Carers

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of carers.

I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for choosing this as the first debate of this parliamentary Session since the re-establishment of that Committee. I very much appreciate the fact that within the space of a few days after the celebration of national carers week, the Backbench Business Committee was able to grant us this time to examine how better to support carers in this country and to recognise the extraordinary contribution that each and every carer makes to their families and our society. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) and the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) for their support for this application and for the contributions that I look forward to hearing from them later in the debate.

As I said, last week was national carers week. With over 10,000 events up and down the country—I am sure that many hon. Members will have had the opportunity to participate in them in their constituency—this was the biggest carers week so far. Here in Westminster, MPs were invited to a variety of events, including a speed dating event with carers with a wide range of life experiences. I had the opportunity to meet, among others, a woman called Karen whose husband has Parkinson’s. She told me about her experience of being a carer for someone with that particular condition and about the isolation she felt, having taken on that caring role. She conveyed a sense of being increasingly excluded from participating in many aspects of society. I met other carers involved with Marie Curie, who told me how, because of the nature of the diagnosis and the rapid progression of the cancers in question, they experienced additional strains and burdens in trying to get the right support at the right time for their loved ones. The week concluded with a lively carers question time event, in which the Minister and a range of experts participated.

This year’s theme was “Prepared to Care?” It highlighted the fact that people who take on caring roles are often not prepared for the physical and emotional impact of caring, nor for its impact on their lives in other ways, not least financially. In that sense, it is worth stressing that this is not a “them and us” issue. It is easy to think about this as something that is going to happen to other people, whereas the figures clearly show that three out of five of us will be a carer at some point in our lives. It will touch all of us, either through personal experience or through our family’s experiences.

I want to pay particular tribute to the carers I have met over the years in my constituency during my time as a Member of Parliament. I want to thank the Sutton Carers Centre for being a lifeline for thousands of carers—young and old alike. The carers centre in Sutton has been my guide and teacher on carer issues over the past 15 years. Whether through shadowing carers to learn directly from them or meeting carers at the centre, I have found that the things they want—the things they tell me they want—are not impossible or unreasonable. They do not want to feel that everything is a constant battle—a battle to get a diagnosis, a battle to get an assessment, a battle to get support, a battle to get a break, or, indeed, a battle to navigate around the system.

Over the years, I have met and listened to many carers in my constituency and I have met carers for whom the lifeline that keeps them sane and keeps them connected is not the formal social care support, nor even the carer centre. It may be, for instance, the local bowling club, as I learned from one of the carers whom I shadowed. The determination of the club’s members to support a friend was the most important thing in that person’s life. Not enough is made of such informal, often fragile networks of support, although they often represent the vital difference between just surviving and having a life.

There is clear evidence that the caring role takes its toll on people, physically, emotionally and financially. Six out of 10 carers report experiencing depression because of their caring role, and, as I have said, caring can be a lonely business: three out of five carers say that they have experienced difficulties in maintaining relationships with friends. Another problem is the desire of many carers to stay in the workplace so that they can remain connected through their work. More than 3 million are trying to balance their caring responsibilities with paid work, often at the expense of working hours or their career prospects.

Last June I hosted a carers summit with the forum Employers for Carers, led by BT. The aim was to explore opportunities to help carers to remain in the workplace. BT and other members of the forum, such as British Gas, have a good track record in that regard. They invest in their staff and want to retain them, so identifying and supporting carers seems logical to them. The cost to the bottom line of a business of replacing a member of staff can be huge, and one of the purposes of the summit was to enable more employers to see the business case for carer-friendly employment practices. The Government subsequently established a “task and finish” group to consider ways of creating an environment in which people could balance their caring responsibilities with their careers. That work is vital.

According to a recent survey conducted by YouGov for Carers UK, an estimated 2.3 million people have given up work at some point to care for an older or disabled loved one. One in four gave up work or reduced their working hours because the cost of replacement care was too high, and a similar number reported that services were not flexible enough to meet their needs. The impact of being forced to give up work to care for a loved one on an individual’s finances alone is clear, but the London School of Economics has estimated that the hidden cost to the economy—in benefits and lost tax revenues—is a staggering £1.3 billion a year, every year. When lost earnings are taken into account, the figure can rise to as much as £5.3 billion. That is not a cost that the United Kingdom can continue to bear as a consequence of a failure to act and provide the safeguards, supports and systems that would enable carers to remain in employment.

There is an urgent need to us to reframe the debate. We must stop focusing on the burden on the economy, and see caring as an asset and an opportunity. We must begin to view it in the way we view child care support and services. Carers must be entitled to more flexibility at work, although the Government have done much in that regard. Given the scale of demographic change—the over-85s are now the fastest-growing section of the population, and their number is set to double by 2030—and the growing proportion of “sandwich workers” who are attempting to juggle paid work with the demands of caring for both children and older relatives, the provision of flexibility is becoming an imperative. The Government must also think about how the market for low-level support services such as cleaning, shopping, gardening and befriending can be increased and, crucially, brought into the formal labour market.

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

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, which is timely given some of the things that have been happening in old people’s homes. Does he agree that there is a case for asking employers to help people who have to care for a family member? Such people are often under stress, and if they have to give up their jobs, their standard of living will fall as well.

[Paul Burstow]

That is a key point, and one that I want to put to the Government very strongly. Carers can only be helped to remain in the work force and balance their working lives with their caring responsibilities if the right substitute care and flexibility are available, and if employers have the right attitudes in the first place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend will know that last October we outlawed age discrimination, and if that is the reason for this happening, it is totally unacceptable. We have to recognise that cancer is one of our biggest killers and that the over-85s are a key group if we are going to tackle it. He will welcome today’s news about making available drugs to tackle breast cancer, which may mean that surgery will no longer be necessary.

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

19. Will the Minister tell us what the reduction in size of the Department’s cancer policy team will be after April 2013, and whether any of the team’s functions will be removed to other bodies or scrapped?

[Mr Hunt]

We are reducing investment in the back office so we can put more money into the front line. The result is that there are 219,000 more cancer treatments every year than there were under the last year of the Labour Government.

Thalidomide Trust (Grant)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

We had a genuine judgment to make. On the one hand, I wanted to provide a good deal of certainty for a lengthy period, but this is a unique group of people. Their health is deteriorating, but we do not yet know what the prognosis is for the rest of their lives. It therefore might have been dangerous to allocate a sum of money for the rest of their lives. For all we know, their needs may grow considerably. It is therefore right to take stock in 10 years’ time and make a judgment on their needs at that stage.

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

I have met victims of thalidomide over many years, and I had the privilege of being Parliamentary Private Secretary to the former Member for North Warwickshire when he introduced the pilot scheme, so I really understand some of the difficulties that the Minister has faced. I therefore congratulate him, as I know that it was a difficult and emotional decision to take. The trust should also be congratulated on its efforts and tenacity over many years.

[Norman Lamb]

As I indicated in my statement, I had to respond to an Adjournment debate on the subject in Westminster Hall on my very first full day in the job. The presence of so many thalidomiders at that debate sent a very powerful message to me about the need for us to face up to our responsibility to support those individuals.

Regional Pay (NHS)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

It is sad that the Secretary of State resorted to the union bashing that we also heard from the Minister in the Westminster Hall debate. I have had a meeting with the Royal College of Nursing, and I have a briefing from the BMA about the case against the local and regional approach to pay. That has nothing to do with Labour-affiliated unions. Those organisations are speaking up for their staff, who are extremely worried. It is patronising to say that staff are concerned only because someone stoked them up and told them falsehoods or whatever. They are worried about the proposal because they work in the NHS and they know what impact it will have on them.

The south-west consortium’s explicit intention is to reduce costs by considering

“further more radical changes to the pay and conditions of the workforce”.

Yet to do this at a time when hospital budgets are under great strain and nurses are being made redundant, each trust paid £10,000 of public money to join the consortium. They have to appoint a consortium director, establish a consortium working group and commission legal advice, so it remains to be seen how much the added bureaucracy of the consortium will cost.

Even more worrying is the lack of transparency or accountability for that spending, given that we still do not know who is responsible for employing the director of the consortium or to whom they are answerable. Perhaps most disturbingly, the project initiation document explained that

“it is likely that Trusts would be obliged to dismiss and re-engage staff to secure such changes”,

which not only calls into doubt the validity of their proposals, but has serious cost and legal implications.

I can only agree with the BMA that regional pay is a

“costly and time consuming distraction”.

But of course this affects not only the NHS as an institution, but the individual staff on whom the whole service relies, who potentially face a 15% pay cut. The consortium proposes to cut sickness absence payments so that they are paid only at the base rate, yet for staff permanently on nights, the extra payments that they get for working night shifts are an intrinsic part of their salary, on which their mortgage payments often depend. It would constitute, on average, a 20% pay cut if they were ill and were paid just at the base rate.

Reducing annual leave entitlement not only amounts to a pay cut but means that staff who rely on their leave to balance caring responsibilities will face additional costs, if they can even continue to work. At the same time, extra child care costs will be even less affordable if enhanced payments for nights and weekends—payments which are intended to recognise their personal sacrifices and the additional costs that these workers incur—are changed.

The consortium is also considering increasing working hours. Once again, this is an effective pay cut, which ignores the fact that so many overworked staff already work longer hours. According to the Royal College of Midwives, 87% of midwives “frequently” or “always” worked more than their contracted hours, and more than half reported that none of those extra hours were paid for. These are emotionally and physically demanding jobs and the consortium risks leaving staff even more tired, or coming into work when they are really too ill to do so, in order not to lose their extra pay.

The south-west is a net importer of NHS professionals, but our trusts risk losing demoralised and under-appreciated staff to other regions where the terms and conditions are more favourable. NHS staff require the same training, dedication and commitment all around the country, so why should my constituents be paid less simply because of where they live, especially when there can be a greater demand for health services in the south-west because of our older population, and when the cost of living in many places is so high?

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

The same sort of thing happened many years ago with plant bargaining, so to speak, at a regional and a national level in the private sector. The employer did away with the national agreements, did away with the regional agreements, and the end result was people being poorly paid. The Secretary of State has no experience of that and he has the effrontery to come to the House today and foist it on everybody. It is a disgrace, bearing in mind who his paymasters are, when he talks about the trade unions.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I agree entirely. There is a danger of even greater fragmentation so that we move from national pay to regional pay to very localised pay, with everyone competing against each other—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Cunningham]

We were accused of being in the hands of the trade unions as paymasters.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Not individuals? I was worried that the hon. Gentleman was referring to individuals.

Mental Health (Approval Functions) Bill

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

That is a tremendously important point. Over the years, in terms of crucial public functions such as those we are discussing—and, indeed, in wider considerations such as assessments of new treatments with the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence—there has been a trend towards independent decision making, so that people can feel that there is no political, or departmental, interference, such as through changing local resource decisions.

The taking of these powers, and the rubber-stamping of approvals to section people, up to the national level will give rise to concerns about whether the process is sufficiently independent and people’s rights are being properly considered. I hope Ministers have listened to the important point my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East has just made.

I will end by addressing a point of wider principle about mental health policy and the place of mental health within our society. I believe it is possible that this whole unfortunate episode is symptomatic of a wider cultural problem: that mental health simply does not get sufficient focus and resources in the NHS at both the local PCT level and the regional SHA level—and, indeed, within the Department of Health. Beyond that, I do not believe that mental health gets the consideration it needs in Government or in this place. We do not give sufficient consideration to the hugely important issues relating to mental health.

When I was Health Secretary, hundreds of submissions would come across my desk in the course of an average week, and it was unusual if just one of them related to mental health. It is very much seen as a fringe consideration, pushed to the edges of the system—a peripheral concern in PCTs and SHAs, and all the way up to the Department of Health. That situation must not be allowed to continue.

The culture of separateness in the way we consider mental health, as opposed to other NHS issues, has deep roots in our society. Mental health services have often been provided in buildings that are out of sight, out of mind and on the fringes of the mainstream health care system.

That has to change. In the 21st century, we demand it. In our lives, we are all now dealing with much greater levels of stress, change and upheaval, and sometimes we are all left reeling by the sheer pace of modern life. We are discussing today between 4,000 and 5,000 very vulnerable people as though they are somehow apart from the rest of us. They are not. Any family can suffer the terrible consequences of serious mental health issues. In such circumstances, we would all want to be assured that those affected are not forgotten and pushed to the fringes where proper procedures are not carried out because there is a somewhat out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach. These issues are central concerns because they go to the heart of 21st century living.

Mental health must no longer be left at the edges of our national debate about health and care policy. It has to come to the very centre of our health care system. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 includes one good measure at least: to create parity of esteem between physical and mental health. I must say that it was a Labour amendment in another place that introduced that improvement into the Act, but, to be fair to the Government, I should add that I am pleased that they accepted it.

Will the Secretary of State explain what parity of esteem means in practice? What action has the Department thus far taken to put parity of esteem into effect in the national health service, and what plans does it have for the future? We have learnt in recent days that the budget for mental health has been cut in the last financial year, which suggests to me that the NHS is reverting to its default position in tough times.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that role models in society could do a lot more to help to improve cultural attitudes to mental health issues?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and we have the seen the beginning of the kind of campaign he advocates with the work of the Time to Change group. There has also been incredible bravery from individuals such as the cricketer Marcus Trescothick, who spoke out very publicly about the difficulties he had faced, and just a few weeks ago in this House we witnessed some incredibly powerful contributions from Members on both sides of the Chamber: for the first time Members spoke personally and publicly about the difficulties they faced.

I think a change is under way, therefore. People who have been suffering alone will take great heart and encouragement from these developments. We are beginning to challenge the last taboo—the last form of acceptable discrimination in our society—but that does not come a moment too soon. My feeling is that Parliament is finally waking up to the full scale of the mental health challenge we face. A Bill before us at the moment will outlaw the discrimination that exists whereby somebody who has suffered a serious mental breakdown is unable to be a Member of Parliament, a company director, a juror or a school governor. It is so important to remove that discrimination from the statute book because it sends a message that recovery is not possible, and that if someone has a serious mental breakdown there is no possibility of their coming back and playing a full part in our society. The further problem with that legislation is that it prevents those people from being in leadership positions in those organisations—in schools, in Parliament and in companies—where they could develop a better understanding of mental health and what policies need to be put in place to support people who may experience those problems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I can assure the hon. Lady that we will be talking with the devolved Administrations, and indeed all other agencies, and welcome any input on this. It is good to hear her welcome our strategy, and I am sure she will agree that the only way we can reduce alcohol harm is by working across Government.

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

5. What recent progress he has made on the evaluation of the thalidomide grant pilot scheme.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)]

The thalidomide grant is a three-year pilot, running from April 2010 until March 2013, to explore how the health needs of thalidomide survivors can best be met in the longer term and how such a scheme might be applied to other small groups of geographically dispersed patients with specialised needs. Officials have discussed the evaluation of the first year of the pilot with members of the Thalidomide Trust and its national advisory council and we await the evaluation of the second year.

[Mr Cunningham]

The thalidomide grant was introduced by my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State under the previous Labour Government and has been going on for many years. Can the Minister assure me that it will continue until a decision is taken on whether to carry on with the scheme beyond the pilot stage or to do something else?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will recall from my first answer that I am looking to discuss the timing of the roll-out with clinical commissioning groups. I do not want that to be unduly delayed, because there are clear benefits to patients in the 111 system in that it gives them a more integrated single point of access to the NHS.

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

12. If he will introduce proposals to require a minimum ratio of nurses to patients in hospitals.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)]

Guidance on staff ratios and the proportion of registered and unregistered staff can play a useful part in supporting local decisions about setting safe and sustainable staffing levels. Both the Royal College of Nursing and the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement have produced such guidance. We have no plans to impose centrally determined ratios, as in our view that would undermine professional judgment.

[Mr Cunningham]

Is the Minister aware that the RCN says that nurses are overstretched, with too much reliance on cheaper, unqualified assistance? What impact does he think that will have on care for the elderly?

[Paul Burstow]

First, let me say that we greatly welcome the survey the RCN published last week, and the work it has done for many years to highlight ratios such as the ratio of nurses to beds. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that the ratio has improved under this Government. We are working with the RCN and others to identify the processes and paperwork within the NHS that occupy nurses’ time and take them away from the bedside, which is the priority.

Health and Social Care Bill

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Bill is passed, perhaps one of the biggest changes will be to the relationship between doctor and patient. Every time a patient is not referred for some sort of specialist treatment, they will wonder whether that is on clinical grounds or because their GP has one eye on the budget. Whatever the basis for those fears, GPs will be in a difficult position, and because NICE guidance will no longer be compulsory, the problem will be compounded when people compare their experience with that of others, using the internet or other means.

However, the most worrying aspect derives from the stories that we hear from parts of the country where individual GPs might have a financial interest in the services that they now commission. Such a relationship would not only destroy the trust at the heart of the system, but provide perverse incentives for how it might develop in future.

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

Government Members have said that the Government will spend an extra £12.5 billion on the NHS. Yet University hospital in Coventry must make further cuts of £28 million this year. The Government boast about the increase in the number of doctors, but it takes seven years to train a doctor. Who, therefore, was responsible for training those doctors? The Labour Government.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, correct. He knows that the problem that all parts of the health service face is that they have been given money to justify claims from Ministers to Parliament, but they must ring-fence some of it to pay for the reorganisation—£16 million in the case of my PCT.

The story of the Bill is the story of British politics at its absolute worst. We have a weak and unpopular measure, opposed by nearly everyone, pushed through by two out-of-touch party leaders because they are worried that they will look weak if they perform a U-turn. Even worse, whatever Government Members might say, we all know that, had the Downing street operation been up to speed from the beginning of this Government—if, for instance, they had had a policy team in the centre of Government—the Bill would never have got through. After all, why, after spending so much time and so much money convincing the public that they could trust the Tories on the NHS, and after making a commitment that there would not be a further top-down reorganisation of the NHS, have the Government embarked on a deeply unpopular and unwanted top-down reorganisation of the NHS? The Bill has confirmed every swing voter’s nagging fear—you simply cannot trust the Tories on the NHS.

We have the Bill for two reasons: the vanity of the Secretary of State for Health and the naivety of the Prime Minister. Neither is a good enough reason for proceeding. It is time to drop the Bill.

084 Telephone Numbers (NHS)

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ainsworth]

If the Minister does not mind, a number of Members want to intervene, and he will have an opportunity to respond in a moment.

The people affected are disproportionately the more deprived members of our community. It is no longer the case that people who use mobile phones are among the better-off. That might have been the case once upon a time, a generation or so ago, but there is proven evidence that people who do not have access to a fixed line and therefore depend on a mobile phone are disproportionately from the poorer sectors of society. The other people who are disproportionately affected by the excessive charges are those who are concerned about the cost of their fixed lines and have therefore entered into contract agreements that charge for the use of the access numbers for GP surgeries because they do not fall under the contracts. How can we can allow GPs to continue to flout their contracts? Why are we not effectively enforcing them?

At the moment, the Minister is trying to convey to the House that the NHS will not be made unaccountable through his health Bill, and it would really help his argument if he made an effort to show that he is prepared to make the NHS accountable, as it currently is. I would therefore like to know what he intends to do about this. I want him to issue new Department of Health guidance that makes it clear to the GPs who are effectively trying to deny it that the use of such telephone numbers is in breach of their contract and that they must comply without further delay and migrate to an 03 number or provide a landline equivalent. He must not take no for an answer.

I wonder whether all the changes that the Minister is imposing upon the NHS are affecting PCTs’ ability to enforce what they are supposed to be enforcing. I want him to ensure that PCTs, to which he appears to have passed the buck of responsibility for this, enforce compliance by GPs. GPs must stop evading their responsibilities, under the very principles of the NHS, to enable people to access services without enhanced costs.

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

Has my right hon. Friend been able to measure the profit being made from the poorer members of society, who are most likely to need the services? That might be difficult; it might be a question for the Minister. Less well-off patients are clearly being exploited, so does he have any idea how much they are being exploited by?

[Mr Ainsworth]

The GPs will deny that there is any profit and will say that they provide an enhanced service for which the customers pay. But if there is profit in the partnership at the end of the year, it returns to the doctor, so potentially there is a profit, and that would clearly be in breach of the contract. People could be provided with access to their GP services without any enhanced charges, but GPs, because they have chosen to enter into the contracts, are passing the costs on to their patients.

Epilepsy

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Good morning, Mr Scott. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I am very pleased to have secured this debate. To be honest, it is so long since I began trying to secure it that I cannot entirely remember all the motivations for doing so. Recently I have had two different groups claiming ownership of the idea for it, and I am quite happy to accept that they are both right. I do not regard myself as an expert on epilepsy and I am not particularly motivated by self-interest or by the experience of relatives or close friends. Like many other MPs, I am motivated by constituents who have come to me to talk about their own experiences of epilepsy and by the interest of the various groups and charities that set out to help people with epilepsy. Consequently, any mistakes and omissions in my contribution this morning are entirely my fault, but I am extremely grateful to various groups for the facts in my speech and the good advice that I have received. They include Epilepsy Action, the Joint Epilepsy Council, Epilepsy Bereaved, the National Centre for Young People With Epilepsy, which is now called Young Epilepsy, and of course the all-party group on epilepsy—whose secretary in 2007 was, I note, the MP for Witney, who is now the Prime Minister.

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

Like my hon. Friend, I have a number of constituents who are affected by epilepsy. The Dattani family lost their son, Ravin, in February because of epilepsy, and with the help of others, in particular the local newspaper, the Coventry Telegraph, they have raised about £19,000. They point out that epilepsy causes more than 500 deaths each year in the UK, and one of the issues they have raised in correspondence with me is that often parents do not know the right questions to ask a doctor. That view is reflected in other correspondence that I have received on this subject, and it is a point that we should look into. In addition, the majority of people do not realise that epilepsy can end in death. Will my hon. Friend congratulate the Dattani family on their efforts to do something about epilepsy after the loss of their son, and particularly on raising about £19,000 with the help of our local newspaper?

[Steve McCabe]

I certainly congratulate the family on that fundraising, and the point about lack of information on epilepsy is crucial. The full title of the debate is “Prevention of avoidable deaths from epilepsy”, but given the nature of the subject I may occasionally stray into more general territory; I hope that you will forgive me for doing so, Mr Scott.

Epilepsy is defined as a tendency to have recurrent seizures, when a sudden burst of excess electrical activity in the brain causes a temporary disruption in the normal message-passing between brain cells. Epilepsy is not one condition but a composite of about 40 different types of seizures and up to 50 different syndromes. It affects about 600,000 people in the UK, which is one in every 103 people or about 930 people in each parliamentary constituency. It is estimated that about 69,000 people with epilepsy could have their seizures controlled with good treatment; about 74,000 people are taking aggressive drugs unnecessarily, because of misdiagnosis; a quarter of people who are known to learning disability services have epilepsy; half of the 60,000 young people with epilepsy are estimated to be underachieving academically relative to their intellectual capacity; and people with epilepsy have been shown to be twice as likely as those without epilepsy to be at risk of being unemployed.

Some studies suggest that the likelihood of early death in people with epilepsy is two or three times higher than in people without epilepsy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) indicated, the biggest risk appears to be poor seizure control, with the risk of early death increasing as the number of seizures that an individual suffers increases. A phenomenon that people are now starting to come to terms with is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, or SUDEP. I understand that in 2009 about 1,150 people in the UK died of epilepsy-related causes. That means that, each day in the UK, approximately three people with epilepsy die, and at least a third of those deaths—one death each day—are potentially avoidable.

I am very grateful to Lucy Kinton, a consultant neurologist at Basingstoke and North Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust, who says that there is not enough research into SUDEP, which frequently affects young people who otherwise could be expected to have a fairly normal life. Indeed, she points out that our investment in research into epilepsy is much lower than our investment in research into other frequently occurring conditions, such as diabetes.