Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. As part of the NHS long-term plan, we have an ambition to diagnose 75% of all stageable cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028. That means that we need to make significant improvements on the harder-to-detect cancers such as bowel cancer. We are working across systems to deliver those improvements, not only with better screening programmes, but by improving patient pathways. However, I am more than happy to meet her if she wants to have a further conversation specifically about bowel cancer.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

Following discussions with constituents who are living with Parkinson’s and with Parkinson’s UK, I am concerned that North Yorkshire has only one dedicated Parkinson’s nurse. Given the complexity of the condition, what steps are being taken further to incentivise nurses to specialise in Parkinson’s and on long-term delivery?

[Andrew Stephenson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know the huge value of Parkinson’s nurses to local patients in my constituency. Under the NHS long-term workforce plan, backed by more than £2.4 billion over the next five years, the NHS will focus on expanding the number of clinicians training for enhanced and advanced roles working as part of multidisciplinary teams with the right skills to meet the changing needs of patients.

NHS Dentistry: Recovery and Reform

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

That is exactly what we are doing, and not just in relation to other European nations but in relation to other countries around the world. We want the General Dental Council to ensure that qualified dentists from overseas are recognised and supported, and get on to our registers as quickly as possible.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

Like many others, I very much welcome the recovery plan, and I thank the Secretary of State for meeting me earlier to discuss the issues that we face in York. However, may I press her on the subject of integrated care boards? Will she ensure that they are held to account? Will they face increased monitoring to ensure that they spend the allocated money on dentistry and on the target areas in the recovery plan, and will that money remain ringfenced?

[Victoria Atkins]

I well understand why my hon. Friend has asked that question, about a matter that other Members have also raised. We are exploring ways in which we can make the expenditure of the dentistry budget more transparent, because it is right for ICBs to reflect the needs of local residents and deliver the services that should be available under this dental recovery plan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

Of course we have regular discussions, not just with Cabinet colleagues, but with our counterparts across the UK. I had a meeting just yesterday with Health Ministers, including my counterpart in Scotland, on the shared challenges. On the issue that the hon. Lady raises, as the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) said a moment ago, we are providing significant support for households—over £3,300 in support—but we also have measures that target schools, including holiday support measures and wider health and wellbeing measures, such as our significant investment in school sport.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

T4.   The Minister is fully aware of Bupa’s decision to close its dental clinic in York, at Holgate Park. I put on record my thanks to him for working with me to find a solution for those constituents affected by the decision. What is being done to reassess out-of-date dental contracts, so that we can ensure that increased demand is met and that my constituents get the access to dental care that they deserve?

[Steve Barclay]

We are taking action, which is why the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough met my hon. Friend recently. In his area of Humber and North Yorkshire, there has been an increase in the number of children seen by NHS dentists over the previous 12 months, so the picture is improving, but we recognise that there is more to do; that is why we have made a number of reforms to the dental contract and why we will announce further plans shortly.

Mental Health In-patient Services: Improving Safety

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am extremely keen to share our experience, so that we can learn from each other. As the hon. Gentleman knows, this is a shared challenge across our United Kingdom. The pandemic shone a spotlight on the mental health pressures that many people face, and I am extremely keen to work on a UK-wide basis with colleagues to ensure that we learn from each other as we take these measures forward.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

Given that a recent report into mental health services in York established that communication is a clear concern that is affecting mental health outcomes and safety locally, what specific steps would my right hon. Friend take to ensure better communication between primary and secondary care services? As we all know, that is vital in delivering faster and better outcomes for patients not only in York but across the country.

[Steve Barclay]

That is an extremely good point. In fact, a key element of the primary care recovery plan looks at the handover points between secondary and primary care, which are often the cause of significant additional work within primary care. We are keen to see where we can ease those pressures, which in turn frees up our experienced GPs to do those tasks that require more time, so that is part of the primary care recovery plan. Through the rapid review and the focus on data, we are better able to identify where there are gaps or areas of duplication that take clinicians away from spending time with patients. That matters both in secondary and primary care, and it is something that the rapid review has been addressing.

Procurement of Evusheld

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Daisy Cooper]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. That is exactly the question I would like the Minister to answer.

There are two significant problems with the most recent report published last week. First, it effectively says that the RAPID C-19 group looked at the results of a trial run on actual people in December 2021 and concluded that the evidence was so good that they were going to recommend that Evusheld be rolled out to patients. However, in May of this year, they looked at non-clinical data—test tubes, petri dishes and the like—and decided that the results were not good enough. It does not take a rocket scientist to work out that high concentrations of a virus in a petri dish do not translate to tests in real human beings.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

I understand that 33 other countries have approved the use of Evusheld, including every G7 member apart from the United Kingdom. What do you think we can learn from the other parts of the world that have approved this important treatment for the immunocompromised?

[Daisy Cooper]

I am grateful for that question. In fact, Evusheld is now so effective that not only has it been rolled out in 33 countries, but a number of countries, including Japan, Italy, Spain and Israel, have actually put in repeat orders for Evusheld, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has even launched a public drive to increase uptake. In private discussions, both the Minister and his predecessor have indicated to me in meetings that there was some evidence that countries had bought the drug but were not using it.

Let us be clear: the failure of any Government to identify clinically vulnerable patients and distribute the medication to them has nothing to do with the effectiveness of that particular drug. Before we throw stones in glass houses, we should remember that of immunocompromised patients in England who caught covid and were referred for treatment, only 17% actually got it. That failure to distribute is more to do with the fracturing of our health systems; it is not about the effectiveness of this drug.

Antimicrobial Resistance

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

It is a pleasure not only to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, but to speak in this important debate. I warmly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for having secured it. I share his view on the priority of keeping the Government’s focus on this very important subject: as a co-chair with my hon. Friend of the all-party parliamentary group on antibiotics, I urge the Minister to reflect very carefully on the suggestions my hon. Friend has made and that continue to be made in this debate. I also want to highlight a few other important points that we need to consider.

First, the Government need to carefully assess how covid has impacted on the global and national antibiotic resistance challenge. Unsurprisingly, the once-in-a-century scale of the pandemic has generated concerns that the increased prescribing of antibiotics worldwide on the back of covid will amplify the problems of growing resistance. The scale of the virus disaster and the variety of global health systems has led to a huge, unco-ordinated and large-scale use of different antibiotics, and we need to know how the nature of the AMR threat has evolved as a result.

The covid experience and the size of the Government’s response also offer lessons for the AMR debate by indicating that, when necessary, we can rise to the challenge and assign huge resources to protect the public. The costs involved in developing the new drugs needed to beat the resistance are enormous, as has already been touched on in this debate, but arguably our perspective on that has shifted somewhat when we consider the scale of the fiscal firepower deployed against the covid virus—some £378 billion in this country alone, as of October’s Budget.

Given the potential of AMR to equal or surpass what covid has done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton mentioned, with the very plausible prediction of 10 million dead annually across the world by 2050, it seems reasonable to increase our national financial commitment now. With a much more significant—but still relatively small—investment, we can really make a difference. As has already been mentioned during this debate, and as the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry has called for, raising the £10 million cap for the Government’s AMR project subscription trial could be one such investment.

The Government should also explore whether they can build more laboratory capacity in middle income countries and the developing world, as part of our public health and wider aid strategies. The lack of significant medical microbiological facilities in such nations is a significant factor in the mistaken prescribing of antibiotics that fuels the growth of AMR around the world. These labs are necessary to generate the guidance on which antibiotics best fit which disease.

The source of the deficiency is an absence of quality, accredited training and the lack of medical microbiological biomedical scientists, producing a situation in which under-informed prescribing practices simply spread resistance. Building that capacity would be a helpful addition to the UK public health and aid policy, because, as the pandemic has shown, disease mutations that develop abroad do not stay there for long.

Growing antibiotic resistance in lower income countries is both a disaster for them and a serious threat to lives in this country. I urge the Department of Health and Social Care to engage closely on this aspect of the problem and listen to calls, such as those from the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, for the creation of a global antimicrobial stewardship accreditation scheme to ensure co-operation across health and research systems and to generalise global good practice. Ministers should constantly remember the need to address the challenge of resistance across Government—I mean making sure that other Government Departments know the impact that AMR has.

I want to touch on one example of that. At the APPG on antibiotics, we recently connected scientific researchers at the University of Exeter with Ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, so they could share the case for amending the Environment Bill so that it took account of the issue of antimicrobial residues in water and sewage. I understand DEFRA’s decision that although it should not adopt the specific University of Exeter recommendations, it will continue to listen to this research work, including through the new shared outcomes fund pilot project on AMR surveillance, which is in the Environment Act 2021, but we need to see a level of engagement across the board, from all Departments. A Government assessment of whether a further statutory basis is needed to step up action on AMR should be welcomed.

I finish on this brief point, Sir Gary. Many of us in the Chamber now have sat here before, talking about AMR. We are constantly raising the same arguments and the same points, but we really need to spread that message wider. The biggest disappointment is that it is the same few Members raising the same points: the subject does not seem to be getting the political traction it needs. Given where we have been with covid, that might be slightly understandable, but we have to remember, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said: if we take our eye off the ball, AMR has the potential to be a much larger pandemic than we have ever seen before.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

The winding-up speeches will begin at 5.32 pm. We are now going to have seven and half minutes of pure gold from Jim Shannon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

1. What recent steps his Department has taken to increase NHS capacity.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

16. What recent steps his Department has taken to increase NHS capacity.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)]

The NHS will receive an extra £5.4 billion for the second half of this financial year to support its response to covid-19. This includes an extra £1 billion to help to tackle the treatment backlog and £478 million to continue the enhanced hospital discharge programme, freeing up beds. This brings the total extra investment in health and care services so far this year, during the pandemic, to £34 billion.

[Julian Sturdy]

My wonderful local charity York Against Cancer has been approached by York Hospital regarding the part funding of a da Vinci robotic cancer surgery system. This revolutionary machine allows for fewer and smaller incisions, meaning faster patient recovery, shorter hospital stays and, ultimately, better and faster cancer care. Will the Secretary of State assure me that he fully supports local collaboration, wherever needed, to introduce these machines and that he is doing everything he can to roll out this new technology across our health service?

[Sajid Javid]

I assure my hon. Friend that cancer care, whether provided through these machines, diagnostics or in any other way, remains an absolute priority for the Government. Colleagues will understand that some cancers were not diagnosed during the pandemic, and I join him in congratulating York Against Cancer on the work it is doing. I would like to learn more about this machine and to see how we can make it work throughout the NHS.

Covid-19 Update

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I take it from that that the right hon. Gentleman supports the measures that I have set out today in this statement, and I thank him very much for his support.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]]

I very much welcome this statement today on the back of the successful vaccine roll-out programme. However, given the rising numbers of people having to isolate and the impact this is having on businesses and our economy, can I reiterate the call to my right hon. Friend to consider bringing forward changes to the requirement to isolate after contact with a confirmed case for those who are fully vaccinated? There has to be a better way forward that does not have the economic impact that the current isolation policy is having.

[Sajid Javid]

I understand the importance of the point my hon. Friend has made. As I said in response to another question, the date of 16 August is based on the best advice that we can get at this point in time. He may be interested to know that, as well as the test and trace system, there is the NHS covid app. A number of people have referred to the so-called pinging. I want to take a careful look at this to ensure that it can also provide a more proportionate and balanced system, given the rate of vaccination.

Covid-19 Update

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am afraid I do not agree with the prognosis. We are, of course, very careful to ensure that the vast majority of people who go through the managed quarantine service—hotel quarantine—have a good experience. Of course, they have to be in a hotel when often they would rather not be, so it is an unusual situation, but it has been put in place with great sensitivity and I am very grateful to all those who have worked so hard on it, not just in my Department but among the hotels, the airports and the carriers. However, the hon. Gentleman clearly has some significant individual concerns, and I would be very happy to ensure that the Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), meets him to hear those individual concerns and to try to make sure that they are resolved—in particular the point about ensuring that food provision is appropriate for those fasting at Ramadan, which of course is very important.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]]

Given that the seven-day rolling average of covid deaths is now 24.9, with just 10 yesterday, and that in normal times the daily cancer death toll averages over 450—a figure sadly likely to rise due to delayed treatment and the disruption of the pandemic—what are the Government doing to catch up with the cancer screening and operations backlog and get the health service back towards other medical conditions so that the death toll from non-covid cases does not become the worst legacy of this emergency?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend is quite right to ask about that; it is an incredibly important topic. I am pleased to say that, over the second peak this winter, the amount of cancer work—surgery and treatment—continued much closer to normal. He is quite right that, in the first peak, it was reduced significantly. We are very focused on the backlog that has been created by the pandemic, but I am pleased that the death toll from covid is coming down. In fact, the very latest data, published today, shows that the number of deaths recorded with covid after 28 days is four. Those numbers tend to be lower at the weekend, and we mourn each of them, but that nevertheless reinforces his point that it is vital that we get on with getting through the backlog that has been created by the pandemic.

Covid-19 Update

Julian Sturdy Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The challenge with the proposal the hon. Gentleman puts forward is that vaccinating those who are not as vulnerable to the disease before those who are more vulnerable would essentially increase the overall clinical vulnerability to the disease. I am glad that the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) did not raise this issue as health spokesman on the Labour Front Bench, although I know others on the Labour Front Bench do so. We have to follow the clinical order of priority, because my priority is saving lives.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) [V]]

Further to the Prime Minister’s suggestion yesterday in Batley that we may not see a return to different regional tier restrictions due to the virus’s behaviour, how will the Government avoid unfairly disadvantaging areas with low covid rates? Or does the fantastic vaccination programme roll-out mean that the whole country can now make steady progress out of lockdown together?

[Matt Hancock]

That is our goal—that the whole country can make steady progress together. In fact, case rates across the UK are more similar in all parts of the UK than they have been for some time. There were significant regional variations over the autumn, but that is much less widespread now, hence the comments that the Prime Minister made yesterday.