Testing of NHS and Social Care Staff

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman puts his case persuasively. My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), who will be winding up the debate for the Opposition, will, I am sure, want to touch more on the mental health impact of the lockdown. It is undeniable that the lockdown has led to unquantifiable mental health problems festering in society, and statistics show an increase in anxiety and depression. There are particular issues around young people not being able to access child and adolescent mental health services. If services have closed, as happened in his constituency, then, yes, we need a plan to ensure that those services are reopened as quickly as possible.

Another area where we have had access to services restricted is in cancer, and cancer touches everybody. It touches every family. It has touched many Members in this House very individually and personally as well.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. What is happening to our cancer services is very important, as he said. Some of the figures are incredible. There are 2.1 million people waiting for breast or cervical screening tests, which is 60% higher than in April 2019. Treatment rates for chemotherapy have fallen by 70%, surgery by 60%, and radiotherapy by 90%. That underlines very critically the severe problems for those with cancer and for those needing treatment right now.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman is ahead of me in making the points that I was hoping to go on to make. I am not surprised that he has made those points given that he is a Leicester City fan. I am very proud to have Leicester City football club in my constituency— hopefully we will do better next season. He is absolutely right in what he says, because the statistics on cancer are absolutely terrible.

Around 2 million people in England are currently waiting for cancer screening tests or cancer treatment, including chemotherapy. Today, we have a published analysis, which shows that those waiting more than six weeks for diagnostic tests—some of these will be for cancer of course—have increased from 30,000 to 469,000 as a result of the lockdown. Cancer referrals are down 60%, and 1 million people are missing out on breast, bowel and cervical cancer screening. That means that about 1,400 cases of cancer are going undiagnosed every month. In March and April alone, there were at least 500 more deaths from cancer than average, and research from University College London predicts that an estimated 17,915 additional deaths of existing and newly diagnosed cancer patients could occur in England in the next 12 months. That is why resetting our NHS and getting it started again is so vital.

We also know that covid attacks the lungs, so this is an especially frightening time for those with serious asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema. One in four people with COPD have had a regular GP or hospital appointment cancelled, or both. Some 24% of people on pulmonary rehab programmes have had their classes cancelled, and 600,000 people with asthma or COPD have missed their annual review. The more we know about coronavirus, the more we know it is also a cardiovascular issue. Those with cardio- vascular problems are the second biggest group of those with an underlying condition dying from covid now, yet about 30,000 elective procedures for heart disease have been deferred. Referrals to stroke units have declined, and excess stroke deaths in care homes are 39% higher than the five-year average. We are making these points not in a spirit of blame, but to re-emphasise the point that lockdown has come with huge costs and will inevitably mean that people will die or develop long-term illnesses unless there is now a plan to get the NHS up, running and working again.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is always keen to support those on his Front Bench. Indeed, he was one of the few Tory Members who actually supported Mr Cummings, tweeting:

“Another media non-story when there are so many important ‘real’ stories of this crisis”.

The Government were slow in getting PPE to the frontline, slow in ramping up testing, slow in going into lockdown, slow in getting tracing going and slow in protecting care homes. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman recognises my constructive tone, but it does not mean that I will not highlight the failing of this Government in their mishandling of many aspects of the pandemic.

I must now move on, having spent some time in this mutual love-in with the former Health Secretary. I do not want to damage his career any further, although he is probably not on the Prime Minister’s Christmas card list at the moment.

I hope that the Government will engage seriously with our suggestion of regular testing for all NHS staff, because we believe that is a crucial part of an effective test, trace and isolate strategy. The problem is that the testing and tracing is still not as effective as it should be. Of course, we recall that testing and tracing was abandoned on 12 March, and the Government have been playing catch-up ever since. At Health questions yesterday the Secretary of State could not even tell us how many people were being tested on a daily basis. I hope that the Minister will now get us that information.

Local authorities are still not receiving localised data, which is very serious. At Thursday’s press conference—the Prime Minister has now got rid of the press conferences—the Health Secretary casually announced, in response to a question, that Leicester is experiencing one of the highest spikes in the country. Nearly a week later, the local authority still does not have specific postcode data on where the people who have tested positive are. The Secretary of State announced that last Thursday, and today is Wednesday. We do not have that data because the data protection protocols have still not been agreed. This is shambolic. The Government cannot announce that there is an outbreak in a particular part of the country but then not provide the local authority with the data it needs to put in place the necessary measures.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Given that the hon. Gentleman is a Leicester City fan, I will.

[Jim Shannon]

I am always pleased to intervene on anyone, but especially a Leicester City supporter.

On systematic testing, the figures from Cancer Research UK are critical, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware. Between 21,000 and 37,000 tests would be required every day across UK cancer services just to catch up. That underlines how important the testing is, and that is just for those who have cancer.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that is why we have brought forward this debate. I think that we all understand why a lot of elective surgery and treatment had to be paused, but now that the lockdown is being eased, Government Ministers need to tell us how they are going to start treatment again, and how people who have been waiting for treatment, whether for cancer or for heart disease, or for a hip replacement, are going to get that important care.

We have a situation in which GPs cannot carry out tests, book tests or refer patients for tests. If someone goes to one of the Deloitte drive-through testing centres, or one of the centres where that role has been subcontracted to someone else, there is no requirement for the results to be sent back to their GP. GPs do not know who in their local area has been tested positive, because that is not going on their health records. This is shambolic. At the same time, the Government have given a £100 million contract to call centres run by Serco and Sitel, where tracers are complaining that it is chaotic and they have nothing to do. I do not know whether the Minister read the testimony, published in the British Medical Journal, of a clinician working in one of the call centres. They wrote:

“NHS Professionals employed us as clinical tracers, but we were recruited by Capita… Sitel provided access to the tracing applications and systems, and these all required different usernames and passwords. Synergy CRM assigned cases…CTAS captured contact tracing information, RingCentral was used for voice calls, and MaxConnect was used for storing knowledge about contacts. All of these systems were accessed through Amazon Workspace.”

This sounds a complete mess. At the same time, the chief executive of Serco is saying that this is an opportunity for it to “cement” its role in the NHS. Serco should not be an excuse for more NHS outsourcing and privatisation. Serco should be kicked out of our NHS, and local public health officials and GPs should be leading the tracing response.

And, of course, the Secretary of State has failed to deliver on his app, with months wasted and £11.8 million confirmed as down the drain by the Minister in the Lords yesterday. We are now in the dismal situation where there is an app for the Secretary of State himself, but there is not even an app for covid. You really could not make it up, Mr Deputy Speaker.

We believe that it is time for the Government to invest in public health services, to put GPs in the driving seat of testing, to give local authorities the localised data that they need and to begin a programme of routine testing of all NHS staff, whether symptomatic or not. We accept and understand that Ministers will have made mistakes throughout this crisis. It was an unprecedented pandemic, but Ministers have been slow, their response has been disorganised and the scale and nature of the pandemic, even though it was at the top of the risk register, at times underestimated.

However, Ministers can learn from their mistakes. They can take the advice of the former Health Secretary and they can take the advice of their former leader and former Foreign Secretary. They can start putting in place a programme for mass testing, starting with NHS staff, because we need it for our national health service. Our constituents are waiting in pain, agony and distress for treatment. It is time to deliver the care they deserve, and I commend our motion, constructively, to the House.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Labour party for bringing this debate to the House for consideration, and the way it was promoted as well, which I thought was very positive. It is helpful for everyone to be able to see the same things. I also want to put on record my thanks to all the NHS staff across the whole of the United Kingdom, but especially in Northern Ireland. Those on the frontline have worked extremely hard and long hours, faced with the coronavirus outbreak, and we owe them a great deal. I live on a farm outside Greyabbey, and at 8 o’clock on a Thursday night we could hear the clapping from three miles away down in the village by those who came out to show their appreciation. We do owe those staff a lot.

There seems to be light at the end of the covid tunnel, and I am thankful for that, but we must remember the more than 40,000 families that have been plunged into the ongoing darkness of the loss of a loved one. That must be remembered in every covid-19 debate we have in this House as a salient reminder of those who have passed away. Our thoughts and prayers remain with them all.

The recent advice in Northern Ireland has been put in a very clear way: shielding will pause at the end of July. It has been put in that way to make people aware that the war has not been won. The war will not be fully won until we have a vaccine in place for this strain and a basis in place for future mutations. I thank Queen’s University, Belfast for the sterling work that it is doing in that area.

One of the main ways to win the battle has been isolation and containment. My mother has been in self-isolation for some 14 weeks. She is 88, almost 89, and she had a chance to go and do a bit of shopping. She went mad the day she got out, and was touring round all the shops. She has a real buzz for going round the shops, and I think everyone in Newtownards must have said to themselves, “She’s back!” She was, and she did plenty of shopping.

We need to have the testing in place to move on, and that is very important. The testing has to be accurate and give us the results that we need. It is very important to have professionals who have the knowledge. It is imperative that the workforce are tested often and accurately, when we consider that 80% of UK cases are mild or asymptomatic. We must have an accurate system in place, not simply for NHS staff, but for all those around it. The Minister has spent a second day in the Chamber and we look forward to her response, which I know will be positive.

The NHS has been incredible, but we must not fool ourselves into thinking that the pressure is off, because it is not. On the contrary, the pressure is most assuredly on. We have had almost four months of rescheduled operations and cancer screenings and steroid injection cancellations—all of those needs exist. It has been argued that the pressure is worse.

Covid-19 has devastated cancer services. I referred to that in two interventions on the shadow Minister earlier, so I will not ask those questions again, but as lockdown measures came into effect, urgent referrals plummeted, screening programmes were paused, many surgeries were cancelled, clinical trials were put on hold and existing health inequalities were exacerbated. The epidemic has led to a huge backlog of patients waiting for cancer services.

Cancer Research UK has said that a backlog of some 2.4 million people has developed in the first 10 weeks of lockdown. We need to address that, and I know that the Minister will address that in her response. Steps must be taken to ensure that not only NHS staff but staff in the charitable sector and in cancer care homes are tested accurately, routinely and to a high standard.

In terms of pancreatic cancer, Northern Ireland has one of the worst five-year survival rates in the world and ranks at roughly 32 out of 36 countries with comparable data, according to CONCORD-3. I dread to see—I hope I am wrong—the reality of what covid-19 has done to cancer patients, and we need to work to address that.