NHS Specialised Services

Debate between David Amess and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 15th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate you on your knighthood, Sir David, which is well deserved. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I also congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) on launching and promoting this very important debate.

I want to speak up for robot-assisted surgery, which should be the subject of national commissioning and should not be localised. The case for it is very powerful indeed. Some 500,000 robot-assisted surgical procedures took place in the world in 2013, and 5,000 of those were in Britain—but 5,000 is quite a small number when compared with the total number of operations across the whole field of health during a year. These operations are very specialised; a small number of very specialised surgeons do them. Clearly, such surgery is wholly inappropriate for local decision making, local funding and local commissioning. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made the point very strongly: these operations should be part of a national service, where we can get economies of scale and a focus on centres of quality and expertise.

The operations are used, among other things, to treat patients with prostate cancer, kidney cancer and bladder cancer and, to a lesser extent, in the areas of colorectal surgery and gynaecology. Having seen some of the operations on film, I know how incredibly precise and difficult they are and what miracles can be worked by robotic surgery. It cannot be done by human beings: however brilliant a surgeon is and however delicate their hands are, they cannot be as precise as a robot. Robots will increasingly become part of the way we operate on human beings more broadly.

My reason for being so interested in this issue is personal. Over the last four years, I have been invited to speak, briefly, at an international symposium on surgical robotics at the Royal Geographical Society. It has been led by my noble Friend Lord Darzi, of another place. As we all know, he is a gifted and brilliant surgeon himself. I make a brief address at the beginning—not because I am a medic myself or know anything about these things, but because my late father was Professor Harold Hopkins FRS. He was a gifted scientist who designed the first successful optical endoscopes. Flexible fibre optics were his, as were rod lens cystoscopes and all the endoscopes that followed from them.

If anyone has ever had a colonoscopy or a gastroscopy—or, indeed, had their bladder inspected through the urethra—they will have had one of those instruments poked inside them. I have experienced more than one of them, but fortunately I was in perfect health, so I was pleased about that. I also had the unusual experience of seeing the first ever clear picture of bladder cancer; my father showed it to me when the first endoscope was used to take it. It was an historic moment.

The point I want to make is how important it is that these procedures are promoted within the national health service, because Britain must be at the forefront of this technology. We have brilliant surgeons and brilliant designers and scientists designing these things, but when my father first invented his cystoscopes, his endoscopes, he could not get them produced in Britain. Eventually, he met a man called Storz in Germany, who manufactured the endoscopes and made millions of pounds from them.

The Deutsches Museum in Bonn has a case devoted to those instruments in a part of the museum for foreigners who have made a contribution to the German economy. It could all have been done in Britain, but it was not. I fear that if we do not keep funding this cutting-edge technology—“cutting” is perhaps an unfortunate word—we will lose our position in the world at the head of all these developments. It is so important for Britain, as an economy, that we sustain these things, but they will not be sustained if we have penny-pinching local commissioning, which will undermine the procedures and their availability.

These are very serious concerns. Sadly, my father died of prostate cancer himself some 20 years ago. There is a hereditary component in prostate cancer, so I have a personal interest in making sure that all these operations are available and that we have the best possible technologies to deal with the disease.

A recent front-page report in The Guardian or The Independent—I forget which—showed that prostate cancer treatment varies enormously from area to area, and death rates are higher in some areas than in others because some treatments are not available nationally. Some treatments, such as implanting into the prostate small radiation-generating components that kill off cancer cells, are not available to all sufferers, and they should be.

There are all sorts of reasons for national commissioning to ensure consistency of provision across the country and that people do not die unnecessarily of dreadful diseases. There is a powerful case in many other fields for national rather than local commissioning. We are talking not about hip replacements and tonsillectomies, but about very specialised operations, sometimes for rare diseases and conditions, using technology that is not available in every area. There should be national centres for such things.

That is my case, although I could speak at much greater length. I want to finish on the question of funding for the health service. There has been a lot of press comment and alarm about the state of the health service, and quite rightly so. I do not speak for my Front-Bench team—I only wish I did, and from time to time I try to persuade them that I should—but I believe that NHS spending must be increased. We spend at least 2% less of GDP on health than do the French or the Germans, and 2% of GDP is the equivalent of approximately £60 million per constituency. I would like to see an extra £60 million spent on health in Luton North, as I would in Luton South and in every other constituency. That would simply match the current situation in Germany and France.

The NHS does a wonderful job and is incredibly efficient, despite what people say. It has a high level of productivity, although that is being damaged by fragmentation and creeping privatisation. It is a remarkable organisation, envied across the world. It is still, in many ways, the best health provision in the world, but it is in danger from underfunding. I want us at least to match what the French and Germans do, especially as our economy is now evidently stronger than theirs.

There is a possibility of spending more. The population regularly indicate in polls that for certain areas, particularly health, they would be prepared to pay a little more tax to make sure that they are safe. I look forward to the next Labour Government, who should be in office in the next few weeks. We will then be able to move forward and properly fund the NHS.

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Mark Tami, who, as it turns out, has plenty of time at his disposal.

Whitsun Recess

Debate between David Amess and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee, of which I confess I am a member, on providing this opportunity for debate. I have observed that some colleagues have used it extremely well, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who spoke so movingly. I congratulate her, too, on bringing the military wives choir to Portcullis House yesterday.

I wish to raise a number of points on the Whitsun Adjournment. First, I have three early-day motions, which I urge colleagues to sign before we rise for the recess. The first congratulates West Ham United on being promoted to the premiership, despite some poor management and over-inflated ticket prices. The second congratulates Chelsea on beating Bayern Munich. The third, with which I suspect Conservative Members might be pleased, condemns the behaviour of some of the people attending the Police Federation conference. I thought that their behaviour was disgraceful, particularly the way they tried to bully and intimidate the Home Secretary. I thought that, for them, it was a public relations disaster.

I shall turn now to online newspaper comments. I am increasingly concerned with the whole system whereby people can publish material in electronic newspaper articles without supplying their names and addresses. This is totally unacceptable. There are swear words and expletives, but there seems to be no legislation to deal with the problem. None of us really has the money to fight cases through the courts, even if that were possible. I know that whenever an article is written about me in one local newspaper—which I do not send to it—the abuse is endless. It is water off a duck’s back for me, but for some people who are rather close to me it can be a little bit offensive. I welcome the Defamation Bill, but I think that there should be much stricter controls. It is absolutely gutless not to force those who wish to say abusive things online to leave their names and addresses.

Public anger has recently been directed at the high pay received by private sector bosses, most notably those in the big banks, but what regulation is there to deal with some public sector executives? In 2009, 31 council bosses earned more than the Prime Minister, which is crazy, and chief executives of public bodies can take home more than £250,000 a year. I am not satisfied that there is proper scrutiny of public organisations, including some in Essex such as the probation service and NHS trusts.

I find it less than acceptable that a Member of Parliament should have to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to confirm, after a number of months, that those who were consulted on the closure of Leigh police station lived miles away, so effectively there was no consultation. It has taken me two years just to confirm that the present chief constable of Essex was chosen from a shortlist of one. That is outrageous. Apparently the other candidates had withdrawn on the day. When I asked who had made the decision not to re-advertise the position, I was told that the decision had been made in the first instance by Essex police authority. That says it all. In 30 years, Essex police authority has never engaged with me, as a Member of Parliament. As I have said, there needs to be much greater scrutiny. Anyone can get rid of Members of Parliament after—now—five years, but some public bodies seem to be a law unto themselves.

I must admit that one of my children had an unfortunate experience recently with a private clamping company. We are dealing with it through the small claims court, and I am determined that we will win. To charge someone £480 and then intimidate and bully them is totally unacceptable. I understand that the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 will outlaw wheel-clamping on private land, and I welcome that, but I think that private clamping companies should be much more tightly regulated.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Amess]

I think that I must accept your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. Some of us have been here since 1 pm, and I know that you are very keen to give everyone a chance to speak. I apologise for not giving way on this occasion.

I am dismayed that victims of the Vioxx disaster are still struggling to obtain compensation. Vioxx was the biggest drugs disaster in human history, killing more than 100,000 people worldwide and leaving many more suffering horrific side effects. With that in mind, I find it unbelievable that victims are still fighting legal battles. So far, the United States of America is the only country in which a Vioxx settlement has been won. Attempts at settlements have been made in Canada and Australia, but we do not seem to be progressing too well in this country.

I am also concerned about the impact of drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. All of us with children know that the biggest challenge we face is bringing them up, but I am very worried about something that has been brought to my attention by a constituent, Mrs Stephanie Lister: the fact that children with behavioural disorders are being described as having ADHD. Very young children are often issued with powerful treatments such as Ritalin, and Mrs Lister wondered whether the damage that they might cause had ever been considered. Children often complain of chest pains, vomiting and even total memory loss as a result of taking medications for behavioural conditions. Such prescriptions provide big business. In 2010 the NHS spent £48 million on ADHD drugs. The number of prescriptions has increased steadily over the past decade, and is currently at about the 750,000 mark. That is quite extraordinary.

I am very concerned about the political situation in the Maldives. The resignation of President Nasheed in February caused great turmoil. Last week the Speaker of the Maldives Parliament came to see me. Its Parliament is in deadlock, while the Speaker was barred from entering the state opening ceremony. He wisely chose not to intervene with force. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to do as much possible to help with the situation in the Maldives.

We in Essex are very upmarket, so we talk about children, not kids, but two weeks ago the “kids count” awards took place on the House of Commons Terrace, and it was a privilege to be there. I presented one of my constituents, Stephanie Migliorini, with the “kids count” award for the most inspirational young person. It was a wonderful evening. Various celebs were present, including Tony Hadley, the still-great singer, and Darren Campbell, the still-great runner. Seventeen-year-old Stephanie has two older brothers with tremendous challenges, and she has looked after them magnificently.

I am proud to have been given a new book written by one of my constituents. Simon Sear has written the inspirational “Kencho: the Art of Happiness”—which, of course, we all chase. He is the husband of Juliet Sear from the popular local bakery, Fancy Nancy. The book outlines a personal transformation programme, drawing on psychological tools and Simon’s personal experience, and its focus on happiness reinforces the social messages of the current Government. I recommend it to all colleagues as a good bedtime read.

I was delighted that one of my hon. Friends mentioned the comments made by the managing director of the International Monetary Fund only this week. Some Opposition Members must be suffering from amnesia: for 13 years we had a Labour Government. For 13 years that Government had an opportunity to transform our nation’s prospects, but, started off by Tony Blair and then finished by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), our country was left in a dreadful state. No wonder the managing director of the IMF said she shivers to think what would have happened without the fiscal consolidation implemented by our new Government. I hope they stand firm on our current policy.

Last Thursday, Southend was blessed with the arrival of a new cultural centre on the end of what is the longest pier in the world. It is the first new building to be constructed on the pier since 2000—that is because, unfortunately, we have had three fires over the last 50 years. The building weighs 170 tonnes and it was carried by boat down the river Thames. I think it will be an icon for the eastern region, and I urge all Members to visit it.

Everyone is looking forward to the Olympics celebrations that will take place throughout the country. The arrival of the Olympics torch in the south-west has been absolutely marvellous, and I congratulate those who have made it possible for 95% of the population to be involved. Of course the highlight will be when the torch comes to Southend on 6 July. Mark Foster has been announced as one of the torch bearers, and the torch will be met by a choir of 2,000 people. It will be a wonderful occasion, and I am advised that there will also be some flash-mob dancing.

Next week, we will have the jubilee celebrations. In fact, we have the jubilee party in Westminster Hall this evening, and I know that many hon. Members will be on the Terrace on Sunday 3 June. Southend has had 67 applications for street parties, so we are certainly going to celebrate 60 glorious years of the sovereign reigning over us. I also just wish the House and all our officials a happy Whitsun recess.