Deafness and Hearing Loss

Kelly Tolhurst Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing this important debate; it is a real pleasure for me to speak in it. I also think it is an absolutely fantastic move that today’s debate is being signed. I advocate that more debates held in the Chamber be signed. It should be the norm in the House of Commons, not an exception to the rule.

I was very keen to speak in this debate about deafness and hearing loss, because it has had a major effect on my family. Rather than focusing on the many issues that affect deaf people in this country, I want to share with hon. Members an example of how deafness has affected my life.

Twenty-five years ago, at the age of 40, my mum lost her hearing literally overnight, due to a virus. She woke up one morning and could not hear any more. She had not been ill and had never had any hearing problems, but she went from being a hearing person one day to having no hearing the next day. At that time, we had a really good ear, nose and throat hospital in Maidstone. About a week after my mum lost her hearing, my father took her there, and it was confirmed that she had no hearing. The hospital staff put her on steroids and told her that it was due to a virus, that the hairs in her ears had died and that it was very unlikely she would ever get her hearing back.

That was absolutely devastating for my mother and for us all—my sister, myself and my dad. It changed her —and our—life fundamentally. We could not communicate with her; everything had to be written down. My mum could not sign or lip-read, so she was flung into isolation and, quite honestly, a state of depression. It was a really tough time. She had two teenage girls who were at that time very much into their singing, and all of a sudden, my mum had to accept that she would never again be able to hear her daughters sing.

Due to the abruptness of her hearing loss, it was really difficult to mitigate some of the emotional damage she suffered. The NHS looked after her and the staff tried to help her. They gave her lip-reading classes and offered her support with a counsellor; they even put her in contact with another lady in the country who had lost her hearing overnight, but my mum was still mourning the loss of something that she was never going to get back. Importantly, she was never told that she was a candidate to have a cochlear implant—that reinforces the point made by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden).

Deafness is the invisible disability. My mum did not look like she had a disability. Her voice sounded like it always had, because she had been a hearing person for 40 years, but I saw and experienced at first hand the major barriers that people who are deaf have to face. I recognise that there are strong differences between individuals who have been born deaf, those who have gradual hearing loss, and those who had hearing loss as a small child, perhaps due to meningitis or some other illness, but the biggest thing for my mum was that she did not have any deaf friends. We did not even know any deaf people.

Particularly acute was the fact that my mum’s opportunities were severely limited. She had looked after me and my sister at home, but was looking forward to going back to work because we were now in our teens. All of a sudden, she found that she was unable to work, because she did not have the confidence, and it was very difficult for her to understand anyone at that time. The opportunities open to her were therefore extremely limited.

Eventually, after eight years, my mum decided that she wanted to do something about her hearing loss. She went to the doctors, and they talked to her about whether she could be a candidate for a cochlear implant. She was told that she would have been able to access one immediately, because of the severity of her hearing loss, but it then took another two years for her to have an implant, because 25 years ago the funding was quite a challenge, due to the fact that such procedures were not as frequent as they are now.

After 10 years of suffering, being isolated, suffering with depression and being unable to go back to work, she finally had the cochlear implant. Sadly for her, after a year of travelling to St Thomas’ hospital, with its fabulous technicians, led by Terry Nunn, it was decided that the cochlear implant had not worked. She therefore had to go back for a further implant. Many people will not understand that a cochlear implant does not bring someone’s hearing back. They do not hear like they did when they were a hearing person, but it gives them some quality of life.

Technology has changed, and 25 years on, cochlear implants are available not just in London, but all over the country. What is very clear is that the sooner someone has a cochlear implant after the loss of hearing, the greater impact it will have on how that person hears. I was extremely worried on reading the reports, which have already been mentioned, that some clinical commissioning groups are now looking at stopping hearing aid provision. One of the only things that kept my mother going through those 10 years was that she was using a hearing aid. It did not help her hearing—all it did was accentuate the background noises and cut out some of her tinnitus some of the time—but if she had not had access to that service in the time before having a cochlear implant, it would have been even worse. In my view, hearing aids are a cheap way of having an impact on people who are suffering from gradual hearing loss. I find it quite frightening that CCGs would even be considering stopping that support, and I think it is a dangerous road to go down.

As hon. Members have already said, hearing loss, even if it is mild, sends people into isolation. They might not put themselves into certain situations because of fear of not understanding or not being able to hear what is going on. I used to go into the supermarket with my mother and people would ask her if she would like a carrier bag, but because she did not hear them, they would think she was rude. They might make a rude comment to her because of that, but she actually could not hear them. Hearing aids are massively important and can be an important way of keeping people out of that isolation and of maintaining their contact with the health service so that the hearing loss can be monitored.

It is not often talked about, but people who suffer from hearing loss and deafness are also very embarrassed by their disability. If it was physically visible, everybody would be talking about that kind of disability. People would be banging the drum and asking for support from the Government and different organisations; but deaf people work, get on with their lives and rarely moan very much. They put up with quite a lot. Because they do not have a visible characteristic, it is very difficult for hearing people to truly understand the isolation, depression and mental health issues that they are subjected to.

I have spoken today very much from an emotional point of view about a real-life situation that has affected me. I hope that what I have said has illustrated that deafness can take many different forms; it occurs not just in old age, or from birth. For too long, deaf people have been disadvantaged and isolated. It is really good to have this debate, and I join the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse in supporting the cause of the UK Council on Deafness. All its recommendations are well thought out, meaningful and realistic asks. I hope that anyone who is deaf who watches this debate next week will see that it is good to have such debates in Parliament, and that we care about deafness in this country and the people who suffer from it. I am pleased to have been able to speak today.