Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Jake Berry Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

rose—

[Victoria Atkins]

I will just finish this point. We are bringing forward this legislation so that we stop the start from 2027. Future generations will not have that addiction to nicotine.

[Victoria Atkins]

Yes, I can assure the hon. Lady, because the illicit trade is often the greatest in the most deprived areas of the country, and I am about to develop exactly how we will help law enforcement. I very much understand the concerns across the House about ensuring that the illicit trade does not flourish.

[Sir Jake Berry]

Has my right hon. Friend seen the latest statistics that say twice as many schoolchildren smoke cannabis as smoke tobacco? It is already illegal—for all of us, not just children—to smoke cannabis. If a ban really worked, how can she explain those statistics? How can she show that this ban to stop people who are currently 15 will be different from the anti-drugs legislation that we already have?

[Victoria Atkins]

To be clear, is my right hon. Friend suggesting that we repeal the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, under which cannabis is prohibited? Although I have no experience of it, I understand that the consumption of marijuana also involves the consumption of tobacco and cigarette papers. The point is that we are trying to move away from the idea that current youngsters will be able to buy their cigarettes legally in shops from the age of 18 in 2027, precisely because we want to ensure that they can lead longer, healthier lives. In a moment I will come to some of the myths that the tobacco industry has put around about the impact of introducing age restrictions on cigarettes, which will be interesting evidence for those who are concerned about that.

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[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Until the early 2000s, every pub you walked into was filled with smoke. One in every four people in this country was a smoker. The last Labour Government banned smoking in public places, which had an enormous impact on the health of our nation. The following year, there were 1,200 fewer hospital admissions for heart attacks, according to the British Medical Journal. Since 2007, the number of people who smoke has been cut by almost a third. Our understanding of second-hand smoke grew, and there was a cultural change around where it was acceptable to smoke. Even at home, people went outside to smoke, instead of smoking in front of their children.

A study in Scotland found that whereas hospital admissions for children with asthma were increasing by 5% a year before the smoking ban, admissions were down by 18% in the three years following Labour’s legislation. In short, Labour helped to build a healthier society: smoking was down, the number of patients needing treatment was down, NHS beds were freed up and lives were saved. But there is more to do. During the 13 years when Labour was last in office, life expectancy was extended by three and a half years, but in the 14 years that the Conservatives have been in office, it has grown by just four months. For men, it is beginning to decline. We are falling into ill health earlier in life today than we were a decade ago, which is a shameful indication of our country’s decline.

What more motivation could this House need for once again taking seriously the health of our nation? Today, smoking remains a scourge on our society. Some 75,000 GP appointments every month are to deal with the impacts of smoking. The cost to our economy, after taxes, is £10 billion. Around 80,000 of our friends, neighbours and colleagues lose their lives to smoking every year. It is a lethal addiction, a scourge on society, an enormous burden on our NHS and a drag on our economy, and it is time to consign it to the dustbins of history. Let us act today so that the next generation of young people can live healthier, happier and longer lives than the generations before them.

Labour will give our wholehearted support to this Bill. In fact, we needed no persuasion. In an interview with The Times in January last year, I said that it was time for a New Zealand-style smoking ban. I argued that a progressive ban would have a transformational impact on the health of individuals, the health of the nation as a whole and the public finances.

After around two and a half years in this job, I am getting used to the Government nicking Labour’s policies. In the last year alone, the magpies opposite have swooped in on Labour’s NHS workforce plan, Labour’s plan to recruit dentists in the most under-served areas, Labour’s plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas giants, and Labour’s plan to abolish the non-dom tax status. Even so, I was shocked when I saw that the Conservative party—the party of Ken Clarke—is nicking the Labour party’s plan for a progressive ban on tobacco. Of all the policies that the Conservatives have adopted from the Labour party in the past few years, nothing shows our dominance in the battle of ideas more than this latest capitulation.

Where Labour leads, the Conservatives follow. Indeed, when I first floated this proposal, Conservative MPs called it “nanny state” and

“an attack on ordinary people and their culture”,

and I was accused of “health fascism”. What irony, when Conservative MPs are overseas today in Brussels, lining up with the European far right. Anyway, it is water off a duck’s back to me. I am delighted that just a few months later the Prime Minister announced this policy at the Conservative party conference, and that a Conservative Health Secretary has brought this progressive ban before Parliament today.

However, it seems that not every Conservative Member got the memo. It has been widely reported, and we have seen indications of it today, that there are still Members on the Conservative Benches—as many as 100, if we believe rebel Tory briefings to the media, although in our experience these Tory rebellions tend to evaporate when the moment comes—who resist the new interventionist consensus, who continue to fly the flag for small-state libertarianism, and who believe that the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister have surrendered to the lobbying of big health and those tyrants in Action on Smoking and Health, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Diabetes UK, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Mind, Asthma and Lung UK, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of Midwives and the British Medical Association. Well, we happily align ourselves with big health in defence of the nation and we are only too happy to defend the Health Secretary against the siren voices of big tobacco that we see gathered around our former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in the corner of the Chamber today.

[Sir Jake Berry]

On the issue of unity, does the hon. Gentleman agree with the comment made by his colleague the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) that if we bring in a progressive ban on cigarettes, we should mirror it with a similar ban on vaping? If he becomes Health Secretary, will that become the policy that he will promote?

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central made the really good point—a point that needs to be well understood in the context of this debate—that vaping is undoubtedly, unquestionably a useful smoking cessation tool, but we should not send the message to the country that vaping is good for our health or that it is without harmful consequences. When it comes to banning things, it should be on the basis of evidence and there should not be a predisposition to ban. I have not yet seen evidence to persuade me that vaping is harmful enough to introduce a ban of the sort suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central. I hope I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that, when the general election eventually comes, the Labour party will not go around trying to ban things left, right and centre, but I certainly want to consign to the history books the 244,000 people on NHS waiting lists in his area as a direct result of the policies of the Government whom he supports and has served.

[Sir Jake Berry]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

I will happily give way. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to take the opportunity to apologise to his constituents in Rossendale and Darwen for his abysmal record in government.

[Sir Jake Berry]

I will resist the hon. Gentleman’s offer. He has just said that vaping should only ever be used to help people to stop smoking cigarettes. If this Bill passes, it will be illegal for people who are now aged 15 ever to smoke cigarettes, so there will be no requirement in his world for them ever to vape. So I repeat the question, which he has refused to answer: will the Labour party bring forward—this is supported by his own party—a ban on vapes to mirror the tobacco ban? Yes or no?

[Wes Streeting]

The record will show that I answered the right hon. Gentleman’s question. I talked about banning things and taking away people’s choice, and there are plenty of things that we do on a daily basis that might be harmful to our health in some way. Indeed, participating in most physical contact sports carries a risk of injury, but we are not going to ban football, rugby or boxing. I refer him to my previous answer, which is that I have not seen evidence to persuade me to ban vaping in the way that this Government are proposing to phase out smoking. I have answered that question already and I answer it again now, but I am sure that it will not be lost on the people of Rossendale and Darwen that he did not take the opportunity to apologise to the 244,000 people in his area who are stuck on record long waiting lists.

Once again, the Prime Minister has shown that he is too weak to stand up to his party. The psychodrama in the Conservative party is being put before the interests of the country. In the press today, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch) is the latest to let it be known that she will be opposing this Bill. Journalists were helpfully pointed towards comments about her belief in the limits of the state made during her last leadership campaign. I say “her last leadership campaign”, but I am sure that it will not be her last leadership campaign. Indeed, I do not think it has ever stopped. Anyway, that is what she said. In fact, she bemoaned Governments who try to “solve every problem”. Well, if she has a problem with Governments solving problems, she must be delighted with the record of this Government, who can barely solve any problems. They cannot even solve the chaos in their own party.

The Business Secretary is not the only one who is desperate to tell Conservative party members that they oppose this Bill. The former Prime Minister joins us today. The right hon. Member for South West Norfolk and recently declared candidate to be the next leader of the Conservative party, has said that the Bill is “profoundly unconservative”. A stopped clock is right twice a day, and I find myself agreeing with the former Prime Minister. This is absolutely an un-Conservative Bill. It is a Labour Bill, and we are delighted to see the Government bring it forward. [Interruption.] Yes, even this stopped clock is right twice a day for the Trussites in the corner. The right hon. Lady is in fine company when it comes to former Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson has said that this proposal is

“absolutely nuts…It’s just mad”.

Well, now he knows how the rest of us felt when he was Prime Minister.

The right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) could not be with us today because she is currently in Brussels surrounded by the police who are trying to shut down the event she is attending with some far right fanatics, with whom she has much in common. A source close to the right hon. and learned Lady has said that she is “not a fan” of the Bill. Well, now she knows how the rest of us feel about her, too.

Some dark horses have also spied an opportunity to play to the gallery. It seems that even my former bête noire, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), fancies his chances in the ongoing battle for the Conservative leadership, because he too has come out against this Bill. To be fair, he has a strong case for the leadership of the Conservative party. As Health Secretary, he had to face a workforce in constant dispute with him, which is good practice for dealing with the party, and he has to deal with a steady stream of toxic sewage in his current job, so who could be more experienced in coping with the travails of the modern Conservative party than the right hon. Gentleman?

I want to praise the one member of this Government who has consistently made the case for the Government’s Bill. No, of course I am not talking about the Prime Minister. Since his party conference speech in October he has shrunk away from the debate, once again too weak to stand up to his own party, and instead left it to others to make the case for him. To her credit, the Health Secretary has cast aside any leadership ambition she may have once held and come out in full-throated defence of Labour’s policy. So let me assure my comrade opposite that we will stand with her today in the voting Lobby, even as the forces of conservatism stand against her.

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[Sir Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

I start my speech by saying that there are some good parts of this Bill. The banning of disposable vapes and preventing children from starting smoking or vaping is something that anyone with a brain—there are perhaps more of them on the Government Benches than on the Opposition Benches—would support. I will address my remarks to whether banning all children who are now 15 from ever smoking is the right way to stop them smoking, as well as talking about whether any Government have a mandate on removing personal liberty.

I am sorry to see the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) leaving his place, because I was about to address some remarks to him. It is unfortunate for the quality of debate to label someone standing up to ask whether this measure will be effective as someone who wants children to smoke. I am an ex-smoker and I do not want children to smoke; I just want to pass decent laws in this House to ensure that we can reduce the number of young people smoking. That is why, when I look at this ban, I question whether it will work.

I put it to the Secretary of State that 20% of young people say they have tried cannabis. Those are not my statistics, but those of the Office for National Statistics. That is twice as many as the number of young people who say that they have tried tobacco, I think within the past 30 days. If bans worked—cannabis is banned—no child would ever have tried cannabis. It is illegal not just for those who are 15, but for all of us, whatever age we are. I went to Aintree this weekend to enjoy the grand national. I was amazed that people were walking around at one of the most heavily policed events in the UK openly snorting cocaine. It is a class A drug, and the police were doing nothing about it. If bans worked and the police enforced them, no one is this country would take drugs. I therefore question whether banning people who are now 15 from ever starting smoke will work. To me, the answer is no.

I will move on to the mandate for any MP or any Government in this place to seek to bring in such a measure in advance of a general election. If Members go to Washington and have a look at the Korean war memorial, they will walk past thousands of names—it is an extraordinary memorial—and at the end there is a bold statement: “Freedom is not free”. All the freedoms that we enjoy in this country have not been given to us; they have been fought for. People have died to ensure that we keep those freedoms.

What we are really talking about today is removing from a group of people in our society—they may be young now, but do not forget that, at the general election after next, some will be 18 and banned from smoking, while some 19-year-old voters will be able to smoke—the right ever to have the agency to make their own decisions. If we believe in freedom, we must accept that people have to be free to make bad decisions as well as good ones. If we live in a society where the only decisions that we are free to make are those that the Government tell us we are free to make, we might as well live in a socialist society—we may as well live in Russia or China. For me, freedom means the freedom to get things wrong.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making some extremely valid points. Freedom with responsibility and freedom of choice are surely what the Conservative party should stand for. We can think of all kinds of reasons to ban all kinds of things, but surely the choice of the individual should be paramount. It is not for Government to dictate to individuals.

[Sir Jake Berry]

My hon. Friend is quite right. That is the legal position under the law in this country if we have capacity, no matter how bad the decisions we make. Constituents have contacted me about elderly relatives who are making poor financial decisions, but because they have capacity they are free to make those decisions, albeit bad ones in some cases.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Jake Berry]

I will not. I have given way once and want to stick to my time. I will not support the Bill, because I believe in freedom.

My second point is about mandate. The Prime Minister does not have a mandate to bring forward this legislation, and no Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs—in fact, no MPs in the House—have a mandate to vote for it, because it was not in our manifestos. We are just months away from a general election. If people believe that this measure is so important, they should put it in their manifestos. The Conservative party could put it in our manifesto and let people vote for it.

The powers that we have in this House of Commons are not ours; they are lent to us by our constituents between general elections. We are quite rightly getting to the point where we have to return those powers to our constituents and try to persuade them that we have done a good enough job to get them back. Before we start giving away their freedoms and liberties, let us at least give them the opportunity to have a say.

There is one addiction in this country that I am even more concerned about than the addiction to nicotine: the addiction of the Government to telling people what to do. I want to live in a free society where I am free to make both good and bad decisions. As people go through the Aye Lobby to support the Bill this evening—I shall be going through the No Lobby—I ask them to cast their mind back to the last time we were all washed through the Aye Lobby together on a wave of health and science and righteous hope to keep people safe, which was during the covid pandemic.

I am proud of furlough and all sorts of things, but I regret closing schools. It was the wrong thing to do, but I was washed along on that wave. I opposed some of the covid proposals. People should look back to that and think, “That was the last time we took people’s freedoms away from them. Did we always get it right?” In my view, the answer is no. We got lots of things right, but we also made lots of mistakes. As people march through the Lobby, they should think about whether in fact they urgently need to support the Bill or whether it should wait until after a general election—we may have a different Government then, if polls are to be believed—when the British public will have at least had the question put to them.

The addiction of our Government to telling us what to do goes beyond whether we should smoke. During covid, they determined who we could go to bed with, whether we could sit in the park and read a newspaper, and whether we could go to work. We are now told how we can heat our homes and whether we can drive an older diesel car in London. Unfortunately, we live in a country where those freedoms—those freedoms that are not free—are being eroded every single year of our lives. That is not something that I am comfortable with, and it is not something that I am prepared to support.

There are good bits to the Bill, but we cannot allow the fact that good bits of legislation have been annexed to this terrible legislation, which in my view will not work, to force us to support it. The Government could bring in the vaping measures on their own, and I would support them. I just do not support the creeping ban on tobacco. When people reach the age of 18 in a free society, they must be free to choose for themselves.

I will finish with this. If Members find themselves in the No Lobby tonight—I hope I will see a few colleagues in there—they should keep in their mind that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it. In my view, by voting no tonight, we defend the freedoms of our constituents and our country. It is the right thing to do, and I look forward to seeing as many colleagues in there as possible.

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[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

As I have said ever since I met my hon. Friend at the age of 18, he is always right. I can never disagree with him.

I want to say a few even more furious words about vaping. It is just appalling to see vapes being deliberately marketed to children at pocket-money prices and in bright colours, with fun packaging and flavours like bubble gum and berry blast, and with the vape counter right next to the sweet counter.

[Sir Jake Berry]

Before my right hon. Friend gets too furious about vaping, may I ask her to clarify two points on smoking? First, she said that because of the addictive nature of nicotine, it is extremely important that we stop people smoking from the age of 15. I do not support that, but if it is so important, why are we not starting at 17? It is already illegal for 17-year-olds to smoke. What is the magic of 15? If we really believe in the policy, why delay? Secondly, she spoke about her own experience, and I am a former smoker myself. She started smoking at 14, and I started smoking at about 14 as well. It was illegal when I started smoking at 14, but it did not stop me. I am a lawbreaker—how shocking. Why does she think that this ban on people starting smoking when under age will be different?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising those really important points. As I will come on to, we will be putting £30 million of new money each year into trading standards and our enforcement agencies to clamp down on enforcement, and we are making it illegal to sell cigarettes to anybody turning 15 this year. He asks why. It is precisely because we are trying to bring in the Bill with a decent amount of notice so that people can prepare for it, precisely to protect retailers and allow all the sectors that will be impacted to be able to prepare.

I come back to the area where I am seriously on the warpath: targeting kids who might become addicted to nicotine vapes. I went to Hackney to visit some retail shops, where I saw the vape counters right next to the sweet counters. I saw that it is absolutely not about me—it is not about trying to stop me smoking. It is about trying to get children addicted through cynical, despicable methods. Sadly, for too many kids, vapes are already an incredible marketing success. One in five children aged between 11 and 17 have now used a vape, and the number has trebled in the last three years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jake Berry Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

That is not the case at all. The hon. Gentleman knows, although he pretends not to, that the NHS and social care are facing unprecedented pressure because of the pandemic. He will know that as a result of the pandemic, both in NHS settings and in adult social care there has been a necessity for infection and protection controls. He will know that, sadly, staff absences are higher than they have been in normal times. But the NHS is stepping forward, with its colleagues in adult social care, to provide whatever support it can bring, especially with the record funding the Government are providing, both to the NHS and to adult social care.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) and I have been working with east Lancashire local authorities and our GP services to see whether we can increase the number of face-to-face GP appointments. Will the Secretary of State say what action he and the Government are taking to ensure that people in east Lancashire can see their general practitioner face to face?

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this issue. We have heard time and time again in this Chamber about the pressures our constituents are facing in order to get that kind of face-to-face access to their GPs. We all know why the situation was particularly bad at the height of the pandemic, but we expect it to improve rapidly. The percentage of people being seen face to face is increasing substantially, in large part because of the measures the Government have taken, including the £250 million access fund that was announced a few months ago.

Public Health

Jake Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the impact of restrictions on people’s livelihoods as well as their lives. However, she is asking me to stray beyond my brief as a Health Minister to talk about the financial support, although she will be aware that the furlough has supported huge numbers of people during the period of lockdown and since, and the Chancellor has introduced further measures to support people in the months ahead.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Helen Whately]

I will make a little more progress and then I will take further interventions.

I will now run through each of the regulations that were amended. The first was the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (North of England) Regulations 2020—SI 2020/1057—which changed the geographic areas covered by the north of England regulations. Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, Warrington and the Wirral were removed. These local authority areas were then added to the north-east and north-west regulations—SI 2020/1010. Two new areas were also added to the same protected area, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. For each of these, this was the first time that local restrictions had been implemented. People living in these areas are prohibited from mixing with people from different households in each other’s homes and gardens, and in any indoor public venue.

Next, these regulations added Bolton to the geographic area covered by the north of England regulations, rejoining the other local authorities that make up Greater Manchester. This amendment meant that the takeaway-only restriction affecting hospitality was removed, so businesses in Bolton have been once again able to serve food and alcohol with table service. Due to Bolton being added to the north of England regulations, the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Bolton) Regulations 2020—SI 2020/974—were revoked.

The final regulations amended by these regulations is the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Obligations of Undertakings) (England) Regulations 2020—SI 2020/1008—which were incorrectly amended before. This amendment ensures that the right exemptions apply to the requirement on pub, café, restaurant or bar managers in the protected area of the north-east and north-west regs to take all reasonable measures to stop groups of six in areas where only national restrictions apply, or members of the same household in the north-east and north-west protected area from singing on the premises.

To come to the decisions behind these regulations in more detail, given the urgency of the situation and the rapidly increasing numbers of people testing positive for covid in Merseyside, Halton, Warrington, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough, we consulted local leaders last week on the potential next steps. Similarly, we consulted local leaders in Bolton.

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[Helen Whately]

My hon. Friend invites me to stray somewhat from the subject of this SI and the updates to the regulations, but clearly from what he said, he is well aware of all the work that is going on for us to have a vaccine. He is also well aware that the priority at the moment is that we absolutely have to suppress this virus because the alternative does not bear thinking about.

[Jake Berry]

On the subject of this SI, what does the Minister think the impact was of the eat out to help out scheme in places such as Bolton? When it was introduced, the rate per 100,000 was more than 10 times that of central London. Does she believe it has had an impact, and if so, what?

[Helen Whately]

Again, my hon. Friend is asking me to stray beyond the scope of the SI, but what I will say is that, in the decisions that are made about interventions and policies more generally, clearly we are always looking at what is going on and what the transmission rate is. Something we saw during the period when there was eat out to help out was that that was a period when, in general, we had lower rates of infection. It gave great support to the hospitality sector, which had been clearly having a really difficult time. We are now very much seeing a second wave, particularly in much of the north of England, and therefore it is absolutely appropriate that there are, in general, greater restrictions. We absolutely must suppresses this virus and one place where we know that infection goes on is through hospitality, where there is social contact.

I will return to the job in hand, Madam Deputy Speaker. Guidance has been updated for people living in protected areas to make it clear what they can and cannot do under the restrictions. Again, I know local authorities are working hard on communications as these measures only work if people know about them, understand them and comply. These regulations, as with the other local regulations we have debated already, demonstrate that we will take action where we need to. In mirroring the restrictions that have been used in other parts of the country, we are drawing on and learning from experience. We will, of course, use continued experience of these measures to inform and help us develop our responses to ongoing local outbreaks.

I reiterate to the House that, for significant national measures with effect in the whole of England or UK-wide, we will consult Parliament and, wherever possible, we will hold votes before such regulations come into force, though of course responding to the virus means that the Government must act with speed when required, and we cannot hold up urgent regulations that are needed to control the virus and save lives. I am sure that no Member of this House would want to limit the Government’s ability to take emergency action in the national interest, as we did in March, but we will continue to involve the House in scrutinising our decisions in the way my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out last week. This will be through regular statements and debates, and providing opportunities for Members to question the Government’s scientific advisers more regularly. I am grateful to all Members for their continued engagement in this challenging process.

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[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

On 23 March, it was absolutely correct that our nation entered lockdown as one nation, but I believe the fact that we are discussing these local restrictions today shows that we should have left lockdown in a sequential way, guided by regional data.

In Blackburn with Darwen, one of the boroughs I represent, when the pubs opened in July our local infection rate was 81 per 100,000, while London’s was 3.2. I think the Government have fallen into the fatal trap of making national decisions based on a London-centric view with London data. I hope that the Minister will go away and reflect on that, and take the opportunity to take a new approach.

The people I speak to across Rossendale and Darwen are confused. There are variable restrictions that come in and come out. They want a simple system. That is why I believe that, rather than the regulations we are discussing, we should have a national system covering England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the consent of the devolved Administrations—one that is clear and proportionate but, most of all, simple and easy for people to follow. That national system should come in and out on the basis of local data and local decision making, not on the basis of national decisions or national data. For businesses in east Lancashire and the wider north-west, it is vital that, whatever system we have, it is backed by strong Treasury support to ensure that areas in the north of England that are subject to enhanced restrictions can survive economically at the end of this lockdown.

The final point I will make is in relation to liberties and freedoms. As a nation, the liberties and freedoms we take for granted have not been given to us by a benevolent Government. They have been hard fought for and hard won. In fact, on many occasions they have had to be torn from the hands of the powerful. Day by day, we see those liberties and freedoms being given back to the Government in the name of covid. I am afraid that that has to stop, because once we give these up, they will not come back to us; the Government will not return them.

Businesses such as Perspex and Bark Engineering in my constituency, which worked through lockdown, showed us the best of society. The worst of society is the Government enjoying these new powers a little bit too much, with police officers fining people for being in their front gardens and a bizarre ban on people sunbathing on their own in public open spaces; I cannot see what harm that was doing. When the Minister responds to the debate, can she tell us what the plan is for returning to the people of the north of England the liberties that these restrictions take away? We want to remove the manacles of state control from our hands and our feet, but we can do that only when we have beaten this virus. The Minister must say what measure will see that happen.

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[Mr Harper]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and the Government need to recognise that we are in this for the long term. We need a set of restrictions that are sustainable, that we can stick with over the long term, that people feel are deliverable and that enable the economy to flourish. I was encouraged yesterday by the urgent question that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury took for the Government, because it sounded to me as though the Treasury was starting to think about this approach of living with the virus and putting in place economic measures. That is very helpful.

[Jake Berry]

For someone who lives in Rossendale and Darwen on the border between Bolton and Lancashire, the rules have a labyrinthine complexity. They change on a weekly basis and people cannot follow them. Surely, living with this virus must mean having simple, easy-to-follow rules that do not change on a weekly basis, and that can be turned on or off based on local data. Does my right hon. Friend accept that that is the right approach?

[Mr Harper]

Yes, I do. We can see from the footnote to the regulations that we are debating that the two sets of regulations that they refer to have been amended 18 times. I have to confess that I find them difficult to follow. A resident of any of the areas in question cannot just go to the Government website and pop their postcode in—[Interruption.] The House is going to be asked to take a view on these regulations today, and I have taken the trouble to look at them and research them so that I can take a properly considered view on them. I am also concerned that the Government should make the right decisions based on evidence. We hear stories to the effect that these restrictions may be put in place in other parts of the country, and it is important that we get it right. Let me conclude my remarks, and I will sit down.

The Government need to think about living with this virus for a considerable period and having a sustainable set of restrictions. I do not think that there are just two choices. As I said to the Minister yesterday, I do not think it is helpful if every time somebody asks a question or sets out an alternative, they are accused of wanting to let the virus rip and let thousands of people die. I think that point was well made, because she did not refer to it again in her closing remarks. However, on a webinar with the CBI this morning, I heard the Secretary of State again set out that choice, which I think is a false choice.

I do think that there is a “third way”, to quote the phrase that has been used today. I think it is a more sustainable one, which would be better for the country and more successful. If the Government were to adopt that approach, I think the whole House and the whole country could get behind the plan. We could unite to live with this virus in a way that people would find meaningful and sustainable. I hope that the Government will reflect on that and bring forward such a plan at the earliest opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jake Berry Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am always somewhat disappointed by the right hon. Gentleman’s rhetoric, given that we are spending about £1 billion more every year than when he was mental health Minister. This April, we will reintroduce maximum waiting times for eating disorders. As he knows, we have committed to publish pathways for all conditions during this Parliament. That will include his constituent who, I agree, is waiting much too long at the moment.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Some GP practices in east Lancashire have, through sheer frustration, started publishing the number of missed appointments. When will the Secretary of State consider giving GPs the power that they want, and that the public want them to have, to charge those who miss repeated GP appointments, including in east Lancashire?

[Mr Hunt]

I have sympathy for people who are frustrated about that issue. As I have said before, my objection is not one of principle; it is whether it is practical to do it. Perhaps that is something that GPs could decide at a local level.

Pharmacies and Integrated Healthcare: England

Jake Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Oliver Colvile]

rose—

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

rose—

[Steve Double]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) first.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Double]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I agree with him. Clearly, part of the answer is getting GPs and pharmacies working much more closely together, and co-locating can often be one way to help with that.

[Jake Berry]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he accept that the demand for prescribing pharmacies can be demonstrated by the recent proliferation of adverts we have seen on television for “pay to see your GP” services, which I was very surprised to see so many of on TV over Christmas? For £20, someone can pay to have a Skype consultation with a GP, who will then email or contact the local pharmacy to issue them with a prescription. An NHS that is free at the point of use should be absolutely fundamental to us in this country, but the fact that people are now paying to see GPs rather than waiting to see them shows that there is huge demand for people to have minor ailments prescribed for by a pharmacist.

[Steve Double]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; he clearly watches far more TV than I do, because I was not aware of that. However, he makes the point well that there has been a huge increase in the demand being placed on our GP services, and people are therefore looking for other ways to meet that demand when it cannot be met in the usual ways.

I applaud and support the Government in their desire to create a truly seven-day-a-week health service. Part of the way to achieve that is by making far better use of our community pharmacies. Many are already open for longer hours than GP surgeries, typically on a Saturday, and my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans made the point that maybe some need to consider opening for longer still. That is something the Government could certainly help with. If we are to achieve a truly seven-day-a-week health service, we need to make more effective use of our pharmacy services.

Defending Public Services

Jake Berry Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. In fact, I wanted to come on to talk about that perceived tension between money and the quality of care. Until three years ago, we did not have an independent inspection regime to go around ambulance services and tell the service, the public, constituents and Members of Parliament how good the quality of care is in each area. The first step is to have that inspection regime so that we know the truth, and then things start to happen, as is beginning to be the case in ambulance services across the country.

The big point—this is precisely what I wanted to move on to—is the worry, which is shared by many people, that an efficiency ask of this scale might impact on patient care. They should listen to the chief inspector of hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, who points out that financial rigour is one of the routes to excellent quality, and that there is a positive correlation between hospitals offering the best care and those with the lowest deficits. In other words, it is not a choice between good care and good finances; we need both.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Before my right hon. Friend moves on, I want to draw him back to the question of charging international visitors for the use of the NHS. The Government now charges non-EU citizens £200 per person as part of their visa application. Will he tell the House why he has chosen the figure of £200, which seems extremely low? An equivalent private healthcare policy for a year would be £800, £900 or £1,000, and an equivalent level of travel insurance for the same period would be £400 or £500. Is there not an opportunity to tier this and perhaps charge people more as they get older and become more likely to rely on the NHS?

[Mr Hunt]

I recognise why my hon. Friend has asked that question. We do think very hard about the level at which we set that charge, which was introduced for the first time only a couple of years ago. The reason that it is set that low—I recognise that it is quite a low charge—is that a large number of people paying it are students who tend to have low health needs and be low users of the NHS. We want to ensure that we do not create an inadvertent disincentive for people coming to the UK when they can, at the same time, choose to do their studies in Australia and America. However, it is something that we keep constantly under review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Berry]

My right hon. Friend will of course be aware that there is a differential charge for students—some £150 a year rather than £200. Will he go away and consider whether there is a possibility of charging high earners who come to this country more than a couple of hundred pounds a year, because the charge does seem so low? Will he also specifically look at whether there is a possibility of charging people who are older more, as they are much more likely to rely on the NHS?

[Mr Hunt]

Let me repeat that we do keep this matter constantly under review. The important thing is that, for the first time, we are charging people who come to the UK on a long-term basis for their use of NHS resources. That is something that did not happen before.

Let me return to the crucial issue of this link between the quality of care and good finances. Why is it that it is so important not to see this as an artificial choice between good care and good finances? Very simply, it is because poor care is about the most expensive thing that a hospital can do. A fall in a hospital will cost the NHS about £1,200, as the patient typically stays for three days longer. A bed sore adds about £2,500 to NHS costs, with a patient staying, on average, 12 days longer. Avoidable mistakes and poor care cost the NHS more than £2 billion a year. We should listen to inspiring leaders such as Dr Gary Kaplan of Virginia Mason hospital in Seattle, which is one of the safest and most efficient hospitals in the world. He said:

“The path to safer care is the same one as the path to lower costs.”

That brings me on to the second way that this Government are fiercely defending our public services, which is our restless determination to raise standards so that people on lower incomes can be confident of the same high quality provision as the wealthiest. To their credit, the last Labour Government succeeded in bringing down NHS waiting times. I hope that that decade is remembered as one when access to NHS services improved. However, because of poor care identified in many hospitals post Mid Staffs, we should surely resolve that this decade must become the one in which we transform the safety and quality of care. Mid Staffs was the lowest point in the history of the NHS, so we must make it a turning point, or a moment that we resolve to offer not just good access to care, but care itself that is the safest and the highest quality available. The record of the past three years shows that we can do just that.

The King’s Fund has given credit to the Government for their focus on safety and quality of care. Patient campaigners have said that the NHS is getting safer and the main indicators of hospital mortality and harm are going in the right direction. However, there is much more to do, so what are our plans? First, we must deliver a seven-day NHS. It should never be the case that mortality rates are higher for people admitted at weekends than for people admitted in the week. Last week’s junior doctor contract agreement was a big step forward, but we also need to reform the consultants’ contracts, improve the availability of weekend diagnostic services and increase the number of weekend consultant-led procedures.

Secondly, a seven-day NHS also means a transformation of out-of-hospital services, especially access to an integrated health and social care system that needs to operate over busy weekends as well as during the week. It also means more GP appointments at convenient times, which is why we want everyone to be able to see a GP in the evening or at weekends. We are backing general practice with a £2.4 billion increase in its budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller).

I hope the House will forgive me if I reflect on an historic event that took place in Scotland this weekend. For the first time in 114 years, the Scottish cup returned to Leith, in Edinburgh, when Hibernian won the cup final. For many years those of us who are fans of Hibernian have been used to taunts that the last time the cup came back to Easter Road, Buffalo Bill was in town and Queen Victoria was on the throne. At least those taunts are over. The hurt of losing 10 cup finals—of traipsing to Hampden to face defeat after defeat—is over. A fine game, between two teams entertaining the fans, took place in Scotland on Saturday, and I am delighted that the people of Edinburgh and Leith can celebrate a cup victory at long last.

There is little to be welcomed in the Queen’s Speech. It was a missed opportunity for progressive action on pensions, social security and the economy. The UK Government are caught in a civil war over Europe and have delivered a Queen’s Speech with a poverty of ambition. The Tory party is at war with itself and failing miserably in its war on poverty, which the Prime Minister talked about at the conference last year. We are seeing not a war on poverty but a war in the Conservative party.

[Jake Berry]

One could perhaps compare the Conservative party’s disagreement over Europe to two men fighting over one woman. Is it possible that after such a catastrophe everyone can come back together as friends?

[Ian Blackford]

I am saddened at the depths to which the hon. Gentleman stoops. I am delighted to have friends and colleagues representing my party here and in government in Edinburgh, and they will continue to have our full support.

The Queen’s Speech demonstrates that the Tories are a threat to high-quality, well-funded public services. Having listened to the Leader of the Opposition last week on the Queen’s Speech, we are none the wiser as to what the Labour party is offering. We could have asked him, of course, had he been taking interventions, rather than forcing us to sit and listen to a monologue that lost the attention of his own party, never mind that of the House.

Some measures are to be welcomed, such as the likely delivery of the universal service obligation on broadband, as mentioned by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, but the Queen’s Speech delivers nothing on pension reform for the WASPI women, on tax simplification or on social security, and no major action on the economy to boost exports and productivity.

The Conservatives have orchestrated some truly devastating cuts that have destroyed the safety net that social security should provide. We see through their rhetoric on life chances. The scrapping of legal commitments to tackle child poverty, the four-year freeze on working-age benefits, including child tax credit, working tax credit and jobseeker’s allowance, will see families losing up to 12% of the real value of their benefits and tax credits by 2020. We have seen the butchering of the very aspect of universal credit that might have created work incentives and the hammering of low-paid workers, to name just a few of the regressive cuts that will decrease the life chances of children across these islands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

No, I will not, because that is not true. Full-time places at Scottish colleges have increased, and I will return to that point.

Ruth Davidson would want to introduce tuition fees in Scotland by the back door. Down here, the Tories are all for front-door fees. In Scotland, the Tories are all about back-door fees. The doors are locked to many who want to participate in education unless they can pay the price. Front door or back door, with the Tories there is always a price to pay. Young people from the most deprived areas in Scotland are now more likely to participate in higher education by the age of 30 since the SNP came to power—up from 35% of young people in 2007-08 to 41% in 2014-15—which is the result of the SNP’s successful education programme. The number of qualifiers from the most deprived areas increased by over 2,300 from 8,035 in 2007-08 to 10,395 in 2014-15.

Overall, since the SNP came to power in Scotland, the number of Scottish-domiciled, first-degree students going to university has risen by 11%. Last year saw a record number of Scots accepted to universities across the UK. That is a record to be proud of. Rather than carping from the sidelines, the Labour party should perhaps get behind what the SNP has delivered in Scotland for the people of our country.

The Scottish Funding Council has invested more than £76 million in additional widening access and articulation places over the past three years and continues to fund a wide range of other initiatives to support access. We will ensure that those who have a care experience and who meet minimum entry requirements will be guaranteed the offer of a university place and a non-repayable bursary of £7,625. In Scotland, we recognise that access based on ability, investing in our human capital, is the right thing to do. That is a non-negotiable principle. It is price worth paying for our children and our future. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) said some time ago:

“The rocks will melt with the sun before”

the SNP imposes tuition fees on Scotland’s students.

There is little good news for young people. Whether someone is young and looking to start a journey towards eventual retirement or is nearing retirement, there is much to fear from this Government. Given the injustices for many women, the UK residents living in many overseas countries suffering from frozen pensions, or the constant tinkering with pensions that undermines saving, there is little for which to commend this Government. The Government are playing a risky game on pensions; the new lifetime ISA muddies the waters in an already complex area. ISA savings from taxed income undercut the pension saving from pre-tax income—in other words, the Chancellor has found a convenient tool to increase tax receipts today, but that is not necessarily good news for individual savers. According to the Association of British Insurers, presented with a choice, no employee will be better off saving into a lifetime ISA than a workplace pension because of the loss of employer contributions. ABI calculations indicate that the long-term cost of forgoing employer contributions would be substantial—for a basic-rate taxpayer, the impact would be savings of roughly one third less by the age of 60.

[Jake Berry]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, but does he not accept that one benefit of people saving for their retirement through an ISA is that it gives considerably more flexibility? As we go on our life journey, there are often times when we may want to draw down some of that money—for example, for a deposit to buy a house. Does he not see this as being about consumer choice? There is probably room for both of these things, although it is extremely important that we protect the existing pensions system as well.

[Ian Blackford]

This is a vastly important issue, and I genuinely want to work with the Government on it. All of us in this place have a collective responsibility to get pensions right. I will accept that there is a shared concern across the House, with a recognition that pension saving is not at a sustainable level in this country. My problem with the lifetime ISA proposal is that it undermines what should be the best route for all, which should be saving through the new auto-enrolment, with the incentives that are there. Of course, that will be discussed when the plans are presented to Parliament, but I say to the Government that they should be very careful with what they are doing, because we all share the ambition to get this right. I make the offer to the Government that we are prepared to work together to make sure that we get the best mechanisms to increase pension savings in this country.

Pension saving is at a crisis point, and no amount of regulation will right that problem—[Interruption.] I can hear some guffawing; I will try to wrap up my remarks, but I have been very generous in taking interventions from across the Floor. We need a fundamental overhaul of the pensions system. The Tories need to be more ambitious on pension reform and find real solutions that incentivise pension saving. The SNP has long called for the establishment of an independent pension commission to look holistically at pension reform, focusing on existing inequalities and paving the way forward for a fair, universal pensions system.

We must also prioritise fraud and scam prevention. Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon UK, commented that fraud and scams that pensioners are vulnerable to should really have been tackled in the pensions Bill. She said:

“I’m extremely disappointed that the government has failed to use the Queens Speech as an opportunity to tackle the ever-growing threat of pensions fraud via legalisation.

We still need to look at ways for the industry, regulators and pension industry to work together to raise the profile of pensions fraud to stamp it out and protect savers.”

I am going to wrap up my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but let me just say that nearly 1 million people aged over 75 live in poverty and need more help from the Government, according to a report by City University London and Independent Age. It also suggests that the income of those aged over 75 is, on average, £3,000 a year less than that of younger pensioners. Those figures suggest the vital need for a sustainable income in retirement to be available for our older generation, and the Government must do more now to address that. There is so much that needs to be addressed to give confidence to savers and pensioners.

Our alternative Queen’s Speech proposed a universal pensions Bill to support a more progressive pensions system. Such a Bill would establish an independent pensions commission to investigate the inequalities in current and future proposed pension policies; fund transitional arrangements for WASPI women affected by the rapid pace of increases in the state pension age; and allow for further development of access to automatic enrolment and further options to incentivise pension saving. The complexity of the pension system is a real turn-off for savers, preventing them from shopping around or making sound savings choices. Just last week, the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, said that the British pension system was so complicated that even he failed to understand it, and he warned of the damaging consequences that that presents for consumers as they approach retirement. Conversations with countless experts and independent financial advisers have confirmed for me only one thing: they have no clue either.

That comment about having no clue could equally be made about the Government in the Queen’s Speech. We have outlined an SNP alternative, delivering a message of hope and vision for the people of Scotland. It is not too late for the Tories to open their ears and, indeed, their minds to a different direction. If the Government seriously want to increase the life chances of our children, they must return to the drawing board on social security cuts and admit that they have got it wrong, as they have done on the economy. Instead of the promised assault on poverty, we have been left with a Government plan that has a poverty of ambition. There is a different way, and I appeal to the Government to make the right political choice and abandon austerity.

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[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Like me, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will know that Lancashire has some of the finest public services in our country. I represent the police force and the health service in my constituency with the greatest pride here in Parliament, and rely on them when I am at home in Lancashire.

However, proud as I am of our public services in the north-west and Lancashire in particular, we need to show that our businesses and our economy will improve in order to support them. This Queen’s Speech—a one nation speech—did not give preference to the private sector over the public sector, but set out a programme in which both could succeed, and in which, specifically, the northern powerhouse, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), could play a central role.

Many years ago, my home city of Liverpool contributed more to the Exchequer than the City of London. In 1889, when our great county council—Lancashire county council—was formed, our first civic leaders, some of whom had been Cabinet Ministers, resigned as Members of Parliament to lead it. Was that because, at the time, it was said that the empire’s bread hung by Lancashire’s thread? Well, it may have been, but I believe that the real reason was that those MPs—including former Cabinet Ministers—knew that more power resided in our great northern cities, and in our town halls, than at Westminster and in Whitehall.

Of course, all that changed during the first and second world wars. As we waged total war in this country, it became necessary to concentrate power in London. We saw the nationalisation of our industries, and we saw many decisions taken away from our great regional local authorities. Just as the power came to London, wealth and skills moved away from the north of England to the south. The Queen’s Speech, and its commitment to the northern powerhouse, means that some of that money and power will be removed from London and returned to the north. London has had it for far too long, and we want it back.

This scheme did not drop out of thin air. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer first advocated the idea of a northern powerhouse in June 2014, at the Museum of Science and Industry. It could not have happened in a better place than Manchester, close to our Free Trade Hall. With your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to reflect a little on the progress that we have made in the last 23 months.

During debates in the House, Members often ask why so much money is spent on London’s infrastructure. Why has London been given Crossrail 1, and why is it to be given Crossrail 2? Well, one reason is that Transport for London unifies all the London boroughs so that they can work on infrastructure projects throughout this great capital. For far too long, our local authorities in the north of England have been in competition with each other when it comes to rail and road infrastructure projects, rather than working together to ensure that we have a plan in the north to enable our cities to grow. That is why I am so pleased that we now have Transport for the North fighting for our cities and towns throughout the region.

It is so important for the north of England to become super-connected. What do I mean by “the north of England”? Well, within 40 miles of Manchester we have Leeds, Liverpool, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, and the city of Sheffield. That belt of counties, towns and cities encompasses 10 million people. One powerful urban conglomeration could become one powerful, super-connected economic unit, which would not compete with London, and would certainly not pull London down, but would create growth and wealth throughout the north of England so that we could compete not just with the south, but with other cities across the globe. If the north were an independent economy, it would be the ninth largest economy in the European Union, and—much as it pains me, as a Lancastrian, to say this—if Yorkshire were its own country, it would have created more jobs in the last five years than the whole of France.

Of course the northern powerhouse is hugely important, but we are also very excited about the digital economy Bill. The commitment to super-connect every house with a universal broadband connection is important to our rural communities throughout the north-west of England. It is a glue that can bind towns and villages into the northern powerhouse project, and Lancashire can play its part.

We have three world-class universities; Uclan—the University of Central Lancashire—Lancaster, and, of course, Edge Hill. However, I must make an appeal to Lancashire county council. If we are to have a powerful, knowledge-based economy in which we all become wealthier and more successful, the council must not cut our library services. If we want young people throughout Lancashire to be able to study in peace, and to look things up on the internet in, for instance, Bacup, Whitworth and Crawshawbooth libraries, we must be far-sighted. We cannot focus on short-term cost savings. I accept that budgets are under great pressure, but we must have a long-term plan, and that will not be served by robbing our young people of their libraries.

In the last 23 months, we have also seen development to help the northern powerhouse to grow throughout Lancashire. The Heysham link road is nearing completion, and a close partnership with Peel Ports in both Liverpool and Heysham is enabling us to create a global gateway through the sea for the north-west’s industry. That, of course, includes the aerospace industry. We are very lucky in Lancashire—our aerospace industry is globally pre-eminent—but we must ensure that, through the northern powerhouse project, we can build on the success of that existing industry. In my own constituency, companies such as J. and J. Ormerod plc, Linemark, WEC Engineering and of course the world-famous Crown Paints are already making the northern powerhouse a reality.

I have a simple ambition, and I hope that it will be reflected in the Queen’s Speech. It is to drive the northern economy ahead and to narrow the north-south divide. In a one nation speech, we in the north of England must show that we do not want to drag down London or the south; rather, we want to create a more prosperous north of England to rival and succeed the south as we build our economy. Those who talk the northern powerhouse down—as the Leader of the Opposition did in his response to the Queen’s Speech—are making a mistake. Perhaps the ambition of Members from across the House who represent the north of England is not understood in Islington or other parts of London. People who say that the northern powerhouse is dead just because one infrastructure project has been delayed or because one business has closed do not understand the scale of our ambition. I caution those Labour Members who are hanging on in the south of England— one of whom we have just heard from—against talking down the north, because to do so would be a terrible mistake. I know that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) did not do that; it was the Leader of the Opposition who talked it down in his response to the Queen’s Speech.

I have some small suggestions for the Government. First, we have handed over an unprecedented amount of power to our cities through city deals in Preston, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. There was some criticism when civil servants from the northern powerhouse were brought to London. Let us reverse that by creating a northern powerhouse board made up of civic leaders based in the north of England. Secondly, people in the business world want clear guidance about how they can be involved in this project. It excites businesses across the north of England like no other Government initiative, and we have to get the information out there. Finally, I hope that the Government will keep in mind our creative industries in the north-west. Those industries are supremely successful at competing on a global scale, and the northern powerhouse must drive that forward and celebrate those industries.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I was hoping for a lot more from this Queen’s Speech. I hoped that there would be something to address the ever-growing housing crisis in this country. I also hoped that there would be something on the environment or on the long-awaited and much promised Bill on wild animals in circuses. But mainly, I hoped that there would be some hope for my region and my constituency. Yet again, however, we heard only scant warm words with the brief mention of the northern powerhouse—the Chancellor’s pet project—which does not even seem to reach the north-east.

I do not think the Chancellor heeded my words on the lack of measures for the north-east in his ultra-shambolic Budget back in April, when I warned him that, despite his ambition to be king of the north, he needed to recognise that there was a lot more of the north beyond Manchester before he got to the wall. Mercifully, his time as Chancellor is almost up. Who knows where he will be when winter comes, post-referendum: in No. 10 or in the wilderness on the Back Benches? His legacy for the north-east is, sadly, only more pain and hurt.

Today’s debate is all about our public services, and I want to highlight the damage that is being inflicted on them by this Conservative Government, who are continuing to starve them of proper investment while forcing through damaging and unnecessary legislation. The Tories are now trying to dismantle and ruin two of our country’s greatest and most precious institutions: the NHS and the BBC. These are two public services that we probably all use almost every day and both are central to our national way of life. This Government are hellbent on completely changing the culture and ethos of the two institutions. They have already started the process, but we must not let them complete it.

Since the Conservatives came into office in 2010, the NHS has faced crisis after crisis, all of which could have been avoided if it had been given proper investment and support. Instead, we saw an unnecessary top-down reorganisation of the NHS that disjointed funding streams and placed unnecessary burdens on services through cuts that have been detrimental to our constituents’ experiences of using the NHS. This abysmal mismanagement of the NHS by the Health Secretary and his equally appalling predecessor is compounded by the fact that 3.7 million people are currently on waiting lists, by the understaffing of our hospitals and by patients’ struggles to see their GP. The mismanagement has been acutely felt in the north-east, with the prime example being the underperformance of the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust. That was the subject of a Westminster Hall debate about two weeks ago in which I and a dozen other north-east colleagues raised our numerous concerns. I hope that the Government have listened to those concerns and will act as soon as possible.

Instead of addressing the issues that the NHS is facing on a day-to-day basis, the Health Secretary took it upon himself to enter into a protracted fight with our junior doctors. They do an amazing job of treating patients in difficult circumstances, yet he has battled with them remorselessly over their pay and conditions. It is welcome that a deal has now been struck between the Department of Health and the junior doctors after everyone was at last brought back around the negotiating table. However, this all could have been avoided, including the recent strike action, if only the Health Secretary had meaningfully listened to the junior doctors’ concerns about the impact the proposed changes to their contracts would have on the NHS.

The Health Secretary must rethink his entire strategy for the national health service and ensure that it does what it was created to do. I want to quote from the leaflet that every home received when the NHS was launched in 1948:

“It will provide you with all medical, dental and nursing care. Everyone—rich or poor, man, woman or child—can use it or any part of it.”

It was Nye Bevan who said:

“Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community”.

We should have seen something like that in this Queen’s Speech. But wait—no, that only happens in a Labour Queen’s Speech. That is how we got our NHS in the first place.

The BBC is another of our treasured public services that the Government are trying to undermine. The Culture Secretary is using tactics that can only be described as bullying and intimidation to make the BBC accept a new charter—which is in no one’s interests other than those of commercial media moguls—and he has shown his true colours by going on record as saying that the disappearance of the BBC is a “tempting prospect”. Those are the words of the man who is supposed to be in charge of nurturing and championing British culture and talent.

The Government’s proposals aim to hobble the BBC, and they will put its position as an independent public broadcaster in jeopardy by introducing Government appointees to oversee the organisation. That is a clear attack on the BBC’s independence and its ability to hold the Government to account. Putting Government-approved people on the board would threaten the very existence of the BBC as we know it. Peter Kosminsky, the director of “Wolf Hall” and winner of the BAFTA Best Drama award, has said that

“the BBC’s main job is to speak truth to power—to report to the British public without fear or favour, no matter how unpalatable that might be to those in government.”

Those words remind us of exactly why the Government must maintain the integrity that the BBC has come to be respected for, not just in the UK but right across the world.

The BBC is not only one of our main sources of news and information; it also acts as a beacon for British culture and talent and is a true cornerstone of UK plc. From giving that much needed break to up-and-coming artists on BBC radio stations to the many TV programmes that showcase the greatest aspects of British life—commercially successful shows such as “Strictly Come Dancing” and “The Great British Bake-Off”, informative and incredible documentaries such as “South Pacific”, “Frozen Planet” and the many other David Attenborough documentaries that have taken us into some of the most remote and exotic places in the world—the BBC is the very best of British in everything it does, and we get to enjoy all that for the remarkably good-value price of just 40p a day while sitting in the comfort of our own home. However, the Culture Secretary has persistently put the future of commercial BBC programming in jeopardy by saying that the BBC should focus on broadcasting for the public good. He clearly forgets that all shows broadcast by the BBC, whether commercial or informative, are for the public good. The two cannot be separated because commercially successful programmes help to fund world-class documentaries that are viewed across the globe. My Opposition colleagues and I will do everything in our power to ensure that one of our most treasured institutions is protected, continues to drive creativity in the 21st century, and is accessible to all.

Going back to Peter Kosminsky, he also said in his acceptance speech at the BAFTAs:

“It’s not their BBC, it’s your BBC.”

Never have truer words been said about our BBC. We need to defend it at all costs from the damage that this Government wish to inflict upon it. Our NHS and BBC make us proud to be British. When it comes to damaging those two precious public services, the Government will not get an easy ride either from Opposition Members or from the wider public watching today.

[Jake Berry]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the BBC is uniquely able to tackle difficult issues such as controlling abuse? She may have been following the recent story in “The Archers” relating to Helen Titchener, which showcases the BBC at its best. If the hon. Lady goes on to the “Free Helen Titchener” JustGiving page, she will see that the BBC has been involved in helping to raise £130,000 to support women’s refuges across the country.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am so pleased that I allowed that intervention, because it was excellent. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that, and I do agree with him.

The NHS and the BBC are cherished institutions, providing an essential public good. They are the very best of British. The proposals are a damning indictment of this Government’s attitude towards our country and those two great institutions, of which I believe the whole country is immensely proud. That is why we cannot allow them to be dismantled or diminished in stature or performance. On the day that the NHS was founded, Nye Bevan said:

“The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.”

His words apply equally to the BBC in this context, as much as he intended them for the NHS. We need to have faith now, and we need to fight for both of them before it is too late. Otherwise, the NHS and the BBC, which our grandparents’ generation so proudly created, will no longer be there for our grandchildren, who will never forgive us.

NHS in London

Jake Berry Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend puts it excellently. I have some figures that illustrate the adverse consequences. Ealing mums were promised access to 24/7 consultant cover—168 hours per week—for a better, safer service. That has not materialised. Eight months after the closure, the only hospital to come close to that figure is West Middlesex, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth—it is not even in north-west London. St Mary’s has fallen short at 98 hours. Queen Charlotte’s—the hospital where I was born, although it was somewhere else in those days—offers 116 hours; Chelsea and Westminster, 115 hours; Northwick Park, 108 hours; and Hillingdon, 112 hours. They all missed. There has been nothing concrete. Only on a wing and a prayer will they reach that nirvana any time soon. So much for a better service.

Paediatrics is next for the chop. On 30 June, there will be no children’s wing at Ealing hospital. I have a lot of figures, but people are often numbed by statistics, and other Members want to speak. According to the Office for National Statistics’ 2014 population estimates, Ealing is a very young borough—23.5% of the population is under the age of 18—so we need a children’s wing.

It is worrying. People can be treated quickly and effectively for accident and emergency cases at Ealing hospital at the moment, but the consequence of the changes will be that ambulances will have to take people to Hillingdon and other places miles away. It is unclear who is going to fund that. A lot of those who are admitted to the children’s wing are not taken in an ambulance; they come under their own steam. Will a nurse or a doctor accompany everyone who uses patient transport service, to ensure child safety? There are a lot of question marks.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is familiar with Kingston from having worked there. She knows that it is an excellent hospital with excellent community healthcare service provided by Your Healthcare. She is talking about additional funding for hospitals and acute trusts. Does she agree that, although the Government have provided £10 billion of additional funding for the NHS, it is important that money is not taken out of community services to prop up acute services, because community services are meant to keep people out of hospital?

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and I would include community pharmacies among those community services. There is a lot of worry among pharmacists in my constituency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jake Berry Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

We have record levels of nurses in training and a record number of nurses in practice because of the decision by my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary to increase nurse training by 11% over the past two years. We can expand that significantly due to our reforms to the funding of nurse training. As regards nurses from abroad, part of the reason we are undertaking this change is so that every putative nurse in this country can have the opportunity of having a nursing position. At the moment, we have to limit those positions because of the funding regime that is in place.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

T8. Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the first responders in Rossendale, who support the ambulance service by attending 999 calls to very serious cases, including one involving a friend of mine over Christmas? Will he in particular pay tribute to Brian Pickup, who is stepping down as team leader of the first responders after 11 years of unpaid public service?

[The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)]

I am delighted to do so. First responders have been a valued addition to the frontline of allied health professionals whom we can all support, and I am delighted to pay tribute to Brian for the work that he has done. I am sure that I speak for everyone in the House in saying a warm thank you to all those who have been part of the first responder scheme for the effort they have put in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jake Berry Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

Well, I can, but may I gently say that under this Government and under the coalition we increased the proportion of money going into the health budget, whereas the Scottish National party decreased the proportion of money going into the NHS in Scotland? The £8 billion is what the NHS asked for to transform services, and that will have an impact, meaning that more money is available for the NHS in Scotland. I hope the SNP will actually spend it on the NHS and not elsewhere.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for personally intervening to enable the Ilex View medical centre in Rawtenstall to open for longer hours, despite that being precluded under its private finance initiative lease of that building. Will he update the House on what steps can be taken to ensure that where GPs are in a building that is subject to a PFI lease, he will be able to intervene to ensure that they can truly open seven days a week and for extended hours?

[Mr Hunt]

This is one of the main reasons why the Chancellor allocated £1 billion to modernise primary care facilities in the autumn statement. We recognise that many GP premises are simply not fit for purpose. If we are going to transform out-of-hospital care, we need to find ways to help GPs move to better premises, to link up with other GP practices, and that will be a major priority for this Parliament.

Health and Social Care

Jake Berry Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and I hope she does a lot more for the NHS than her predecessor did. He caused a huge amount of damage. She is right to say that the NHS is looking for the consensus she describes. NHS staff would hugely value more consensus on the five-year forward view.

The problem, as I have said to the Secretary of State before, lies in the privatisation. The Health and Social Care Act 2012, which the hon. Lady’s predecessor took through Parliament, is forcing NHS services out on to the market. As I have said, 40% of those services are now going to private sector organisations, with 40% going to the NHS. The Secretary of State claims that privatisation is not happening, but I am afraid that that is just not correct in any way. If there is to be consensus, the Government should repeal that Act. They never had a democratic mandate from the people of this country. They never gave their permission for the NHS to be put up for sale in this way. If the hon. Lady’s party were to repeal section 75 of the Act, she could help to create the basis for consensus on the NHS.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

The day after the general election, I was approached by someone outside my constituency office. He congratulated me on winning, but said that he was terrified. He had been told by the local Labour party that if the Conservatives won the election, he would personally have to find £80,000 to pay for his son’s operation because the NHS would be privatised. Will it ever be possible to build consensus when one political party in this House is seeking to weaponise the NHS?

[Andy Burnham]

I do not know which election the hon. Gentleman was fighting, but I went round the country and heard stories from patients who were having their treatment rationed. Older people were not being given cataract operations, for example, and were having to consider going private. Varicose vein operations were being rationed. If he never heard those stories, he could not have been listening to his constituents on the doorstep.

The NHS is in the grip of private staffing agencies because of the cuts to front-line posts and to nurse training, and because of low morale. This is the Secretary of State who denied NHS staff a 1% pay increase after years of pay freezes. What a kick in the teeth for staff who are working flat out to try to keep the NHS going! Good will in the NHS is at an all-time low, and it is no wonder that so many disillusioned staff are going to work for agencies to supplement their income. The Secretary of State has woken up to the problem today, and he has promised to take tough action on the agency bill, but will not put a cap on the agency spend in financially troubled trusts that results in those trusts being understaffed, because he will not permit them to recruit the staff they need? He needs to clarify that point. Will he also consider the rates paid on internal banks, and correct the ridiculous situation in which staff have a greater incentive to work for external agencies than for their own employer?

Why has there been no mention of staff training? Surely increasing the number of nurses coming through training is the only proper long-term answer to cutting agency spend. If the Secretary of State wants a fresh start, why does he not make an immediate pledge to increase nurse training commissions this year, as I would have done if Labour had won the election? Will he do that? If not, why not? Until he corrects this situation, the NHS will continue to be saddled with long-term agency costs. The truth is that the chickens are coming home to roost. The Secretary of State has left the NHS in the grip of private staffing agencies, and the measures he has announced today will not help.

The Secretary of State has also tried to paper over the cracks with a headline promise of £8 billion. There are three problems with that. As I said to the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), it represents an IOU for five years’ time, but it will not deliver real money now, which is what the NHS needs. Secondly, the £8 billion makes sense only if the NHS manages to make £22 billion of efficiency savings by 2020. That is the five-year plan, as I am sure Members agree. To date, the Secretary of State has not provided any real details of where that £22 billion of savings is going to come from. Many of the people I speak to in the service say that the NHS has already had five years of hard efficiency savings, and that savings on that scale cannot be achieved without causing real harm to services. Does the £22 billion involve cuts to staff? Does it involve service closures? Does it involve more rationing of drugs and treatments? Will he now set out a plan for those £22 billion-worth of efficiencies? People have a right to know how he plans to achieve them.

Thirdly, can the Secretary of State tell us where this £8 billion is coming from? During the election, Ministers repeatedly failed to answer this question. The Chancellor was asked about it 18 times on “The Andrew Marr Show”, and his evasion was excruciating. So can the Secretary of State now give us an answer? If he cannot, people will conclude that the Conservatives either knew they were going to break this promise or did not want people to know where the money was going to come from. But people need to know, because the Government could be about to repeat the big spending mistake that they made in the last Parliament.

Five years ago, I warned the Government that it would be irresponsible to pay for the NHS by raiding social care, but that is exactly what they did. Around a third of a million vulnerable older people lost social care support at home and, unsurprisingly, many of them ended up in hospital. Those cuts to social care had terrible human costs, but they also created huge operational and efficiency problems for the NHS, with record numbers of frail people occupying hospital beds. I say this again to the Secretary of State: if you let social care collapse, it will drag the rest of the NHS down with it. It is a false economy on a grand scale to cut social care to pay for the NHS. Will he be clear today: will he confirm that, if the Government have no plans for new taxes, the money for the NHS will come from cuts to other unprotected Departments? If that is the case, are we not looking at even deeper cuts to local government and social care in this Parliament than we saw in the last?

The Secretary of State cannot keep dodging those questions. The Gracious Speech promised plans to integrate the NHS and social care, but there will be nothing left for the NHS to integrate with if he carries on in this way. The care cuts in the previous Parliament were the root cause of the A&E crisis. Hospital accident and emergency departments have now missed the Government’s lower target for 97 weeks in a row. If they cut social care again, we will have to deal with a full-blown NHS crisis.

Attendances at A&E departments increased 10 times faster in the four years after 2010 than in the four years before 2010. That was caused not just by the ageing society, as the Secretary of State likes to claim, but by his failure to look after that ageing society.

Where was the action in the Queen’s Speech on the scandal of 15-minute care visits? The truth is that there is no solution for the NHS without a solution for social care, but the only plan on offer from this Government is more cuts, and those cuts will pile pressure on an already overstretched NHS. This is where the NHS finds itself at the start of this Parliament.

The Secretary of State has promised us a seven-day NHS, which we all support. He has promised us 8 am to 8 pm GP opening. How on earth will he deliver those promises when he cannot say where the money is coming from, and when the NHS is facing a huge financial deficit? He will make a grave mistake if he tries to introduce seven-day working in the NHS on the backs of NHS staff. Staff who work the most unsocial shift patterns often face the greatest cost. For instance, they have no choice but to use their car if public transport is not running. It would be utterly wrong to pay in part for seven-day working by removing the unsocial hours payment, and we will oppose any attempt by him to do that. Good will is evaporating in the NHS and we cannot afford to lose any more.

In conclusion, to listen to the Secretary of State today, we might be forgiven for thinking that everything is fine in the NHS, but it is not. People are waiting longer and longer for cancer treatment to start, and the cancer standard has been missed for the past five consecutive quarters. NHS waiting lists are at a seven-year high. People cannot get GP appointments when they need them; they are left ringing the surgery for hour after hour in the morning to be told that nothing is available for days. Ambulances are taking longer to arrive, as we heard at Health questions earlier, A&E remains in permanent crisis mode, mental health services are in crisis, social care is being cut, NHS services are being privatised, and the bill for agency staff has left the NHS in the grip of private agencies.

The uncomfortable truth for the Secretary of State is that he is running out of people to blame. This is the NHS that he inherits from himself, and it is heading downhill fast. The onus is now on him to produce a plan to turn round NHS finances, turn round A&E and deliver on the promises he has put before the country. The NHS enters this Parliament facing one of the most dangerous moments in its history. We will not let him shift the blame on to NHS staff. The party that created the NHS will hold him to account for the damage that he is doing to it right now.