Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Rebecca Pow

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend, I know, speaks from experience as he has a farm right by a lot of water, so he raises a very important point. May I just say, Mr Speaker, that we have tremendous support on the Conservative Benches today, which, I think, demonstrates the understanding of these issues. My hon. Friend was right to raise the ELM scheme. Our future farming policy will be centred around support aimed at: incentivising sustainable farming practice; creating habitats for nature recovery; and establishing new woodland ecosystem services to help tackle climate change. We will help farmers to deliver environmental public goods, which, of course, bring in things such as natural flood management, which he has mentioned. They will be an important part of our new future, with things such as leaky dams, slowing the flow and, of course mixed in there, good soil management, which is something that is very dear to my heart.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

What recent steps his Department has taken to reduce the discharge into waterways of raw sewage and storm water by water companies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

Water companies are committed over the next five years to a significant programme of improvements and to the monitoring and management of storm overflows, costing around £1.2 billion. However, there is more to do, and I met the chief executive officers of water companies in September and made it clear that sewage discharges must be reduced. To achieve that, I have set up a taskforce bringing together the Government, the water industry, regulators and environmental non-governmental organisations to develop actions to address the issue.

[Dame Diana Johnson [V]]

It is good to hear that a taskforce has been set up. In 2019, Yorkshire Water spent 616,643 hours discharging raw sewage into local rivers, which is the worst figure in England. It posted profits of more than £212 million in 2018-19—very much a case of private affluence and public effluence. We need to raise standards, and the Environmental Audit Committee Chair has proposed measures to do that. Will the Government be supporting the proposals of the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne)?

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Lady touches on an issue to which the Department is giving a great deal of attention. As I said, I have recently met water companies to say that that is not good enough and that they need to improve. The Environment Agency carries out a lot of monitoring on the issue, but the situation is not good enough. The taskforce that I mentioned will be developing short and long-term actions to increase water company investment in tackling storm overflows. The Government are very supportive of the aims of the private Member’s Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne); some measures in the Bill could be helpful in reducing storm overflows, and I have asked the taskforce to look at some of those measures. I thank the hon. Lady for her question.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between Diana Johnson and Rebecca Pow

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

That leads me to my next point, which is on the Scottish proposals. As we have heard, they offer a better settlement, particularly for the bereaved, who are guaranteed 75% of their partner’s previous entitlement in addition to continued access to the Scottish discretionary scheme. That gives them much-needed security in a way that the proposed English scheme does not. I ask the Minister to look again at adopting the Scottish model and at providing more guarantees on non-discretionary support for widows and widowers.

My fourth point is about support for primary beneficiaries, which was raised in an intervention. The APPG asks the Government to look again at some groups of primary beneficiaries who need better support than is proposed under the English scheme. I received an email this morning from someone who contracted hepatitis B through contaminated blood products. Under the scheme, they are not eligible for any help, but they have obviously suffered and are suffering still. I hope that the Minister is willing to look at a very small group of people who are not covered.

The APPG believes that if more assistance were provided in the form of non-discretionary, ongoing payments, it would reduce the need for discretionary support and allay a great deal of our constituents’ worries. I urge the Department of Health to consider the contrast with the support announced in the Scottish scheme and whether more non-discretionary, ongoing payments could be made.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I applaud the hon. Lady for bringing the debate to the House. Although I recognise that the new payments scheme is an improvement, I want to speak up for one of my constituents, who does not want to be named. He is among the 256 out of the 1,250 haemophiliacs who were infected with multiple viruses—those who were co-infected. Their lives have been devastated—absolutely blighted—and they feel that they are not being fairly treated under the new arrangement. Will she expand on whether we can help those people a little bit more?

[Diana Johnson]

I will come on to the ways in which I think the funding that the Government have put together could be used more effectively to assist more people who have been affected by receiving contaminated blood, including the hon. Lady’s constituent.

I will talk a little about the overall funding of the new scheme. There is much that the Government could do to improve the scheme without any additional cost to the public purse. Even if the Scottish proposals, particularly those for widows and primary beneficiaries, were adopted in England, they would fall within the budget that has been allocated for every year save 2016-17. That is set out in an analysis conducted by the Haemophilia Society, which was presented to the Department of Health at last week’s meeting. I hope officials will consider that carefully.

Any need for additional funding could easily be met from two identifiable sources. I think the £230 million from the sale of our 80% stake in Plasma Resources UK should be made available, as should any reserves left in the accounts of the three discretionary charities when they are closed in 2017. Further, I ask the Minister to promise that any money that is not spent on beneficiaries in each year will be rolled over to support beneficiaries in the next year. At last week’s meeting at the Department of Health, it appeared from what officials told us that any unspent money would have to be given back to the Treasury. That would be a gross act of betrayal towards those affected.

In conclusion, unless the Department of Health accepts that its new scheme still has substantial issues that need to be addressed, the new support scheme will not command the full confidence of the people it needs to satisfy. Indeed, in some crucial respects it will be worse than the system it replaces.

The APPG still believes that people should have the option of a lump sum payment as part of any new scheme, to give them the opportunity to decide for themselves what is best for them—either a regular payment or a one-off lump sum payment.

Contaminated Blood

Debate between Diana Johnson and Rebecca Pow

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are now a few days away from the end of the consultation period. I understand that the Minister was advised—wrongly, I think—by her officials that she could not meet the all-party group during the consultation period. I know that that was not the case in Scotland: the Minister there met MSPs and individuals. We called for this debate so that the Minister could listen to the comments of her fellow parliamentarians about the Government’s proposals and then feed them into the consultation.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I have many constituents in Taunton Deane whose lives are blighted by this issue of contaminated blood. Although I applaud the Government for bringing forward this consultation, there are many who believe that it is only adding fuel to the fire. In fact, it could be making the situation worse and causing more pain, not least because, in Scotland, people may get a better deal than those in England. I urge the Minister to look very carefully at the consultation so as not to penalise people who are already badly suffering.

[Diana Johnson]

I wish to move on now to highlight a few of the problems with the consultation. First, as has already been said, many of the existing recipients will receive lower payments under the new scheme. The Government’s proposals would end all discretionary support, such as winter fuel allowance, child supplements and low income top-ups, which means that many people will lose out, potentially by thousands of pounds a year.

Secondly, most of the current beneficiaries have hepatitis C stage 1 and currently get no ongoing support. They are left begging for individual payments from the Caxton Fund. The Government proposals will provide annual payments for people in stage 1, which is welcome, but those people will be subject to regular individual assessments. That could result in fluctuating payments and reduced financial certainty for individuals. Assessments will also take only clinical factors into account. They will not look at the loss of education or employment, and decades of loss of amenity, ill health and loss of earnings. According to the information from the Government, those assessments will cost £500,000 a year to carry out. Would that money not be better spent on providing financial support to those people?