Health Visitors (England)

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady pre-empts a point I was going to make on page 5 of my notes, so I will take that bit out.

Unlike some other public service professionals, health visitors are non-stigmatising and usually welcomed over the threshold into homes, enabling them to give early advice and support to prevent later problems, encourage healthier choices, detect problems early and, in some cases, act as an early warning safeguarding alarm. Often when social workers are the ones to knock on the door, it may be too late, and that professional has a completely different sort of relationship with the family.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this timely debate. What he just said is so important. The mandatory health visitor contacts in my constituency are not taking place as they should. When constituents complain or I complain, we are essentially told that they are profiled based on risk, which is clearly not how a mandatory set of contacts should work. I worry that we sometimes make assumptions about socioeconomic status or other factors, whereas the kind of problems we are talking about can manifest themselves in any family. If we are serious about having a mandatory system, should it not be that, rather than discretionary? If it is about capacity, let us talk about that.

[Tim Loughton]

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a good point, which was on page 5 of my notes. This issue affects everybody across society, often better-off, more affluent families who might be better at hiding it or less inclined to come forward to seek help. The charity that I chair has units in Liverpool, Newcastle, London and so on, and we see that middle-class parents who have serious attachment dysfunction problems with their children are less likely to come forward. Those, ironically, may be harder-to-reach people. Health visitors are the early warning system and are able to signpost some of those people to services. They can also point out, “I think you have a problem,” and it will be taken on trust.

I appreciate the good points that have been made, but I will make some progress. The cost of failing to intervene early is enormous—financially and, more importantly, socially. The impact of not intervening early can disadvantage a child through early years, school years, adolescence and often into adulthood. In some cases, it can be life-defining.

One of the great achievements of the coalition Government was to pledge a massive increase in health visitors. In opposition, the then shadow Health Minister, Andrew Lansley, championed the recruitment of no fewer than 4,300 new health visitors, based on the successful model of the Dutch Kraamzorg system—I was involved in research into that—where post-natal care is provided to a new mother and her baby an initial eight to 10 days immediately after birth.

Four years ago, the Government’s health visitor implementation plan and the “Call to action” scheme were the pride of the nation. The policy was built on sound evidence that the health visiting profession had the power to drive health improvements and provide a universal service designed to give every child that best possible start in life, as we all want to see. Impressively, for a Government target, it was achieved—just about—in the lifetime of the 2010 to 2015 Parliament.

Depressingly, since then, the numbers have started to drop dramatically. In June 2015, there were 10,042 full- time equivalent health visitors in England. A year later, that had fallen to 9,491 and the latest figures show a 31% drop from the peak. According to the Institute of Health Visiting,

“one in four health visitors do not have enough time to provide postnatal mental health assessment to families at six to eight weeks, as recommended by the government.”

In response to a survey that the institute put out,

“three quarters of respondents said they are unable to carry out government recommended maternal mental health checks three to four months after birth.”

That is a crucial stage at which to pick up mental health problems with the parents, which may already be impacting or will impact on the infant. It is not only about looking after the baby, but the family unit and particularly the prime carer.

To a large extent, the reason for that has been the transfer of responsibility for health visitors from the health service to local government, as part of its enhanced public health responsibilities. I am not challenging the wisdom of doing that, but it has come at the time of the greatest squeeze on local government spending recently. The architecture of the delivery of health and wellbeing services for babies and young children, I think, has been fragmented in a disorienting manner between local councils, Clinical Commissioning groups and NHS England, with insufficiently qualified scrutiny of how it works. There is an issue around the quality of informed local authority oversight over many of these public health roles.

Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I give huge credit to Marie Lyon and all the campaigners from the Primodos group; I have got to know them very well in the four years since I was elected in 2015. I have rarely met a more tireless and dedicated group. The same goes for the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). She, with her staff, has run the all-party parliamentary group with incredible veracity and determination, and it is a pleasure to be part of that. I also give credit to Jason Farrell of Sky, who recently did a documentary on the impacts of Primodos, shining a light where no one else, frankly, has gone.

I have campaigned for my constituent Wilma Ord and her daughter Kirsteen, who was born deaf and with cerebral palsy. Like so many women, as many Members have mentioned, Wilma believed that the deformities that her child was born with were her own fault. Let us call it out for what it is. As the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) said, there was a criminal cover-up. Some 1.5 million women were treated as human guinea pigs for the pursuit of profit by the company Schering, now Bayer. I hope that it is listening today.

I know that the Minister and the Government are listening. There is clearly consensus, the likes of which few of us will have seen, across the House on this issue. We are not going away, the campaigners are not going away, and this issue is not going away. Until I am no longer the elected Member of Parliament for Livingston, I will campaign on this issue and pursue it, as I know everybody in the Chamber will.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, am pleased that this debate is happening, but I am really sad and frustrated to be here. I have re-read my speech from our October 2016 debate, at which I think all hon. Members in this Chamber were present. I spoke about two constituents who had been affected.

Most of the speeches in that debate articulately raised such cases, but basically they were asking for a process to find answers. Three years later, we have fewer answers and most of us are more suspicious and angry. On that basis alone, this cannot be the end of the matter. I thoroughly agree with the hon. Lady’s comments.

[Hannah Bardell]

I absolutely agree. I share the hon. Gentleman’s despair and sadness that we are in this position so many years after the group was set up—a process into which the Government put public money and in which medical experts took part. As I have said, we are not necessarily criticising the people in the expert working group, who are medical professionals, but they have fallen victim to a process that was at best opaque and at worst corrupt, given the influence of the companies involved.

Who knows why we ended up in this mess? On the day the report was due to be published, the hon. Member for Bolton South East and I went to an event that we thought was supposed to be public—or at least open to Members of Parliament. We were stopped at the door; some of the press were allowed in, but we were not. We know that there was due to be a press conference and a public event, but they were both cancelled.

Members have spoken passionately about the lack of independence and impartiality, the gagging clause that Marie Lyon had to sign and the heavy-handed approach taken, all of which have caused serious concerns. What does it say to those in the medical community who may be invited to be part of future Government working groups that a group that was supposed to be open and transparent and get to the truth of an issue has turned out to be a cover-up? It raises serious concerns that their credibility will be called into question. That is a very dangerous situation.

As well as looking at the wider issue, we need to look at the mess that the expert group became, so that we can give confidence not only to the families and to our constituents, but to medical professionals.

Autism Diagnosis

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth, for giving me the chance to say a few words about this important matter. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) for calling this debate. I have a personal interest in this issue: my eldest son has autism, which I have had to learn about, live with and adapt to throughout my life as a parent. My first ever Westminster Hall debate, back in 2010, was on this very subject. From there, I got involved in the all-party group on autism, which is now ably chaired by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan). I also thank the hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland). He is now the Solicitor General and cannot participate in the debate, but he has been a great champion and friend on these issues.

This is an absolutely crucial issue. People reach out to me all the time because they know that I am a parent of an autistic child—they have seen things in the media or they have looked up the work of the all-party group. People from outside my constituency have even turned up to my surgeries to try to talk to someone who they think can help and can try to guide them through the process, which is extremely difficult for a great many people. A child being diagnosed with autism is just the beginning of a difficult journey—people in that position have to cope with a whole range of things—but diagnosis is crucial. It is the pathway to intervention and help, and so many children have co-occurring mental health problems alongside autism that, to have any hope of addressing those, we must surely begin with the process of diagnosing autism.

We have all seen the figures. People are simply waiting too long—an average of three and a half years for children and two years for adults. Until recently, people in my constituency told me that they had to travel to Sheffield for an appointment for an adult autism diagnosis. I find that incredible, given the service provision that we should have in an area the size of Greater Manchester.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) said extremely well, all that contributes to a culture of making parents fight for the support that they need. It creates warrior parents, who have to struggle against the system when the system should be there to support them. The Government aspired to change that through education, health and care plans, but I cannot say with any honesty that they have succeeded. We have not yet achieved that cultural shift. I do not say that with any partisanship; I know that a great many colleagues want to work towards that. I had a lot of time for the former Minister, Edward Timpson—he lost his seat in the election—because of his work on this issue. We really must address it, and people on both sides of the House have that aspiration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate called for a primary care register. That absolutely should be the starting point, but I am clear that I want minimum national waiting times for diagnosis for autism, which a couple of Members have already mentioned. That is the only place we need the policy framework to get to, and given the support we have heard today, which parents like me up and down the country will sincerely appreciate, I believe we can get it there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I fully appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s point. I am slightly uncomfortable about this, because often it can take a considerable amount of time for a proper assessment between first appointment and diagnosis, but perhaps we need to look at other measures. Generally, the more data we have in this area, the better we can measure performance. Clearly we need to ensure that we have sufficient specialists who are able to undertake these assessments and diagnoses. Sometimes that can be a challenge, so we need to ensure that local commissioners have access to those specialists.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Many of us are flexible about how we will get to the system we want to see, and capacity is definitely an issue when it comes to specialists. On the point just made by the former Minister, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), the problem is that at an initial assessment people are told, “You don’t need to go and have the official diagnosis yet. Try to persevere in mainstream school. See how the child develops.” The problem, as other Members have said, is that in the early stages of life, each month of development is so important, and we get to a point where, frankly, even if a diagnosis is given, so much has already been lost. That is the purpose of a national maximum diagnosis waiting time.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s point, but the wraparound support and care will do more than any finite target time. I am happy to look at that.

We are running short of time and I really need to give the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate time to respond. We have had a very constructive discussion today, and I look forward to engaging with all hon. Members on these issues.

Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) for securing today’s debate. It is a privilege to follow the fine speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell).

I rise today at the request of my constituent Susan, who is from Stalybridge. It was in the early ’70s that Susan suspected and hoped that she was pregnant. With no home urine stream pregnancy testing yet available, Susan did what any woman of her generation would do—and will do for years to come—and visited her local GP. Yet that simple visit, that routine appointment, was to haunt her with the need for answers for the rest of her life. As with 1.5 million others of her generation, several of whose stories we have learnt about today, Susan’s GP prescribed her with a couple of pills, to be taken a day apart, to determine whether she was indeed pregnant. If she was not, she would bleed, and if she was, she would not.

The pills were handed over without lengthy explanation, detailed precautions or any warning. These pills Susan now knows to be Primodos. The Primodos she took contained a now unfathomably strong cocktail of hormones: 10 mg of norethisterone and 0.2 mg of ethinyl estradiol—I ask the House to forgive my poor pronunciation. Those hormones, in those doses, equate to 13 morning-after pills or 157 contraceptive pills. Yet many patients, like Susan, at that most optimistic moment in their lives, had no inkling of what the pills contained. They simply trusted their doctor.

In 1972, Susan’s beautiful baby daughter Sarah was born. As time would tell, Sarah had severe learning difficulties. Now 44, Sarah will never enjoy her life independently. She relies on others for her care. She will never work, marry or have her own children. Her family face the challenges that all families with a loved one with additional needs face—the limitations, obstacles and “what ifs”.

In 1978, six years after Sarah was born, Primodos was withdrawn from the medical market amid fears it prompted instant miscarriage. For many women, its stated purpose of indicating whether they were pregnant or not may, sadly, have been more like “pregnant or not any more”. For those women fortunate enough to carry their babies to term, thousands may never know whether the wide-ranging disabilities their children share, from brain damage to heart defects and sensory impairments to undeveloped limbs, may have been caused or worsened by hormone pregnancy testing, or those allegedly harmless little pills—pills whose use many doctors and researchers queried at the time; pills that were to be decisively discontinued.

I do not rise today to suggest that every single disability or birth defect originating from the period of its use was caused by Primodos. That would of course be speculative. I do not rise to say that any specific reparations from Bayer, the manufacturer, should be made or to ask the Government, the NHS or the pharmaceutical industry to take speculation as fact. I rise to say that we need to give women such as Susan the opportunity to examine whether that speculation is indeed fact—whether suspicion could give way to transparency and whether peace of mind is a price worthy of investigation. I believe it is time for a thorough public inquiry into the safety of Primodos, its passage on to GPs’ shelves and its effects on both the babies who survived and those that did not. I fully accept that it may not be possible to identify all the answers, but it is none the less time to ask the right questions.

I myself am the father of four beautiful children. My eldest son has significant learning difficulties, including pronounced autism. He is absolutely wonderful and I love him and always will, yet I cannot pretend that, through the initial years of his diagnosis and in the many challenging situations that have followed, any parent would not be in a position of asking themselves “Why? Why my child? What has caused his condition? It is something that we did?” Listening to this debate, I am glad that my son is a millennial baby and not a child of the ’60s or ’70s, because if there were the slightest hint that his life chances might have been robbed by something wholly preventable and unnecessary, I confess that I would find that very difficult indeed to deal with.

Yet the importance of a rigorous investigation into this drug goes beyond the need to examine the past. We must call for this investigation because failure to do so may jeopardise something so important and fundamental to our treasured NHS, and that is the implicit trust that our doctors know what is best for us. If we allow potentially harmful drugs to ease in and out of widespread use without robust examination, that will chip away at the assurance that trained professionals are sure that they know what is best for us.

Another of my constituents was the notorious, late Dr Harold Shipman. I have close friends who had a parent among his victims. Indeed, almost everyone in the town of Hyde knows someone affected by the crimes of Harold Shipman. I have therefore experienced the most extreme example of how abuse of the fundamental trust between doctor and patient can rock a community to its core. Our NHS doctors are among the best in the world and each of us owes the whole UK medical profession our gratitude for the tireless public service they give. A GP is more than a stranger in a room; they are a friend, a confidante, an advocate and a signpost to further help.

I am sure no GP wants to find themselves in the awful position of wondering whether they have dispensed prescriptions without being fully aware of the risks to the patients who took the medication. Let us not undermine this most important of relationships by failing to look closely enough at the drugs that we have asked doctors in the past to distribute. Let us put Primodos under the microscope—for Susan, for Sarah and for continued trust in our NHS.

Junior Doctors Contract

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I am happy to do that for my hon. and learned Friend. It is not an easy problem to solve, because junior doctor training placements operate on six-month rotations, and they are a competitive process. We get many more applicants for a number of posts than there are posts available. We must find a way of balancing the need to respect family responsibilities, which is something that we all want to do, with the need to have a fair process for the most competitive positions. We do not have the balance right yet, so we have said that Health Education England, which decides where people are to go on rotations, will now have a duty to consider family responsibilities when it makes decisions about those rotations.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the potential resolution of this dispute and thank the Government for negotiating it. We should also thank junior doctors for having the courage to go on strike, which no one does lightly, to get a better deal for the NHS. I ask the Secretary of State to reflect on this breakthrough, to take further steps to build on his difficult relationship with NHS staff and, crucially, to stop presenting NHS policy as a false dichotomy between the interests of patients and the interests of NHS staff.

[Mr Hunt]

If the hon. Gentleman had listened to some of the things that I have said, he would have heard me say repeatedly that I do not think that that dichotomy exists. As he says, it is a false dichotomy because, in the end, what is right for patients is also right for doctors. The thing that demoralises doctors, nurses and everyone working in our hospitals in different parts of the NHS is when they are not able to give the care that they want or that they think is appropriate to the patients in front of them. That is why hospitals that have moved closest towards seven-day services are also some of the hospitals with the highest levels of morale in the NHS. He is right that it is a false dichotomy and that we need to do both together.

World Autism Awareness Week

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, thank the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) for securing this vital and much-needed debate. Like her, I thank the Solicitor General, the hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland), who I am sure would be speaking today if he was able to do so.

I speak not just as the vice-chair of the all-party group on autism and as an MP who has dealt with many pieces of casework involving families touched by autism, but as the father of an autistic child with learning difficulties. I wanted to share some personal insights into living with a family member with autism, but I realised that, unfortunately, the speech I brought with me would probably have lasted for the full duration of the debate, so I am not able to give it. However, I want to pay tribute to some of the excellent national and local organisations that help to support children and adults with autism, and to say a little about how I want services in my area of Greater Manchester to develop in the future.

I am extremely blessed to be the father of four beautiful children. My eldest child, Jack, was born when I was a new graduate in my early 20s. I remember listening to the radio while driving home from the hospital, the day after his birth, when Elton John’s “Circle of Life” came on, and feeling tremendous excitement, as all new parents do, as well as a healthy dose of nervousness about life never being quite the same again.

As we were young parents—in particular, we were the first in our peer group to have children by several years—I suppose that, in hindsight, we missed the early signs that something was not quite right. Jack’s mother and I unfortunately separated just a year after his birth, and many of the things we saw we understandably attributed to the difficulties of having two homes and two different families. But slowly we came to see that everything was not quite as it should be, particularly when taking him to things like football and swimming, where he could not follow the rules and societal norms of the situation he was in.

Receiving the news of that diagnosis is a very hard moment. There is no denying that there is a sense of anger and of guilt, and sometimes a sense of shame. But there is also a sense of relief, and many parents—some are perhaps watching this—who are struggling for that diagnosis themselves will be looking for the sense of relief it brings.

Of course, there are big consequences for family life. We have heard about families feeling difficulty in going out because of the reaction that they get. Members can imagine that that is particularly hard when you are the local MP in attendance at large noisy civic occasions that are really mandatory for the job. As well as everything that has been said on diagnosis, on provision of healthcare and on mental healthcare provision in particular, the challenge we face is to make our society more autism-friendly.

There are some brilliant people who are doing that in this country. I commend the work of the National Autistic Society and its recent campaign, “Too Much Information”, which I believe is its most powerful yet. I was touched by the film shot entirely from the perspective of a child with autism walking through a shopping centre, which gives in about a minute an insight into the discomfort, sensory overload and claustrophobia that are normal for many people with autism. When the child ultimately has a meltdown the viewer understands why. There are many other organisations I would like to have had the time to talk about, including Ambitious about Autism, and Autistica and the work it funds in medical research into the causes, diagnosis and treatment of autism.

I see tremendous work in this country not just from the third sector but from companies. The example of Asda has been given. Many cinema chains are now embracing autism-friendly screenings, which I find absolutely fantastic. My own beloved football club, Sunderland, has built a new sensory room in the stadium for autistic fans, so something may now available to me that never had been before, that feeling of taking my son to a football match. I will probably wait until next season before I take advantage of that.

Another company leading the way is Manchester Airports Group. It now fast-tracks families with autistic children through the stressful environment of airport security. It has created videos and booklets that help prepare people for what to expect from their airport experience. Its thoughtfulness is literally helping to open up access to a much wider world for people with autism in Greater Manchester and beyond.

That brings me to my final point, which I will not quite have the time to go into. Greater Manchester is already performing well in the national NHS strategy for autism. My hope is that, with the devolution of health provision, we can make Greater Manchester the world’s first autism-friendly city region. I want to see more of our public spaces accessible to people with autism, more of our public servants empowered as autism champions and an ambitious strategy for education and employability. I want Greater Manchester to be a beacon of best practice for autism across the world. I hope that the Minister will share that ambition.

Junior Doctors Contracts

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Whatever the Government’s aspiration, the fact is that we cannot run a health service on any day of the week without doctors who are willing to work in it. The reality is that the doctors I speak to in my constituency are exasperated. They are angry. They feel as though they have no choice. The Conservative party is kidding itself if it thinks that this is about the BMA making a political fight. There is a genuine strength of feeling about the way in which these people have been treated. That is shared by consultants and nurses, which is why they are willing to cover for their colleagues. The idea that the Government have no responsibility for the single biggest industrial dispute in the history of the NHS is, frankly, pathetic. People want to know why, if there is just one issue left to settle, imposition is necessary. Why can that not be taken off the table, so that negotiations can begin again and the strike avoided?

[Mr Hunt]

Because on that one issue—Saturday pay—the BMA said in writing last November that it would negotiate, but it tore up that agreement and said that it was not prepared to negotiate even one iota. That was why the agreement fell apart. The BMA could easily, had it stuck to its word, have negotiated an agreement and we would not have a strike today. The Government have been totally reasonable and fair throughout. The BMA has not. It is the BMA’s choice to call these strikes. It should think again, because this is the wrong thing for patients and the wrong thing for the NHS.

Contaminated Blood

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate today and to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing such an important issue to be brought before the House. I add my praise to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for her outstanding leadership. As a member of the all-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, I feel strongly that it is right that the House consider this matter and that more should be done. I also feel that it would be unconscionable if any reform that did come about actually reduced the support currently being received by people who have been victims of this appalling episode in the history of our public health system.

As we have heard, between the mid-1970s and the late 1980s, 4,670 people with haemophilia were infected with hepatitis C through their NHS treatment and the transfusion of contaminated blood. Of those, 1,243 people with haemophilia were also exposed to HIV. Almost half of those infected with hepatitis C, and almost three quarters co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C, have since died. Many have experienced poverty and discrimination as a result of their infections. For so many of the victims, the simplest of daily tasks can become difficult and, in some situations, frightening. Such a scenario can be seen in the life of one of my own constituents, Mr Michael Gee, with whom I have worked on this issue since I first met him at a constituency surgery in 2013. Alongside many other victims, Michael has travelled to be here today to listen to this debate. The determination to be here is testament to the importance of these decisions. I pay tribute to Michael and to everyone else who is here today and who has been placed in a similar situation.

As a young boy, Michael was accidentally scalded when reaching for a pan of boiling water on the cooker while his mother was making dinner. Rushed to hospital, he underwent a number of blood transfusions. Due to the shortage of blood donors, the Government of the day had purchased blood supplies from abroad, and one of the bags used contained contaminated blood.

Michael was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1987, and it is a condition that he has had to live with throughout his adult life. Hepatitis C causes chronic fatigue, organ damage as well as significant cognitive impairment and damage to the auto-immune system causing arthritis and muscle problems. There are also a whole range of significant practical everyday problems. Hepatitis C sufferers, for instance, struggle to get mortgages or proper insurance.

Michael is now a father, and due to the nature of his condition he is restricted in his interaction with his own child. Terrified that an open wound could transfer his virus, he often has to wear gloves to put his mind at ease, and keep the safety of his children paramount. Such a scenario is difficult to comprehend for any of us who are parents and we would not wish to see anyone placed in that position.

I do not think that any Government have done enough on this matter. In 2009, the Department of Health reviewed the support for the victims of the disaster, but 80% of those who were infected with hepatitis C were excluded from the financial help. That was on the grounds that their illness was considered to be at stage 1. They had been categorised as stage 1 because they could not prove a certain stage of liver disease. To make things even more unfair, there were serious differences in the help given to people with HIV and people with hepatitis C. One of the biggest and most obvious anomalies was the fact that if someone with HIV died their spouse could apply for ongoing financial support, albeit means-tested, but if someone with hepatitis C died their partner received nothing.

The entire support system is inadequate, and is administered by a multitude of charitable trusts with different rules and criteria, which makes it harder to access. In 2016, the Government are in danger of repeating the errors of the past and once again letting down the victims and their families. Last month, victims of the disaster received letters from the Department of Health consulting them on reforms that could leave some of them up to £7,000 a year worse off. This is not acceptable, and it must not be allowed to happen.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the impact on families. My constituents, David and Vincent Farrugia, tragically lost their father Barry after he contracted HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood. The families and the bereaved are not included in the consultation—there is no provision for children, dependants or bereaved families. Does my hon. Friend agree that children and dependants who are now adults should be included in the consultation?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I agree with my hon. Friend. When we learn the details of these cases it is clear that people’s entire lives have been grievously affected, and it is only right that everyone associated with those injured parties is given the opportunity to take part in the remedy that is required. I would point out to the Department of Health that almost all of the victims of this disaster were infected at least 30 years ago, and there is substantial research evidence showing that by now they have suffered significant damage to their health and earning potential. That must be taken into consideration.

The cap proposed by the Government on annual payments once again shows the lack of compassion and reasonableness faced by these people. The fact that infected spouses will stop receiving payments is grossly unfair. The Prime Minister apologised in the House to the victims last year for what they had had to endure, saying that it was

“difficult to imagine the feelings of unfairness that people must feel”—[Official Report, 21 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 1423.]

Given the latest proposals, do not those words now ring somewhat hollow? The chilling truth of this tragedy is that about half of the estimated 5,000 haemophiliacs who were infected have died without ever seeing justice.

I would ask all Members in the Chamber to think not only of those affected, such as Michael, but of the victims’ families, who rely on financial support, which provides the security and stability they need and deserve, and which we as Members of this House have a duty to protect. This is one of the worst episodes in the history of public healthcare and the NHS. Any sense of natural justice leads, I believe, to the conclusion that it must be addressed. We cannot give these people back their health or their dignity, but we can give them closure. We can give them proper financial support—and, frankly, it is time we did.

Junior Doctors: Industrial Action

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ben Gummer]

Back in November, the BMA said that it wished to discuss Saturday pay rates, and then went back on that promise—one that it had made at ACAS. That is something that, in my experience, normal trade unions do not do. In my experience, they hold to their word when they have made a promise at ACAS. Given that repeated breach of good faith, it is hard to understand how a return to talks would achieve what the hon. Lady thinks it would. That is why it is so important to move ahead with the vast majority that has been agreed, and introduce this contract, which is better for patients and better for doctors.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

What an absolutely shambles of the Government’s own making! Will the Minister accept that in view of the language he is using today and the tone that the Government have struck—not just today, but throughout this week and before that—they have given the impression to junior doctors and the country that what they really seek is a fight and a confrontation rather than the resolution that the public deserve?

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Gentleman is the last person to speak from the Opposition Benches. I note that he of all people—this saddens me—also fails to condemn this withdrawal of emergency cover. I am afraid that in the absence of that condemnation, the House will only draw the conclusion that the Labour party supports the withdrawal of emergency action in this strike.

Victims of Contaminated Blood: Support

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I thank the hon. Lady for those comments and I will reflect on them. The DWP matters are outside the remit of the Department of Health, but I will take on board the general issues she raises and refer them to colleagues. As I have said, we continue to work with the devolved Administrations on NHS matters; if her constituent is being treated in Scotland, it is a devolved matter for the Scottish NHS.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I appreciate the contrite tone of this question, but this is so very disappointing. My affected constituent simply wants to be able to buy a home and provide security to his family, but that is not available to him at present. Can I tell my constituent that next year a new scheme will be in place and that he will be eligible to receive support from it?

[Jane Ellison]

It is clearly my intention to have a reformed scheme in place next year. I do not know the circumstances of his constituent, so I cannot make that individual commitment. I have said that we want to move to a reformed scheme next year. I understand the frustration of Opposition Members, but, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) acknowledged, Governments of all shades and descriptions have not stood up to tackle this issue. We are going to try to do something; it will not satisfy everyone, but I hope we will be able to come forward with a scheme that will respond to many people’s concerns.