Covid-19 Vaccination Harm

Debate between Karin Smyth and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms Lewell. I am speaking today on behalf of the Minister for public health and prevention, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), who cannot be here for other parliamentary reasons. I know that she agrees with me that debates such as this are important to uphold the British people’s trust in public health measures, so I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for securing it.

I want to start by giving some assurance, particularly to people watching at home. We know that over 53 million people, following the example of Her late Majesty the Queen, took the jab during a once-in-a-generation health emergency, and that covid vaccines helped to keep millions of people out of hospital and, in many cases, saved lives. It is important to remember that the vast majority of people who took the jab did not suffer adverse effects. The hon. Member for Christchurch has made some of those points publicly, and I am grateful for that. However, that does not mean that we should turn a blind eye to the rare and tragic instances where things have gone wrong, as he eloquently highlighted.

I want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to some of the campaigners, Kate Scott, Sheila Ward and Kelly Hatfield, for their tireless campaigning on this issue, and to Gareth Eve and the family of John Cross, all of whom have raised the issue of vaccine injury with my ministerial colleagues. Their loved ones took the vaccine because they wanted to protect their families and the NHS.

Today, those brave campaigners are still fighting for all people who suffered adverse reactions. They are not statistics—as hon. Members have said today, they are people. They are our constituents. Their voices must be heard. I am glad that they continue to have the opportunity to raise their concerns with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and with my colleague, the Minister for public health and prevention. The conversations are difficult, but they are essential to making Whitehall understand where the system falls short and where we can make a meaningful difference. It is not just a question of making sure that systems are in place to support people when things go wrong. As the hon. Member for Christchurch outlined this morning, it is about maintaining public confidence in our health service and vaccination programmes. That is what is at stake in this debate, and that is why it is helpful that he secured it.

That said, I do not think I will be able to assure the hon. Gentleman on the exact timelines that he asked for. However, I assure him that we are neither being complacent nor playing hard to get, as he said of even his own Government. Indeed, I echo the Secretary of State’s comments to the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) back in June.

We are taking tangible steps to improve the administration of the vaccine damage payment scheme. As hon. Members know, the VDPS is a statutory route through which those who have suffered serious harm as a result of vaccination can apply for financial support. The scheme has been in existence for many years, but since the covid-19 vaccination campaign began, there has been a rise in the number of applications. That is to be expected, given the record number of vaccinations given in such a short timeframe, but it has put pressure on the processing time. That is why the Department has been working with the NHS Business Services Authority, the administrators of the scheme, to modernise operations, improve the experience of those who apply for an award and process claims at a faster rate. To get that done, additional medical assessors have been appointed and the application process has been digitised.

The NHS Business Services Authority has also been working to improve the return rate of medical records from the healthcare providers required to assess claims through engagement with NHS institutions and using subject access requests as needed.

With regard to the ongoing work, we recognise that concerns about the scheme go wider than the application process. We have heard those calls from the hon. Member for Christchurch, other Members present and campaigners, and, as he references, during the covid inquiry hearings, when the Government were asked to look at issues such as the eligibility criteria for the scheme and the current award amount. Last September, the Secretary of State met campaigners to discuss that issue, and ministerial colleagues have had further meetings since. In those meetings, my colleagues set out that although any changes to the scheme would be a cross-Government decision, our door remains open to campaigners and we will do everything we can to keep progressing this at pace.

I recognise that individuals and their families who have suffered harm following vaccination are waiting on a more detailed update, but I reassure them that the Secretary of State and Ministers are continuing to look at the issues and a range of options. I reiterate the comments that the Secretary of State made at Health questions. We want to be clear in our response. I will not be able to offer the hon. Member for Christchurch the timeline that he wants today.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The Minister says she cannot give us an exact timeline. Could she give us an approximate time? Is this going to be finished before the end of this year, for example? That is not an exact timeline, but it would be an indicative timeline. And when she talks about various options, can she not explain which of those options are being considered or which ones are not being considered? For example, is increasing the £120,000 payout being considered? Is reducing the disability threshold from 60% being considered? Is disapplying the three-year limitation period for the bringing of civil claims being considered? Please can we have a yes or no to those things? We are not asking for the decisions on those, but we are asking whether they are being considered or not.

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me to give more details, which I cannot do today. But I will take back to the Department that broader request for timelines and what things are being considered. I will make sure we get back to him on that as a result of this debate.

On the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the hon. Member for Christchurch and the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) asked about the effectiveness of the MHRA in monitoring harms. The MHRA is globally recognised for requiring high standards of safety. Vaccines used in the UK are authorised only once they have met robust standards of effectiveness, safety and quality.

Once approved, the comprehensive post-market surveillance of a vaccine begins, where the benefits and risks of the vaccine are very closely monitored. The MHRA collects data through the reporting of adverse reactions by the public and healthcare professionals to the yellow card scheme, as well as from other information sources domestically and internationally.

As hon. Members know, a dedicated team of scientists constantly reviews the information to look for safety issues or rare adverse effects. All reports of adverse events, alongside other information, are analysed and reviewed continuously to identify trends and patterns that may require action, with any information indicating a possible new safety concern thoroughly evaluated. Updated advice for healthcare professionals and patients is issued where appropriate.

The covid-19 vaccines have been scrutinised continuously since roll-out, with the MHRA having implemented a proactive surveillance strategy for monitoring the safety of all UK-approved covid-19 vaccines.

I just want to end by saying that the vaccine programme—

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Obviously, the Minister has a brief that has been given to her by officials on behalf of the Minister with responsibility for public health, the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), who is not able to be here. Can this Minister give me some assurance that I, together with my colleagues who have participated in this debate, will be able to meet the relevant Minister, so that we can go over some of this stuff? I realise that this Minister does not have the discretion to be able to respond to this debate, but the public health Minister would have that discretion, so can she guarantee that we can fix up a meeting, please?

[Karin Smyth]

The hon. Gentleman is of course a very experienced campaigner, and he asks his question absolutely appropriately. I know that my hon. Friend the public health Minister is very happy to meet people and discuss this, but I can also assure the hon. Gentleman that the Secretary of State is very much looking at this personally as well. I will take that request for a meeting with the public health Minister back to the Department, and I am sure that she will be happy to do that.

The vaccine programme was an immense contribution to public health during a once-in-a-lifetime health emergency, and many of us remember the sense of relief that we and family members felt when we got that text with the invitation to come forward. But for a small number of people and their families, it brought pain, loss and hardship. We must never forget them, and our responsibility as a Government is clear. We are absolutely committed, as I have said, to further work to improve the scheme, as well as to continue to engage with those who are affected and have suffered vaccine harm, to consider how the system could better reflect their needs. That does include the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman, and other colleagues here today, on behalf of all our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

GP Services: Christchurch

Debate between Karin Smyth and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Karin Smyth]

I will not, because the hon. Member for Christchurch wants me to answer his questions.

We are working closely with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to address the issue of additional demand in national planning guidance and ensure that all new and existing developments have an adequate level of healthcare infrastructure for the community. The NHS has a statutory duty to ensure that there are sufficient medical services, including general practice, in each local area, with funding and commission reflecting population growth and demographic changes. The hon. Gentleman highlights an important point that we will continue to pursue.

Those are the facts about the decision made by the ICB, which was its decision to make. I am not going to stand here and tell the hon. Gentleman that he is not right to do what he is doing; he is absolutely right to fight for the best possible service provision for the people of Christchurch, and I would do the same for my constituents—all hon. Members do that. These decisions are best made locally, however, and it is for Dorset ICB to use its autonomy to make them, not Ministers in Whitehall.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The ICB is not elected or accountable. We have an elected and accountable council—BCP council—which decided that the surgery in Burton, a community facility that had been there for more than 30 years, should remain and that permission should not be granted to change its use, because of its value as a community asset. Why should the ICB be able to second-guess the elected representatives of the community? Is that not intolerable?

[Karin Smyth]

I could talk for a long time about the accountability of health services, but we do not have time for that. The legislation, as set up by the previous Government and others, is clear that ICBs have responsibility for commissioning services on behalf of the local population within the resources that they have available. They need to do that under particular guidelines, which I have outlined, and it is important that they keep up communications with Ministers and local people.

I am not au fait with the day-to-day running of Dorset ICB—that is not for Ministers—but at a strategic level, I recognise that Dorset currently has the fifth-highest ratio of GP clinicians to patients in the country. I know that everyone wants to be in first place, but I am sympathetic to the ICB’s arguments that other practices may suffer if the surgery were reopened. Closing the former site has made the services at Christchurch medical practice and other neighbouring practices slightly larger, which has given them greater resilience in the long term.

The hon. Member for Christchurch mentioned the new Labour Government and what we are trying to address. I do not have the figures in front of me, but every hon. Member present will know there have been hundreds of GP service closures—not just branches but practices—over the past 14 years. The trend has been for primary care to receive a smaller share of the NHS budget, and as a result, secondary care has had much more activity. We all know about the 8 am scramble, and some GPs have been forced to work in appalling conditions with leaky roofs and buckets catching rainwater.

That is why our priority is to stem the flow of resources away from primary care, shift the focus of the NHS from hospital to community, and begin building a much better neighbourhood health service. Our objectives are to hire more GPs, reach an agreement on a new contract, rebuild surgeries through increased capital spend, and bust the bloated bureaucracy that has built up. In the summer, we committed to bringing in an extra 1,000 GPs through the additional roles reimbursement scheme, which we backed with an extra £82 million of funding after changing a technicality that prevented primary care from hiring more new doctors. We have surpassed our initial target and 1,500 more GPs are now serving patients on the frontline. Since we took office, I am happy to confirm that 11 have been recruited by Dorset ICB, including, as I understand, three in the hon. Member’s constituency.

In conclusion, we are committed to shifting the NHS from hospital to community and to building a neighbourhood health service. We are bringing back the family doctor.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

One of the issues is that since the branch surgery was closed, Christchurch medical practice has reduced its number of full-time equivalent GP doctors. There used to be 10.7 and now there are only 10.2, which may be part of the problem. Surely it must be in the interests of the Government, the taxpayer and everybody else to allow a branch surgery to reopen, at minimal additional cost, to the benefit of 4,500 people in the Christchurch area.

[Karin Smyth]

As I said, decisions about how the additional costs are borne and the resilience of the rest of primary care in the area are for the ICB. It has been very clear that that is not the case, so the hon. Member may want to take it up with the ICB.

Since we came into office, we have been doing the hard yards of restoring the role of general practice at the heart of our health service, including in the hon. Member’s constituency, by investing in people, places and programmes that cut bureaucracy. We are laying the foundations for an NHS that is fit for the future, particularly based around primary care and neighbourhood health centres.

Question put and agreed to.

Maternity Services: Gloucestershire

Debate between Karin Smyth and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher.

With your leave, I will start with a few words to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week. Many mums and dads across the country have suffered the heartbreak of losing a baby. Everyone deals with grief in a different way, but it has been moving to hear from parents how baby loss certificates have allowed them to process what they have gone through and have helped give them closure.

That is why this week we launched an extension to the baby loss certificate service, which is a voluntary scheme to enable parents who have experienced a pregnancy loss to record and receive a certificate to provide recognition of their loss, should they wish. Until now the service was only open to parents who had experienced a loss since 1 September 2018, but today we are removing that restriction, making the certificates available for every parent who has lost a child. We will update the House with a formal written statement shortly. The Government are committed to delivering compassionate care for women and support for parents who have suffered a baby loss. It is the right thing to do.

I think this has been a genuinely good debate. We have heard from experts—I commend the Opposition spokesperson the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for the work they do—and others have shared experiences. I knew that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) would bring forward good points too, so I contacted the trust myself so that I could give the hon. Gentleman and hon. Members present my frank assessment of what is happening on the ground.

To reiterate, as of August 2024 the midwifery vacancy rate in the Gloucestershire hospitals NHS foundation trust stood at 13%—the equivalent of 32 full-time midwives. That level is high for the south-west, though roughly in line with the national average. In April 2022, the Care Quality Commission gave the trust a warning notice for the maternity service, and rated it “inadequate” a year later. In May this year, the CQC issued the section 31 notice—a severe warning that requires at minimum an immediate action and improvement plan, which, as colleagues will know, in some other settings could result in a closure. It issued that after seeing postpartum haemorrhage rates, poor foetal monitoring and high levels of agency staffing.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham and others from the area are right to be concerned. We can all agree that it is unacceptable when new mothers do not receive the highest possible standard of care. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, we should be honest about the problems in our NHS and serious about fixing them. Maternity services are very far from where we want them to be. Childbirth should not be something that women fear or look back on with trauma. Safety is obviously paramount. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham said, it should be a special moment.

I thank the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) for sharing her experiences. I was in hospital for two weeks after having my first child, and it is a traumatic time, so the length of time she mentioned must have been very difficult. My second came out so quickly that I was in and out of hospital before we knew it. My third child, as has been mentioned, was almost delivered at home by my husband after we had chosen a home birth. He is not medically qualified, so I can tell you that the sound of the doorbell ringing for the midwives’ arrival was the best sound I have heard in my life.

To the second question asked by the hon. Member for Cheltenham, I will outline the steps the trust is taking to improve the situation. They include a new director of midwifery, an education and training midwife and a perinatal quality and governance lead. To improve retention, the new leadership has introduced a retire and return scheme and is holding monthly events for senior leadership to listen to staff and address their concerns. The trust has recruited 33 new midwifery starters since 2023, including from overseas. Ten midwives are due to start this month, with a further 10 expected in January. But there is still a gap. That is why the Aveta birthing unit and the postnatal beds at Stroud maternity will remain temporarily closed until they reach safe levels of staffing. The trust clearly felt that it could not continue those services without putting new mothers at risk, which is an impossible situation to be in.

I am pleased that the birthing unit at Stroud remains open, but the other closures have had an impact on women, their families and the local community, as has been eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester and mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate. The impact goes further afield to my own city of Bristol. In addition to those measures, the trust is developing new apprenticeship schemes; building partnerships with universities, including Worcester and Oxford Brookes; and launching a midwifery attraction campaign in the autumn.

Although the trust has had positive feedback from last year’s new starters, I am pleased that it is carrying out regular assessments, as per the recommendations in the Ockenden review, to ensure that midwives have the right skills to serve the people of Gloucestershire. The turnover rate is now settling, and I know the hon. Member for Cheltenham and other colleagues will do everything they can to help convince midwives that his county is a great place to live and work. The passion for those units is very evident here today, which I am sure will be welcome to those trusts.

I know from my career in the NHS that such changes take a long time. It is too soon to make an assessment until all the new midwives have started. However, we are not waiting for the CQC to do the rounds to ensure that the picture is improving. The local maternity and neonatal systems team and the regional NHS England team are meeting with the trust on a fortnightly basis to review progress. The trust’s monthly board reports will report on progress; I know hon. Members will be watching carefully.

It is important to give the new team space to prove themselves. I am hopeful that we will see improvements in time. At a national level, whenever trusts and maternity units do not perform on our watch, we will steer them back to safer ground. That is why we are supporting Gloucestershire maternity services through the national maternity safety support programme. That means that the trust is supported by a maternity improvement adviser for midwifery and obstetrics, who helps the trust to embed the maternity improvement plan.

I know that the hon. Member for Cheltenham and others will continue to hold the trust to account, until it is delivering for women in their constituencies. I am grateful to him for obtaining this debate and giving me the chance to put the Government’s position on the record. With regard to his third question, like many trusts in this position, the trust does have the budget for establishment; it is the recruitment and retention of midwives that is the issue. Some trusts do different things with incentives; I do not know whether this trust is particularly doing that. That might be something he would wish to pick up with the trust at another time.

On more general maternity improvements, in September the CQC published a report that demonstrated how much the previous Government let down new mothers in this country. Lord Darzi’s report has shown that, despite some improvements, there is still a disgraceful inequality of outcomes for black and minority ethnic women, as we have heard again today. We will look at every recommendation in the CQC report, and if officials object to any of them, I expect to hear a very good reason why.

There is ongoing work to improve maternity and neonatal services across England. The NHS put in place a three-year delivery plan to make maternity and neonatal care safer, fairer and more tailored to every new mother’s needs.

I shall now discuss the Government’s wider ambition. Choice—which was mentioned today by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate—is for us absolutely a key part of maternity care. As the hon. Member for Winchester said, our NHS must listen to and work with women and families on how their care is planned and received, based on what matters to them.

To get maternity care back on its feet, we need to train thousands more midwives as part of the NHS workforce plan, while encouraging experienced midwives to stay in the NHS. Many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Cheltenham, spoke of recruiting midwives, with regard to morale and workload. That was also mentioned by the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) and for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean). The NHS will deliver the people plan, giving a stronger focus to a modern, compassionate, inclusive culture, which absolutely has to be part of our forward look in the 10-year plan.

We will ensure that trusts failing on maternity care are robustly supported into rapid improvement. We are setting an explicit target to close the black and Asian maternity mortality gap. NHS England is on the right track, boosting the workforce through training, apprenticeships, postgraduate conversion, return to midwifery programmes and international recruitment. I have been clear that the Government will build on those programmes, not replace them.

Finally, I want to end by restating our unwavering commitment to maternity services across the nation, including in Gloucestershire. We are actively working to improve staffing levels and are planning for the future needs of Gloucestershire’s maternity services. I say to the constituents of the hon. Member for Cheltenham that I hear his concerns and completely understand them, and I will work with him to set this right.

The Opposition spokesperson is an assiduous writer, and I have answered a number of her letters, but if I have not responded to particular points from the previous debate before recess, I apologise, and will ensure that that happens after this debate. She has raised important questions.

In the constituency of the hon. Member for Cheltenham and in mine, women have had to bear the brunt of inaction for the past 14 years, but this Government will deliver for women, not just in the south-west but in the country as a whole.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I call Max Wilkinson to respond to this very well-informed debate.

Children’s Cancer Care: South-East

Debate between Karin Smyth and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher—it has been severely tested this afternoon, but you have done remarkably well in getting us all to the end of this important debate, particularly for local people, on the issue of children’s cancer. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing it. The hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) all spoke on behalf of their constituents with the diligence that we would expect.

Receiving a cancer diagnosis is always distressing and deeply worrying for anyone; for a child and their family it can be particularly devastating. Watching a child go through that is a difficulty that most parents, fortunately, do not have to face, but my thoughts are with the many who do, who are being talked about today—particularly those who have lost a child to cancer. I pay tribute to the many families campaigning for good cancer care for children and young people.

Every year, 4,000 children and young people are diagnosed with cancer in the UK; sadly, it is still the biggest killer by disease of children and young people in our country. As we have heard this afternoon, the needs of children and young people with cancer are very different from those of adults. They can face real challenges in cancer care. It is crucial that they get the right treatment and family support. Often that treatment takes place in dedicated specialist treatment centres far from home: children can travel on average 350 miles to get their cancer treatment.

According to research by Young Lives vs Cancer, distressed and vulnerable children often travel across the country to receive care. As we have heard, the location of the centres is important for local people seeking the best care for their children. My city, Bristol, is home to the paediatric haematology/oncology programme, which serves the whole south-west region, working with shared care centres from Gloucestershire to Cornwall to ensure that children receive care as close to home as possible.

What should that care look like? We know that children receive the best care with early diagnosis and access to treatment from well-supported and trained staff, based on the latest research. Sadly, under this Conservative Government swathes of targets have not been met, and children are left waiting for a diagnosis when every second is vital. Those missed targets include the faster diagnosis standard, with three in every 10 patients waiting longer than 28 days for a diagnosis or to have cancer ruled out in 2022-23. Waiting lists have risen to a record high, with over 400,000 children awaiting consultant-led treatment. Prolonged waits have a detrimental impact not only on children’s health, but on their education and overall wellbeing. Although I welcome the children and young people cancer taskforce announced last month, without a properly functioning wider health system, children with cancer will continue to be vulnerable to those missed targets and delays in care.

The root of the crisis is the failure to provide the NHS with the staff it needs to treat patients on time. Indeed, the Royal College of Radiologists, which represents specialist paediatric radiologists, has said that after years of underinvestment, the workforce is stretched, causing backlogs and delay. That is why Labour is committed to providing the staff, the modern technology and the reform that are crucially needed to bring down those waits to safe levels. We will provide 2 million more appointments a year for planned surgery, diagnostics and out-patient care, and double the number of CT and MRI scanners, speeding up diagnosis and access to treatment for children.

We know and we have heard in the debate how important it is for people, and particularly for their families, to be confident that they will receive the right care in the right place. The guidelines produced by NHS England are very clear about the processes to be followed and the clinical case to be made for major service change. Indeed, that was much discussed in the Bill Committee for the Health and Care Act 2022, on which I sat. I look forward to hearing from the Minister—I will give her plenty of time—about any assurances that she can give to local people on the decision, and to the Members of Parliament who have spoken today on both the process and the substance of decision making in the NHS.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Minister, over to you.