Covid-19

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I echo the sentiments of many Members in thanking our NHS workers for the work they have done throughout this crisis and will be expected to do through the winter ahead. I want to focus on an issue that affects them very keenly: the national scrubs crisis, which leaves NHS workers without the equipment they need to do their job in fighting covid on the frontline.

In answer to a written question I asked, the Government assured me in August that

“NHS Supply Chain, the main provider of consumables and equipment into the National Health Service, report that its suppliers have sufficient supplies of scrubs for NHS customers to order.”

That is not the case on the ground, as I am told by so many NHS staff and by those who are sewing scrubs on a voluntary basis across the country. The Government are lying, in denial or blissfully unaware of the reality on the ground. I would like the Minister to take the time following the debate to look into the scrubs crisis, to meet the leader of the Putney scrub hub, who is a very inspiring woman, and to find out what is going on at NHS Supply Chain in order to sort this out.

It is essential that our NHS workers have enough scrubs and the right scrubs in the right size. Scrubs must be lightweight enough to be worn under other PPE, and they must not take three months to order from abroad, as they currently do, if an order can even be got in. There has been a massive increase in the need for scrubs in hospitals, clinics, care homes, prisons and now vaccination clinics. The demand for scrubs will increase at a time when we cannot even provide enough scrubs to our NHS workers. Staff are being told to go home. There is one hospital that has 500 staff and 300 scrubs, so 200 staff are being sent home because they do not have the equipment they need. Newly qualified medical staff are being told to find their own scrubs, and they cannot get hold of them.

The Putney scrub hub in my constituency, which has a highly-skilled leader, is making 15,000 scrub sets, all from a squash court in Roehampton. Those volunteers are still making those scrubs, and they want to go home. That is why I implore the Minister to look into this. The most recent orders they have had are from a psychiatric unit in West Middlesex University Hospital, from King’s College Hospital, Central Middlesex Hospital, the West London Kidney Patients’ Association—I could go on, but this demonstrates that a lot of NHS providers do not have enough scrubs.

There seems to be no central co-ordination of scrubs procurement and no national plan to deal with obvious supply issues. In July, I said that the Government needed to put this at the top of their to-do list to sort out in the summer. It has still not been sorted out, but there is time. Can the Minister address this and enable Putney scrub hub volunteers to put down their scissors and get back to their normal lives?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We will start the winding-up speeches at 6.44 pm. There are three speakers left, so if colleagues take two minutes instead of three, we can get everybody in. I call Tom Hunt.

Local Contact Tracing

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the issue of track and trace. I and other Opposition Members are rightly furious at the amount of money being spent on private companies that could have been invested in our own NHS and in local public authority systems.

This issue is of huge interest to my constituents in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields. More than 100 people have written to tell me about where it has gone wrong with testing and tracing, and more than 700 people have signed my joint letter with my hon. Friends the Members for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) and for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), asking for a permanent testing centre in Wandsworth borough. Deloitte has been sent to find one, but it cannot find a place, so we do not have one; we rely on the Army to pop up every now and again. One mother was left in a car park, having to travel to another testing centre. She could not find a QR code on her app. The testing centre was almost empty, but she was not able to go in.

The Minister talked about a spine and ribs, and the whole system working together. We have a spine in this country: it is the NHS. It is a national health system. We should have used that from the start rather than spending £12 billion on systems that have entirely failed us. SAGE has now said that track and trace had a minimal effect on stopping the virus, but it should have been the core of our reaction and our action to stop the virus.

The existing privately outsourced system has failed. We have no permanent testing area in Wandsworth—will the Minister meet me to talk about that? My constituents have told me it is not working; local councils have told the Government that it is not working; and now scientists are telling the Government it is not working. It is time to give Serco a reboot; in fact, it is time to give Serco the boot. I ask the Minister to trust our local authorities and give them the contract for testing and tracing.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Chris Stephens, who is to resume his seat at 6.47 pm.

Queen Mary’s Hospital: Urgent Care Services

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am grateful that Mr Speaker has granted this debate, and to the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), for taking time out of his schedule to respond to it. This issue is of huge concern to my constituents, as I am sure he can understand. More than 300 of them have signed my petition just this past week, and many have been in touch with me to explain how important the issue of urgent care services at Queen Mary’s Hospital is to them.

I have called for this debate and am standing here today because I really value our local hospitals and all the work that the fantastic staff have done during this pandemic to care for us, to endlessly adapt systems and services and to save lives. I take this opportunity to thank the NHS managers, doctors, nurses, cleaners and support staff for all that they do. It is because I, and local residents, value our local hospital so much that I ask the Minister to support the reopening of the urgent treatment centre and the pharmacy for out-patients before the winter and the increasing demand begins. It is really important that it is a walk-in treatment centre that does not require bookings.

Allow me to provide some context for the Minister. In August 1997, Queen Mary’s Hospital, which is in Roehampton, ended its A&E service, and has since had a minor injuries unit, which the trust gave a gold-standard accreditation in November last year. So there is no A&E service in my constituency. The minor injuries unit was upgraded to an urgent treatment centre, with a GP added to the excellent nurse practitioner staff, earlier this year. In a normal year, the centre serves 16,000 to 18,000 people, so it is a vital service in our community.

During the peak of the pandemic, the decision was taken to temporarily close the service because of a lack of space for social distancing and to be able to adhere to Government guidelines, and also to move the staff to other areas that needed them more. The pharmacy for out-patients has only recently been closed, and at very short notice. Of course I understand, as do local residents, that changes had to made and that health services had to adapt. I fully appreciate that our NHS managers had to make some extremely difficult decisions on service provision as they faced the prospect of being overwhelmed, which they are now facing again, with the second wave. The continued closure makes us in Roehampton feel overlooked, and it is putting additional pressures on NHS services at Teddington, the walk-in centre at Kingston, St George’s Hospital A&E and local GP surgeries. I am concerned that this will cause untold long-term damage to the health and wellbeing of our community. 

I have been asked, “What about the person with the dislocated shoulder, the chest pain, the allergic reaction?” They all need to be assessed and stabilised urgently, but at the moment they are being turned away. I have met the chief executive of the hospital trust and raised these issues. I asked her to assure me that the centre would be reopened as soon as it was safe to do so, but she has not confirmed when it will reopen, if at all. That is very worrying. I hope to hear from the Minister this evening that he will support the trust in making plans to reopen the walk-in urgent treatment centre. 

I would like briefly to explain the impacts that the closure is having on local people. Anyone who goes to where the minor injuries unit used to be is asked to travel far away to the Teddington walk-in centre, to Kingston A&E or to St George’s A&E in Tooting. Those bus journeys can take an hour, which can result in painful journeys or in many people not making the journey, not being seen and not being treated. I am sure the Minister will agree that an hour on public transport is an unacceptably long journey time when there is a really good hospital right there in Roehampton, but it is just not open for walk-in urgent care. One of my constituents wrote to me this week to say:

“I took my elderly father, who is nearly 90 years old, to Queen Mary’s just over a month ago, because he had cut his fingers quite badly and they were bleeding. The kind staff there had helped us when my father had a similar problem last year and they knew how to bandage his fingers because he has very thin skin…Because the Centre was closed, we had to go all the way to Kingston Hospital which was quite stressful. While his treatment there was good, it would have been far easier if we could have gone somewhere more local to him as my father isn’t used to travelling that far.”

Also, some patients are unable to travel or should not travel. An example is patients with diabetic foot ulcers, who should keep their activity to a minimum to allow ulcers to heal. At the same time, if they have an infection, it needs treating immediately as it could deteriorate rapidly leading to the need for amputation. That is one group of patients who are not getting the care they need because the urgent treatment centre and the pharmacy are not open. There is an obvious health risk to people needing to travel further if they are seriously ill.

There is also an increased risk of covid infection through asking people to travel greater distances by public transport during the pandemic, especially when they are unwell or chronically ill. They could have an underlying condition, which might be the reason they are going to the urgent care centre in the first place. That would make them more susceptible to the effects of covid-19. Closing the pharmacy is having the effect of delaying patients receiving treatment, as they are now being referred to their GP by the clinics. If they cannot immediately get an appointment with their GP, this can lead to delays of up to 48 hours before starting their treatment. That is another impact.

There is also a knock-on effect on services in other places. The fact that 16,000 to 18,000 people a year used to be treated at Queen Mary’s is putting pressure on St George’s and Kingston, along with the increasing demand at the moment. GP surgery appointments are already at a premium, and this demand will only worsen as the difficult winter months approach. Even before the pandemic, it was reported that over 11 million patients had to wait more than 21 days for a GP appointment. In my constituency, there are 14 main surgeries and three branch practices. My team has called round all the local GP services. Several are still only doing appointments over Zoom, and in one local medical centre, a member of staff begged for the urgent care centre to reopen due to the pressure its closure is causing for GP surgeries.

Increased demand for overstretched GP surgeries with finite resources ultimately means fewer local people’s conditions or illnesses receiving treatment, and even more concerningly, serious and urgent illnesses such as cancer being missed and going undiagnosed. It is cancer diagnosis that I am particularly concerned about. As the Minister knows, lots of cancers are diagnosed when people present at hospital with a symptom. With the doors of the urgent treatment centre still closed, many cancers that might otherwise have been spotted will have been missed.

--- Later in debate ---

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Maria Caulfield.)

[Fleur Anderson]

Many cancers will be missed if people cannot go to the urgent care centre and are redirected to other facilities, because there is a real concern that they are not making that journey.

According to Breast Cancer Now, the importance of GP referrals and of the NHS breast screening programme to breast cancer survival cannot be underestimated. However, the number of people referred to see a specialist with suspected cancer declined dramatically during the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. In England, between March and July this year, there were 95,000 fewer referrals by a GP for tests.

Prostate cancer is also of real concern. This cancer claims the life of one man every 45 minutes in the UK. Early diagnosis, as I know from my own family, really does save lives. The impact of covid-19 has meant that around 3,500 men in the UK risk being diagnosed with last-stage, incurable prostate cancer. With GP appointments often hard to get, urgent care centres such as the one at Queen Mary’s Hospital are very important in spotting signs of cancer early on. The prolonged closures of urgent care centres are accelerating the crisis in cancer care. Cancer and other serious diseases will not wait for the covid-19 crisis to abate—they will not wait until the winter is over—before taking lives again. We cannot lose sight of this. We cannot risk the lives of local people.

In summary, the urgent treatment centre and pharmacy at Queen Mary’s Hospital is a very valued and valuable local health service with fantastic staff. I understand that it had to close and that difficult decisions had to be made, but for too long, people in Roehampton, Putney and Southfields needing urgent care have been sent away. That is leading to some people going untreated and others suffering on long journeys, and it is adding to the pressure on A&E services at Kingston Hospital and St George’s Hospital in Tooting. It is time to stop sending people with dislocated shoulders, deep cuts, chest pains or severe allergic reactions to places an hour away when we have a great hospital with great urgent care nurses in our own community. We need the out-patient pharmacy to provide medications for treatment as soon as they are needed. There is more demand than ever for a walk-in service at the urgent treatment centre, which used to treat 16,000 to 18,000 people a year. My ask of the Minister is simple: will he do everything in his power to reopen the urgent treatment centre with walk-in capacity and the out-patient pharmacy at Queen Mary’s Hospital before the winter begins?

Health Inequalities

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Health inequality is explicitly linked to the wider inequality caused by 10 years of austerity policies. Labour’s record shows that health inequality and child poverty—they are very much linked—are not inevitable and that Governments can address them effectively, but this Government have had a decade to do that and have simply not done enough. Huge health inequalities exist in my constituency. I shall concentrate on healthy food, housing and air pollution.

Roehampton includes areas that are among the 20% most deprived areas in England, and the 10% most deprived with respect to income and housing. Health levels in Roehampton are consistently lower than those in the wider London Borough of Wandsworth. Average life expectancy is 7.4 years less for men and 5.5 years less for women in Roehampton than in Thamesfield ward at the other end of my constituency. Men in the Alton and Putney Vale area of Roehampton spend up to 6.6 years fewer in good health than the Wandsworth average and women up to 4.9 years fewer. It is a scandal.

In one area of Roehampton, people feel like they are living in a food desert. These are urban areas where it is difficult to buy affordable, good-quality fresh food. That is a poor phenomenon across the country.

Cuts to transport and just having one small supermarket in an area are really big issues. That is a matter of town planning which could be addressed by the future high streets fund. Furthermore, more funding for councils could be used to help establish fresh food shops. Community organisations could also be used.

Linked to this is the high level of overcrowding in Roehampton. The biggest reason for people coming to my surgeries since I was elected is mould. Children growing up in homes with damp and mould are prone to asthma, and are often not able to go to school. Poor housing also means less physical activity, loss of sleep and missing school, and those problems are exacerbated in temporary accommodation where, often, there is no fridge, no cooker and no space to prepare food. I call for a public health review of our temporary accommodation.

Finally, air quality is not just a public health issue, but a social justice issue. Poorer families are less likely to have a car, but also more likely to live on the most polluted streets. To tackle this, we need a legally binding commitment to meet the World Health Organisation guideline levels for fine particulate matter; a strengthened Office for Environmental Protection; and targets and funding for councils to have a modal shift towards cycling and walking. These are public health issues. Residents of Putney, Roehampton and Southfields face health inequalities, and the Government need to start listening and take action.

Social Care

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I speak from the experience of having run adult social care services in a community centre for the last three years in Battersea and of being a serving councillor in Wandsworth Borough Council. I want to explain something that may have been missing from the debate up to now and make the case for community services as part of our social care system.

The social care system is in crisis, as Members on both sides of the House have acknowledged. People across Putney, Roehampton and Southfields raise this with me all the time and many people who do not raise it with me, I know, are suffering in silence, trying to find the care that they need or that their adult child, family member, friend or parent needs. The social isolation of elderly people and adults who need additional support is increasing while care services are decreasing. Last year, there were 1.32 million new requests for social care, only half of which resulted in a service being provided. For the other half, nothing was provided or they were signposted elsewhere, often to overstretched community services.

A national care service is needed that joins up health services, social care and community services as a third but essential pillar of this, bringing us together. I agree that we must do it by working together, as has been mentioned, but we must build stronger communities and work together for the good of all. It has been so frustrating to run older people’s services for the last three years while, all around us, it felt like the council-run services were decreasing and the health services and the NHS were providing less and less. We were being left to pick up the pieces yet we were not being provided with either the funding or the way of organising our care service that enabled us to do that.

Across the country, funding for council’s adult care services has dropped by 50% in the last 10 years since the Tories came into power. The whole system is so disjointed that it is really hard to function within it. Community organisations, staff and volunteers spend lots of time chasing services and making relationships with different professionals and organisations who then move on, and we have to start all over again. There urgently needs to be a plan that joins up the NHS, social care and the voluntary sector. This is about funding, but there needs to be far more—it is about organisation and putting adults, the elderly and their needs at the centre of the decisions that we make, rather than organising to make things easier.

Too often, as I said, the voluntary sector is picking up the pieces. Fantastic local organisations such as the one that I worked in, the Katherine Low Settlement, but also Putney-based Regenerate-RISE and the over-60s lunch club—I am sure that hon. Members know of many in their constituencies—are providing long-term support, not piecemeal support. There is an understanding of people’s whole community, including their family, their friends, and who is caring for them, as well as a much quicker speed of response, which really understands the changing needs of the vulnerable in our society. They are also great value for money.

Too often, however, the voluntary sector is not even mentioned in a debate such as this. It is treated as the last on the list and as not being professional. It is often treated with disrespect, whereas from my experience, community services are often on the cutting edge of care for adults with special needs and the elderly. We can learn a lot from such services and they need to be part of the plan that we hopefully will create.

Community services can respond really quickly. Assessments by social services often take months and in that time, an elderly person’s health can deteriorate because they are not getting the care they need. That can end up being a greater burden to the local authority than if support had been put in place earlier, and it can lead to a prolonged stay in hospital.

Last year, 2,000 people died every day while waiting for a decision on their application for social care—it is almost unbelievable. The provision of care for older people is diminishing and the problem of older people living longer is growing. The number of residential and nursing home beds has fallen in every region of England in the last five years. For instance, the care for people with dementia—that long-term, increasing and changing support—is often best provided by community care services. Social workers often change their roles frequently, so older people are faced with people they do not know and who do not understand their situation, whereas community services can provide long-term continuity and culturally appropriate care.

I pay tribute to all the social workers and careworkers across the country who do amazing, selfless and dedicated work and yet are not valued. As has been said, there must be a new system of pay, training and qualification that values our careworkers, who are too low paid but certainly not low skilled. I also pay tribute to the 6.5 million unpaid carers. Often, the only support they receive is from community services, and it is that which enables them to support the people they are caring for. By co-commissioning with health, social care and the voluntary sector, we could give people the best chance of staying at home and not going into care. We need a national care service that places equal value on community social care services alongside health and social care. We need better ways of working, better funding and, ultimately, a better quality of life for everyone.

[Several hon. Members rose—]