Oral Answers to Questions

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

Nine out of 10 prescriptions are not paid for, but free at the point of delivery. On the various important points that the hon. Lady makes, tackling health inequalities is hugely important to us. That is why we are creating 160 extra community diagnostic centres, which are targeted at areas of the highest deprivation. It is why we are rolling out targeted lung health checks in 43 areas of the most deprivation. It is also why we are providing cost of living support worth about £3,300 for the average household in this country. It is one of the most generous schemes anywhere in Europe, exactly to tackle those cost of living pressures and health inequalities.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that health inequalities can also be geographical within the south-east, with boroughs such as Bexley having historically received less funding than other parts of London. Does he therefore agree that further investment in the fantastic Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup would address that issue and improve health outcomes for people in south-east London?

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is assiduous in making the case for his constituency. Ministers of course will meet him to discuss this matter. I know he is closely following the progress of the CDC bid, which we have been talking about. Those diagnostic centres are doing fantastic work to get earlier diagnosis and save more lives, particularly in areas of deprivation.

Patient Choice

Louie French Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I can confirm that, from October, we will roll this out to those who have been waiting more than 40 weeks, and we will look to bring down that threshold over time. We will focus first on the longest waits.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I share my right hon. Friend’s desire to increase patient choice and reduce waiting times. One way to do that in south-east London is to expand further the number of services at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, which is an excellent modern hospital with the capacity to expand services. However, there needs to be a will within NHS leadership, especially within the new integrated care boards, to get on with doing so, particularly for community diagnostics. Will my right hon. Friend please agree to meet me to discuss further how we can improve patient choice and patient outcomes in Bexley?

[Steve Barclay]

I share my hon. Friend’s desire. As part of this announcement, payment will follow patients to incentivise trusts to take on more, which further underpins patient choice. We are actively engaged on accelerating the diagnostic centres and, as a result of ministerial intervention, we have speeded up the diagnostic centre programme. I look forward to updating the House on how many additional scans and tests will now be done this year, as opposed to the original plan for those tests to be done in 2024. I am very happy to have further discussion with him.

Allergy Awareness Week

Louie French Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

It is great to see you in the Chair today, Ms Ali. It is a pleasure to speak in today’s important debate on allergy. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for securing it, and I echo many of the sentiments that he expressed. I thank all the excellent campaigners across the UK whose lives have been impacted by allergies, especially those families who have tragically lost loved ones and continue to campaign to raise public awareness and to lobby for policy changes. They are an inspiration to us all.

As the Member of Parliament for Old Bexley and Sidcup, let me also highlight the crucial and often lifesaving work of Allergy UK, which is based in Sidcup and supports individuals and families across the country via a range of allergy-related guidance and services. Those include a helpline and a dietician service to help the parents of young children who have symptoms of food allergy and have not yet been referred to a dietician. I had the privilege of visiting the hard-working team in Sidcup last year to see its work at first hand. I am very sorry that Carla will soon be leaving, and I thank her for her fantastic leadership and all her hard work for the all-party parliamentary group on allergy.

As we have heard already, an awareness among patients and in the NHS of how allergies can impact our health can be a matter of life and death. That is why I support Allergy UK’s mission for everyone in the UK to take allergy seriously. I must admit that I never did so before I met the team and allergy experts from across the country. After I mentioned that I suffer with hay fever each year, they gave me more information on the various types of pollen than my brain could digest, and lots of great advice on how to manage my allergies. If they are watching today, I promise them that I did listen—I am sniffling a lot less than I would normally at this time of year.

Mine is just one relatively minor case, and hay fever is a common example of an allergy. Living with any kind of allergy is challenging and can impact the quality of a person’s life, but food allergies can trigger very severe reactions and, without emergency treatment, present a risk to life. Understanding that is vital, not just for patients but for medical professionals.

It is estimated that 41 million people in the UK live with allergic disease and that 50% of children are affected by one or more allergic disorders. However, there is a significant gap in both awareness and healthcare services for those affected by this disease of the immune system. That is why I signed the patient charter, and why I back Allergy UK’s campaigns to raise awareness, including in schools, and to introduce allergy nurse and dietician services in GP practices.

Regional integrated care boards have a clear role to play in the new NHS structure in helping to close that gap. I look forward to hearing more from my hon. Friend the Minister about how the Government can support that endeavour with the significant money being allocated to the NHS to help to improve health outcomes, and how the Government can address the estimated £1 billion annual cost of NHS prescriptions to help to manage allergy symptoms and the increase in hospital admissions highlighted by the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham.

The service specification sets out that providers should deliver a diagnostic package for the investigation of suspected allergic diseases, including initial consultation and follow-up in a dedicated allergy clinic and specialised allergy tests, but the evidence is clear that we need more specialists across the country to avoid a postcode lottery for individuals and families. There are resources available to support healthcare professionals in making referrals to specialist services, including guidance from the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, but we must continue to promote them to medical professionals.

We have made progress in recent years. The most obvious example is Natasha’s law, which came into force on 1 October 2021. It requires all food retailers and operators to display full ingredient and allergen information on every food item they sell pre-packed for direct sale. That gives the millions throughout the UK who are living with food allergies and intolerances better protection and more confidence in the food they buy. I again thank all the campaigners across the country, including Natasha’s family and Allergy UK, as we continue to raise awareness and make vital calls, not just in Allergy Awareness Week but throughout the year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louie French Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important point on two levels. The first relates to how we boost recruitment in areas such as Lincolnshire, and the new medical school in Lincoln will play a key part in that. The second relates to how we increase the retainability of staff in those parts of the country, and having more on-the-job training and apprenticeships is a key way of doing that. That is why things like the new medical doctor degree apprenticeship will be particularly relevant to cohorts of the population in areas such as Lincoln.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

One of the biggest issues my local hospitals raise with me in outer London is the impact of Sadiq Khan’s ultra-low emission zone expansion, with nurses and other staff facing charges of £12.50 per shift or £25 if they are working nights. Given that 50% of London’s emergency service workers live outside the capital, does the Minister agree that the Mayor and the Labour party should stop ignoring Londoners and drop their ULEZ tax rate?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the additional costs that the London Mayor is imposing not just on NHS staff but on all staff working in the capital, in contrast to the approach the Chancellor has taken to energy support to help staff across the workforce, including in the NHS, with the cost of living.

Diagnostic Hospital: Stockton

Louie French Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

I thank the House for allowing me the opportunity to raise this important and urgent issue, making the case for one of the Government’s new diagnostic hospitals to come to Stockton.

First, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the incredible workforce who are the backbone of my local NHS. Having volunteered during the pandemic and shadowed shifts in my local hospitals, North Tees and James Cook, I have seen at first hand their incredible commitment and dedication; the doctors, nurses, porters, domestic staff, care workers and everyone else each day provide a lifeline to those most in need. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. These people deliver grade A public service and deserve grade A resources and workplaces.

I welcome the fact that a Conservative Government have given the NHS the biggest cash boost in its history. I welcome the incredible difference that this additional £33 billion of funding will make, and I welcome the commitment to build 40 new hospitals by the end of the decade and to create a network of diagnostic hospital hubs to tackle the post-coronavirus backlog. In recent times, I am delighted to have seen tens of millions of pounds of capital investment put into my local hospitals. At South Tees, that has meant, among others things, upgrades to life-saving radiology equipment, and at North Tees we have seen upgrades to our award-winning urgent care centre and the provision of a new respiratory unit.

However, nowhere is investment in healthcare needed more than in my area. There is a debate about health inequalities in this country; this is about the difference in access to care, the impact on people’s quality of life and the differences in the resulting life expectancy. It is an appalling fact that there is a street in Stockton where if someone travels from one end to another, just 5 miles, they pass through two areas where the difference in life expectancy is 20 years! Those living in Yarm in my constituency can be expected to live until the age of 84, whereas those living in Stockton Town Centre, in neighbouring Stockton North, can expect to live, on average, only to the age of 64—that is equivalent to the life expectancy of those living in Ethiopia. That is entirely unacceptable in Britain in 2022; we cannot go on like this.

I realise that a new hospital or diagnostic hub is not the entire solution to this problem, and that it requires interventions from the health service, social services, the local council and other agencies, but investment in our local health service is part of that solution. I have already held an Adjournment debate on the need to improve North Tees hospital and I have talked of the huge maintenance costs that consume the hospital’s budget, the fact our operating theatres are not big enough to house modern robotics and the fact that the hospital is just not fit for the 21st century. Our bid is in to the new build hospital programme, but today I am here to make the case for us to have one of the Government’s new diagnostic hospital hubs.

The pandemic has created a huge pressure on our NHS; with elected surgery paused, the waiting lists and backlogs have grown to unprecedented levels. During a shadow shift at North Tees, I saw the unbelievable challenges facing our doctors as they have to decide which patient’s surgery is the most urgent and who must wait, whether it be the youngster involved in a car accident at the weekend or the elderly person awaiting a hip operation. These are harrowing choices for clinicians to make and we must do everything we can to help tackle that backlog. Among the 88,000 people on waiting lists across North Tees, South Tees and County Durham NHS trusts, more than 2,500 have waited more than a year for an appointment. So as well as pushing the bid for a new hospital at North Tees, I believe Stockton would be the ideal place for one of the Government’s new diagnostic hospital hubs. Such a hub could save lives in my area, by ensuring that people can get the checks and tests they need more quickly. They could get the MRI scan that could detect cancer and ensure they get the treatment they need in time, or the CT—computerised tomography—scan that detects the stroke and ensures the right care to aid their recovery.

I realise that the Minister, and several of her predecessors, may well be sick of hearing from me on these two bids, but I am not the only person who believes this diagnostic hospital hub needs to come to Stockton.

Both North Tees and South Tees NHS trusts have agreed that Stockton should be the home of such a hospital hub. I spent my summer delivering tens of thousands of leaflets and knocking on doors across my constituency, speaking to residents about the plan. Thousands of people signed the petition and backed the plan. Our proposal is to build the new diagnostic hospital in Stockton town centre, which is due to be reconfigured and made fit for the future, thanks to £16.5 million from the Government’s future high streets fund. Putting the hospital hub here will mean that it is accessible to all by public transport, as well as driving footfall and breathing life into our town centre to support the local economy. 

 It would be remiss of me to discuss this without mentioning the challenges in attracting radiographers to operate and man such a hospital hub. It is great that, thanks to a Conservative Government, there are now 30,000 more doctors and 40,000 more nurses working in our NHS than there were in 2010. However, there remains a problem in attracting radiographers. A chronic workforce shortage means that a diagnostic centre would need additional staffing rather than extracting from the teams already based in acute hospitals. 

The north-east is hit worst by these shortages with a vacancy rate of 17%, the highest vacancy rate in England and, worryingly, 90% of those vacancies have been unfilled for more a year. Alongside my plea for a diagnostic hub, I urge the Government to invest in local clinical radiology training places. 

This Conservative Government and their levelling-up agenda have meant huge investment in my area, improving infrastructure with upgraded roads, new cycle lanes, railway stations and the saving of our airport. We have seen new jobs and training opportunities delivered through the UK’s first and biggest freeport, supporting the development of a new training hub to upskill local youngsters and increasing investment in local schools. Tens of millions of pounds of funding have been put in to improve town centres in Stockton, Thornaby, Yarm and—hopefully soon—Billingham.

Now it is time to level up on health, so that people from my area can live long and happy lives and we can eliminate health inequalities that have no place in modern Britain.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

My hon Friend is making a fantastic speech on the importance of diagnostic hubs in the north of England. Does he agree that that levelling up also applies to areas in the south, particularly my area of Sidcup, where we have also been lobbying for a diagnostic hub? We also need to level up and provide that local service for my hospital, Queen Mary’s, in Sidcup.

[Matt Vickers]

I agree. I know how much work my hon. Friend has put in to try to seal the deal in his part of the world. I am sure that the Minister will have good news for us all. It is well earned if it is there.

I hope that Ministers will back the bid that has been put forward to provide my area with the much-needed increase in diagnostic capacity so that my local NHS is fit for the future, fit for patients, and fit for its amazing staff. I know that the Government are committed to modernising the NHS and have announced massive investment that will fund healthcare across my region. I know that the Minister is probably sick of hearing from me on this issue, but I will continue to push for the resources we need to tackle the heartbreaking health inequalities that my area faces. 

I thank the Minister for her attention and look forward to her response.