Winterbourne View Hospital and the Transforming Care Programme

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Ms McVey. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) for having secured today’s debate, and for the depth of her commitment to the rights of disabled and autistic people over many years.

The 10th anniversary of the screening of the “Panorama” documentary that showed the horrific abuse of vulnerable residents at Winterbourne View near Bristol is a time for sober reflection. We remember the victims and their families, and the horrific trauma they suffered. What happened at Winterbourne View was sickening, and it was chilling that despite safeguarding concerns having been raised several times previously, it took an undercover documentary to prompt urgent action. The Winterbourne View scandal should have led to a genuine transformation of care and support for people with learning disabilities and autistic people. The scandal revealed a system that was not fit for purpose; a level of institutionalisation that resulted in a dehumanising culture; and huge problems with transparency and accountability. The Government acknowledged that hospitals were not the right place for people with learning disabilities and autistic people to be living, and promised to end that practice.

However, in a terrible failure, not only are around 2,000 autistic people and people with learning disabilities still trapped in inappropriate hospitals, there have been further appalling scandals. At Mendip House, eight years after Winterbourne View, we saw the taunting, bulling and abuse of autistic people. At Whorlton Hall, nine years after Winterbourne View, we saw a disturbingly similar revelation of horrific abuse in a private hospital behind closed doors. There have been many, many individual stories of families whose loved ones end up in assessment and treatment units under the Mental Health Act 1983, who battle—sometimes for years—to get them out, and live in fear for their health and safety every single day as they do so.

The failures are all the more distressing because we know what good care and support in the community looks like, from examples such as Alderwood LLA in Northamptonshire. It runs small homes for autistic people, and all of its services are rated by the Care Quality Commission as good or outstanding. I have spoken many times in this place about my constituent Matthew Garnett, who as a 15-year-old was sectioned and taken to an ATU. I supported Matthew’s parents as they battled for months to get him out of hospitals. With his parents, I visited him in hospital—at St Andrew’s in Northampton—where I was shocked both by how ill Matthew had become, particularly how much weight he had lost, and by the attitude of some of the staff who were responsible for his care. St Andrew’s has been found by the CQC to have multiple failings in several different inspections. Later, I visited Matthew in his new home, provided by Alderwood, where he was almost unrecognisable—a healthy, happy young man, enjoying football and trips to the seaside, volunteering in his local community, requiring a tiny fraction of the medication he had been prescribed in hospital, and living life to the full.

One of the keys to Alderwood’s success was undoubtedly the training and skill of their staff, who are highly specialised in communicating with, and supporting, autistic people. They were able to see such huge improvements in Matthew’s health in part because they were able to communicate with him in ways that reduced, rather than exacerbated, his anxiety. I pay tribute to the campaigning work of Matthew’s mother, Isabelle Garnett, who in recent years has used her family’s terrible experience to campaign under the banner of Homes Not Hospitals. Matthew should never have been in St Andrew’s, yet the Government continue to funnel millions of pounds into inappropriate hospital-based accommodation —places where health and wellbeing deteriorates, where people are physically and chemically restrained or put into seclusion, where contact with friends and family is limited, and where patient advocacy is in short supply.

The Government’s failure to deliver transforming care has been due to a lack of political will. It is not enough to just close hospital beds if the funding is not available to deliver homes in communities. It is not enough to expect that people will not be admitted to hospital if there is such limited support available for people with learning disabilities and autistic people in communities that many families find that they are unable to cope, and face crises of mental health or increasingly challenging behaviour.

The failure to deliver transforming care is also fundamentally linked to the failure to deliver social care reform more widely, and to the paucity of the Government’s vision. We need a sustainably funded social care system that enables everyone with support needs—whether they are working-age adults or older people—to live as independently as possible with dignity and love, but the Government have dragged their feet, ignoring social care for more than a decade.

We have heard far too many statements of outrage and warm words from the Government; we need action. I call on the Minister to put in place the funding needed to deliver homes not hospitals for people with learning disabilities and autistic people, and to stop funnelling NHS money into inappropriate private hospital placements, which so often do more harm than good.

Covid-19: Social Care

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered social care and the covid-19 outbreak.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and to speak in this debate in person—for me, for the first time in the Boothroyd Room. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate, and to my co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), for co-sponsoring it.

The APPG on adult social care has a working group of representatives from the social care sector, including not-for-profit care home providers, sector-wide bodies such as the National Care Forum and Skills for Care, and people with lived experience of managing their own care at home. From the start of the covid-19 pandemic, the working group met weekly to discuss the experience on the ground of each of the membership organisations and the individuals represented on it. I am also grateful to the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), and to the Minister herself for meeting the working group during that time.

Week by week, those meetings gave a vital live insight into the multiple devastating impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on the care sector. They often provided a reality check against what the Government were announcing. The right hon. Member for Ashford and I felt strongly that it was important to bring the weight of this collective experience before the House so that it may inform urgent discussions about the future of social care.

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge the diversity of the social care sector, as there is always a tendency to focus mainly on care homes for older adults when we talk about social care. It also encompasses care homes for working-age adults and people who receive all types of care in their own homes and in supported housing.

The covid-19 pandemic took a dreadful toll across the whole sector. Perhaps the most shocking figure, well reported, is that between March and June 2020, 40% of all deaths from covid-19 were care home residents. The deaths have continued, with a further 12,000 deaths of care home residents since January 2021 alone. More than 34,000 people with dementia have died from covid-19, and tens of thousands more have seen their condition deteriorate at an increased pace due to limited support and contact with loved ones. Those figures mask a human story: the tens of thousands of families grieving the loss of a precious loved one, remembering the full richness of the lives they lived, and the thousands more families grieving the loss of precious time that they cannot get back with loved ones whose dementia has deteriorated.

At least 850 social care workers have died due to covid-19. That figure is likely to be higher given the lack of availability of testing to confirm diagnosis in the early weeks of the pandemic. The vast majority of the care workers are women, many are black, Asian and from other ethnic minorities, and many had dedicated their lives to looking after other people. Each one leaves a grieving family, and we must acknowledge their service and sacrifice.

The figures also belie the diversity of the social care sector, because they do not include the impact on people receiving care in their homes, who were often vulnerable to coronavirus infection from carers visiting multiple homes. Sometimes, they felt unable to receive care at all, due to the risk of infection, resulting in untold hardship and difficulty. The figures also do not include the impact on unpaid carers, often left isolated and unsupported, or the impact on people living in unregulated supported housing.

Each week, the APPG working group heard of the problems accessing personal protective equipment and covid-19 testing. Providers were operating in the dark, with their hands tied behind their back, unable to know who was carrying covid-19 in their care homes and without access to full infection control measures.

Covid-19 ripped through many care homes, as the access to testing and urgent need to free up hospital beds for covid patients meant that undiagnosed covid-positive patients continued to be discharged from hospitals into care homes. The completely unacceptable blanket use of “do not resuscitate” orders for care home residents further speaks to the disregard for the most vulnerable members of our communities at the start of the pandemic.

I pay tribute to social care workers who stepped up to do extraordinary things in these horrendous circumstances —staff who moved into care homes, leaving their families in order to avoid the risk that they were a source of infection; staff who, again and again, held the hands of the residents in their care as they lay dying, when their loved ones were unable to be there; and staff who went out of their way to facilitate FaceTime calls to maintain contact with relatives who could not visit. Social care staff must be recognised for their immense contribution during the pandemic.

I will dwell for a moment on the mental health impacts of the pandemic, in the light of the situation that I have described. It is easy to forget that care homes are communities. Staff look after the same residents week after week, and relationships become like family. Many staff who watched residents and colleagues dying from coronavirus have experienced the trauma of bereavement many times over during the past year. I recall listening to one social care worker describing the first time in many weeks that residents with dementia in her home were able to come together for a music therapy session. One resident, looking around the room, said, “Where is everyone?” not understanding that so many residents had passed away. It is heartbreaking.

Contrary to the words of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, there was no protective ring around care homes or other vulnerable residents receiving social care at the start of the pandemic. The need for urgent reform of social care has been known for a long time. We have had more than a decade of detailed cross-party work on social care. The funding gaps are quantified. The international best practice is well understood. The range of options available for reform are known. What has been lacking is the political will at the very top of Government to deliver it.

Despite the Prime Minister promising in July 2019 that a plan was ready and that he would begin cross-party talks, there has been no progress nearly two years on. The Government have published the NHS White Paper, which barely mentions social care. We are told that there will be a 10-year plan for social care, but for all those working in social care, and relying on social care day by day, reform is long overdue. They are struggling to understand why the Government have dragged their feet so much for so long, for a sector that has such a profound impact on quality of life for so many people every single day.

From the perspective of the APPG working group, what are the priorities for the Government as we reflect on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on social care? First, the promised public inquiry on the covid-19 pandemic must include a separate strand on social care, so that the lessons can be learned for future pandemic planning and social care can be better protected the next time we face such a terrible challenge.

Secondly, the Government must start the long-promised cross-party talks. Social care needs long-term reform, based on cross-party agreement. That will not be achieved by the Government announcing plans at short notice and simply expecting everyone to vote for them. It needs a process, properly resourced and entered into in good faith, to secure that agreement.

Thirdly, it is vital that co-production is at the heart of social care reform. Social care reform must be delivered in partnership with those who live and breathe social care every single day as residents in care homes, people who manage their own care at home, older people and working-age adults, social care workers, unpaid carers and local authorities. The Government must set out a process for co-producing reform with those who have the most knowledge and experience to contribute.

Fourthly, reform must address pay and terms and conditions for social care workers. Social care work is highly skilled and demanding and can be very rewarding, but there is not a route to social care reform that avoids the issue of pay. As well as making a huge difference to the lives of millions of people every day, social care contributes £46.2 billion to the UK economy each year. However, in many parts of the country it is still possible to earn more at the local supermarket than in social care. That cannot continue.

I pay tribute to Unison for its work in establishing the ethical care charter, which guarantees domiciliary care workers the real living wage, and an end to zero-hours contracts and 15-minute visits. It has been adopted by many councils, including Southwark, which covers part of my constituency. It not only benefits care workers, but helps build resilience in the social care system. This should not be left to the discretion of individual councils. There is a chronic shortage of social care workers, and the trauma that many have experienced during the pandemic is likely to make the situation worse. Social care must be seen as a rewarding career in which everyone is paid a decent wage. There has been no commitment from the Government to increase pay for social care workers, and I call on the Minister to change that urgently.

On long-term reform, the Government’s proposals must be comprehensive. In the discussion of social care, all too often there is a failure to acknowledge the diversity of the sector and a dominant focus on care for older people, which ignores the needs of working-age adults, who account for almost half of all spending on adult social care. It also ignores the unregulated provision in which much care and support is delivered, and the needs of unpaid carers, who save the economy a colossal £132 billion each year.

We need a social care system that makes high-quality care and support available to everyone who needs it across a wide range of different settings. Although I hope the Minister will respond on the urgent need for long-term reform, there are also some very pressing short-term concerns that are important for the social care sector right now. The first is the question of additional funding for infection control. Social care providers have faced huge additional costs as a consequence of the need to use personal protective equipment and employ additional staff to cover for sickness absence, or to avoid agency staff travelling between care homes. Despite the anticipated release of covid restrictions in June, it is highly likely that the need for enhanced infection control in care homes, and for domiciliary care workers, will continue. However, the current funding allocation runs out in June. Can the Minister confirm whether ongoing funding will be provided for infection control in care homes beyond June?

Secondly, many care providers have raised with me the very restrictive nature of the 14-day quarantine requirement for residents who leave care homes, which means that if a resident leaves a care home, even for only a few hours, they have to quarantine for 14 days. Having entirely failed to protect care homes from coronavirus infections at the start of the pandemic, the Government are now applying a much more restrictive standard to care homes as restrictions are lifted elsewhere. Can the Minister please explain under what legislation the guidance could be enforced? What are the implications for the deprivation of liberty?

Importantly, what will be the implications for care home residents who wish to vote in local elections on 6 May? Requiring residents to isolate for 14 days after attending a polling station will surely deter many from exercising their democratic right to vote. In anticipation of the guidance, there has been no dedicated effort to encourage residents to vote by post, or to make them aware of the implications of it, and it is now too late to sign up for postal votes. Will the Minister consider moving to an approach based on testing, vaccination, social distancing and PPE in order to enable care home residents to leave their care homes for voting and other essential purposes?

In conclusion, I thank each and every social care worker for their immense contribution during the past year of the coronavirus pandemic, and I remember each worker, care home resident or vulnerable adult whose life has been lost. I pay tribute to the scientists and NHS workers who have delivered the vaccine roll-out with such rapid speed, so that we can now see the beginning of the end of this terrible pandemic. However, acknowledging the immense contribution of the social care sector at the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic can be done properly only by making a firm commitment on the funding and reform that social care so desperately needs, and I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to do that today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate today. It has been a reflective debate and one full of immense experience and knowledge of the social care sector, and that is very welcome.

In the couple of minutes that I have, I will push back slightly on some of the Minister’s comments. It was disappointing that she mentioned additional funding, PPE and testing and talked only about the things that the Government did later on in the pandemic—the very deep trauma experienced by the social care sector with regard to a shortage of PPE and lack of access to testing was in the early months. I feel that, by failing to mention it, she does a disservice to those workers and residents in the social care sector who really suffered the impact of the Government’s failure to plan ahead of time for a pandemic and their failure to deliver and get swiftly off the blocks when the pandemic hit.

The point that I would like to make about the health and social care White Paper is that it talks about integration, but without talking about social care reform, and that cannot happen. We have an NHS, which is a well organised national system, founded on a statutory basis; and we have social care, which is not a system but a fragmented and diverse set of organisations and individual families all struggling and all brought to breaking point by the lack of funding, the lack of organisation and the lack of overall structure and accountability.

If there is to be integration, it has to be integration on the basis of parity of esteem, and that involves the Government getting to grips with the question of reform. I urge the Minister just to take seriously the voice of the APPG and the sector, to continue to engage and, most importantly, to start a structured process for cross-party talks, so that together we can deliver the change that the social care sector so desperately needs.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered social care and the covid-19 outbreak.

Black Maternal Healthcare and Mortality

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I pay tribute to Tinuke and Clo for their vital work campaigning on black maternal health under the banner Five X More . I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for sharing her devastating experience so bravely and powerfully.

The statistics on maternal mortality are truly shocking. Skin colour should have no correlation with maternal health, yet in the UK, black women are over four times more likely than white women to die during pregnancy or childbirth; women of mixed heritage are three times more likely; and Asian women are twice as likely. What is even more shocking is that the gap has been widening—not for a short period of time, but for more than a decade.

The factors contributing to maternal mortality rates are complex and multiple. Social and economic factors have a strong influence on underlying health. Pressures such as insecure work, low income and fear of losing employment force some women into unsafe situations. Implicit racial bias in healthcare can lead to assumptions being made and some women not being listened to. The extent to which women are listened to, respected and empowered throughout pregnancy and childbirth has a vital bearing on ultimate outcomes.

The most shocking aspect is that every organisation concerned with maternal mortality says that more research is needed to understand why black women are at greater risk of death. After a decade of increasing black maternal health disparity, we still need more action to understand why there is such appalling racial healthcare inequality, so that action can be taken to stop it. That means better data collection, clear and measurable targets, and more funding for research.

We have to ask why those appalling statistics have been of so little concern to the Government that they have failed to undertake any major inquiry or fund significant research. There is a gender and ethnicity gap in medical research, and that must change. The Government must now commission an independent review of the ethnic disparity in maternal mortality, looking in detail at the data and capturing the lived experience of black women, Asian women and women of mixed heritage.

I want to highlight in particular some of the things that are known and on which action could be taken right away to make a difference, even as further research is commissioned. We know that women from black and Asian backgrounds are more likely to be key workers in frontline roles and physical roles such as social care. Many of those women are on low pay and in insecure work. Maternity rights and health and safety protections at work must be extended to all women, whatever their employment status or job role. It must not be the case that fear of losing pay or losing work forces pregnant women to risk their health, either through the work itself or through being unable to attend essential healthcare appointments.

The barriers to accessing healthcare that face some black and Asian women, particularly asylum seekers and women with no recourse to public funds, must be removed. In maternity care, relationships really matter. Women’s experiences during pregnancy and childbirth are far too inconsistent across the country, but often, the best care is delivered by community-based midwifery teams, working across both community and hospital settings and enabling women to get to know and trust the midwives who will eventually deliver their babies. Dealing with a birth is not like other forms of healthcare. Women in childbirth should feel that they are equal partners with midwives, doctors and the wider professional team to deliver their baby safely.

Finally, the racial disparities in maternal health further serve to underline the nonsense of the report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. That report straightforwardly denies the lived experience of many black people and people of colour living in the UK. Addressing structural racism, shown so clearly in the health data we have been discussing today, must start with listening to and taking seriously the experiences of black people and people of colour in the UK, not denying those experiences. That report will not even help to get off the blocks the work that needs to be done to iron out and remove racial disparities in maternal health.

Social Care Reform

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab) [V]]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing this important debate and I pay tribute to her for her commitment to and advocacy for social care over many years.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate today as a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care. Throughout most of the covid-19 pandemic, I have met on a weekly basis members of the APPG’s working group, which includes not-for-profit care home providers, home care providers and people with lived experience of receiving adult social care.

These meetings provided a valuable insight in real time into the impact that the pandemic has had on the social care workforce. I have to say that, very often, the first-hand experiences reported to me bore no relationship to the Government’s statements on social care. There was no protective ring around care homes; residents and staff contracted coronavirus and died, because they could not access personal protective equipment or testing. Domiciliary care was completely neglected. There were no protocols on managing infection risk for staff who provide care to multiple people in their own homes. People who manage their own care at home could not get access to advice or PPE. There was not the financial support to enable care workers to self-isolate when necessary, without their having to worry about how they would put food on the table.

Throughout the pandemic, the social care workforce carried on looking after our most frail and vulnerable loved ones, consoling people who did not understand why family members were unable to visit, holding hands, and comforting people as they passed away.

In responding to my written parliamentary question on whether the Government would recognise the contribution of the social care workforce during the pandemic with a payment, as the Welsh Labour Government have done, the Minister said that the Government had issued the care badge. A badge does not put food on the table, help to pay the rent, compensate for lost income due to illness or self-isolation, or help with the stress and trauma that many care workers have endured.

The pressures on the social care sector were well documented before the covid-19 pandemic, and the pandemic has only made them worse. These pressures are evident across the diversity of the sector: just 4% of local authority social care directors are confident that they have the budget to meet their statutory duties; an increasing number of contracts are being handed back to councils; there are autistic people and people with learning disabilities who are still incarcerated in hospitals because there is no funding for community provision; 1 million people are eligible for care but do not receive any at all; and there are many more people whose care package does not meet the full range of their needs.

Social care has been urgently in need of reform for a decade. There is not a route to social care reform that does not address pay for social care staff. It is a shocking and unacceptable reality that in many parts of the country it is possible to earn more in the local supermarket than it is in caring for the most vulnerable members of the community. That situation must change.

There has been no lack of detailed cross-party work on the options for social care reform. Select Committees, APPGs and independent commissions have all explored the options and brought forward proposals. The lack of delivery is the consequence of a lack of political will. That has to change. We owe it to the workforce, who have been through so much this past year, not to delay any longer.

Covid-19 Vaccine: Take-up Rates in London

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) on securing this important debate.

I put on record my thanks to everyone who is working to deliver the vaccination roll-out in Dulwich and West Norwood, from the scientists who have worked to deliver safe and effective vaccines at such a rapid speed, the nurses, doctors and public health teams who have organised the delivery to the volunteers who have made vaccination centres such welcoming, joyful places.

The vaccination programme is our great hope at the end of this difficult year of coronavirus, but it is as true locally as it is globally that none of us is safe until all of us are safe. Coronavirus has already shown itself to be a disease of inequality, thriving on pre-existing ill health, low paid occupations and overcrowded housing, and affecting people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities much more severely.

Previous studies of flu vaccination uptakes have identified ethnicity and deprivation as factors correlating negatively with take-up. It was entirely predictable that the inequalities of covid-19 could be further exacerbated by vaccine hesitancy within communities and occupations that were already at a high risk of serious illness and death. That is what we now see. Last week, more than a quarter of over-80s in Lambeth and Southwark had still not received their first jab, and while 80% of white residents over 65 have now been vaccinated, the rate among African and Caribbean residents was below 45%.

The reasons for hesitancy are complex, but they are not mysterious: well-documented examples of appalling, unethical medical experimentation have led to understandable fear and mistrust in some communities; mild side effects of a jab, which might require a day off work, are a deterrent if there is no guaranteed sick pay; the structural racism that some communities have encountered has eroded their trust in institutions, including the NHS, and peer-to-peer communication of anti-vax misinformation on WhatsApp and Facebook is very potent. All those factors and more may lead people to be hesitant to come forward to take the vaccine.

Addressing people’s deep-seated fears and concerns requires time and resources. I pay tribute to some of the very effective work being done at a local level in Lambeth and Southwark to address vaccine hesitancy, including the leadership being shown by black and Asian councillors. Those efforts are driving up vaccination rates week by week, but our councils urgently need more resources to deliver that work. When the Government recently invited a select list of councils to bid for additional funding to address vaccine hesitancy, Lambeth and Southwark were not on the list. This is, frankly, inexplicable.

The vaccination programme is rightly being celebrated across the country, but it will not have been a complete success as long as disparities remain in the vaccination rate between different communities according to race, income or occupation. If that is allowed to persist, covid-19 will become a disease of inequality to an even greater extent, with some communities enjoying protection, while those in others still fall ill and die. That is not a reality that we can possibly accept, so I urge the Government to take this issue much more seriously and fund our councils properly to combat vaccine hesitancy.

Covid-19 Update

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. When we see the community transmission of a variant of concern, we send in extra testing, and sequence all the positives to try to find any other variant of concern nearby. That means going door to door to offer testing, and enhancing contact tracing so that, for anybody who tests positive, we ensure that we test all those they have been in contact with and, in some cases, the contacts of those contacts in turn. That is currently under way in a number of locations, in targeted areas. Of course, I speak regularly with the Welsh Government to ensure that we take the same sort of approach over the border.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab) [V]]

Vaccine hesitancy is highest among black, Asian and minority ethnic residents, and tackling it is vital to stop the existing covid-19 health inequalities widening and deepening further. My constituency has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the country yet neither of my local councils, Lambeth and Southwark, was included on the seemingly arbitrary list of councils invited to bid for additional funding to address vaccine hesitancy. Can the Secretary of State explain why, and will he commit to working with the Communities Secretary to look again urgently at that decision?

[Matt Hancock]

It is the Minister for the vaccine roll-out, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon, who is leading those efforts. It is obviously an incredibly important subject, because it matters to us all.

Covid-19

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken in this debate. Taken together, the contributions have served as an important reminder of just how far the frontline of the fight against this pandemic stretches. I would highlight in particular the passionate speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who highlighted the plight of small businesses across her constituency, especially in the hospitality sector, and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), who spoke about the urgent issue of vaccine distribution to nations in the global south.

We owe our deepest gratitude to all those who spend their days and nights caring for others, working to keep our local economies functioning, our communities safe and our public services working, including our NHS and care workers, who continue to work long, gruelling hours, struggling for months without adequate PPE in a heroic response to the virus. Time and time again, our teachers, support staff and childcare workers create safe and supportive environments for children to thrive, even under such huge pressures. Other key workers, including many on short-term or zero-hours contracts, work to keep the country running. Testing site workers and contact tracers, often under-trained and ill-equipped, have done a huge amount of work, as have so many others across the country during this difficult time.

I know that every Member across the House wants to support and recognise all those working on the frontline of coronavirus. It is essential that their commitment and sacrifice is met with a fair, effective and far more joined-up approach than what the Government are currently delivering. That is the minimum they deserve.

Labour pays tribute to the work carried out by doctors and scientists across the world to develop vaccines against covid-19. Every Member across the House will have shared in the jubilation as Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer covid-19 jab following its clinical approval last week.

In the meantime, as the vaccination programme is rolled out, there is still a huge task to reduce transmission. Labour has warned for months of the need for an effective test, track and trace system, but unfortunately the Government failed to use the window provided by the second national lockdown to fix the Serco test and trace system, and it remains an area where they are failing.

Labour is clear that our local mayors and council leaders should be in the driving seat to deliver an effective localised test, track and trace system. Our local councils have been a lifeline for so many during this difficult time, and are crucial not only in facing the virus down, but in rebuilding and recovering from the pandemic, yet too often some parts of the UK are left behind by the Government. On too many occasions, local leaders have not been given a seat at the table while the national Serco test and trace system flounders. Local responses will very according to the prevalence and transmission rate of the virus, but local leaders must know clearly what is expected of them and must be provided with the funding to deliver for the communities that they have been elected to serve.

The combination of Serco test and trace and the three-tier system failed to limit the spread of disease in September and October, and we ended up in a second national lockdown. Nobody wants a repeat of that. That is why we are calling on the Government to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated, that systems are reformed and strengthened and that no area is left behind.

This afternoon, we learned that London and parts of Essex and Hertfordshire will be placed into tier 3 on Wednesday. That is devastating news for many businesses, driven by alarming rates of disease transmission. The measures are sadly necessary, but they will succeed only if the Government work constructively with local leaders and put in place the right measures to support businesses and those who need to self-isolate.

We have seen the Government’s response too often being driven by who they know, not who is best placed to deliver. Multimillion-pound contracts have been handed to a small number of large firms, many of which are not integrated into our local communities and are not beholden to the same standards of scrutiny as Government Departments or local authorities. Not only that, but outsourced contracts and the cronyism too often associated with them have marred the Government’s response. That must be addressed.

Today, we learned of yet another example: Fleetwood Strategy, a brand-new company whose founder worked on the Tories’ election campaign, which was handed a £124,000 contract with no competition. We need much more transparency and more proof that experienced and qualified British businesses are being openly engaged. That is absolutely crucial for a joined-up and well-co-ordinated covid-19 response and for restoring the trust that is sorely lacking.

The Government must also see our schools, teachers and support staff as an indispensable part of our communities. Schools must be properly supported, with the right measures in place, including mass testing, to ensure that any spread of infection is swiftly contained. Local leaders in the north looked on in astonishment last week when councils in London and Essex were offered the mass testing for schools that they had been denied. The same councils in London and Essex were in turn bewildered at the lack of support provided for them to deliver the tests that they had been allocated. There are still schools struggling to access laptops for children who do not have them, so that they can learn from home when they need to self-isolate, at the same time as many children are being sent home due to infections in school or staff shortages. The Children’s Commissioner, Ofsted and others have been clear that covid-19 has widened the disadvantage gap between children. The failure to ensure that every child has the basic equipment they need to be able to continue their education remotely when needed is a source of huge anger and frustration in many communities, and that, combined with the failure to roll out the catch-up tutoring programme in any meaningful way, means that the Government are allowing coronavirus to compound educational disadvantage.

Tackling covid-19 is a huge global challenge. Appallingly, the UK has the worst death rate in Europe and the deepest recession of any G7 country as a consequence, so the Government must now learn the lessons from other countries. The Government’s response must be far more joined up. Countries that have managed the most effective infection control introduced locally led contact tracing, deeply embedded in communities. Ensuring that people who need to self-isolate do so means putting in place income support so that no one has to choose between doing the right thing for public health and putting food on the table However, we are still in a position where local authorities across England feel disconnected from central Government and where the national contact tracing system is still not anywhere near locally integrated enough to curb the spread of infection effectively.

All of us want the response to covid to be successful and all of us are unequivocally delighted at the news of our scientists’ success in developing effective vaccines, but we still face very grave challenges. That is why Labour has proposed overhauling the failing support for self-isolation. The Government’s own chief scientific adviser has said that testing

“only matters if people isolate as well”.

The Government must expand eligibility for the £500 test and trace support payment to users of the NHS covid-19 app and reduce the isolation period by using rapid testing. They must urgently conduct and publish an assessment of the financial barriers to self-isolation, including the level of statutory sick pay. They must end the top-down centralised model of test, trace and isolate once and for all, putting local teams in charge, and they must ensure routine testing for all high-risk workplaces and high-transmission areas. For our national response to work, a more connected and community-based response is crucial. I urge the Government to listen today and meet that challenge head-on.

We can all look forward to the vaccination roll-out. It is vital that everyone who is offered a vaccine takes it and protects themself and those closest to them, but we also know that the roll-out of the approved vaccines will take months, and that still, every single day, hundreds of people across the UK are dying from covid, and many more are suffering from its longer-term effects. We cannot and must not continue on the same path, with the Government clinging to outsourced contracts that have failed time and again to deliver. The Government must fix Track and Trace, support people to do the right thing, help vital sectors of our economy such as hospitality and the performing arts to survive beyond the pandemic, and work with our councils and communities to break the stranglehold of this virus and enable the recovery to begin.

Covid-19

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

As this dreadful pandemic continues week by week, we cannot allow ourselves for a moment to be desensitised by the numbers. In the last seven days alone, 2,909 people have died from covid-19 in the UK. Each one leaves behind grieving family and friends; my thoughts are with them. I pay tribute to everyone working in our NHS and social care, key workers in retail and distribution, postal workers, community organisations and many others working through the long, gruelling slog of coronavirus.

None of us debating coronavirus in this House is arguing to score points. The focus of this important debate, challenge and scrutiny is to save lives. That is important, because in the UK we are in the devastating situation of having both the worst coronavirus death rate in Europe and the deepest economic recession of any country in the G7. Scrutiny and accountability matter, and I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) highlighted the exhaustion and burn-out of NHS staff in his constituency, and the risk to NHS staffing levels. However, his neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), gave him a clue about the reasons for that, with the impact of NHS cuts on people’s resilience and capability to cope with coronavirus.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) raised the devastating impact of coronavirus on black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and their lack of participation in vaccine trials, calling for urgent action to address that. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark) highlighted the devastating impact on families with loved ones in care homes who are unable to visit them at present. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) argued for the urgent need for action to tackle misinformation from fake news on social media. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) spoke powerfully, from her own experience, of NHS emergency planning. The hon. Members for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) both raised gaps in the Government’s provision of economic support in relation to coronavirus.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) spoke about the woeful failure of Ministers to answer questions and inquiries from MPs, which is vital at this time. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) highlighted the urgent issue of access to testing for home care workers, and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) spoke passionately about the national scrubs crisis and, again, the urgent need for Government action.

Today is a day on which the step change that we need to see from the Government is clear. The National Audit Office has delivered its report on pandemic procurement, and it makes for uncomfortable reading. At best, the findings expose shambolic incompetence, with documents missing and no clear trail of accountability. At worst, there may be deliberate attempts by the Government to withhold information and cover their tracks while wasting public money and awarding lucrative contracts to friends and donors. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the Government must seriously clean up their procurement act in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

This debate is about covid, the many difficult challenges that it poses and how we as a country might overcome them. It is clear that the Government’s crony-riddled, incompetent approach to outsourcing vital public services has significantly undermined the response. Nowhere is the impact of that illustrated more clearly or worryingly than in contact tracing. It is as clear as day that the Government’s national contact tracing system is not working. Labour has brought concerns about that to the House many times, as the system has consistently failed to meet the 80% target required for it to be effective, and the performance trend in recent weeks has got worse, not better.

When the Government announced the newest lockdown, the Opposition urged them to take the time to fix the contact tracing system, but that has still not happened. Last week’s figures showed that the system was failing, as 40% of close contacts were not reached—half the proportion needed effectively to break the chain of transmission. Labour, along, I am sure, with everyone in the House, is unequivocally delighted about the promising news on vaccines, but the roll-outs will take some time, and in the short term there is no silver bullet. We still need an effective, localised contact tracing system. We also need urgent action to alleviate the devastating isolation of care home residents. Today, I met several care home providers, who spoke about the huge undertaking that rolling out visitor testing would mean for them, and expressed scepticism about the resources that the Government were offering to enable that roll-out from just 20 care homes at present to all within only a few weeks.

Across the country, people are sacrificing so much to do their part in beating coronavirus. The least they can expect is that the Government are doing everything that they can to fix it. Instead, little has changed over the past few weeks. The Government have not made any attempt to review their outsourced Serco and Sitel-led national system. They have not offered any more support to local communities, and they have not taken the practical steps they could take to improve the system and help it reach more people effectively.

The Government do not need to look far for practical examples of how to deliver a better system. They could look at the Welsh Labour Government’s localised, insourced contact tracing programme, which has reached close to 90% of contacts. It could look to local councils across England, from Preston to Peterborough, which are working hard to pick up the pieces of the contacts missed by the national system, despite not being resourced to anything like the levels needed.

This failure on contact tracing is not just hampering our response to the pandemic; it is having heartbreaking consequences. Families have lost loved ones, as people who did not know that they were at risk of having contracted coronavirus continued to circulate in the community because they had not been contacted and told to self-isolate. The sheer chaos of the system has also had deeply distressing impacts. For example, one family who tragically lost a father from coronavirus were telephoned multiple times by the national track and trace system. Contacts being traced are not just names in a database. They are real people with real lives, and members of a community.

There is also a spatial dimension to contact tracing. It is not only about speaking to individuals in isolation, but about identifying patterns of infection that may lead to workplaces or particular types of accommodation. Public health teams who are embedded in their communities, as well as being experienced in infection control, are well placed to do this work. Labour would trust those at the heart of a community to lead contact tracing, and it is not too late to change this. No one will be happier than Labour Members if the Government curb their instinct to outsource their covid response by default, trust and resource public servants to deliver, and stop handing public money to Tory party friends and donors. We urge them to do so, because what comes next matters.

As increasing good news of a vaccine emerges, we must trust the values of community and public service over profit, and harness the talents of the British people. We should use those values and talents to build a national vaccine system. We want to work constructively with the Government in the national interest, but that requires a clear change of direction: rejection of cronyism and commitment to public service. I hope that the Minister will set out today how she plans to clean up the Government’s covid contracts calamity once and for all.

Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Services: Covid-19

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) on securing this important debate.

This year has been incredibly difficult and challenging for everyone working in our national health service, for the patients they serve and for the staff and volunteers at the many charities and community organisations that help to support patients and carry out critical research, including Breast Cancer Now, Breast Cancer UK, Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK. I pay tribute to them, and to every one of the staff who work in King’s College Hospital in my constituency for their incredibly hard work since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Our nurses, doctors, care assistants, allied health professionals, porters, cleaners and admin staff have all worked with extraordinary commitment in exceptionally challenging times.

Breast cancer is a devastating condition, and every year across the UK more than 50,000 women, as well as approximately 400 men, receive their first diagnosis of it. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and to my friend Paula Sherriff, the former Member for Dewsbury, for speaking publicly about their recent experience of diagnosis and treatment during coronavirus—an experience that is made all the more difficult by the restrictions on contact with friends and family, who are often so vital in providing comfort during a difficult time.

Although our NHS staff have worked so incredibly hard this year, as always, the coronavirus pandemic has exposed the impact of 10 years of austerity on our healthcare system. In many parts of the country, including my constituency, our NHS was not able simultaneously to care for patients impacted by coronavirus and to maintain the array of other critical services, including cancer screening. Our local hospital worked extraordinarily hard to maintain cancer treatment, but across the NHS the need to cope with the huge influx of coronavirus patients and prevent further infection spread, particularly among clinically vulnerable people, caused significant disruption to surgery pathways.

Many people also became concerned that GP surgeries and accident and emergency departments were not safe environments, and therefore they put off reporting concerning symptoms that might have been the first sign of cancer, including breast cancer. The breast screening programme was officially paused in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and effectively paused in England, in March. At the peak of the pandemic, there was a drop of approximately 70% in the number of cases of cancer being reported across the UK, with Breast Cancer Now estimating a drop of more than 100,000 referrals for breast cancer.

As we know, early diagnosis is key to obtaining the best possible outcomes for patients who are eventually diagnosed with cancer. As MPs, unfortunately I am sure that we are all aware of constituents whose diagnosis came much later than it should have done, because the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. However, even for those constituents who managed to receive a diagnosis, there have often been unacceptable waiting times for treatment that was urgently needed. The stress of knowing that urgent surgery is needed to remove breast cancer, but not having a firm appointment or timescale for such surgery, has been unbearable for a number of my constituents.

Exercise Cygnus clearly showed that the UK was hugely underprepared for a pandemic such as covid-19, but instead of learning the lessons from 2016, this Government buried them. That has resulted in unbearable strain on many parts of our NHS. Just a few days before the second national lockdown, I visited King’s College Hospital to thank the staff for their tremendous hard work and to discuss the preparations for the second wave of coronavirus. It was reassuring to hear about the detailed planning that has been carried out for the second wave, and about the focus on keeping non-coronavirus treatments and care going at this time, but we know that there is a backlog.

I want to end by highlighting the inequalities that already exist in gaining access to breast cancer treatment and screening, with black, Asian and minority ethnic residents far less likely to access screening and far more likely to end up with a late diagnosis. We urgently need a proactive programme to ensure that there is equal access to screening services, that this pandemic does not result in a further deepening of unequal access and that all breast cancer patients get access as soon as possible to the treatment and care they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I just do not recognise the picture that the hon. Lady has presented. We are investing at least £2.3 billion in mental health support and mental health provision. That investment translates to 345,000 children and young people who will be able to access mental health support via NHS-funded health services and school-based mental health support teams. Spending on children and young people’s mental health services is growing faster than the overall spend on mental health, which itself is growing faster than the overall NHS budget. Children and young people’s mental health is our priority, and we are showing that by investing in it. The picture that she paints is, I am afraid, completely not the case.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the NHS Test and Trace service.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the NHS Test and Trace service.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Care (Helen Whately)]

NHS Test and Trace launched in May. Four months later, more than 150,000 people who have tested positive for covid-19 have been contacted, and 450,000 of their contacts have been reached so that they can self-isolate. We have tested more than 7 million people at least once and many, such as care home workers, more than once. Rapid expansion brings with it challenges. Working with local authorities, we will continue to improve test and trace, as it is an important part of our armoury to defeat this virus.

[Helen Hayes]

As a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care, I meet weekly with a working group drawn from across the care sector. Providers on that group report that they are still experiencing delays in receiving weekly test results, still have no routine access to weekly testing for domiciliary care workers or staff working in supported living environments and urgently need regular testing for family members to alleviate the terrible isolation of care home residents from their loved ones. When will the care sector have all the access to testing that it needs on a reliable basis to stop the second wave of coronavirus delivering the utter tragedy and devastation of the first to the care sector?