Infant Formula Regulations
Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)
I am grateful to have secured my first Adjournment debate on an issue that affects so many families in my constituency and across the country: the cost of infant formula and the regulations that govern its sale.
The infant formula market is rightly highly regulated, and should remain so. Regulations have a key role in supporting public health goals and breastfeeding. However, not all parents can or want to breastfeed, and recent stats show that 95% of babies in the UK have had some formula by the age of nine months. As the father of a nine-month-old baby, I know how emotionally charged and difficult it is to navigate infant feeding. The infancy period is crucial for a child’s development. In their first year, they will triple their birth weight, and the foundations of their health are determined for the rest of their life. It is vital that parents have access to safe and affordable food during infancy. The fact that, for too many families, that is not the reality is a public health crisis.
Recent data from YouGov shows that one in four mothers are struggling to afford formula milk. Over the past two years, the price of the cheapest brand of formula has risen by 45%, with an average price hike across all brands of 25%. Those increases are putting immense pressure on families.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
I thank the hon. Member for bringing forward this important debate and allowing me to intervene briefly. A recent Competition and Markets Authority report highlighted the insufficient marketing regulations in the formula industry, which enable brands to exploit vulnerable parents by presenting their products as distinct or superior, despite all formulas being required to meet the same nutritional standards, whether the box costs £7 or £14. Does he agree that an NHS-branded formula in plain packaging could be considered? It could be sold at cost price. That would give those families who choose not to, or who cannot, breastfeed confidence that their decision is best for their child, regardless of the cost.
Chris Webb
I completely agree, and I will come to that later in my speech. I look forward to working with the hon. Lady and other members of the all-party parliamentary group on infant feeding when it is established in the coming weeks.
In my constituency alone, where child poverty has increased by 30% in the past year, 12,500 children are going without enough food each day. Formula is an essential product for many, but the average tub now costs a staggering £14.50, so many parents are resorting to extreme and unsafe measures to feed their babies. A black market has sprung up for infant milk, and it is one of the most commonly shoplifted items. Rather than working to reduce its cost, some supermarkets have resorted to locking formula in cages or attaching security tags to it. Certain stores have even gone as far as to prevent customers from entering unless admitted by staff—that is happening in convenience stores across my constituency.
We are seeing something that should be unthinkable in modern Britain: formula foraging. I regularly read heartbreaking posts on local forums from parents begging for baby milk to tide them over until the next payday—they are in utter despair—but by seeking out cheap or free milk online, they risk feeding their babies a product that could be out of date or already opened and potentially laden with bacteria. Studies have shown that the inability to afford formula can lead to unsafe feeding practices such as skipping feeds, ignoring expiry dates, and over-diluting powdered formula or bulking it out using unapproved alternative foods such as porridge, all of which can harm an infant’s health.
New NHS England figures show a worrying rise in childhood malnutrition. Up to 47% of hospitalised children are at risk of undernourishment. Last year, admissions for malnutrition at Blackpool teaching hospitals had almost doubled on the previous year. Gastroenteritis has become an alarmingly common illness in infants, with many now suffering more than one episode a year. In Blackpool, hospital admissions for under-ones with gastrointestinal problems are almost triple the national average. Dehydration—a common complication of gastroenteritis—is a particularly serious risk, and it is exacerbated by parents’ inability to access or properly prepare formula. Parents should not be forced into those dangerous choices when they are simply trying to feed their babies. This scandal demands the urgent attention of the House.
Income Tax (Charge)
Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
I start by recognising that this Government face an enormous challenge in clearing up the mess of a decade of Conservative mismanagement in this country, and that failure is nowhere more apparent than in our NHS and care sector. Every day, thousands of patients across the country face agonisingly long waits, often in severe pain, just to see a GP or get an appointment with a dentist.
Yesterday, I met a constituent whose 45-year-old husband—a well-loved, energetic and creative man—never regained consciousness after being left in the A&E waiting room of my local hospital for six hours after suffering a brain haemorrhage. James Palmer-Bullock leaves behind three wonderful children, a loving wife and a devastated community. His wife’s request to me was to ensure that no family ever suffers the same neglect again. I hope the Secretary of State will meet me to discuss the experience that my constituent faced and what can be done to prevent it in future.
New funding for day-to-day spend in the NHS is welcomed across this House, and it is desperately needed if we are ever to address the crisis in the NHS. However, there is no point in pouring money into a leaky bucket if that money does not get where it needs to go.
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
It is not just public services that we need to focus on: the third sector provides vital services that many of our constituents rely on, particularly children’s hospices. I would like to highlight to the House the Acorns children’s hospice in my constituency, which provides vital support to many local families in a really acute moment of need. In 2019, NHS England decided to increase the children’s hospice grant—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. That intervention was far too long.
Jess Brown-Fuller
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He will be pleased to know that I am going to mention hospices later in my speech.
To fix the NHS, we must fix both the front and the back door. Taking the pressure off secondary care can only be achieved by properly funding primary care. That is why the decision to increase employer’s national insurance contributions is a significant mistake, as it risks worsening the crisis in the NHS and care sector. Increasing that rate will drive up GP surgery costs, significantly raising the annual expense of GP practices. Those practices are not eligible for the employment allowance that protects our small employers, so surgeries in Chichester and across the country will bear the full weight of that rise—a burden that they and my constituents simply cannot afford. Surgeries such as Southbourne surgery, Langley House surgery and Selsey medical practice have already reached out to me with concerns about their ability to continue providing services amid those financial challenges. They all agree that this increase will directly undermine patient access and care.
Charities have long suffered the burden of failing statutory services. Chichester boasts some of the most amazing charitable organisations, and one of the great pleasures of my role is to spend time with the people at the heart of those organisations. Charities such as Stonepillow, which works to prevent homelessness in our area, face an increase in costs of £125,000. I also visited St Wilfrid’s hospice after the Budget announcement—an incredible hospice that provides palliative care for hundreds of people every year, both in the hospice and in the community. It now faces an increased bill of £175,000—money that it needs to find annually, with only 17% of its annual budget covered by the NHS. I urge the Government to consider exempting the health and social care sector from the national insurance rise, so that the Treasury is not giving with one hand and taking with the other.
NHS Winter Readiness
Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts(1 month ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for bringing forward this important debate on a very busy day for all Members, given the Budget announcement in the Chamber.
Last winter was nothing short of a catastrophe for the NHS and everyone who depends on it. NHS figures show that, between November 2023 and March 2024, nearly three quarters of a million people endured A&E waits of more than four hours and nearly a quarter of a million waited for more than 12 hours. In west Sussex alone, there have been 25,000 cases of 12-hour A&E waits so far this year—a 36% increase on the same period last year. Those figures leave patients and staff in my constituency of Chichester deeply anxious as we approach another winter, especially given that we have had the busiest summer on record, with NHS staff managing a staggering 6.8 million attendances over just three months.
In many cases, being seen quickly is literally a matter of life or death, especially in acute and emergency settings. Rory Deighton, the director of the NHS Confederation’s Acute Network, warned us that:
“Without immediate funding there is a very real risk the NHS falls into crisis this winter, with ambulance response and handover delays, overcrowded A&Es and people stuck in hospital beds because of a lack of community and social care.”
It is evident that many of my constituents in Chichester have lost faith in emergency health services. A recent poll conducted by the Liberal Democrats showed that one in four Britons has avoided calling an ambulance for fear that it will take too long to arrive. NHS paramedics, nurses and doctors consistently go above and beyond, and yet the system they are working in has stretched them to breaking point. Patients are bearing the consequences: they suffer each winter as the NHS crisis intensifies.
The Chancellor’s Budget announcement today that a 10-year plan will be introduced in the spring will not address the immediate crisis on our doorsteps. It was disappointing to hear very little attention paid to social care, which we know causes a huge number of beds to be used in hospitals. We cannot fix the bed crisis by just buying more beds; we must invest in the workforce that supports those beds. We must ensure that, this winter, my constituents in Chichester do not sleep in corridors or wait in uncomfortable waiting rooms—an experience that is all too familiar for me because, last winter, my grandmother ended up in a corridor, after being admitted in agony, in full view of the public. That would be an incredibly distressing experience for anybody, let alone somebody suffering with acute dementia.
There is no point in throwing money at a leaky bucket if the funding will not get where it needs to go to address the issues across the healthcare system. In my role as Liberal Democrat spokesperson for hospitals and primary care, I have had the opportunity to meet professionals from across primary and secondary care and hear what they are calling for so they can successfully provide a service across the board this winter. They are asking to be able to plan, with budgets that have a shelf life longer than 12 months, and allow them to innovate for the future. Year after year, the previous Conservative Government resorted to spending hundreds of millions of pounds in emergency funds every year to manage the winter crisis.
That emergency funding was a short-term fix that often arrived in those hospitals far too late to address the problem, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire pointed out. It was short-term fix rather than a comprehensive long-term plan to invest ahead of the crisis. Liberal Democrats have long called for a winter taskforce to oversee a dedicated, ring-fenced fund to build resilience for hospital wards, A&E departments, ambulance services and patient discharge pathways over the next four years.
I have no doubt that this will not be the last time we talk about NHS preparedness for winter. I fear that the Budget today will not have alleviated the concerns and fears of my Chichester constituents, nor those of the staff working in health care in my area. I urge the Government to use our ideas and prepare the NHS for not just this winter but future ones. We are ready to work constructively with the Government to that end.
Access to Primary Healthcare
Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
Today marks the first Liberal Democrat Opposition day in this House for 15 years, and we have dedicated it to the topics that are fundamental to constituents up and down the country: carers, the provision of care, and the NHS. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on hospitals and primary care, it is my honour to close today’s debate and to pay tribute to the many excellent contributions from my hon. Friends and hon. Members across the House.
I commend my hon. Friends the Members for North Devon (Ian Roome), for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley), and for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) for their passionate tributes to their constituencies in their maiden speeches. I also pay tribute to the hon. Members for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), and for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), who bring such valuable knowledge to the Chamber during debates on healthcare.
Our NHS was once the envy of the world. The care, compassion and accessibility that it offered were unparalleled. Sadly, after years of Conservative mismanagement, our NHS and care sector are in crisis. Every day, thousands of patients face agonisingly long waits, often in terrible pain, while trying to see a GP or get an appointment with a dentist. Lord Darzi’s report highlights the fact that primary care services are heavily underfunded, which is leading to unnecessary hospital admissions. There are clear economic benefits to investing more in primary care. With the first Budget of the new Government due to come to the House soon, I remind the Chancellor that every £1 spent in primary care is estimated to save £10 in urgent and secondary care.
In my constituency of Chichester, people are deeply worried about accessing GPs, a concern echoed throughout the general election campaign and reflected in my surgery appointments with residents. The public’s trust in the NHS has been eroded due to the consequences of poor Conservative management. As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) pointed out, the Conservative Government promised 6,000 more GPs in 2019, but instead GP numbers have fallen by almost 500 and GP practice funding has been cut by £350 million in real terms since 2019.
Healthcare is not a luxury; it is a necessity. As Liberal Democrats, we believe everyone should have a legal right to see a GP within seven days, or within 24 hours if it is urgent, so we would pledge to recruit 8,000 more GPs to deliver on this promise. We also want those over 70 and those with long-term conditions to have access to a named GP, ensuring continuity of care, which helps to prevent unnecessary hospital admissions. As the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), mentioned, continuity of care is vital for patient trust and staff morale.
This is not the first time I have mentioned this in the Chamber to the Secretary of State, but the collapse of a not-for-profit GP federation serving Chichester and the south coast last month was a stark reminder of the system’s fragility. Patients’ appointments were cancelled, services were threatened and 130 staff were left unpaid. The collapse was due to the erosion of contract values with primary care networks and NHS Sussex. When GPs are sitting in my surgery telling me they want to work but they cannot, with no reassurance that they will be paid for the work that they have done, something has gone terribly wrong.
Dental care is another critical area within primary care. We have heard today about dental deserts across the country. During this afternoon’s debate, I began trying to list every Member who mentioned their dental desert and I gave up. It was shocking to hear the statistics and the harrowing case studies from across the House. The Liberal Democrats are calling for a dental rescue package that includes investment in more dental appointments, reforming the broken NHS dental contract and using flexible commissioning to meet patient needs. Workforce planning for health and social care must also be written into law, ensuring that we have enough dentists to meet demand.
Lastly, we must reverse the Conservatives’ cuts to public health grants, in order to support preventive dental care, including oral health programmes and promoting healthy eating choices, which will reduce the pressure on our NHS dental services. The Government have an opportunity to turn around a decade of Conservative chaos and mismanagement of our precious NHS and to give primary care the attention and focus it deserves, and we will work constructively with them to ensure that patients in Chichester and across the country get the care that they deserve.
NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation
Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the hon. Member for her question. No, I do not think that the take-up rate is where it should be. That is why in the short time we have been in office we have put more effort and energy into vaccine take-up, but there is more to do. I welcome her to the House, and will not have a go at her for the record of the people who sat on the Government Benches just before the general election.
Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)
At the end of September, a large GP federation serving patients across Sussex suddenly went bust, causing 130 redundancies; patient care was severely affected. The federation reported that the cause was a failure to obtain long-term contracts from any of its major clients, and the erosion of the real-terms value of contracts with both primary care networks and NHS Sussex. Does the Secretary of State agree that protecting continuity of service is key to public confidence in primary care, and will he meet me to discuss this case?
Wes Streeting
I am grateful to the hon. Member for her intervention. I wish that this was a challenge only in her constituency; it is a challenge right across the country. As I said to the Royal College of GPs last week, it will take time to rebuild general practice, so that it is back where we want it to be. We would be delighted to hear more from her; I will ensure that my Department makes contact, and that a Minister is in touch about the challenge in her constituency.