Health and Care Bill

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

This Bill can really help support giving every baby the best start for life.

First, new clause 55, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), would require the Secretary of State to publish guidance on how integrated care systems should meet the needs specifically of babies. “The Best Start for Life” report, published in March, calls for every local area to publish a seamless start for life offer for every new family. That must include midwifery, health visiting, mental health support and targeted services such as couple counselling, debt advice and smoking cessation. Each of these services is currently provided from silos within the public, private and civic sectors, so properly integrating them is no small task. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure there is very clear guidance to every local area on how it should co-ordinate its support for babies.

I also want to support amendments 91 and 92, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), which call for parity of esteem between mental and physical health. Mental health support for families who are struggling in that critical early period is vital. The London School of Economics has assessed that perinatal depression, anxiety and psychosis carry a total long-term cost to society of about £8.1 billion for each one-year cohort of births in the UK. Prevention is not only kinder but so much cheaper than cure.

Finally, I would like to support amendment 102, from my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), which calls for integrated care boards to provide clarity about their plans to tackle domestic violence. I am delighted that the Minister has already agreed to accept it. Analysis by the WAVE Trust indicates that up to 30% of domestic violence begins during pregnancy. The WAVE Trust highlights the crucial nature of experiences in the period of conception to the age of three in the formation of seriously violent personalities, largely because of the sensitive nature of the infant brain in those formative years. Domestic violence within a family is incredibly damaging to the emotional development of a baby, and I encourage my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that plans for tackling domestic violence cover not just relations between partners, but reducing the impact on babies.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you may have heard me speak in this place before about giving every baby the best start for life, and I keep doing so because I am convinced that, if we invest in the 1,001 critical days, we really will transform our society for the better. It is in the period from conception to the age of two that the building blocks for lifelong physical and emotional health are laid down.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I was not expecting to be called, Madam Deputy Speaker, but here we are. I want to tell a little story about my dad. My dad often rings me and tells me the things I should say in Parliament—I am not entirely sure any of you are quite ready for it, but I want to tell a story about my dad. He was born in the war, and they were given a council house by the Attlee Government—my dad could lecture us on it for weeks! He was given a council house, which his very Conservative parents bought in the 1980s. My granny, unbelievably—a lovely, generous woman—was a massive Thatcherite. She bought her council house in the 1980s, and that council house stands in my constituency. It is worth around £120,000.

My dad went on to get an education—a free education—and he moved into an area of Birmingham that was not very trendy at the time. He stayed there, I was born there, and my brothers lived there. All through our lives we watched that area get a little bit trendier, and the price of my dad’s house, which he bought for £30,000, went up and up and up. He didn’t particularly do much work—he likes to woodwork in his garage, but he has not done much. His house is probably worth around £700,000 now, and it was £30,000 when he bought it.

If my dad were here today, what he would say to hon. Members, and what he will almost certainly say to me, because he watches it all, lurking on Twitter, is that he does not deserve to keep his wealth for his children at any greater rate than the people who live in the council house that his parents bought on Frodesley Road in Sheldon. Yet today, the people who live in my constituency and the council house that my granny bought, to try to get a better life, will subsidise the care of my father, who has a £700,000 house that I do not need to inherit. I’m all right. I’ve got quite a good job. It is totally unacceptable that that is the situation we are putting almost all my constituents in, compared with constituents in Chipping Norton, for example, or the constituents of other hon. Members who have stood up and spoken. My constituents will largely be left with nothing. They will not be grateful.

[Edward Argar]

I am conscious of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will try to cover some of the main themes that have emerged from today’s debate. I am grateful for the debate we have had today. The vast majority of what is contained in the Bill is exactly what the NHS said that it wanted and needed, and it is the right legislation being brought forward at the right time, to drive forward those priorities highlighted by the NHS in its 2019 consultation. The Bill drives forward integration not only within the local NHS within a region, but also greater integration with a local authority. It provides the foundations on which we can continue to build, as we move forward with greater integration of health and social care services that are designed to work around the individual, rather than in institutional silos.

Despite misleading claims by campaigners—and, indeed, by some Opposition Members—the Bill does not privatise the NHS. The NHS will always be free at the point of delivery. It has been in the hands of the Conservative party longer than it has been in the hands of any other party, and the Conservative party has put in place record investment in terms of resources in our NHS. What we propose in the Bill continues to build on that. Government Amendment 25 on ICBs is clear: ICBs are NHS bodies. They have always been NHS bodies in our proposals, and we have put in place provisions regarding conflicts of interest. Just to make sure, and given the misleading claims about private involvement, new clause 25 puts beyond doubt that ICBs are NHS bodies and must act in the best interests of the NHS. It is an amendment that is much stronger and much more effectively drafted than the alternatives put forward by the Opposition, because we believe in putting this question beyond doubt.

On the ICBs and ICPs, we have sought to be permissive rather than prescriptive, giving those local systems, within a national framework, the flexibility to deliver what they need to deliver for their local areas, which they know best.

I have been happy to accept amendments 102 and 114. I will continue to reflect on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker); in the nicest possible way, I suspect that—rightly—he will not go away. The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), set out very clearly the case for his amendment 114, which I was happy to accept, and the importance it places on patient safety.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) has done a huge amount of work in this space—I pay tribute to her—and she is right: we will look very carefully in the statutory guidance at how we can emphasise that. I fear that my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) was not in her seat when I paid tribute to the work that she had done previously, but I put that on the record too.

On new clause 49, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), a distinguished former Care Minister, made the point extremely well that this is a significant improvement and step forward on where we currently are in respect of tackling the social care challenge.