Countess of Chester Hospital Inquiry

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment in putting families and their wishes central. I hope he will understand that as part of an independent inquiry, it will be for the judge to decide which hearings are held in public and which are in private. In essence, part of the initial discussion on a non-statutory inquiry and my discussion with the families was about balancing privacy concerns versus the more adversarial and public nature of a statutory enquiry. I know that Justice Thirlwall will be sensitive to the families’ wishes and what is the appropriate balance between hearings held in public and those held in private.

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

After all that has happened, it was surely a mistake not to implement recommendation 5 of the Kark review. Why does the Secretary of State not just get on with it and bring it in to disbar senior managers in the NHS?

[Steve Barclay]

The Kark recommendations that were accepted, which cover events since those covered at Chester, are believed to have addressed the concerns about the revolving door, but given the issues that have come to light through the case in Chester, I have asked NHSE colleagues to revisit that decision without waiting for the inquiry to look at that. Of course, the inquiry will also look at what is the right balance of regulation for managers.

Recovering Access to Primary Care

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right about the opportunity that tech offers to deliver changes at scale and the fact that this is proven technology that is working and already up and running in many primary care settings. So often within the NHS the challenge is not the initial innovation—we get pockets of wonderful innovation—but how we industrialise it across the wider NHS. This recovery plan focuses on that, looking at how we scale the case studies to which he refers. About half of primary care does have digital telephony. The opportunity here is to target that funding at the other half; that is often the smaller GP practices, as well as those in coastal communities, because they find the transition to tech more difficult. That is why a key part of this recovery plan is about the investment in not just the tech, but in locums, to provide cover so that staff can make the transition to that new way of working.

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

The NHS workforce plan has been promised for years. Meanwhile, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) says, we are short of GPs, pharmacists and dentists in Hull. Will the Secretary of State answer the question she put to him: can we please build on the excellent work of the Hull York Medical School to set up a dental training school there, and a school of pharmacy and one for ophthalmologists? That would help in the longer term, but we need a proper workforce plan and the Government need to get on with it.

[Steve Barclay]

As I have said several times, we will publish a workforce plan shortly. We are committed to that and the Chancellor set that out in the autumn statement. Of course, when he was doing this job and when I was previously in the Department, we expanded medical undergraduate places by a fifth, so there was an increase then. I have said that we will also set out a dental recovery plan in due course.

NHS Strikes

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and he is right to highlight the wider issues that we want to discuss. The previous negotiation with the junior doctors included, for example, setting up a higher pay band, which has meant that there has been a cumulative increase of over 24% over four years. It included targeted action such as a £1,000 a year allowance for junior doctors who work less than full time, and targeted action around unsocial hours and weekend work. Those are the meaningful discussions that we want to enter into with junior doctors, but that has to be on the basis of a realistic and deliverable discussion, and 35% is not that.

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

I am not sure the Secretary of State understands just how angry people are. My constituents are absolutely furious with the Government’s stewardship of the NHS. Hull is the most under-doctored area in the country; we have the longest waits in A&E in the country; and we have had a very poor Care Quality Commission report on our local hospitals. On the junior doctor strikes, when will the Secretary of State start to put patients first? I want to make sure that he goes away from this Chamber and gets ACAS involved, so that we can get the junior doctors back at work, with no further delays and cancellations for my constituents and patients in Hull.

[Steve Barclay]

The rather odd thing is that we have a larger cash offer on the table for 2022-23 than the Labour Government in Wales, and we have reduced our longest waits far more than they have in Wales. We have a deal that the trade union leaders themselves have recommended, that the majority of staff councils have recommended and that the largest health union has voted emphatically in support of. It is right that we allow time for that deal to go through, and we stand ready to have similar meaningful and constructive engagement with the junior doctors once they move from what is an unrealistic position.

NHS Winter Pressures

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

First, integrating health and social care through the integrated care boards. That is what we put in place from July, recognising that actually the pressures on the NHS are often as much about pressure on social care as they are about pressures in the NHS itself. In particular, if we look at ambulances, we see that often it is the delay in domiciliary care that is driving the blockage on the wards, which in turn applies there. Secondly, it is recognising that there are workforce pressures, which is why NHS England has been working on the workforce plan that has been set up.

Thirdly, we have already set out our elective recovery plan. Over the summer, the longest waits—those of over two years—were largely cleared. [Interruption.] Opposition Front Benchers chunter, “How’s it going?” Let us look at how it is going, compared with the Labour Government’s two-year clearance in Wales. Before Christmas, there were about 60,000 people in Wales who had been waiting for more than two years; in England there were fewer than 2,000. We are making progress on the longest waits through the work of Jim Mackey, Professor Tim Briggs and Getting It Right First Time. We are innovating with the surgical hubs and the community diagnostic centres. That, in turn, gives greater resilience to the electives that used to be cancelled when there was winter pressure. With hot and cold sites, they are much more resilient.

Finally, I must take issue with what my right hon. Friend says. In France, Germany, Canada and many other countries, the massive spike in flu and covid pressure, combined with pressures from the pandemic, has placed similar strains on healthcare systems. It is simply not the case that the issue affects England alone.

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

I am really not clear how, despite all the warnings, the Government have got themselves into this position after the biggest crisis in the NHS. We all know that it is a no-brainer to invest in social care to reduce bed blocking, so what exactly is the purpose of the pilot that has been announced for Hull and the Humber? It will tell us what we already know: that what we need is investment in social care and reform of social care.

[Steve Barclay]

We recognised very early—in fact, NHS England recognised it in the summer—that this winter was likely to be extremely hard, both because population resilience to flu would be lower as a consequence of the pandemic and because of the combination of pandemic backlogs with the ongoing level of covid admissions. As I have said, we have more than 9,000 patients in hospital with covid and a further 5,000 with flu; that comes on top of the other strains from the pandemic that we have seen. The measures taken, such as boosting the vaccination programme, extending it to the over-50s and being the first place to have the bivalent vaccine, were part of the package in NHS England’s operational plan.

We also recognised—this point goes to the heart of the right hon. Lady’s question—that social care is central. That is why, notwithstanding the other economic pressures that the Government faced, health and education were prioritised in the autumn statement, with an extra £6.6 billion in funding for the NHS over the next two years and an extra £7.5 billion in funding for social care. That was recognised with a clear prioritisation in the autumn statement. The reality is that we have had a massive spike in flu cases, meaning that there have been 100 times as many hospital admissions for flu as there were last year.

Women’s Health Strategy for England

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I know from my own involvement in the mesh campaign just how central the hon. Lady’s role was in it, and I pay tribute the work that she has done on that and a number of other campaigns over recent years. In respect of mesh, she will be aware that an annual review is published. On the workplace issue, a key thing that comes out of the report is the significance of the time off work that many women are experiencing, with the difficulty, quite often, in having these conversations with employers. It is very welcome that the civil service has taken a lead, as has the NHS, in certain aspects of that, but there will clearly be more to do, and the point she raises will be part of that wider conversation.

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

I welcome the appointment of the women’s health ambassador, Dame Lesley Regan. It is an excellent appointment to that role.

The 2020 report on access to contraception by the all-party parliamentary group on sexual and reproductive health found that the current fragmented commissioning arrangements have a severe impact on women’s access to contraception due to a lack of joined-up services. With 45% of pregnancies in England being unplanned, what specific plans does the Secretary of State have to remove the barriers to co-commissioning of reproductive healthcare to require different parts of the system to work together to meet women’s healthcare needs?

[Steve Barclay]

I welcome the hon. Lady’s acknowledgement of the expertise that Professor Dame Lesley Regan brings as ambassador. I think she will be fantastic in that role. A key part of this strategy is addressing the fragmented health system and how that impacts on areas such as contraception. That is why we are having, for example, the women’s health hubs to provide a one-stop shop and centre of expertise so that we can better identify the services that people need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

One of the purposes of Cabinet Office questions is to enable Ministers to respond to issues as they arise. Obviously I have a range of external meetings that reflect the responsibilities that we have discussed in the House, not least my roundtable on food security and resilience, an issue that was raised earlier. As for the wider approach to illegal immigration, that is a policy matter for the Home Secretary, who leads external engagement on the issue, but of course the Cabinet Office plays a supporting role in relation to Home Office colleagues.

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

I just want to make it clear that the Government’s approach to the study conducted by Sir Robert Francis was to publish it at the same time as their own response. That is what we were told—although the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood and many campaign groups had asked the Government for openness and transparency, and for the report to be published when it was given to the Government. Given that two people are dying every week as a result of the contaminated blood scandal, may I press the Minister on this issue? Do the Government accept that there is a strong moral case for compensation to be paid, irrespective of any legal liability, and for interim payments of at least £100,000 per individual to start now?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point that is a key issue for the illegal migration taskforce, which I chair. I will meet the Home Secretary later today, and I met the Foreign Secretary yesterday. He is right that our response is a whole of Government endeavour and I am sure that the Home Secretary will update the House further on our progress.

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

T6. Does the Paymaster General, as a former Law Officer, agree that there is a fatal flaw in our system when the person who ultimately makes judgment on the ministerial code is a Prime Minister who is at the centre of allegations of breaking the law and misleading the House? Does it not go against all the rules of natural justice to be judge and jury in your own case?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Steve Barclay

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises a very legitimate point, and, in short, yes we will. To encourage the issue he highlights, we require public buyers to divide contracts into more accessible lots, or to explain why they cannot, so that tender requirements can be matched to smaller business specialisms. I know that he is a champion for Dudley South and that is exactly the sort of measure that will help businesses in his constituency.

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

10. What recent assessment his Department has made of the progress of the infected blood inquiry.

--- Later in debate ---

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

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Steve Barclay)]

I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), for his leadership of the Cabinet Office over the last two years and wish him well in his new role. I also thank my officials at the Treasury for all their support during my time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I welcome the comments made by the Opposition Front-Bench team in respect of the new ministerial team and look forward to constructive engagement with them in the months ahead.

Mr Speaker, a theme this morning has been your recent G7 Speakers conference, and certainly for me, as someone born and bred in Lancashire, it is a particular honour to have the role of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Cabinet Office is the strategic headquarters for the Government, supporting the Prime Minister and the Cabinet in delivering for the British people. I look forward to working with colleagues to do so, supported by an excellent new ministerial team.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I join in welcoming the right hon. Member to his new post.

Whereas the NHS infected blood scandal was the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, the covid pandemic has been the biggest public health disaster in a century. In March 2020, the chief scientific adviser said if the UK could keep covid deaths below 20,000 that would be a “good result”, and now of course there have been more than 135,000. If the covid public inquiry, which we understand will not start until next year, is to be a genuine attempt to look at the rights and wrongs of what happened, will frontline staff in the healthcare and social care sectors be involved in setting the terms of reference?

[Steve Barclay]

We have been clear that we will have an inquiry, and that will be next spring. Clearly, there will be consultations on shaping the leadership of that, its terms and how it will be conducted. The Prime Minister has been clear on his commitment to ensuring that we learn the lessons within the covid response not just in England, but across the United Kingdom. That applies in Wales, but in the other devolved Administrations as well. I think something we all share across the House is that the right lessons are drawn so that improvements can be made.