do, although it may be very difficult, and they will find a way of securing care of the highest quality. The experience also taught me something about the interconnection between services.

All the criteria set out in the review document have a role to play, but in my view the most important criterion of all must be quality, and I do not think that that comes across as much as it should in the review. How can it, given that the centre that is ranked second out of the 11 in the country for quality appears in only one of the four options? The question also arises, in the context of Southampton General hospital, of whether—given the role of scale and quality—sufficient consideration has been given to the most recent trends since the suspension of paediatric cardiac surgery at the John Radcliffe hospital.

Other factors have also not been given sufficient weight. First, there is the requirement for co-location of paediatric surgery with other essential services for children. Secondly, there is the impact on paediatric intensive care units, paediatric intensive care retrieval, and the other networks mentioned by the right hon. Member for Oxford East. Thirdly, there are the implications for services that provide longer-lasting care for people with cardiac conditions from birth to adulthood.

Our objective must not be to stall or jam the process, because there is a need to reduce the number of centres. We must avoid the politician’s tendency to say that of course we agree with the general principles of the review, except in the particular circumstances that apply to our own constituency. I hope I have not done that, but I do think that Southampton has a particularly strong case based on the excellence of its clinical record. I strongly support the drive for us not to be restricted only to the four options in the review, considering the additional evidence that has come to light during its course.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

To resume his seat at 3.32 pm, I call Mr Percy.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I am conscious that there are many hon. Members still wishing to speak, so I shall be brief. As the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) said, it is almost inevitable, given the number of people involved in this scandal, that there will be someone in every constituency who has been affected. The issue has especial significance in my constituency, because it is home to the outstanding Lord Mayor Treloar college, where many of the victims were students in the 1970s and 1980s. There were many haemophiliacs at the college because it had an excellent in-house haemophilia centre. My constituent Mr Adrian Goodyear was one of those who was infected by contaminated blood and blood products. He wrote to me to say:

“We’ve now lost so many of our friends from the Treloar days—in fact, we stopped counting at 40—many of whom were children, teenagers or young adults at the time.”

Those words will stay with me.

I would like to pay tribute to all the tireless campaigners from the affected community for their perseverance and tenacity over many years. I congratulate them, and everyone involved on securing this historic debate on the Floor of the House. Hon. Members across the political spectrum have also been instrumental in keeping up the fight. Among them was my predecessor as East Hampshire’s MP, Michael Mates, for whom this was a special cause.

Like most others, I cannot begin to imagine the anguish and fury of the thousands of patients infected by contaminated blood. Whether we call it accident, negligence or anything else, these people came to receive treatment through our national health service—and were poisoned. For some it has been a death sentence; for others a long lingering life sentence.

There are some things in this morning’s written statement that are to be welcomed, including the Minister’s commitment to look afresh at insurance, prescription charges, and access to care services and nursing. Many hon. Members have spoken about compensation, which is, of course, fundamental. It has become clear through this debate—for the reasons expounded by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell)—that today’s motion, as currently worded, is not the best basis on which to move forward. We all look to the Minister to move forward towards a just settlement that will allow those people and their families, who have suffered so much, to reach some sort of closure.

For about the next 30 seconds I want to focus on a different aspect—apology. One of the worst aspects of this whole sad affair is that so many, including those children from Treloar, died without anybody saying, “We’re sorry.” That makes me very uncomfortable. It is not about assigning blame. There could be—indeed, there has been—long debate over the technicalities of liability or otherwise, who knew what and when, how quickly things could have changed and so forth. Regardless of those specifics, surely the victims of this disaster are owed the dignity of a proper apology. I have read the expressions of sympathy, but I do not think they quite go far enough. The events predate most current Members of the House, and I am not suggesting that a Minister should come to the Dispatch Box to take, or indeed assign, blame. I do think, however, that it is not too much to ask to give the victims the dignity of hearing a Minister of the Crown come to the Floor of this House and say, “Yes, we are truly sorry.”