Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I drew attention to my right hon. Friend’s long campaigning, and I will return, if I may, to the trajectory of this issue before addressing her point.

Calls for a ban intensified after 2012, when the Animal and Plant Health Agency intercepted a consignment of sheep due to sail from the port of Ramsgate and 42 sheep were humanely killed after being found unfit to travel. I welcome that, since the 1990s, we have seen export numbers decline significantly. In 2020, around 6,300 sheep were exported from Great Britain to the EU for slaughter, and around 38,000 sheep were exported for fattening. I am pleased to say that, thanks to the UK’s exit from the EU, there have been no recorded exports for slaughter or fattening from Great Britain to the EU since January 2021, and now is the time to enshrine that in law.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for making the point that, from 2021, there have been no further exports for slaughter. My farmers are concerned about reproduction. Can he clarify whether the Bill is just about slaughter? What can be done about the gene pool, by making sure that people are still allowed to trade genetic material across the world in order to strengthen stocks?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend characteristically raises a pertinent point, which I will address. He is right to draw a distinction between exports for slaughter and wider breeding programmes, particularly in the horse industry.

Given the demand from Europe’s slaughterhouses for livestock, especially British sheep, there is no reason to think that this trade would not resume at the first opportunity if we did not legislate now to ban live exports. That is why we must put an end to this unnecessary trade.

Long journey times can lead to a host of animal welfare issues, including stress, exhaustion, dehydration and injury. The journeys that once took young, unweaned calves from Great Britain to Spain for fattening were found to last on average 60 hours, and in some cases over 100 hours.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

13. What progress he has made on improving hospital facilities.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)]

The Government are providing record investment in NHS hospital facilities to improve staff and patient experiences and provide extra capacity to cut waiting lists, including the more than £20 billion that we announced just under two weeks ago.

[Dr Evans]

I thank the Secretary of State for his serious investment in Leicestershire, with £14 million for the diagnostic centre in Hinckley and now part of that £20 billion going to Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General Hospital and Glenfield Hospital, including for upgrading the car park. But there is one final part. In 2018 we had £7 million allocated to Hinckley for improvements, but due to covid and the community diagnostic centre investment, the business plan has changed to a day case unit. The money is there. Will he remove the red tape and look on this kindly and swiftly?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the series of investments that we have made in his local area. On the specific case he raises, he will know that the business case needs regional approval, and that is currently with NHS colleagues, but I am happy to commit to him that once that is received, we will look at it very keenly.

Recovering Access to Primary Care

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As I said in my statement, we have 4,000 doctors training in primary care, compared with 2,600 in 2014. We are also looking at how we can better retain the GPs we have. That is why we made the pension changes, which will affect around 9,000 GPs. It is also why we are looking at additional roles to take pressure off GPs, and at how we can reduce some of the burden of bureaucracy, too. We are training more doctors, and we are looking at retention and bureaucracy. No one is suggesting that this is solely an issue of telephony or online booking, as the hon. Lady suggests, but all of this will help to relieve pressure on extremely busy primary care.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I am pleased to be talking about primary care, for obvious reasons. It is important that the Government made the pension changes, which will make a difference to retention, but I am also pleased with the next part of the plan. When I was a clinician, 15% of my workload was chasing letters and administration, which is borne out by the evidence we have heard on the Health and Social Care Committee. Will the Secretary of State comment further on the bureaucracy he is cutting? Will he ensure that this is the first step in pushing down on that bureaucracy, as that will improve the welfare of both our workforce and our patients?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend has a great deal of experience, and he is right to focus on the amount of clinical time often spent on non-clinical issues. Sending reminders through the NHS app will reduce non-attendance. We are also looking at the key interface between secondary care and primary care, as well as considering which appointments can be done elsewhere, such as through pharmacies and the additional roles. The online booking system can better triage people to the right place, and there will be some self-referral in order to take pressure off GPs—not for things that carry a clinical risk, such as internal bleeding, as the Opposition suggest; but for things like hearing aids. If a person has taken a hearing test, they will not need to clear an appointment for a hearing aid through their GP.

Oral Answers

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

First, I very much welcome the good care that the hon. Gentleman received, and it is great to see him back in the Chamber. On the wider issue, that is why we have an elective recovery plan, in which we have applied a boost in capacity, particularly through the surgical hubs. We are looking at how we build greater resilience, especially in winter, when elective beds are often under pressure. We are also investing in areas such as eye treatment, and we are rolling out through Getting It Right First Time a programme of improvement in a range of areas, including that one.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

Provision for special educational needs and child and adolescent mental health services is one of the biggest issues in my inbox in Leicestershire, particularly in respect of delays in assessment and diagnosis. One of the Government’s plans was to introduce school mental health support teams. The Health and Social Care Committee heard that the aim was that 35% of pupils should be covered by 2023. May we have an update on progress and on when we are likely to reach 100%?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I am happy to update the House, as we have already achieved 35% coverage. By the end of the month, we expect to have 399 operational mental health support teams, covering 3 million children and young people. We plan to go further, with over 500 such teams by spring 2024.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

Those discussions are ongoing with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. The hon. Gentleman will know that we made progress in the summer on a couple of areas in relation to pensions, and my right hon. Friend is having further discussions with us in that context.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I declare an interest as a GP and the immediate family of a GP and doctors. GPs are working incredibly hard in tough times. It is true that supply has gone up, but so too has demand. Change needs to happen in primary care, but one of the bedrocks is the GP partnership model. Does this Government agree?

NHS Workforce

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady mentioned the summer, and I think she knows that I visited the Jean Bishop integrated care centre and looked at the great innovations and brilliant work that her constituents, among others, are doing there. I looked at how it is bringing social care and the NHS together through an integrated model and how there has been new investment, supported by the amazing fundraising within the local community and by NHS funding. It would be great to get a bit of balance about the amazing feedback I heard from both staff and patients at the Jean Bishop integrated care centre who are working innovatively. I hope the hon. Lady would agree that the innovation of a centre such as the Jean Bishop is what we need to see in more places across the NHS. To her wider point, there are challenges in social care; she raises a fair point. That is why, despite the many competing pressures that the Chancellor faces, he has allocated £500 million for this year. It is also why he then committed the £2.8 billion for next year and the £4.7 billion for the year after—the biggest ever increase in that funding. But it is not simply about the funding increase; it is also about using new models such as that integrated care model to deliver far better care.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Is that not precisely the point? The NHS will gobble up the money, so it is about how we use the system. The integrated care systems and integrated care boards—established through the White Paper that the NHS asked for—are doing exactly that. They are trying to join up primary care, secondary care, social care, preventive health, county councils and borough councils all in one place to make a better stand on how we can produce healthcare that is better for our constituents and better for the taxpayer. Will my right hon. Friend make sure that, when he goes to the integrated care board chairs, he gives them the chance to solve the problems and unleashes the power to do exactly that, because they know best?

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. It is not just about the significant funding increase that the Chancellor has allocated; it is also about how that funding is deployed, in particular through using population level data for the integrated care system to bring health and care together. One area that the hon. Member for Ilford North and I agree on is the impact of delayed discharges across health and our hospital trusts as a whole. We often see that manifested in ambulance handover times, which are so impacted by that.

On the investment that is going in, my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) is right to say that it is also about how it is deployed. Again, missing from the Opposition motion was any reference to the commissioning of the former Labour Secretary of State, Patricia Hewitt, to look at how to take on board how that funding is spent in an integrated way. It would also be remiss of me not to draw the House’s attention to the £5.9 billion of capital funding that we are using to transform diagnostic services by making the most of new technologies and improving the equipment for our frontline staff, making it easier for them to deliver the patient outcomes that we need. That is investment, along with the investment in care, that this Government can be proud of.

In the motion, the shadow Secretary of State refers to a shortage of workforce, but he ignores the locum doctors and bank nurses that make up a significant proportion of the NHS workforce. He ignores the record numbers of doctors and nurses that we now have working in the NHS, with a 3% increase on last year in both doctors and nurses.

I am sure you will be surprised, Mr Deputy Speaker, given your background in Wales, to discover that we cannot see what the vacancy rate is in Wales because the Welsh Government stopped collecting workforce vacancy statistics in 2011. You would have thought that the motion would be an opportunity for the Opposition to encourage their Welsh colleagues, given the importance that they say applies to vacancy statistics. You would have thought they would be keen to see that information from across the Union of the United Kingdom. I thought that Labour was a party of the Union. Why would it not want to have that transparency across Wales on the vacancy figures? But the motion was silent on that point. Perhaps in closing, the relevant shadow Minister will make a commitment to encourage the Welsh Government to have that same level of transparency.

[Dr Evans]

The Secretary of State hits the nail on the head when it comes to comparing the different countries across the Union, because different countries choose to use different statistics on waiting times to manage their staffing. Does this not confirm the argument we should have a unified way of using those statistics across the four nations?

[Steve Barclay]

I very much agree. In fact, in the spirit of co-operation, I would be happy to write to Sir Ian Diamond at the Office for National Statistics to encourage that, if the Welsh Government were willing to make that commitment. I do not know whether the Opposition would be willing to sign up to encouraging the Welsh Government to have that level of transparency. They seem reticent about having that transparency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Luke Evans]

rose—

[Steve Barclay]

I will give way to the hon. Lady first and then to my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay]

I have said that I am going to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans), and then I am going to wrap up. As I was saying, sometimes there are areas where it is more difficult to recruit and we need to look at the data on that.

[Dr Evans]

When it comes to retention, pensions are a big issue, and the Opposition Front-Bench team have picked up on that. One recommendation from the Select Committee was to mandate for recycling to try to help with that. What other work is being done to try to ensure that senior colleagues with the most experience are incentivised to take on the extra lists and try to deal with the backlog, in all four corners of the country?

[Steve Barclay]

We are uniquely placed in having a Chancellor who has not only a deep understanding of health issues, but an understanding of recent Health and Social Care Committee reports. Obviously, that is an issue that we, with Treasury colleagues, will keep under review.

The motion ignores the vital work that the Government are doing to back health and care, the £6.6 billion of investment in our NHS that was announced in the autumn statement, and the social care investment of £2.8 billion and £4.7 billion next year. This Government are investing in our health and social care. We have always put the NHS workforce first and we always will.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

T5. The levelling-up fund is about improving a region. In Bosworth, we are putting forward the Twycross zoo for its national centre of conservation and education. It will be a world-leading scientific, education and conservation centre, driving tourism and the local economy. It is backed by the borough council, the county council, the local enterprise partnership and the midlands engine. Would the Chancellor like to come and visit it and, failing that, would he like to meet me to discuss how we can make this a symbol of the levelling up of the nation?

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)]

I do not know about the Chancellor, but I am sure my children would love to come and visit the zoo. I thank my hon. Friend for putting forward a bid for the levelling-up fund. As he will know, bids are currently subject to competitive assessment against objective criteria, but more generally, I think the whole House will welcome the fact that zoos are once again fully open to the public this summer. They provide a wide range of valuable benefits.

Economy Update

Debate between Luke Evans and Steve Barclay

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I have set out the comprehensive package of support that applies to businesses with restart grants and so forth. Of course, I would draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the support through local authorities, including the discretionary grants that are available as well.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

I continue to meet businesses in Bosworth, most recently those from the Hinckley business improvement district. They told me they were very grateful for all the support the Government have offered during this time, but they are looking to grow for the future as they come out into the post-pandemic economy, and one of the biggest concerns they have is business rates. I know the Chancellor is committed to a review of business rates. Is the Treasury heeding that call, is the Chancellor committed to bring that forward, and is there a timeline to do so?

[Steve Barclay]

As my hon. Friend touched on in his question, the Government have committed to conclude the business rates review by autumn 2021. The review is considering the issues he mentions, including the fundamental changes to the administration of the business rates system and indeed the impact that has on businesses.