Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between George Howarth and Alistair Burt

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

Yes, I will. I will turn to those who are co-infected, but staying on discretionary payments for a moment, I just think that the position was not clear enough. As the trusts were administered separately and not by the Department, I do not think that there was full awareness that the discretionary payments had become a fixed part of people’s income. There is much more awareness of that now, and dealing with this is essential because people are extremely worried as they do not see such payments specifically included in the scheme, and I hope that they will be part of it.

I would also like a small amount of money to be made available for some of the things thrown up through the system that are not recognised. I am thinking in particular of a family in which two young boys lost their father and two uncles, and were taken into care. Their lives were changed hugely because of that. There is no part of the scheme that fits the agonies that they went through, so I wonder whether there could be some recognition of that, with a small part of the fund kept for unusual circumstances.

I must reiterate my determination that there should be some form of inquiry into what has happened. We know—it is on record—the sense of scandal about this. We have heard from former Ministers, including Lord Owen, who made a speech relatively recently in which he was very clear about what happened. He spoke about ministerial documents being “scrapped” and said:

“I have become convinced that there has been a cleaning-up of documents”,

and that

“there was a decision to clean up all the files and stop some of the incriminating evidence”.

Given that this major issue has led to so many deaths and so much misery, and that people know that something went wrong, it cannot be right that there is still not a public space so that the people affected can know what happened.

The inquiry process worked well for Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday, although we know that the position is currently clouded by what is happening with the child abuse inquiry. I do not think that a full public inquiry is necessarily the only vehicle to deal with this, but there needs to be some way for the Department to answer in a way that it has not done up to now, which it cannot do through the mere revealing of documents. It remains essential that we press for such a process.

[Mr George Howarth]

rose—

[Alistair Burt]

I will not give way, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me. I have taken two interventions and will not get any more time.

I now want to raise specifically the issue of those who were co-infected. The majority of those infected by contaminated blood were infected with hep C. Some 1,200 people were co-infected with HIV and hep C, and perhaps only 250 of them are left alive. The suffering experienced by those who were co-infected is different from that of those who were mono-infected. There is now the possibility of treatment for hepatitis C, which we all welcome. Such treatment has considerably changed the outlook for many people, but it is not available for the co-infected.

This discrete group cannot grow any larger; it is diminishing all the time. Those who are co-infected have experienced things in their lives that have not affected others, such as being told their length of life right at the beginning. I know of those who were told when they were very young that they might have only five or six years left. They thought that the education they were going through was of no consequence—what was the point?—and nor was looking after any sum of money they were given, because they might as well spend it if they were not going to live. Their outlook is now different, because medical treatments have allowed them to stay alive, but their condition is still extremely serious and varies almost from day to day.

For that diminishing number, a lump sum, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and others have mentioned, might be a possibility. They do not want to be dependent on the system; they want recognition of what they have lost, including their opportunities, and a lump sum might be the answer for them. I would be very grateful if there is now some consideration for the co-infected, because much of the debate has tended to be about the majority. I do not think that that is necessarily wrong, because what is provided for the majority is very important, but the co-infected matter.

We have been here too often. I doubt, sadly, that my hon. Friend the Minister will be the last Minister to talk about this issue, but we will not go away and the House will not leave this. This is a collective shame, because Government after Government have not grasped that this just needs a final settlement. We can find the money for other things. This issue cries out for that sort of settlement and we will not stop.

Budget for Community Pharmacies

Debate between George Howarth and Alistair Burt

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) approached me before, so I will take one intervention from him; I will not get through my answer otherwise.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I want him to take two things into account. First, there is a correlation between clusters of community pharmacies and areas of high deprivation and associated ill health, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) said. Secondly, small, independent, local community pharmacies do not have the ability of the big multiples to negotiate bulk discount deals. Will he take those two factors into account as he moves forward?

[Alistair Burt]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He has made representations in the past, and I know how keenly he understands the matter. I will come on to discuss access to funds in due course. It will not be based purely on location, but it will take into account what he says about areas of deprivation. We recognise that these are small businesses, and I understand exactly what he says.

The proposed funding cut has understandably created uncertainty and concern. I assure the House that I see a bright future for community pharmacy and pharmacists, so I urge colleagues to see the opportunity that the consultation presents, as well as the inevitable and understandable concern around funding.

The background to the matter lies in the NHS’s five-year forward view. One of its key strategic aims is to break down the traditional barriers between different primary care services, wider out-of-hospital care services and other sectors, such as social care, to deliver a more cohesive, community-based care model that is focused on keeping people healthy and helping people to manage long-term health conditions. Our vision is to achieve a transformation in primary care and out-of-hospital care more widely as we continue to move towards a seven-day health and care service. We want to empower primary care health professionals to take up opportunities to embrace new ways of working with other health professionals to transform the quality of care that they provide to patients and the public. In particular, we want to free up pharmacists to spend more time delivering clinical and public health services to patients and the public in a range of settings.

I have seen at first hand the fantastic work that pharmacists are doing from within community pharmacies, such as in healthy living pharmacies and other settings, and colleagues have also paid tribute to that work. Pharmacy-led services, such as the recently recommissioned community pharmacy seasonal influenza vaccination programme, can help to relieve pressure on GPs and A&E departments and ensure better use of medicines, better health and better patient outcomes. There are real opportunities for pharmacists and their teams to play an even greater role in helping people with long-term conditions and helping people to make better choices to improve their health and to get the maximum benefit from their medicines.

It is not a zero-sum game of accepting the reduction in funding of £170 million—from a budget of £2.8 billion—and ending this degree of high street care and having nothing in its place. I strongly believe that we can still have a network of high street pharmacies based on a financial regime that rewards quality as well as volume while moving pharmacy into different settings. To that end, we have consulted pharmacy bodies and others, including patient and public representatives, clinical commissioning groups and health and social care providers, on how best to introduce a pharmacy integration fund from 2016-17. The fund will help us to transform how pharmacists and their teams operate in the community, bringing clear benefits to patients and the public. The fund is set to rise by an additional £20 million a year. By 2020-21, we will have invested £300 million in addition to the £31 million that NHS England is investing in funding, recruiting and employing clinical pharmacists to work alongside GPs to ease current pressures in general practice and improve patient safety. The integration fund will help to move pharmacy in a direction that supplements what is already done on the high street and in a way it might not otherwise have done.

The chief pharmaceutical officer, Dr Keith Ridge, has commissioned an independent review of community pharmacy clinical services to make recommendations on future models for commissioning pharmacy-led clinical services. I am very keen that what we are doing is seen in the context of where pharmacy is going to go—not a snapshot of how good it is now, but what it can become. Clinical pharmacists will offer complementary skills to GPs, giving patients access to a multi-disciplinary skill set, and helping GPs manage the demands on their time and provide a better experience for patients. This is a great opportunity for pharmacists wanting to make better use of their clinical skills and develop them further.

Let me give a couple of examples. At the Wallingbrook Health Group in Devon, the work of the local pharmacist on all aspects of medicines optimisation has reduced the need for patient GP appointments by 20% to 30%, making a significant impact on GP workloads and patient outcomes. In Cambridge, Sandra Prater is working with patients to optimise their medicines and supporting patients to self-manage a range of conditions, including asthma, high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation.

The reduction in funding for community pharmacy that we have set out was a commitment in last year’s spending review. I want to emphasise that our aim is to secure efficiencies, make savings and improve quality. It is most definitely not our aim to close pharmacies. I accept that it was me who said to the meeting with the all-party group that up to 3,000 pharmacies could be affected. That was me extrapolating the figures. It is not the aim of the Government to close pharmacies and, as I said in answer to the question, we do not know exactly how the funding will fall, because we do not know yet the result of the negotiations and how this will be handled. I accept that I put that figure into the public domain, but it may not happen in that way at all.

I know that many people choose to access health services through community pharmacies, and I want to assure them that our aim is to ensure that those community pharmacies upon which people depend continue to thrive. That is why we are consulting on the introduction of a pharmacy access scheme, which will provide more NHS funds to certain pharmacies compared with others, considering factors such as location and the health needs of the local population, as the right hon. Member for Knowsley mentioned.

Let me deal with another theme that the hon. Member for Barnsley East mentioned. Hand in hand with that approach, we want to ensure that modern community pharmacies reflect patient and public expectations, and developments in technology. Large sections of the population are now accustomed to using digital services through their phones and tablets. Why not do this for people wanting to obtain their prescription medicines? That is why we want to help those patients to get their prescriptions in a way that fits their lifestyle, by promoting the use of online click-and-collect or home-delivery models. We have also consulted on amending legislation to allow independent pharmacies to benefit from hub- and-spoke dispensing models, which facilitate more use of automation and increase efficient dispensing processes. Officials are now carefully considering the responses received and the Government will respond in due course. These are things we want to encourage people to do, but they do not totally replace what is already being done. They might, however, free up more time for the pharmacists to spend on patient contact rather than on doing some of the other work.

The public phase of the community pharmacy consultation may now have ended, but that does not mean that we will stop listening and talking—the hon. Gentleman asked me to keep doing those things. The Department, supported by NHS England, will have further confidential negotiations with the PSNC, and there will also be a final round of confidential discussions with other key pharmacy stakeholders, who take a keen interest in the discussions in this House. Our aim is to communicate the final decisions early in July so that pharmacy contractors are fully informed in advance of the changes being implemented from October 2016.

Our proposals are informed by the discussions that have taken place and by what has been said by those involved in pharmacy in the past—the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and independent studies—about how pharmacy can move in a different direction but that the current funding structure rewards volume not quality and that changes could be made that would widen the reach of pharmacy. I believe that these ideas can be taken forward in the current context. Our proposals can truly place pharmacy at the heart of the NHS and provide a better, more integrated, service for patients and the public. I am confident that the efficiencies we have proposed can be made within community pharmacy without compromising the quality of services or the public’s access to them. I want to thank those in pharmacy, who are working so hard at the moment and making their case very well, and the public who support them. I think pharmacy can have a great future, as can pharmacists.

Question put and agreed to.

Off-patent Drugs Bill

Debate between George Howarth and Alistair Burt

Friday 6th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

Because I still do not believe fundamentally that the passage of legislation is what is needed in order to reassure people that they have access to the drugs that they need.

Let me make a little progress and deal first with the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Torfaen about what has happened since last year.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alistair Burt]

No, I will not on this occasion, because I have taken every intervention since I stood up and I cannot do my job unless I explain what people are concerned about.

As the Government promised when similar measures were discussed in the House this time last year, we held a round-table discussion bringing together some of the key stakeholders. We looked at what action short of legislation the Government could take.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

Oh, shroud waving—thank you very much. That’s all we need.

On action flowing from last year, the Government had an extremely useful meeting that brought together the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, Breast Cancer Now, the Cure Parkinson’s Trust and Cancer Research UK.

[Mr George Howarth]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given the context of the Bill, do you not think that the use of the term “shroud waving” is at the very least inappropriate?

Anglo-Vietnamese Relations

Debate between George Howarth and Alistair Burt

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Caton, to serve under your chairmanship. I echo the remarks of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) in thanking the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) for this debate this morning. One of my happiest memories of the right hon. Gentleman is that I took part in his by-election when I was the Conservative candidate’s parliamentary friend. That by-election in his area gave me the chance to meet all the Conservative voters personally on several occasions during the three weeks, so we had a happy time without disturbing the pundits too much with a surprise result. It was the start of a very warm friendship.

[Mr George Howarth]

All several hundred of them fondly remember the Minister.

[Alistair Burt]

I am very grateful to them, including the Earl of Derby.

I thank the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire for her comments, and her engagement with and her usual passionate commitment to human rights. I also thank the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for her comments. We cover some similar ground, so I will make some general remarks, but I hope to cover most of the points that hon. Members have made. I begin with an apology on behalf of the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) who is not here because he is representing the Foreign Secretary at the Anzac day service at Westminster Abbey. The House will understand why he is not with us, and I will discuss the debate with him to ensure that he is fully aware of the matters raised.

The right hon. Member for Knowsley is chair of the all-party group on Vietnam. He has a close interest in our relations with Vietnam, and his comments reflected that. I thank him for his courtesy in providing me with a copy of his speech, which helped in preparing my response. The debate has raised several topics that are familiar to those who follow issues in Vietnam and comes at a significant time. Vietnam and, indeed, the wider south-east Asian region are becoming increasingly important to the United Kingdom, as evidenced by the policy of the previous Government, and now by that of this Government.

The Prime Minister was in the region at the beginning of April and, as we speak, the Foreign Secretary is, as has been said, in Vietnam as part of a trip that will also take in Singapore and Brunei for the EU-ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting. That visit is the first by a Foreign Secretary in 17 years. Included in his programme are talks with his Vietnamese counterpart, Mr Pham Binh Minh, and the Minister of Public Security, Mr Tran Dai Quang, with the aim of progressing UK-Vietnam relations. The trip also includes meetings with representatives from the international business and development communities, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be pleased to catch up with hon. Members on his return.

Vietnam is a dynamic country with a booming economy. It has been recognised by the National Security Council as a tier 3 emerging power, and is the world’s second largest exporter of rice and coffee. It is set to continue on that growth path, with the World Bank predicting 6% average growth in gross domestic product over the next two years. It has a population of more than 90 million, with a median age below 30 and a 90% literacy rate. With that projected economic growth and those demographics, the opportunities for the United Kingdom will continue to grow in conjunction with growth in Vietnam. We have seen a similar pattern in other countries in the Asia Pacific region and recognise that the world’s economic and political centre of gravity has shifted south and east. We have responded by implementing what we call the network shift, with a significant increase in resources throughout our missions in the region, including additional staff for our missions in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. That will enable us to strengthen our relations with Vietnam to ensure that there is mutual benefit.

I am sure hon. Members are aware that the UK-Vietnam bilateral relationship is already deep and strong. As part of the National Security Council’s emerging powers initiative, Vietnam is among the six ASEAN countries prioritised as an emerging power. That initiative has enabled us to transform our relationship with Vietnam, using the foundation of the UK-Vietnam strategic partnership, which was signed in 2010. The partnership covers all areas of the bilateral relationship: political and diplomatic co-operation, global and regional issues, education, trade and investment, security and defence, socio-economic development, and people-to-people links.

A key area of opportunity is co-operation on education. There are already more than 7,000 Vietnamese students in the UK, and we are proud that young people in that ambitious country see the standards and opportunities of a British education as key to their success. The right hon. Gentleman referred specifically to education. The British Council there is supporting vocational education, skills training and higher education. UK universities and colleges, as well as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, are running joint programmes with Vietnamese universities. We are working to establish an international-standard state university in Da Nang. A number of UK private sector players, including British University Vietnam, have set up in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

The English language is at the heart of our education offer. Seven thousand children, teens and adults study English at the British Council’s Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City teaching centres every year. The British Council also trains 500 Government officials. It has set up a free website to offer support for English lessons, and ideas and inspiration for educators for more than 5,000 teacher members. Intel has set itself a target of a computer for every Vietnamese household by 2020. Thanks to its work with the British Council and the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training, each will come uploaded with fun, English-learning educational resources in line with Vietnam’s English curriculum.

We can do more. The Prime Minister announced during his visit to Indonesia that the UK has set aside new money to stimulate the expansion of educational links and collaborative programmes across the region, including with Vietnam, with increased student and academic flows in both directions. We are calling that the UK-ASEAN knowledge partnership. We will work with Vietnam and our other regional partners to map the areas of mutual interest. For the 10 ASEAN countries, there is seed money of £200,000, and we can begin to create more opportunities, with a value of up to £3 million, for individuals and institutions.