Testing of NHS and Social Care Staff

Debate between Emma Hardy and Paul Bristow

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I start by paying tribute to all the health and social care workers, right across my constituency. They have my deeply felt thanks and gratitude.

I will concentrate on my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on vascular and venous disease, because I am deeply concerned by the impact covid-19 has had on people who suffer from vascular disease. I have spoken about vascular disease before. It is a killer disease that few seem to know about, despite the devastation it causes to so many lives. Between 15% and 20% of British people over 70 are affected by peripheral artery disease, which can cause painful chronic leg ulcers and is the main cause of amputations in England. As I have said previously, every hour in England someone has part of their foot removed; every two hours in England someone loses their leg.

As chair of the APPG, I have heard evidence from NHS frontline workers and patient representatives deeply concerned by the burden borne by people with vascular disease because vascular services have experienced reductions in their capacity to deliver care during the crisis. Some people with vascular disease are too frightened to seek treatment. As Mr Naseer Ahmad, the Manchester amputation reduction strategy director, says, “One of the biggest problems we face is fear.” I believe the lack of a comprehensive and universal covid testing regime, combined with stories of patients who enter hospital covid-free only to contract the disease while in hospital, is driving that fear. That has inevitably led to people who otherwise would take themselves to hospital staying at home while their condition worsens. To make matters worse, clinicians have expressed fears that many people who have had their non-urgent operations cancelled may have deteriorated since that decision was made.

[Paul Bristow]

Does the hon. Lady agree that for people with peripheral artery disease, it is often urgent referral that makes the difference between saving a limb and losing it? Unfortunately, during the crisis, that urgent referral to secondary care and multidisciplinary teams may not have happened. We must guard against that as we try to save limbs.

[Emma Hardy]

I absolutely agree. As Dr Dan Carradice, a leading consultant on this condition at Hull Royal Infirmary, says, time is ticking, and the more quickly we can deal with this, the more urgently we can save limbs. Because of the delay, we have seen over the past few months a growing wait for lower limb amputations, many of which could have been avoided with timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

We cannot allow this situation to continue. Patients must be confident that they can visit their hospital safely. One vital way the Government could restore trust is to have a routine weekly testing programme for NHS and social care staff, so that patients know when they enter hospital that they are not likely to contract covid-19. Every day, the number of people seeking treatment is growing. Dr Una Adderley, programme director of the national wound care strategy, has described a “tsunami of unmet need” on the horizon as certain vascular services have been deprioritised.

Of course I recognise the huge pressure the NHS is under, but I believe that more can be achieved for people with vascular disease if they are given the focus they need. We need to create safe, covid-19-negative pathways and services for vascular disease in the community and in hospitals. I recognise that these are not straight- forward tasks, and as chair of the all-party group I will be writing to the Secretary of State for further details on exactly how this could be achieved. We also need a comprehensive approach to vascular disease in the NHS long-term plan, because there are huge regional inequalities, with patients in Hull being 46% more likely to need a major amputation than the England average. As I said before, time is tissue, so I look forward to getting a date in the diary for the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), to visit Hull, as he promised in a previous debate—but of course, only when it is safe to do so.

I note that the Government wish to change the wording of the motion away from the need for a weekly testing programme to instead celebrating and recognising their own efforts. With the greatest of respect to the Government, the highest and most well regarded praise tends not to be written by oneself. I would encourage them to seek to earn that praise rather than pen their own, and one way in which they could do that would be to prioritise the hundreds of thousands of patients suffering from vascular disease in the UK.