Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
I welcome the increase in appointments and the numbers that my hon. Friend has drawn to the House’s attention. There is targeted funding of up to £20,000 for areas that are having difficulty recruiting; I am happy to discuss with her how we ensure that Medway can adequately access that fund.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Steve Barclay
I agree that that is an important issue and I am keen to expedite it; we are having urgent discussions about how we maximise the use of physician associates. The hon. Lady raises an important point that we are discussing with the devolved Administrations, because it applies across the United Kingdom. I am keen to move quickly on that important area.
Health and Social Care
Jessica Morden Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Sajid Javid
First, I wish a happy St David’s day to the hon. Member and all those celebrating. I would be happy to meet her on this issue. The Government greatly value the role of physician associates. She knows that they bring new talent to the NHS and act in an enabling role, where they can help healthcare teams with their workload. Physician associates will be regulated by the General Medical Council, and the Department has consulted on draft legislation on just how to do that.
[Official Report, 1 March 2022, Vol. 709, c. 900.]
Letter of correction from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).
An error has been identified in my response to the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden).
The correct response should have been:
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. The minor injuries units at Ilfracombe and Bideford have been temporarily closed since March 2020 due to the pandemic, to allow skilled staff to be redeployed to the emergency department at North Devon District Hospital to meet clinical needs. The Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust continues to work with the local CCG to ensure planning for safe staffing levels for the temporary reconfiguration and for permanent solutions. Were anything to be made permanent, it would of course have to go through the local authority health overview and scrutiny committee. No such referral has been made, and this remains temporary.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Sajid Javid
First, I wish a happy St David’s day to the hon. Member and all those celebrating. I would be happy to meet her on this issue. The Government greatly value the role of physician associates. She knows that they bring new talent to the NHS and act in an enabling role, where they can help healthcare teams with their workload. Physician associates will be regulated by the General Medical Council, and the Department has consulted on draft legislation on just how to do that.
World Menopause Month
Jessica Morden Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), who made some excellent points, and it is great to take part in this debate on World Menopause Month. I am pleased to be a member of the all-party parliamentary group on menopause, chaired with typical passion and panache by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris).
I add my support to the call for the menopause revolution across policy making to finally address the personal, social and professional impact of the menopause on the lives of women in the UK. The issues faced by so many women were outlined so ably by my hon. Friend that I will not repeat them, but we will have another opportunity to discuss some of these issues next Friday when we consider her private Member’s Bill. The menopause is an issue that has been woefully overlooked, and I particularly welcome her reference to menopause training, which is important.
As other Members want to speak, I will make a short contribution to add my support for the awareness raising and the calls for change. We need to see an urgent change of attitude in our workplaces to reflect the changing make-up of the workforce. Menopausal women are the fastest growing working demographic in the UK. In Wales, nearly half of all working women are over 50 and are likely to be experiencing the perimenopause or the menopause.
However, a cut-off age of 50 does not reflect the number of women affected, many of whom will be experiencing symptoms of the perimenopause in their mid-to-late 40s, while many younger women experience an early menopause, whether premature, surgical or medical. This includes younger women experiencing common conditions such as endometriosis, who may receive treatment that induces menopausal symptoms. I am sure we all pay tribute to the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis and its former chair, David Amess, who we are thinking about very much this week.
What is clear is that support for women suffering from the potentially debilitating symptoms of the menopause is not widespread in many workplaces. Although the Equality Act 2010 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex, research from the Wales TUC, which has done great work on this for many years and I commend it to the Minister, highlights how many women feel that managers simply do not recognise problems associated with the menopause in the way that they would for other health conditions, even those with similar symptoms arising from different causes. In studies conducted ahead of the publication of its superb menopause toolkit, the Wales TUC found that almost a third of women with direct experience of the menopause felt that it was treated negatively in their workplace and nearly 60% reported witnessing the menopause being treated as a joke. That clearly highlights the pressing need for menopause workplace policies, particularly in large organisations, so that women know they have the support, the flexibility and the time off without the worry of losing out on pay.
I also want to mention the link between the menopause and osteoporosis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) did. She is our lead on this, as chair of the all-party group on osteoporosis and bone health. That affects 3.5 million people across the UK. Half of women over 50 will suffer a broken bone due to osteoporosis, which, as she said, is a condition closely tied with changes in oestrogen levels. As she said, the menopause is an important time for bone health and bone density. Like the menopause itself, osteoporosis is not something policy makers can merely dismiss as a mild feature of getting older, as many people die from fracture-related causes. Although people living with the disease can live a healthy life with prompt diagnosis and the right support, millions are suffering the consequences of long-term pain and even disability because of under-diagnosis and under-treatment.
The day-to-day impact of osteoporosis cannot be underestimated. Research from the Royal Osteoporosis Society shows that a quarter of osteoporosis sufferers will be living with long-term pain; that 71% have trouble with cleaning and cooking; and that 52% say the condition affects their ability to get around, to drive or to use public transport. There is much more on that. Work is going on in many areas, including in the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in my area, where we have the specialist first fracture clinic in Pontypool, and a fracture liaison service based at Nevill Hall Hospital. However, that needs to be more widespread. I implore Ministers to work with the ROS on its request for the Government to match-fund their research investment, as part of a much-needed rebalancing of research investment towards musculoskeletal conditions, which account for 9% of the health burden, but a mere 3% of the research spend.
Finally, I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East for her Menopause (Support and Services) Bill to end English prescription charges for hormone replacement therapy, which can help to prevent osteoporosis and other menopause symptoms. As has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), thanks to the Welsh Labour Government, our constituents in Wales do not have to pay to access that essential treatment. The Bill aims to ensure that that is also true for our neighbours across the River Severn.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
What my hon. Friend says is absolutely right. Of course if someone puts a defibrillator on private land, access to it should naturally be open to anybody who needs it. I will look into the exact legal status, but let us set aside the legal status for a minute. If there is a defibrillator on private land that could save somebody’s life, the landowner should of course allow access to it for anybody who needs it.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
As current Government investment in motor neurone research is not the targeted funding that is needed, will the Minister meet charities, researchers and patients to examine this discrepancy and commit to additional funding of £10 million a year for five years for a virtual motor neurone disease research institute, with a specific focus on helping us to get a world free of MND?
Helen Whately
I will look into the hon. Lady’s specific request, but I can tell her that the Government are actively supporting research into motor neurone disease. For instance, in April I jointly hosted a roundtable event on boosting MND research with the National Institute for Health Research/Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre, which brought together researchers and others. We are absolutely committed to this area of work.
Coronavirus
Jessica Morden Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I seek your guidance on a matter of correcting the record? Earlier today, during the urgent question on steel and the situation at Liberty asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), the Business Secretary said that the closure of SSI happened before 2010, but that is not correct.
If the Secretary of State does not know, the plant was purchased by SSI in February 2011 but closed in October 2015, after David Cameron refused to intervene. How might we get the Business Secretary to correct the record, to reassure Liberty Steel workers—not least those in Hartlepool pipe mills, who remember the fate of the Teesside steelworkers at SSI—that he will not abandon steel? It is very telling that the Government do not know or understand their own record of inaction on steel.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the hon. Lady for advance notice of her point of order. As she knows, the Chair is not responsible for the content of any contribution from a Minister. Having said that, Mr Speaker has made it absolutely clear that where a Minister knows that they have inadvertently misled the House or there is an inaccuracy, they should correct the record as quickly as possible.
Covid-19
Jessica Morden Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
During previous debates of this nature, it has not always been possible to draw positives from what has been a difficult, dark year for all of us, but the roll-out of the vaccination programme is providing, in my constituents’ words, a glimmer of light at the end of a long tunnel. On behalf of my constituents, I want to say a huge thank you to all the staff helping to deliver vaccinations at our GP practices and mass vaccination centres, as well as all the staff at the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and the volunteers working behind the scenes to ensure that this enormous task is undertaken effectively. The Welsh Government also deserve credit for their effective management of the vaccine roll-out. Wales was the first nation to offer the top four priority groups a covid jab, and one in four people in Wales have now received their first dose. Well done, Wales!
While it is right to celebrate the positives, it is also vital that we remember all those who continue to struggle during the lockdown. I want to talk about a few of the issues that have been highlighted in the debate. Young people have had their school and college lives upended by the crisis, and there is still huge uncertainty over the complicated picture around vocational and technical qualifications. It is more complicated in Wales, with some awarding bodies responsible to the Department for Education—that includes BTECs—and some to the Welsh Government. Students and their colleges need clarity on issues such as struggling to get work experience, being assessed and getting their grades awarded. The Welsh Government are doing all they can with colleges such as Coleg Gwent, but UK Education Ministers need to get our national awarding bodies to tell colleges as soon as possible what to do this year.
Mental health is an ongoing concern for people of all generations, and I hope that one positive to emerge from this period will be a renewed focus on the impact of isolation and loneliness in policy making at all levels. There are lots of good groups in my constituency doing good work. I particularly want to thank Newport County AFC, who I met last week, for the work it is doing through its support network for supporters struggling with mental health problems when fans have not been able to meet up at games. The club is a prime example of how sport can act as a force for good in the community, and I encourage other English Football League clubs to learn from its successful model.
I would also like to speak about the plight of asylum seekers in my constituency. Home Office and UK Visas and Immigration processing times are very long, there are lengthy waits for biometric residency permits, and despite a promise to prioritise those who work in the NHS, that does not seem to be happening. There is real hardship out there in that community. There are people with nothing.
I have spoken in previous debates about universal credit. The Chancellor’s decision to scrap the £20 a week uplift from April, amounting to a cut of £1,000 a year, is indefensible, as is the fact that the uplift has never applied to the 2 million on legacy benefits. That needs to be sorted as soon as possible. We also need long overdue action for workers who have been excluded from UK Government support schemes during the pandemic. There is a Labour-led debate on this tomorrow and I hope that Conservative Members will listen and do the right thing.
Covid-19
Jessica Morden Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab) [V]
In the midst of this most critical situation, I start by paying huge tribute to NHS and care staff from Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, those organising the vaccines and all keyworkers out there in Newport East on the frontline, in the most stressful and challenging of circumstances.
In Wales, 3,997 people to date have tragically lost their lives. Our thoughts are with their families and friends for their loss and pain. It has never been more important to heed the calls to stay at home and keep each other safe. I have some points to raise with Ministers in the limited time I have.
As a Welsh Member, I pay tribute to Welsh Government Ministers and their strong leadership. So often, the pattern has been that the Welsh Government have made the difficult decisions first, only to see others follow later, but I remind Ministers that the Treasury is the Treasury for the whole UK, not just England.
In autumn, when Wales went into a firebreak first, the Tory Government would not extend the job retention scheme, yet when England went into its second lockdown the Treasury U-turned and ensured that support was in place. The Welsh Government took the difficult but justified decision to move Wales to level 4 in December because of the new strain—there was some opposition from the Government Benches to that—but it was not until England locked down last week that additional funding was mentioned. Then it emerged that the money announced for Wales was not new money at all, but money already announced last year. We have seen that pattern repeated throughout the pandemic. We should not forget that we ended 2020 in the UK with one of the worst death tolls in Europe and the deepest recession of any major economy. That was not inevitable; it was a consequence of the Prime Minister’s repeated delay in choices.
I urge Ministers to do more to help the 3 million people in the UK who have been excluded from UK Government support schemes. Many will soon be a year without support, including constituents of mine such as the woman whose employer chose not to take part in the furlough scheme, the newly self-employed beautician and the company director of the small business who is paid via dividends. There was some speculation last week that there may be some movement on this, but our constituents need help as soon as possible, including new starters, those who have been on parental leave and others.
We must see more action for those who rely on the social security system. We are in the worst recession for 300 years, and family incomes are under huge strain. Why are the Government looking to cut universal credit by £1,000 for 6 million families? In Newport East, 8,812 families will take a hit if the cut goes ahead in April. Ministers must rule that out now, end the five-week wait, provide a £20 uplift to legacy benefits and change advances for loans. Action is needed quickly.
Finally, this is a critical time for the steel industry. It would be really helpful if Ministers could update us on talks with Tata about short-term support in this crisis, on Tata’s changes and on the long-term strategy for our steel industry.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jessica Morden Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Matt Hancock
We are making good progress in validating the tests and in doing what needs to be done to be able to use them effectively. I have seen some of these reports from around the world, and I talk regularly to my opposite numbers about how we can get this sort of next-generation testing going.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Matt Hancock
I am a strong supporter of the work we have done to look at that approach. The hon. Lady is right to raise it, and I will write to her with a timetable for that response.
Covid-19
Jessica Morden Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
It is good to follow the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who raised a crucial point about the need to be able to see loved ones in care homes. He is quite right.
I begin by taking the opportunity to put on record my thanks to all those working on the frontline in Newport East during an extremely difficult year, with challenging months ahead of us. I thank the NHS workers, emergency services, local authority staff, civil servants, those in retail and food banks, and many more who have gone above and beyond to help.
My constituency includes communities in Newport, who are entering their second week of local restrictions, and in Monmouthshire, who are under the general Welsh restrictions. There is some evidence that the more cautious approach represented by these restrictions is working, and I am grateful to constituents for adhering to the rules, however challenging that might be.
In Wales, we are doing some things differently, and I know from constituents that the clear majority appreciate the measured, careful, thoughtful, and considered leadership of First Minister Mark Drakeford and the Welsh Government. As an example, while I was driving down today, I listened to a representative from UKHospitality on 5 Live talking about the 10 pm curfew for pubs and bars, which has been referred to a lot today. The UKHospitality representative pointed out how much more sensibly it had been implemented in Wales to avoid a hard cut-off time of 10 pm and the kind of mass exodus on to the streets that has been seen in other places; my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) alluded to it earlier. My constituents have appreciated the clearer and more sustained messaging from the Welsh Government, in contrast to the genuinely confusing messages from the UK Government to go out, go back to work and go on holiday, which has now been followed by the reverse.
The Welsh Labour Government are working on plans to prevent evictions in Wales, and we are spending triple the funding that is being spent in England on avoiding rough sleeping, but in England the Government are lifting the ban on evictions just as the second wave strikes. We are continuing provision for free school meals for those who are shielding or self-isolating into the autumn. It is not clear that the same is being done in England, so there are differences. In Wales, bonus payments have been made to care workers in recognition of the sacrifices they have made. The UK Government have decided to tax and make deductions from those payments, leaving some who are on universal credit with just £125.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington said, the measures announced by the Chancellor last week to help those who are in work fell short of what was required. There is nothing for those who have lost their jobs, or for those in professions in which the Chancellor has deemed jobs to be non-viable. There is no covid recovery plan or strategy for retraining. There is no strategy for the young, who, as we know from previous recessions, will be hit hardest. Everyone under 25 should have the chance to get a job, training or education. The job support scheme should have incentivised employers to keep more staff on, rather than incentivising them to bring some back full time and let others go. The gaps in the job retention scheme and the self-employment income support scheme have not helped those highlighted by the campaign for the 3 million excluded, including new starters, those who pay themselves dividends and those who earn half their income from self-employment. Then there are whole sectors that have been left out, be it the creative sector, the hospitality supply chain or the exhibition and events industry. For those having to claim universal credit, the five-week wait causes huge debt problems. Now is the time for the Government to fix the in-built failings in that system and turn advance payments into grants, not loans.
It is clear from my casework in Newport East that, for obvious reasons, the pandemic is having a severe impact on the operation of key Departments such as the Home Office, and especially UK Visas and Immigration. Can Ministers look at the fact that processing times have skyrocketed to up to two years for some people? I ask that on behalf of a young constituent who cannot take up a place at medical school this year because he has not had a decision, at a time when we desperately need his skills.
Can Ministers also look at the issue of holiday companies and airlines refusing to pay refunds for pre-booked holidays, as local and devolved lockdown restrictions are not covered by UK law? Ministers have said that this is an anomaly, but we need the Government to take action quickly. Finally, as the USDAW campaign has highlighted, since the start of the pandemic the average retail worker has been assaulted, threatened or abused every six-and-a-half days—more than double the rate in 2019. Can we address that issue?