Covid-19 Update

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Programme motion
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC) [V]]

Diolch, Madam Dirprwy Lefarydd. Wales is to go into lockdown on Friday. Scotland, Northern Ireland and regions of north England are already in similar measures. The firebreak restrictions in Wales are tailormade for the health needs of Wales, but the Treasury’s support schemes are based on political considerations and what best serves the south of England. Will the Secretary of State commit to bringing forward the job support scheme by eight days—only eight days—and increasing the level of support to that of the first furlough scheme, so that more people in Wales can afford to stay safe?

[Matt Hancock]

Of course, the furlough scheme continues until the end of the month and the job support scheme replaces it. That is the reason for the timing. It is the premise of the right hon. Lady’s question that the job support scheme, like the furlough scheme, supports every single part of these united isles. It supports the whole UK, including Wales. It is the UK Government coming to the aid of every single person in difficult times. That is the approach we should be taking—supporting everyone, wherever they live in this great country.

Covid-19 Update

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I will absolutely take forward the proposal that my hon. Friend rightly makes. She has been an unbelievably hard-working and assiduous voice for her community in Hyndburn. We have had a lot of contact during a difficult period and I want to join her in paying tribute to the people of Hyndburn who have followed social distancing and brought the case rate right down. It is another example of local action that has worked, but we must remain vigilant because, of course, east Lancashire, close as it is to Greater Manchester, is an area where we have seen a lot of cases, including, as I have said today, in Bolton. None the less, she has done her area and constituents proud in the way that she has represented them and made the case for them during this very difficult period.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

From 6 pm today, Caerphilly will become the first area of Wales to enter a local lockdown. Does the Secretary of State agree that Wales urgently needs more financial powers to support people affected by these necessary precautions?

[Matt Hancock]

I shall speak to my opposite number in the Welsh Government about that suggestion. I know that taking local action, whether in Caerphilly in Wales, in and around Glasgow and Aberdeen in Scotland, or, of course, in parts of England, which is my responsibility when it comes to local action, we only take this action with a heavy heart and when it is necessary.

Coronavirus Update

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I have come to Parliament to explain it at the first opportunity.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Academy of Medical Sciences is very clear: prepare now for a winter covid-19 peak. We must grasp this chance to learn from past mistakes such as PPE shortages and a Welsh Government gazumped by the British Government on testing equipment. Will the Secretary of State commit to a rapid review, not to point the finger of blame, but to stand ready to implement what we have learned before winter is upon us?

[Matt Hancock]

This attempt to divide us is very unfortunate. The UK Government have put testing capacity into Wales that is bigger than NHS Wales’s own capacity, and we do that in Scotland as well with the same effect. We are working together in partnership across the United Kingdom, and, absolutely, we are making the preparations for winter, as the right hon. Lady and every other Member of this House would expect.

Covid-19: BAME Communities

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lefarydd. I thank the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) for her trenchant speech in opening this debate.

Members have risen to speak in the House on matters relating to inequality and BAME communities with depressing regularity over the years. I thank the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for saying we have come a long way. I will refer a little to my own history. I am very aware that I am a white woman speaking on this matter, but before moving to Wales I was raised in Eltham, in south-east London. Stephen Lawrence’s murder in 1993 compelled that community—my old home community—to deeply question its values. The Macpherson report in 1999 made 70 recommendations aimed at tackling institutional racism, primarily within the criminal justice system, yet 20 years later and black people in Wales are five times over-represented in the prison population, Asian people are 1.7 times over-represented, and people from a mixed ethnic group are 2.7 times over-represented. This is a significant indicator of the structural racism and inequality in our society.

This is the hard reality of criminal justice and inequality. Our police forces are indeed very different from those of 1993, but disproportionately too many young men and women have blighted lives and spend much of their lives in the criminal justice system. Those figures reveal that all the good intentions of report after review after commission in no way reflect the lived experience of too many black people, and this is the background of today’s debate.

Many hon. Members have spoken already today about the pernicious effect of institutional racism within healthcare and the wider community. Many have questioned why it has taken the covid-19 crisis to make heroes of health and care staff and to show us clearly exactly how many of those frontline workers are from BAME communities. Representing a constituency now in north-west Wales, I hope that one of the messages we can get from this is: look at how dependent we are on people and look at what the outcomes have been for these people. Are we content for our society to ignore this?

Members have pointed out the obvious: there have been enough reviews, enough commissions and enough descriptions of how racism oozes from private attitudes into public experience. Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter campaign together are reforging our values and forcing us to question our cultural heritage. Thinking again of Stephen Lawrence and all the battles that his brave parents, Neville and Doreen Lawrence, have fought in the intervening years, the people my family knew in Eltham back then did not think of themselves as racists and we did not think of ourselves as racists, but look what happened in Well Hall Road.

People like us would have been horrified to be called racists and people like us are still horrified to be called racists, but that is not enough, is it? It is not enough to be not racist. Our social media feeds tonight will almost certainly include comments that “all lives matter”. Of course all lives matter, but it is not an indictment of anybody for us to be calling for this particular attention. One person’s gain is not another person’s loss. If we are not racists, we must be anti-racist. Do not commission; act on what we already know.

Covid-19 Response

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

The Dudley-Stourbridge massive are out in force today. I am delighted to thank everybody at Russells Hall for the work that they are doing. I am pleased to be able to confirm to my hon. Friend that we are working hard to restore cancer services. Many cancer treatment services have continued, but many were not able to continue because taking somebody’s defences down to close to zero, which is needed in much modern cancer therapy, is not the right thing to do when a killer virus is about. We are able to restore those services and I would love to visit my hon. Friend’s local hospital, whether virtually or physically.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Wales has 130,000 people who are considered most at risk from covid-19, and they deserve to be treated better than being caught up in a game of cross-border political brinkmanship. The Secretary of State’s Government’s changes to the status of shielded people in England were announced in the English media on Sunday. What procedure is in place to co-agree such announcements in good time with the Government responsible for health in Wales?

[Matt Hancock]

I work with my Welsh opposite number, Vaughan Gething, very closely. He and I have worked very closely indeed and the approach that the Welsh Government have taken has been to work through the four chief medical officers to try to do this in the best possible way.

Coronavirus

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is a great question to which I do not have the answer in my head, but it is a matter of hundreds of thousands in the first instance and thousands in the second.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

We know that social care workers play a key role in supporting people to recovery and in alleviating pressure on clinical staff, yet today’s Budget offers no clarity on new money, and care providers are still awaiting a draft social care strategy. If the Secretary of State rightly seeks cross-party agreement, what steps have the Government taken to introduce a draft social care strategy for discussion, and what discussions is he having with the Welsh Government regarding social care capacity?

[Matt Hancock]

The delivery of social care is a devolved matter. We will publish guidance, and we will work with the devolved authorities to make that as consistent as possible, but social care policy is different in the four nations, so obviously we will have to take those differences into account.

Coronavirus

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point. We do have significant vaccine capabilities, and not only in research, where we are world-class, but in some production, for instance in Hamilton in Scotland. The broader point is that investment in the whole production chain and not just research is critical.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Government have outlined emergency legislation that will extend new powers to the Welsh Government. Council representatives I have spoken with are concerned that there are currently legal obstacles hindering the swift deployment of emergency staff, for example in relation to vehicle insurance and limits on working hours. That applies particularly to social care staff, of whom there is a shortage in Wales and, I believe, across the UK. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Welsh Government to ensure that there are clear guidelines for emergency implementation in the care sector?

[Matt Hancock]

We have ongoing discussions with the Welsh Government. For instance, the Welsh Government joined the Cobra meeting this morning—in fact, they have been present at all the Cobra meetings—and we have had very good engagement on the Bill. I will look into the two specific points that the right hon. Lady has raised and will talk to my Welsh colleagues about them.

Coronavirus

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is an important point. We are launching an enhanced communications programme tomorrow, and I will check with my team whether it includes adverts in motorway service stations.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Rural Wales has a high percentage of self-employed people, and data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that 23% of households in Gwynedd are self-employed, compared with a Welsh average of 16%. What provisions have the four Governments made to assure self-employed people that they will be compensated for lost income arising from the covid-19 outbreak?

[Matt Hancock]

I am working with both the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Welsh Government, who have played their part with great care and responsibility in rising to this challenge.

Health and Social Care Committee

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his own really important role in the course of our inquiry. He highlights the point about the CQC. The CQC has no powers of entry into our prisons. We now know that it can carry out unannounced inspections just about anywhere else, but it cannot in prisons. The other challenge that it faces is being able to take a whole-system approach to the way services are commissioned. We heard from it again, in relation to a separate inquiry, earlier this week that it would like to have the powers independently to look at a whole-system approach, rather than just very narrowly looking at one aspect of it. It was very clear to us that a whole-system public health approach needs to be taken to the commissioning and provision of healthcare.

The hon. Gentleman’s other point was about the conditions in our jails. Keeping people in conditions where there are broken windows, cockroach infestations and so on is wholly unacceptable. No one should be living in those conditions in Britain today.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Select Committee on Welsh Affairs is undertaking an ongoing inquiry into the prison estate in Wales, and one issue that has been raised is the fact that health is of course devolved, but there appears to be relatively little consideration of how health is managed differently there from how it is managed in English prisons—of the difference between Wales and England. There is a particular anomaly with the only private prison in Wales, the question of answerability to the health ombudsman, and to whom actually that prison is answerable. Has the hon. Lady made any assessment of accountability between the Welsh and English regimes and to what degree we should perhaps be measuring the difference between health provision in prisons in Wales and that in England?

[Dr Wollaston]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. We did not look at devolved issues, because the remit of the Health and Social Care Committee is England only, but the hon. Lady makes a very important point. As the Justice Committee has an ongoing interest in this issue, there might be an opportunity for that Committee to take the matter up more quickly than we would be able to, but I would be very interested if the hon. Lady wanted to write to me about it.

I again thank all those who contributed to the inquiry, and I look forward to hearing the ongoing thoughts of the Justice Committee.

Phenylketonuria: Treatment and Support

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for securing this important debate and for her cogent argument. I am here on behalf of Mark Edwards of Llanegryn, Tywyn in Gwynedd. We have heard much about the impact on families and children, but the most effective thing I can do is talk about how Mark, as an adult, deals with this condition; how he manages from day to day; and what would make a difference to the quality of his life and the lives of others living with PKU.

Mark first contacted me about the sugar tax, which I had blithely thought to be a good thing. The sugar-sweetened drinks issue sums up how people with PKU struggle to strike the excruciatingly difficult balance between a medically essential specialist diet and fitting in with society’s rigid norms about food and drink.

Our social lives revolve around food and drink, from children’s tea parties to teenagers’ fast-food binges to adults’ restaurant dates. I have been told time and again how difficult it is for people with PKU to cope with the stigma of being “difficult” and “different”, especially over something as integral to our lives as food. If they cannot enjoy cake, jelly, burgers and chips, at least they can enjoy a fizzy drink—Irn-Bru or whatever the brand—like everyone else. Now, however, it costs more, because aspartame is on the red list. People with PKU are being taxed on one of the few social drink and food experiences that they are able to share with everybody else, simply because of their condition.

Mark is keen to stress how much he appreciates Wales’ policy on universal free prescriptions, which allows him to receive the special food and medical dietary supplements that he needs through Tywyn health centre’s dispensary, when he needs them and for free. That means that people with PKU in Wales have a much better arrangement, he said, than those in England. None the less, Mark still faces public prejudice towards his invisible condition. He has had to explain to people that he is not “freeloading on food”, as though it were a matter of lifestyle choice, and not medical necessity.

A number of us in this Chamber have committed to the PKU “diet for a day” on Thursday. A great number of people in Wales have also done so, and they deserve a shout out. They are: Alex Jones of Cambrian News; Janet Davis, the supervisor of Brighter Foods, where Mark works; school friends Carys Hughes and Nicci Hughes; and Tywyn solicitor Andre Bright, who has committed to keeping to the diet for a week. He deserves respect, even if a week is nothing compared to what the families face. I am only brave and organised enough to do it for a day; I apologise. We are doing this in solidarity with PKU families, but we also know that this in no way fully reflects or replicates the reality of their lives. Most of us will do this by being fussy and awkward—I anticipate living off aubergine for a day—but we are only doing it for one day. We will not face this fraught, potentially toxic relationship with food, and the stigma associated with it, every day of our lives.

PKU affects every aspect of one’s life. Controlling the condition by diet alone causes immense strain, and any possible medical intervention will make an immense difference to the quality of people’s lives. Wales is alert to England’s NICE guidelines, and I urge the Minister to do all he can to press NICE to move ahead, so that his Department can recommend Kuvan. I also urge that other drugs, such as Pegvaliase, be considered. I ask the Government to consider the health implications of the wider use of aspartame, which is associated with the sugar tax, and the way that it affects a number of other health conditions as well. Diolch yn fawr.