Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dan Poulter and Hugh Bayley

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T5. On 1 January, the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust ceased providing antenatal advice classes for pregnant women and refers them instead to online advice on its website. Is that an approach the Government support, and will they urgently invite the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to review the change in policy and look at its effectiveness?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

I am sympathetic to the point that the hon. Gentleman raises, and I am happy to meet him to discuss it further so that we can see whether the matter needs to be addressed.

NHS Funding (York and North Yorkshire)

Debate between Dan Poulter and Hugh Bayley

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Poulter]

I will of course continue to press NHS England and raise concerns, as we have with representatives from the area, about the funding challenges being faced in north Yorkshire. It is also important to be aware that, because of how the new system works, with a mandate that sets clear priorities, NHS England recognises the need for a review of the funding formula for not only north Yorkshire, but nationally.

I agree with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) and the hon. Member for York Central about ensuring that funding goes to areas of greatest health care need. NHS England will obviously want to take account of rurality, age, the needs of older people and the complexity of care when it reviews the funding formula.

[Hugh Bayley]

The Minister says that Barnsley gets more money than north Yorkshire because of its higher level of deprivation, which I acknowledge, but why has the new formula given York less money than leafy Richmondshire and Hambleton, when York has higher levels of teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and deaths from asbestos-related diseases among people who had a career in industry. We have higher levels of deprivation than other parts of north Yorkshire, and yet we get less money. That cannot be right.

[Dr Poulter]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good case on his constituents’ behalf, but he should recognise that the Vale of York CCG—it serves not only his constituency, but others in the surrounding area—has received £357,891,000 which is the highest allocation in the area. He is right that its allocation is relatively lower per head than, say, that of Scarborough and Ryedale CCG, but I have outlined the factors that inform the capitation formula for funding, including density of population, and the obvious advantages of delivering health care in an urban environment.

I would be very happy to talk through such issues with the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friends who are here today, and I am sure that we can arrange a meeting to do so in more detail than this debate allows. I also point out that NHS England will fundamentally review the funding formula to take account of demographics, age and rurality, which I am sure we all welcome. I look forward to meeting hon. Members in due course for further discussions and to see how I can assist them with the matters that they have raised.

Question put and agreed to.

Pig Farming

Debate between Dan Poulter and Hugh Bayley

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is right. The key point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) raised, is the need for a level playing field. We are proud that Britain has high animal welfare and traceability standards, but if our farmers are not competing on a level playing field with farmers in Europe and overseas, with 70% of overseas pork not being produced to the same high animal welfare standards, that is wrong. There is an onus on our supermarkets to show greater corporate responsibility and to make a stand by supporting local food producers and ensuring that they help their customers to understand the issues. I hope that we will hear strong words of support on that from the Minister.

We have talked today about the importance of backing British pig farmers, because we believe in backing British food sustainability and security. We have talked about the fact that there should be a level playing field for British farmers and pork producers, with their high animal welfare and traceability standards compared with the standards of their European competitors. We have talked about the need for honest food labelling, which we will discuss further in the main Chamber in the near future. The Minister is a great friend of farming and we look forward to his reply to the debate and to him telling us how he and the Government will support the British pig industry.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

I want to call the Front-Bench spokesmen to start the winding-up speeches at half-past 3, which leaves us time for one further speech.

Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Dan Poulter and Hugh Bayley

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Poulter]

The Opposition need to take on board the fact that the cost of running PCTs has gone up by about £1 billion a year since they were first put in place. The cost of bureaucracy and management in the NHS is unsustainable, and most of the money that we are putting into the NHS is going on salaries and bureaucracy rather than on front-line patient care. It is surely a good thing to remove the middle strand of bureaucracy—PCTs, strategic health authorities and other quangos that cost a lot of money but do not deliver front-line patient care. That will help deliver more money to the front line and to patients, and Members on both sides of the House should support such an initiative.

I shall elaborate on the point about how PCTs have been a great source of wasted money. In my part of the world in Suffolk, they have spent millions of pounds each year on external consultants to tell them how they should be doing the job that they should have been doing in the first place. There has also been a total disconnect between primary and secondary care and a breakdown in the relationship between them. For example, as the Secretary of State alluded to earlier, hospitals have wanted to put in place outreach clinics for mental health, dermatology and rheumatology, but too often, as in my area, they have been told that the PCT will not allow them to do that.

Hospitals have said that they value and need community hospitals, because they provide an excellent place for step-up and step-down care and for rehabilitation after an acute hospital stay, but PCTs have closed down community hospitals such as Hartismere hospital in my community. We know that that is not a good thing. Far too often, PCTs have been a barrier to joined-up thinking in the NHS between the primary care sector and hospitals.

[Hugh Bayley]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Poulter]

No, I have taken two interventions and I will not take any more.

The Bill will allow health care to become more localised. Some of our constituencies have urban needs and some have rural needs, and allowing GPs to set up localised consortia that are more responsive to the needs of local communities will enable them to recognise those health care needs. For example, the area of my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) has an ageing population, so the GP consortia and health and wellbeing boards will rightly focus on looking after the older population. In areas of the country such as our some of our inner cities, including parts of Bradford and Manchester where there are huge health care inequalities, the Bill will provide a real opportunity for the health and wellbeing boards and local GPs to tailor their services much more effectively to tackling local problems. For instance, they may face problems such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity more acutely than other areas.

The Bill is a good thing. It will bring to the NHS framework and the national care standards a much more focused, much less bureaucratic and much more patient-centred approach, which will be much more responsive to the needs of local communities. I am proud to speak in favour of it.

Zimbabwe

Debate between Dan Poulter and Hugh Bayley

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

This has been a good debate, with lots of well-informed speeches, but I particularly admire the speech that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), who spoke with a great deal of knowledge as an obstetrician. What struck me most about his speech was his understanding that health problems in Zimbabwe are fundamentally constrained within the political environment, and that unless there is a political solution to the crisis that Zimbabwe faces, basic human needs will continue to be poorly met.

I spent a great deal of my time in the 1970s campaigning for change in southern Africa. I was a member of the executive committee of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. I spent quite a bit of time standing outside Rhodesia House, as it was then called, demanding an end to the unilateral declaration of independence and calling for true independence for the country.

I am delighted that Zimbabwe is free and has been free for 30 years—independence in Zimbabwe gave a significant boost to the momentum for independence in Namibia and South Africa—but I am sad that true freedom, human rights, the rule of law, peace and, above all, prosperity for the people of Zimbabwe are yet to come.

The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) mentioned a southern African proverb: “Don’t look where you fell, but where you stumbled.” That is good advice. She talked about one stumble being the cave-in by Mugabe to the unreasonable demands of the so-called war veterans and the subsequent land invasions, but we would misunderstand the situation in Zimbabwe if we felt that that was the first stumble that took place.

The British colonial period did not cover our country in glory. The Jameson raid was a putsch by a white colonial adventurer. The independence process in the late 1950s and 1960s was botched and led to UDI in 1963. Then there were 17 years of an illegal regime—in defiance of this country, the legitimate authority. That delayed independence and created very serious problems for an independent Zimbabwe in 1980—not least a legacy of nearly two decades of war.

The problem of human rights abuse in Zimbabwe was clearly illustrated in the remarks of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell). The country is still plagued by appallingly bad governance and by an absence of the rule of law. When Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister seeks to challenge illegal and unconstitutional appointments to top jobs—for example, the appointment of Gideon Gono as director of the central bank of Zimbabwe—he is unable to use the courts to set them aside and make new appointments, despite the fact that the official procedures should allow that.

Unemployment in Zimbabwe is currently about 90%. The country used to be better off than most African countries. The latest figures I have been able to dig out show that gross domestic product per capita stands at some $450. That figure is several years old and it is possible that the position has improved, but that $450 per person in Zimbabwe compared with $618 per person in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.

The HIV infection rate, as we have just heard from the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, is extremely high—one of the highest in Africa and about three times the average for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. Some 15% of the population are infected compared with a still appallingly high average for sub-Saharan Africa of 5%. Life expectancy at 44 years has fallen dramatically from more than 60 years, which applied at the time of independence. Again, it compares unfavourably with other sub-Saharan countries, for which the average is 52 years.

[Dr Poulter]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Swaziland in the early 1980s the HIV infection rate was about 1%, but by 2000 it was nearly 40%? Although we live in an age when there is better access to HIV drugs, even in many parts of Africa, targeted interventions to deal with HIV—given the high rate in Zimbabwe—should form an important part of any aid strategy for the country.

[Hugh Bayley]

Yes, I strongly agree with that. During the Committee’s visit to Zimbabwe in February, we spent some time looking at HIV counselling and testing programmes and other measures funded by DFID that were delivered largely by NGOs. Most certainly, we should be providing aid. Even with a framework of poor governance, it is possible for British aid to make a difference. The availability of antiretroviral drugs, for instance, has improved because of the help of outside donors, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Some indicators are good. Health expenditure in Zimbabwe is higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, as are sanitation rates. In Zimbabwe, 69% of mothers are attended by a skilled childbirth attendant, compared with 46% elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, Zimbabwe has the capacity to recover, when it finds the political leadership to enable it to address problems of catastrophically bad governance. Some of its infrastructure—literacy levels, for instance, are better than in many other countries in Africa—provides the country with the opportunity to bounce back.