Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I know the role she has played, in particular in the all-party group on the armed forces, and of course in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. She is absolutely right, and there are sometimes coup and contrecoup elements of damage to the brain. There is also some evidence to suggest that some people diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder have actually been suffering from a brain injury.

Interestingly, the Ministry of Defence has done some of the most innovative work in relation to brain injuries—physical brain injuries, as it were—and it has been able to transfer some of the skills and research involved in that work to the wider population, which is all to the good. However, I think that the way in which the mind sits inside the brain and the brain sits inside the skull is one of the areas of research that is still underdeveloped, and we still need to do a great deal more about it.

Other causes include brain tumours and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, where somebody may have had a series of relatively minor concussions. There is a complete misunderstanding of what concussion actually involves, particularly in sport. This might be leading to some of the long-term sustained problems of, for example, people in my own constituency who played rugby for many years and had repeated concussions. They may suffer from dementia, depression and anxiety in later life, but have no understanding that that may relate to a brain injury, rather than to anything else.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

While we are talking about sport, may I say that this does not involve only rugby players? There is now evidence that footballers, particularly those heading the ball, suffer sustained brain injuries. It used to be interpreted as dementia, but it is a lot more serious than that. Has my hon. Friend had any discussions with the Football League about that?

[Chris Bryant]

I have had lots of discussions, some of them more fruitful than others, with the Football Association.

It is wholly to be deprecated that FIFA still will not allow a full substitution for an assessment of brain injury during a match. Ten minutes are needed to do a proper assessment on the pitch, but at the moment only three minutes is available in a FIFA match. There can be no substitution, and it is not therefore in the team’s interests to take the person off the pitch. I think that this must change. If there is one thing that I hope Parliament will say to FIFA about this in the next few months, it is that this must change. People we talk of as heroes, such as Jeff Astle, have died because of heading the ball. If those who are heroes to our young people today end up suffering in later life because of what they sustained in their footballing career, we will have done them a terrible disservice.